Day: September 27, 2015

We appreciate Mike Gianella’s weekly FAAB reports covering Tout AL and NL over at Baseball Prospectus on Tuesdays. The final one for this season will come this Tuesday, and don’t expect him to be making too many changes. We asked him some basic questions about the last eight days of his battle with Tristan Cockcroft, which we wrote about earlier today. He had this to say:

What does your team need in order to win?
At this point, I have probably done everything I can do in terms of what is in my control. I need to get a few wins to keep the clump of teams behind me from catching me and I need to avoid a disastrous pitching week to lose a point in ERA. But I don’t have much mobility in either direction. There is a path for Tristan to catch me, but he needs nearly everything to go right in the last week for him for it to happen. It’s not impossible, but it is fair to say it is a longshot.

Has anything changed for your team in the last week or two that is making a difference, for or against?
No, because thankfully (for me at least) a combination of strong hitting performances in August along with Tristan’s pitching staff unraveling has put me in a very comfortable position. Jose Reyes and Ben Revere have stopped running and I’ve had trouble procuring wins, but this hasn’t made much of a difference and most likely won’t.

Here’s the first thing you need to know: In the Tout NL draft-day standings, those are the rosters each team left the draft with and no moves since, Mike Gianella would be ahead of Derek Carty at this point, 83 to 80.

In fact, in the real Tout world, where teams FAAB players weekly, and make trades, Gianella leads three-time champ Tristan Cockcroft, 92.5 to 81.5. Not only did Gianella have the best auction, but he seems to have had one of the best seasons, too. He’s gained 9.5 points over his draft, while Cockcroft has gained nine.

How much of a chance does Cockcroft have to catch up to Gianella? I toted up their potential positive and negative points, the volatility index, to see how much overlap there is between them. This is fairly easy in the counting categories, but harder in the qualitatives, where there are more moving pieces. So, there is some chance either team call fall outside this range, but this should give a fair idea of the possibilities of where they will end up.

Mike Gianella could gain or lose 4.5 points, which puts him between 97 and 88 points.

Tristan Cockcroft could gain 7.5 points or lose 8.5, which puts him between 89 and 73 points.

The chance for a fourpeat is still alive, but just barely. Is it over? Yes, you can put the YooHoo on ice.