Category: Tout Wars Head To Head

At the end of April, Vlad Sedler, Andrea LaMont and Howard Bender were tied for second place, behind Peter Kreutzer’s hot start. But Kreutzer stumbled the next week, and so did Sedler and Bender, leaving LaMont alone in first.

By the end of May, Sedler had climbed back up to second place, four games behind LaMont, and in the last period in June he moved ahead by three games. While his lead seesawed from series to series, Sedler didn’t reliquish the lead the rest of the way, and finished with a three-game lead over LaMont in the end.

Sedler’s team was built around the power of Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton. He bought Noah Syndergaard as his ace, but when Syndergaard went down he relied on break seasons for Robbie Ray and James Paxton, and the reemergence of Dallas Keuchel as an ace to carry his staff. Plus Craig Kimbrel as a closer.

Done! Not really. Actually, it’s a squeaker!

Going into the last weekend, Jeff Zimmerman is nine games ahead of Brent Hershey in the Head to Head portion of the schedule, a seemingly insurmountable lead. But this week Zimmerman is losing to Andrea LaMont, 2-3 in hitting, 2-3 in pitching, and 4-6 overall, which would give him a weekly record of 0-6.

Hershey, meanwhile, has strong leads in eight categories over Paul Sporer, which would give him a weekly record of 6-0 if it holds up.

Here are the current standings:

If the current results hold up, Zimmerman finishes the head to head part of the contest at 84-48, while Hershey will 81-51.

Of course, these teams are also competing in 5×5 roto contests, for the first half, second half, and full season. These are converted to W-L records.

In the first half Hershey was 12-0, while Zimmerman was 11-1. Uh-oh.

In the second half Hershey is in first place again (through Thursday’s games). Double uh-oh.

That’s another 12-0 for Hershey and an 11-1 for Zimmerman. And it’s hard not to assume that the overall full-year standings will tell a similar story, which puts our projected finish at:

Jeff Zimmerman: 117-51
Brent Hershey: 117-51

You can bet that Zimmerman is rooting hard against Andrea LaMont this weekend, and Hershey is rooting for her.

(In case of a tie in total points, according to the Tout Wars Constitution, the team that wins in more categories is designated the winner. If neither team wins more categories, the glory—and the title—is shared.

In the second half, Hershey is up six cats to four, and in the first half Hershey led by five cats to four, so Zimmerman’s best bet to win is to edge LaMont over the weekend in at least one more category, to go 5-1 for the week.)

As we draw to the end of the penultimate series of the 2017 Tout Head to Head season, Jeff Zimmerman is soundly beating Jeff Boggis, and is poised to go 6-0 for the week.

Brent Hershey’s second-place team is being edged by Peter Kreutzer’s team in both hitting and pitching, and is in danger of going 0-6 for the week. But this has been a see saw battle all the way, so there is certainly a fair chance that Hershey’s team will pull it out. There are four days of major league games left to play.

Here are the current standings for head to head play.

But Tout Daily isn’t just about the head to head. Wins and Losses are also applied based on roto 5×5 standings for the first half, second half, and whole season. We’ve had a hard time introducing this novel system into the automated scoring our stat service provides, but here are the standings for the various periods to date.

The first half standings:

The current second half standings are:

We’ll hold off on the end of season standings until the season is over, but it seems pretty clear that there will be no dramatic surprises. The first and second half Top 3 are the same, if slightly resorted.

And here are the combined first and second-half to date standings:

It’s going to take some major reversals for Brent Hershey to overtake Jeff Zimmerman in the race for the first Tout Head to Head crown.