Category: Tout Draft

July 21, 2014 FAAB Report from Tireless Mastersball.com.

When only three days pass between FAAB sessions, as happened in Tout Wars this past week, the reports come fast and furious, though the bidding is weak and limpest.

Mastersball.com’s latest details all of this week’s fun. You can read it here.

One play from out of left field that the Mastersball crew missed was Rotoman’s bid on Cuban free agent Rusney Castillo, who isn’t even signed to a US team at this point! And this isn’t a keeper league! We spoke with Mr. Man, who says the following explains his bidding:

1) To compete for first he needs more hitting, and can’t afford to trade Madison Bumgarner to get it. At the same time, when he proposes to deal his next best starters, Alfredo Simon and Tanner Roark, to owners for mediocre sluggers like, say Adam LaRoche, they laugh and say they’ve been offered good pitchers for, um, LaRoche. Lenny Melnick today traded LaRoche and Drew Storen to Mike Gianella for Cameron Maybin and Tim Hudson. Fair enough, it’s a tough market.

2) Rusney Castillo is 27 years old and has been working out in Florida since being cleared to sign with a US team. He will have an open workout on Saturday and presumably sign shortly thereafter. He he signs with an AL club, Rotoman is SOL, but if he signs with a NL club, Rotoman will hope he is promoted quickly to the big league club.

3) Like Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu, Castillo is a mature hitter, though more a speedster than a slugger. It is thought that if he signs fast enough he’ll spend a short amount of time in the minors and be promoted to the big club by the end of August. Regular at bats in September could be big for Team Rotoman.

4) The cost for all of this is $1 FAAB and a reserve slot, plus having to keep Castillo active for one fruitless week. If Castillo were to sign next Saturday, after the workout, with a NL club, his price would be much higher. And if Rotoman didn’t have Castillo active he would have Nate McLouth’s two AB instead. It seems worth the risk, he said.

Tout Wars Mixed Draft: It’s All Over!

Why play the season? onRoto, Tout Wars stat provider, offers a Toy Box of tools to help teams create reports for custom periods during the year, look at the draft day roster standings and more. One fun Toy Box item at this point, before the season has begun, is Projected Standings.

BaseballHQ’s projections are applied to the rosters of all teams and standings are calculated. Read ’em and weep (or cry out in joy, Brent Hershey).

Screenshot 2014-03-18 11.05.59

 

Of course BaseballHQ’s Brent Hershey and Ray Murphy are going to rank highly. The Toy Box is using their projections.

This year onRoto has added Clay Davenport’s projections, which have nothing to do with HQ. How’d those turn out?

Screenshot 2014-03-18 11.16.59

 

Well, Brent is still in the top group, but it looks like Perry Van Hook and Greg Ambrosius are also to be reckoned with.

But all pay attention to Chris Liss’s maxim: “I want to be last in the projected standings. If I’m last I know I had a good draft.”

Or as Yogi might put it, “It ain’t over until they’ve started playing, at least.”

 

TOUTDOWN! Your Guide to Tout Wars Week!

March 11: Tout Wars Mixed Draft. Results. (Click tabs to select a spreadsheet page)

March 22, 9am: Tout Wars NL Auction. Follow on SiriusXM radio, the spreadsheet, the chat.

March 22, 3pm: Tout Wars Mixed Auction. Follow on Sirius XM radio, the spreadsheet, the chat.

March 22, 8pm: Tout Wars Party! Foley’s Bar, 18 West 33rd Street, NYC. Meet the Touts!

March 23, 10am: Tout Wars AL Auction. Follow on SiriusXM, the spreadsheet, the chat.

March 24: Doubt Wars! Beat the pros, win prizes!

I Like My Draft! Notes from the TW Mixed Draft 2014.

I woke up the day after the TW Mixed Draft to a curious email. It was addressed to me and said that my team had won the draft because my team had taken Mike Trout (duh) with the first pick in the previous night’s draft. Okay.

The issue was I was the live blogger, not a participant, but then I realized that in order to observe the draft I made myself a coowner of Tom Kessenich’s team. Tom had the first pick by virtue of having finished second in the league’s inaugural season and last year’s champ, Mike Podhorzer, moving to play in one of the only leagues this year.

So, I read on. CBSsports, who hosted the draft, went on to say:

Draft Recap

Thanks to players like Mike Trout, Tom Kessenich are the team to beat

It’s a long way to October, but you have won the first round, winding up with the top ranked draft. Your squad, led by Mike Trout, are projected to wind up with 96 category points. That’s 39 more points than Ray Murphy are projected to come up with. Coach Murphy will have all year to prove us wrong, but for now, Ray Murphy are slated to finish in last place.

Another team that will have some struggles is Tim McLeod, who have the worst infielders in the league. Coach Mcleod will have to trot out Corey Hart, Howie Kendrick, and Cody Asche into the starting lineup. Perry Van Hook, meanwhile, are the class of the league in that area, with infielders Miguel Cabrera, Mark Trumbo, and Jose Altuve.

