Month: September 2013

Doubt Wars AL! Who did you love?

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The Top 10 Most Coveted AL Tout Buys

Josh Johnson ($13): Twelve teams spent $13 on Johnson, making him the player taken most by far. He’s earned -$6 thus far. BUST

Jackie Bradley ($1): Ten teams spent a buck on Bradley, who was taken in the reserves in Tout AL. In large part this was a function of the news that Bradley had earned a roster spot in Boston after the Tout auction was over. At this price he was worth the flyer, even though he didn’t pan out. MEH

JJ Hardy ($12): Nine teams thought Hardy’s price, the same as he earned in 2012, was too low. And they were right. NICE

Yu Darvish ($25): Nine teams agreed with Tout Wars that Darvish would earn twice what he earned in 2012, and they were right. BOLD MEH.

Casey Janssen ($10): Eight teams thought the unproven closer was worth a shot, and they were right. Janssen has been just as successful this year as last, and was a bargain. VERY NICE.

Mike Trout ($41): Eight teams bought Mike Trout at a very healthy price, and while any profits will be slight, he’s earned just about every cent already. BOLD MEH

Aaron Hicks ($7): A nice spring and little competition for a job made seven teams pick up Aaron Hicks, but he’s disappointed them as well as Twins fans. BUST

Jed Lowrie ($8): There was some confusion about how the playing time would shake out in Oakland, and Lowrie’s price tumbled. Not unsurprisingly he’s played pretty much full time, and performed as he did last year in a season truncated by injury. NICE

Josh Hamilton ($26): He went for 20 percent less in Tout than he earned in 2012, and seven teams bought him expecting a lot more than he gave. Turns out the naysayers didn’t nay loudly enough. BIG BUST

The following players were claimed by six teams.

Chris Iannetta ($7): Tons of walks, but disappointing power and a bad BA make him a BUST.

Dayan Viciedo ($14): He was retooling his stroke in spring training, and while he’s added some walks and trimmed some strikeouts, most notable is the power drop. Maybe next year. MEH

Jose Altuve ($21): Doubt Warriors were perhaps hoping for improvement from the young speedster, but he’s put up nearly identical numbers to last year. MEH

Lance Berkman ($12): Tout Warriors thought Berkman could beat father time, and Doubt warriors thought they could beat Tout warriors. BUST

Leonys Martin ($10): Questions about playing time and how his stolen base speed would translate to the big leagues kept his price down. The steals have come and he’s proved a great bargain. VERY NICE

Wil Myers ($7): It was hoped that when he was called up in June he would hit, and he has. NICE

No Doubt! Doubt Wars Standings Are Here! Beta.

doubtwarslogoWhen we announced the Doubt Wars contest in March we knew we didn’t have the proper forms in place, but we were jazzed and excited and wanted to try this out this year anyway. So, we asked you to make up your own teams, using the Tout Wars auction prices plus $1, with a budget of $260, to compete against each other and the Touts.

Given the short notice and the awkward entry process, we were pleased to receive more than 18 AL entries, more than 20 NL entries, and more than 30 Mixed entries.

Our intention was to get all the data into a big spreadsheet and update the results each month. That didn’t happen.

What did happen was a little bit of life, and a lot of learning about data cleaning, not an area in which I have much expertise. The problem wasn’t the errors, really. There were some of those. Some of us (yes, my AL entry somehow went over budget) made mistakes. Entries that went over budget were invalidated. Entries that spent the right amount of money but didn’t fill their rosters were allowed. But the errors were generally fixable after a little work, and not a problem.

 

What became a problem was that every entry was different. Some included first and last names, some just last names. Some included the +1 price. Some included the draft price (but were budgeted with the extra dollars). Some last names have Jr. after them, other times the same player didn’t have that. Sometimes J.J. had periods, sometimes it didn’t. The variation was breathtaking.

And I didn’t have all summer to fix things up. So the project was picked up in May, resumed at mid-season, struggled on through the end of July, then put on hold until this past week, when I finally wrassled it to the ground. I think. I found an error in the ERA rankings this morning, so we may not be done yet.

We also have a mixed auction standings based on BA, not OBP. It shouldn’t be too horrible to fix that, but I wasn’t going to complete it today and I wanted to get these results out now that they’re otherwise complete. I hope.

Please take a close look at the results, the formulas, the lookups. I think I’ve got it all right now, but I’m batter and bruised enough by this process to make no promises. We’ll have it right by the time we hand out the awards, but until then we’re all working together to get correct. Thanks for your patience.

AL LEADERS

Tout Warriors Glenn Colton and Rick Wolf lead the pack with their draft day team, which hasn’t been able to hold off Larry Schechter in the race for the TW-AL crown. Andre Pappas is our civilian leader so far.

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NL LEADERS

Tout Warrior Todd Zola is in a dogfight to unseat Tristan Cockcroft in Tout NL, but in Doubt Wars he’s seventh with his league-best draft day squad. Jeremy Pelletier has a commanding lead overall.

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MIXED AUCTION LEADERS

Tout Warrior Paul Singman has the leading draft day roster in Tout Mixed Auction, but we’ll hold off comparing him to the challengers until after we get the OBP glitch fixed. Right now Tim George has the lead.

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