August 2015 | TOUT WARS!

Shake Some Action, Not. The August 31 FAAB Reports.

Mastersball finds Tout Wars far more active than LABR, but really, the well is running dry. Rotoman, for his part, bid hard on Rodney and Verrett, while Phil Hertz bid big for Rotoman castoff Michael Lorenzen. The standings say trust Hertz. But at this point all of us, except maybe Mike Gianella, are looking for a hero.

Gianella will weigh in on Tuesday at Baseball Prospectus on this week’s moves in Tout NL and AL. In fact, the moves are less than half of it. Mike does a nice job dissecting the NL pennant race (which he is atop) in his piece, and discusses the AL race, which Chris Liss currently leads.

Charlie Wiegert, the Godfather of Fantasy Sports, Kicks It In the Tout Daily Final, by FanDuel.

Here’s something the old and new can agree upon. Back in the day, when Major League Baseball tried to appropriate all rights to fantasy sports, Charlie Wiegert put his business on the line to challenge that notion.

You will have to look elsewhere for the history, but karma is paying back, as Charlie Wiegert has won the first Championship of Tout Wars Daily by FanDuel. That’s a $1,000 prize, and validation for the fact that the Daily Fantasy Games are not only the domain of the younger fantasy players.

Wiegert won the Tout Daily championship going away, riding the broad back of Clayton Kershaw. He was the only team to choose the day’s most expensive, and most productive, player.

Here’s how he did it:

Tout Daily by FanDuel Finals! An Update!

There aren’t many innings left to play, but this thing is far from over. Here are the current standings. You can follow the real results at FanDuel.

Adam Ronis has a small lead, but it is tight! Key number is in the next to last column. That’s how many innings are left.

UPDATE: Charlie Wiegert has 14 innings left to play. Other contending teams have players playing, but only Wiegert has Clayton Kershaw. A win for Kershaw catapults GodfatherCharlie to victory. And the Dodgers just went ahead, thanks to Chases Utley (who Charlie has, too).

ANOTHER UPDATE: Wiegert got more from Danny Valencia and has moved into the lead, even before Kershaw wins his game. Adam Ronis needs a miracle, a Kolten Wong homer and a Dodgers collapse to regain the lead.

NOTE: Of the Top Six teams, all started different pitchers.

Tout Daily by FanDuel Finals Are Tonight!

And then there were 15.

Tonight, at 7:05pm ET, the 15 Tout Daily by FanDuel Finalists will compete for $2,000 in prices. That’s $1,000 for the player with the highest score tonight. Second place is $500. Third place is $250. Fourth is $150. And Fifth place is $100.

The names are familiar. See the leaderboard here. Three players, Scott Engel, Adam Ronis and Scott Pianowski, have two entries each. How big an advantage does that give them? And how will they handle their two chances? We’ll find out tonight!

FAAB Reports for August 24!

Mastersball.com surveys a surprisingly active week and notes one of the invidious effects of the Vickrey auction system.

In Tout NL, there were a number of interesting hitters available, and a number of bidders:

Steve Gardner: Domingo Santana 30 (27)

Brian Walton: Domingo Santana 26, Aaron Altherr 26 (25), Travis Jankowski 26, D Sweeney 26, Tommy Pham 2. Travis Jankowski 0

Phil Hertz: Domingo Santana 22, Aaron Altherr 22, Darin Ruf 22 (1), Travis Jankowski 22, D Sweeney 0.

Gene McCaffrey: Aaron Altherr 24

Scott Wilderman: Aaron Altherr 13,Tommy Pham 7 (1), Travis Jankowski 6, Darin Ruf 0

Tristan Cockcroft: Travis Jankowski 15 (1), Aaron Altherr 11, Jason Bourgeois 5 (2)

The bolds are the guys who bought the player, and the number in parentheses is the Vickrey reduced price. The issue here, I think, is the way Vickrey distorts the market, rather than reflect it. Clearly Domingo Santana and Aaron Altherr were preferred over Travis Jankowski, but in terms of pricing, the difference as set by Walton, Hertz and Wilderman is slight. But because of Vickrey, Santana and Altherr went for full price, while Jankowski’s price was cut from $15 to $1. It seems arbitrary, though it is worth noting that Jankowski was Cockcroft’s highest ranked hitter for the week, so it is fitting he got him.

I just think reducing big bids down to $1 demeans the process, making the reduction lucky rather than a reading of the market.

Mike Gianella discusses the week’s Tout AL and NL moves at Baseball Prospectus.

The Tout X Horse Race, Down To The Wire!

Five months, five games, and Bret Sayre leads Patrick Mayo by 14.5 points in the race for the 2015 Tout X championship.

That happens to be identical to the 14.5 point lead that Sayre had over Mayo at the end of Game 1. The two have, ever since, traded blows from month to month, playing it even overall.

In fact, the high scorer in the four games since the opening draft on Tout Weekend has been Doug Anderson, who has managed to climb up into third place despite a disastrous opening frame. His 213.5 points over the last four games edges the 211.5 that Sayre and Mayo have posted.

You can see the whole leaderboard here.

Anderson trails Sayre by 31 points, slightly less than the lead Sayre opened up over Anderson in Game 1. It’s hard to see Anderson being able to close that gap in the final contest, especially since he also has to pass Mayo, whom he trails by 16.5 points. But that’s why they play the game.

Here is a link to the September Game standings.

One interesting aspect to this year’s Tout X Monthly Game is that MLB players can be owned by multiple teams. Who did the Top 3 pick this time round?

DOUG ANDERSON’S TEAM

PATRICK MAYO’S TEAM

BRET SAYRE’S SQUAD

Head To Head for the 15th Ticket! UPDATE: Moyer Wins!

Steve Moyer and Rudy Gamble tied for the third ticket to the Tout Daily by FanDuel Finals, and face off today in a head to head match, winner gets the ticket.

Steve Moyer’s team leads, 30 to 25.5, but has nine fewer innings left to play. The only player shared by both teams is Clayton Kershaw.

Here are the teams as of 4:15pm ET. Click to Enlarge. Follow the action here.

UPDATE: Right now, Moyer leads Gamble by 38.5 to 34. Moyer has Michael Conforto, who is 2 for 2 with a run in the Colorado/NY Mets game. Gamble has Ben Paulsen, who is 0-2. But home run from Paulsen puts these two teams perilously close to a tie.

UPDATE: Moyer Wins! Paulsen struck out to end the game, with a runner on second. If he’d hit a homer he would have scored seven points (4 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI), which would have moved Gamble ahead of Moyer by a quarter of a point. But that didn’t happen. Congratulations to Steve Moyer for winning the 15th ticket. See you all next Friday for the finals!

THE PLAYOFF RESULTS (click to enlarge):

The Final Ticket! Head to Head Playoff Comes on Sunday!

In Phase Five of Tout Daily, the unthinkable happened. Two teams, after four grueling weeks, tied for third place with 165.99 points. Neither, amazingly enough, finished in the Top 10 in Week 4 of Phase Five.

Meet Rudy Gamble and Steve Moyer.

We hadn’t anticipated this happening, which is no doubt why it did, but after much consideration and consultation, it was decided that a Head to Head playoff on Sunday would settle matters. Unless these very equally matched teams tie again, in which case they’ll go at it again on Tuesday.

How essential is this head to head playoff? One team, the winner, will earn a ticket to the Tout Daily Finals, on August 28th. $2,000 in prizes will be awarded to the top five finishers in the field of 15.

The other team, the loser, will go home.

Check in on Sunday for updates, and the final results (probably) Sunday night.

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