Your strength is mainly in your pitchers, who project out to be the 2nd best in the league. That outstanding group is the reason why you are expected to wind up in 3rd place in the wins category.

Turning to individual picks, we tapped charlie wiegert as having made the best pickup with Robinson Cano in the 18th slot. He was projected to be off the board a full 11 picks earlier. On the other hand, Ray Murphy made the worst move of the draft. Coach Murphy selected Shin-Soo Choo with the 20th pick, which we pegged as a serious reach.

Your best pick up of the draft was Max Scherzer, who was expected to have been selected in the 24th slot, but who you got with pick #30. However, you mixed in some (minor) duds as well, the worst of whom was Zack Greinke, taken 12 spots ahead of what his average draft position suggests.

Paragraphs in italics are unique to your version of your league’s Draft Recap.

Now let’s return to some more human commentary.

Perry Van Hook’s draft review runs at Mastersball. He makes an astute point about reserve and DL list use in Tout, and lists the rookies taken and when they went.

Nick Minnix writes about forgetting that Tout Wars uses On Base Percentage rather than Batting Average, which led him to take Adam Jones instead of Joey Votto with the seventh pick. Remember Touts! All Tout Wars leagues are OBP this year! AL touts are hoping Larry Schechter forgets.

The introduction to Paul Sporer’s piece about his team, picking from the 14th slot, before it hides demurely behind the Baseball Prospectus paywall. For subscribers only.

Inside the Mind of a Tout, is a radio clip featuring Adam Ronis talking about his team.

Lots of recaps were heard on the radio, which is a little harder to link to, but send clips if you have them!

 

READY, SET, ALMOST GO! Tout Wars Mixed Draft is almost here!

The second annual Tout Wars Mixed Draft will be held Tuesday, March 11 at 7pm ET.

There are three newcomers in this year’s roster: Welcome Adam Ronis, Ray Murphy and Paul Sporer. Plus Nick Minnix moves over from the TW Mixed Auction.

Last year’s champ, Mike Podhorzer, has moved to the TW NL Live Auction, so it’s a wide open field. Last year’s second place finisher, Tom Kessenich, has this year’s first pick.

Join us here for a LIVE CHAT during the draft, and live DRAFT TRACKING of the results.

Find a complete roster of managers here.

Tout Wars Mixed Draft: The 2014 Owners Lineup

Competing in Tout Wars Mixed Draft in 2014

In order of reserve round pick (available FAAB in parenthesis)
* new to league this year

UPDATE: Corrected order and FAAB totals 1/20 at 4pm ET.

Draft order was selected by owners in the order of last year’s finish.

Tom Kessenich (100)
Perry Van Hook (100)
Eno Sarris (100)
Greg Ambrosius (100)
Tim McLeod (100)
Paul Greco (98)
Nick Minnix (95)*
Grey Albright (82)
Scott Engel (81)
Anthony Perri (72)
Ray Murphy (100)*
Adam Ronis (100)*
Charlie Wiegert (93)
Paul Sporer (100)*
Brent Hershey (84)

The draft will be held at 7pm ET on March 11, 2014. Join the LIVE CHAT and DRAFT TRACKING here.

 

Say Hello to On Base Percentage, Part 2.

While we’re putting the final touches on the 2014 Tout Wars league rosters, we wanted to make one significant announcement regarding the league rules. This year all four Tout Wars leagues will use On Base Percentage (instead of Batting Average) in their 5×5 scoring.

Last year’s experiment with OBP in the Tout Wars Mixed Draft and Tout Wars Mixed Auction leagues was a success. The patients survived, for one, and more importantly the owners in those two leagues adjusted without any obvious difficulty.

Expansion into the only leagues involves one further bit of business. The change means that Tout Wars will no longer be quite as good a draft price guideline as it was for leagues that use batting average. It was this issue that caused us to wait a year, and it was this issue that was forefront in our discussions this year about making the change. An online poll we ran in December, however, helped guide us to a decision.

Half the respondents who hadn’t played OBP thought we should make the change. And the vast majority of those who have played with OBP thought we should make the change.

We know the transition will be uncomfortable for some, but we feel strongly that having bases on balls count for hitters (as they count against pitchers in WHIP) is a very positive step in the evolution of fantasy baseball. We hope that our making the change now will make it easier for leagues that want to modernize their categories to make the jump sooner rather than later.

Tout poohbahs Ron, Lawr, Jeff and Peter all play in the XFL, a mixed keeper league that adopted OBP in 2003. We all feel that the tires have been kicked, any wrinkles have been pressed, and OBP is the stronger way to play.  And just as we did when we adopted 5×5 rather than the still (back then) prevalent 4×4, we hope you’ll come along if it makes sense for your league. As support service providers we’ll be including OBP in our materials this year, and we think you’ll start to see 5×5 (OBP) pricing become more common immediately and going forward.

Have a happy new year, and please welcome OBP!

Tout Wars