It no doubt came as a relief to Doug Dennis to win Tout Wars AL this year with no starting pitchers. Taking advantage of the Tout rules not specifying minimum innings, Dennis dumped out of Wins and Strikeouts and won his league easily. He scored every point possible in the eight categories he played, minus one in WHIP.
Dennis took much the same approach in 2021 and finished 1oth.
Check out the Draft Sheets here:
Tout Wars AL (Draft Sheet: Click here)
Mike Podhorzer writes about his auction.
Jason Collette on his auction.
Ryan Bloomfield’s review of his AL team is here.
Patrick Davitt and Doug Dennis talked at length about Tout AL and Doug’s weird strategy on the BaseballHQ Radio pod.
Patrick Davitt pivots to his own team at baseballhq.com ($)
Tout Wars Mixed Auction (Draft Sheet: Click here).
Eric Karabell wrote about the auction for ESPN+($).
Scott Pianowski’s piece is here.
Scott Engel on his draft is here.
Zach Steinhorn’s draft review can be found here.
Scott Swanay’s team review is here.
Tout Wars NL (Draft Sheet: Click here)
Tristan Cockcroft wrote about his auction for ESPN+($).
Grey Albright hates his team enough to like it.
Tout Wars Head to Head (Draft Sheet: Click here)
Dan Strafford’s pod is here.
Ariel Cohen and Chris Welsh talk about the auction on The Beat the Shift podcast.
Todd Zola and Clay Link talk about Clay’s auction.
The more traditional spreadsheets are linked to in the sidebar later now.
For the third year in a row the Touts are gathering for a virtual Tout Weekend. No party at Foleys, no hanging out at the Stewart Hotel and SiriusXM talking baseball with friends. No intense, fast-paced in-person auctions led by savvy auctioneers pushing the pace ever forward.
For the third year in a row the Touts will be gathering in a draft room at Fantrax, some of them connected on a Zoom call, putting their teams together from the four corners of the US, from Florida to Hawaii, from Maine to the Columbia Valley. Here’s how you can follow along (note that the moderator will need to admit you to the public Zoom Rooms, which might take a moment):
Tout Wars AL (Saturday March 19, 2022 10 AM ET)
Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 896 5031 8894, hosted by Tim McLeod and Eric Cross.
Draft Sheet: Click here
Tout Wars Mixed Auction (Saturday March 19, 2022 4 PM ET)
Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports (The Lawr Michaels Zen and Now Award winner will be announced on SiriusXM in the 15 minute block before the auction starts)
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 864 7710 5666, hosted by Clay Link.
Draft Sheet: Click here
Tout Wars NL (Sunday March 20, 2022 10 AM ET)
Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 895 0366 4657, hosted by Derek VanRiper.
Draft Sheet: Click here
Tout Wars Head to Head (Sunday March 20, 2022 4 PM ET)
Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 853 3504 2173, hosted by Adam Howe and Shelly Verougstraete.
Draft Sheet: Click here
With one exception, this year’s Tout Wars leagues are filled. See who’s playing who on the Touts 2022 page.
This year’s Tout Wars Draft and Hold league kicks off on March 1st. We’ll have a link to monitor the slow draft once we begin.
Tout Wars Draft 12 league also kicks off on March 1st, starting at noon, covered by the Rotowire show with Jeff Erickson and Todd Zola on SiriusXM fantasy sports radio.
Tout Wars Draft 15 league will take place on March 8 at 8pm, covered by Colton and the Wolfman on SiriusXM.
This year’s live auctions, on Tout Wars weekend, will be remote again, alas. They take place on March 19 (AL at 10am, Mixed Auction at 3pm) and 20 (NL at 10am and H2H at 3pm). More details the week before Tout Weekend.
Some other announcements:
Head to Head will again play by CBS Sports H2H Points scoring system, as selected by 2021 winner Frank Stampfl. Unsurprising if you know who Frank works for.
To address the mess of major league free agents because of the lockout, who may or may not have signed by draft day in the AL-only and NL-only leagues, the Touts in those leagues may roster anyone on a major league roster of their respective league, as usual. But in 2022, while they may also draft free agents, any free agents who then go on to sign in the other league may be kept active accumulating stats even as they play. In prior years those players would have had to be released. While the extra talent is going to dilute the draft day pool if the labor issues aren’t solved soon, allowing the stats of the talent acquired to accumulate seemed the fairest way to deal with the issue for all involved.
Finally, this year Tout Wars is acknowledging that for a variety of reasons, some temporary and some permanent, some Touts need partners. We’re now accepting proposals from Touts in some cases, if there is a good reason and both partners meet Tout Wars’ eligibility standards. In the future you’re likely to see more partnered teams than just Colton and the Wolfman in Tout AL. Once we go back to live events, however, with the grandfathered exception of the Colton/Wolf team, only one of the partners will be allowed to sit at the table during the auction.
Each year we publish links to the Touts writings and ruminations about what happened in the season that just ended. Here they are for 2021:
Draft and Hold: Michael Stein |
NL: Fred Zinkie | Phil Hertz |
Mixed Auction: Zach Steinhorn |
Head to Head: Frank Stampfl |
In the draft day standings, the Tout AL standings for the team each Tout bought on draft day, Liss finished fourth with 78.5 points. His obvious weakness was Saves, which showed him last.
Once the season started Liss focused on relief pitching. He bought Chris Devenski, Jonathan Hernandez, Rafael Dolis, Greg Holland, Carl Edwards, Clark Schmidt, Dan Altavilla and Andre Scrubb. Those are all his free agent buys.
And he traded for Brad Hand (he traded Kyle Tucker). At the end of the season he was in fourth place in Saves, and ended up with 99 points, 22 more than Rick Wolf and Glenn Colton’s team and Jeff Erickson’s team, which tied for second.
You can follow the auction here. Listen to commentary on SiriusXM Channel 619. Reserve rounds will be on this Google Sheet. Look for the AL tab.
The auction is over but you can read the chat transcript
[Mar 14, 8:40 AM] rotoman: Good morning world.
[Mar 14, 8:41 AM] rotoman: We should be getting underway in about 20 minutes.
[Mar 14, 8:41 AM] rotoman: Derek VanRiper, your MC today, is on his way.
[Mar 14, 8:47 AM] DVR: Good Morning!
[Mar 14, 8:49 AM] rotoman: Hey Derek!
[Mar 14, 8:49 AM] B_Walton1: Looking forward to your commentary, DVR!
[Mar 14, 8:53 AM] Jay-Z: So DVR, if you were in say a 15-team mixed auction with OBP instead of AVG, what would you be willing to go on say Mike Trout?
TOUT MIXED AUCTION: Sayre | Hershey | Flowers | Steinhorn | Zimmerman | Melchior |
TOUT AL: Davitt |
TOUT NL: Hertz |
BaseballHQ did a five part series featuring Brent Hershey, Patrick Davitt, and Phil Hertz in the final weeks of their respective (Mixed Auc, AL, NL). Read them here. Part one | two | three | four | five.
