Rotowire on Sirius XM: Vickery and Hector Santiago in Tout AL

Jeff Erickson (85), Andy Behrens (51) and Chris Liss (45) talk about their bids this week on Hector Santiago, how Vickery changed them, and just how good Santiago might be. Plus a bonus: A theory that other White Sox closers manque have lost all their lustre.

Rotowire on SiriusXM…

The Bidmeister!

Tout Wars uses the onRoto stat service, and you can follow along with each league via the public page links in the right navbar here at toutwars.com.

At onRoto you’ll find the standings and rosters for each league and all team. You’ll also find the weekly Bidmeister logs, under Transactions Logs in the League Pages.

The Bidmeister is onRoto’s exemplary automated FAAB system. Each week team owner’s enter blocks of bids, starting each by designating a player on the active roster to reserve, release or disable, then listing free agents and bid prices for each. Of particular interest this week was Jeff Erickson’s approach in Tout AL. Of his $100 annual FAAB budget Jeff bid $85 in block 1 and $15 in block 2.

Because Tout Wars uses a modified Vickery bidding system, Jeff actually paid $52 for Hector Santiago ($1 more than Andy Behrens’ bid), and $10 for Vicente Padilla (the floor for bids of more than $10 that aren’t challenged by a bid of $9 or more.) Jeff now has a bullpen.

Lawr Michaels snuck through Fernando Rodney for $16.

Jeff Erickson:

  1. dis DMcGowan Tor:
    1. pur HSantiago CWS 85
    2. pur FRodney TB 23
    3. pur VPadilla Bos 15
    4. pur FMorales Bos 5
    5. pur LMendoza KC 1
    6. pur TWilhelmsen Sea 1
    7. pur JHowell TB 1
    8. pur JMcGee TB 0
  2. rel CRuffin Sea:
    1. pur FRodney TB 15
    2. pur VPadilla Bos 15
    3. pur FMorales Bos 5
    4. pur LMendoza KC 1
    5. pur TWilhelmsen Sea 0
    6. pur JHowell TB 0
    7. pur JMcGee TB 0
  3. res KFukudome CWS:
    1. pur JHannahan Cle 0
    2. pur RBrignac TB 0

Twitter Handles for Touts

Derek Carty: @DerekCarty

Steve Gardner: @sgardnerUSAT

Mike Siano: @fantasy411

Brian Walton: @b_walton

David Gonos: @davidgonos

Tim Heaney: @Tim_Heaney

Scott Swanay: @fantasy_sherpa

Nicholas Minnix: @NicholasMinnix

Mike Gianella: @mikegianella

Rob Leibowitz: @rob_leibowitz

Transaction Inaction

Steve Gardner writes in USA Today about the difficulties MLB’s staggering start to the season have caused fantasy leagues this year.

Tout Wars fell into the trap, announcing that there would be Free Agent pickups last night (April Fools Day). The culprit was a faulty reading of the rules and forgetting about precedent. Each of the last two years the initial claims were conducted on the Sunday night after the start of the season, and after review we moved this year’s initial claims deadline to midnight of April 8th.

At that point all DL players will be known and announced.

Tout Owners Write (and sometimes talk) About Their Teams

AL: Matthew Berry and Nate Ravitz talk about Berry’s Team, Lawr Michaels recap, Jeff Erickson’s recap, Chris Liss’s recap, Mike Siano’s recap, Andy Behrens’ recap, Jason Collette’s recap, Jason Collette compares his LABR and Tout Wars teams, Rob Leibowitz’s recap, Ron Shandler’s fanalytic recap,  Lawr Michaels on strategy,

MIXED: Corey Schwartz recap, Fred Zinkie recap, Derek Van Riper’s recap, Zach Steinhorn’s recap, Lawr Michaels offers mixed league players some advice, Nando Di Fino’s notes, Eric Mack’s recap, David Gonos’s recap, Nick Minnix recap, Tim Heaney recap (strategy), Tim Heaney draft reactions, Paul Singman’s recap, New York doesn’t stay open late enough for Ray Flowers,  Ray Flowers recap,

NL: Derek Carty recap, Peter Kreutzer Recap, Peter Kreutzer Precap, Scott Pianowski recap, Steve Gardner writes a NL survey with some AL bits, and reviews his own NL team, Mike Gianella’s recap, Nate Ravitz and Matthew Berry talk about Nate’s team, Todd Zola’s recap,

The Tout Wars Market

Derek Carty writes for Baseball Prospectus and has been a Tout Warrior since 2010. He is part of a startup called FantasySquared, which is a new game that creates small stock markets that allow fantasy team owners to trade shares in their fellow owners’ teams, perhaps backing the winning team in their league as their own team fades.

The website has just launched, and one of the first leagues available for public trading is Tout Wars. You can sign up at the site and start building your portfolio right away. Rotoman bought a couple hundred shares of his team to win, because he’s confident, and 100 shares of Lenny’s team, because he bid up Rotoman’s prime stud hitter target, Hunter Pence, until he was out of reach.

Derek shared the implied odds thus far for all three Tout Wars leagues. Is there really wisdom in crowds? We’ll find out better once a critical mass has joined the site. But here’s the results of a small sampling: Continue reading “The Tout Wars Market”

Tout Wars Spreadsheets

The unofficial results are here. Use the tabs to find each league. We’re fixing mistakes and cleaning things up right now, so thanks for your forebearance. The rapid pace had us typing faster than we could think, especially in the mixed draft.

UPDATE: Tidied up a bit. Working on filling in the blanks, including mixed reserves.