Tout Wars is pleased to announce the Society of American Baseball Research’s sponsorship of the SABR Trophy, with a presentation by SABR Board member F.X. Flinn of trophies to the three 2009 Tout Wars champions before Friday’s Tout Wars AL Draft.
Tout Wars and SABR hope this inaugurates a long association of championship-caliber play and an expanding appreciation and understanding of the game of baseball.
This year’s 15 man league:
2010 Tout Wars MIXED LEAGUE
The draft starts at 9am on March 28th. We’ll be blogging live from Citi Field. Follow it here!
The new Tout Wars constitution has been posted. The changes are few (and are highlighted in red).
Major League games played last year to qualify for a position has been lowered to 15 (from 20). The object is to open up some position flexibility, which is especially important in these days of expanding pitching staffs.
Tout Wars loves the Vickery FAAB system, but the feeling was that applying Vickery on the less contested players gave owners a nearly unlimited budget, as player after player was reduced to $1. This year, FAAB bids of 10 or fewer will not be adjusted for Vickery, while bids of more than 10 will be reduced to $10 if there isn’t a higher second bid.
FAAB reclaims, if a player goes on the 60 day DL, will be rounded down, rather than up.
There is clarification of what constitutes a legal contingent bid during FAAB.
And that’s about it.
With the draft slated for 2 pm on March 28th, the 13 teams of Tout Wars NL are set.
This year’s competition is joined by Larry Schechter, three time Tout Wars Mixed winner, Chris Liss, last year’s Tout Wars Mixed champ, and Mike Gianella, 2009 CBSsports NL AL Experts League champ.
They join last year’s Tout NL winner Brian Walton in battle with two-time champ Scott Wilderman, and TWNL vets Nate Ravitch, Todd Zola, Lenny Melnick, Phil Hertz, Cory Schwartz, Tristan Cockcroft, Peter Kreutzer, and Scott Pianowski.
The Tout NL draft will be live-blogged on toutwars.com.
For the NL, the games begin April 5th.
The twelve teams of Tout Wars AL are set. One big change this year. Sam Walker, author of Fantasyland, has decided to move on with his two Tout Wars titles.
Taking his place is the estimable Rob Leibowitz, of Mastersball.com, a long time Tout Wars vet who played last year in the NL league.
The rest of lineup includes 2009 champion Lawr Michaels, second place finisher Mike Siano, third place finisher Ron Shandler, and Jeff Erickson, Joe Sheehan, Jason Grey, Steve Moyer, Matthew Berry, Jason Collette, Rick Wolf/Glen Colton, and Dean Peterson.
The AL auction will be held at 4 pm on Friday, March 26th.
The event will be live blogged. We’re working on getting some unfortunately limited number of guest passes. If you’re interested, please write to webmaster@toutwars.com, with Tout Wars Guest in the subject, and which draft you would like to attend.
Tout Wars 2009 juggernaught Creativesports.com, home of AL champion Lawr Michaels and NL champion Brian Walton, have merged with Mastersball.com, a fantasy industry stalwart. The new entity will be called Mastersball.com.
Read the press release here: Mastersball Creativesports Press Release 2009 (doc file).
 Lenny Melnick, of fantasypros911.com and Tout Wars, too!
That is according to Jon Williams’ Favorite Fantasy Expert poll at advancedfantasybaseball.com. In fact all Top 6 finishers play in Tout Wars, which raises an interesting question: Chicken? Or Egg?
Tony Cincotta will be podcasting LIVE! from the Tout Wars AL and NL Drafts.
Jason Collette will be Twittering all weekend long. Follow him: @jasoncollette
Here at ToutWars.com you will find a live blog, featuring the participants, video, stills, and you.
Do you have a Tout Wars event scheduled? Let us know and we’ll post it here.
