Several points. Cristano is a very good lobbyist, seeking to influence the competition for his own purposes. I'm glad he admitted his reason for posting about Pineiro and Duren. He did a great job last year on catcher's arms. I should have literally run away with that league without people loading up on catcher's arms. Many might still have, but I am pretty sure fewer of the also rans would have without his influence.
So it goes.
But one has to read between the lines. Like any good disinformation, the majority of what Cristano posts is accurate, even insightful. But the element of misdirection is rarely lacking. One example: in last years finals thread he posted about Honus Wagner, if I recall, and how he has little use for his 6.55 million card, vastly preferring the 7.98 card. And yet, arguably the best player on his 80M team in event 2 this team was... the 6.55M Honus Wagner!
Dj's team in event 2 was very retro, employing the precise small ball, low cap starters that I often used back in 2006-2008. I think that there are better choices now but it worked very well indeed.
Hallerose did as well as he did last year primarily because he loaded up on OBP guys, which is his signature for small ball teams. The pitching was pretty shaky, even with Sutter and Wagner. Sutter was great but Wagner performed as he usually does, much worse than my expectations. But I also should add, that I've used every one of his pitchers many times over the years, except Kison who I've only employed a handful of times. It also didn't hurt that he was in the weakest division, with two teams deep in the red on run differential. I think of all the managers in this show, he is the easiest, for me at least, to "read" whereas Lab is more difficult for me -at least when it comes to predicting draft picks. No implication that one is better than the other, Karpov and Fischer were fairly easy to understand as well, Kasparov much more difficult.