In a surprisingly interesting week, thanks to big starts for Abraham Almonte and Chris Johnson and the potential of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher, Todd Zola and his happy crew discuss this week’s FAAB moves in Tout Wars (and LABR, too, for that matter.
Mike Gianella will post his thoughts about the Tout AL and NL moves on Tuesday morning. We usually link directly to it here, but travel this week precludes that. But there will be a link to it on the front page at Baseball Prospectus.
It was supposed to be a glorious night for the pitchers. Five had a cost of $10,000 or more, paced by the uberarm of Clayton Kershaw, and even the rooks, like Daniel Norris and Aaron Nola, came with pedigree. But things didn’t work out quite as expected.
The pitchers were fine overall. Scoring was down for the week. The winning score, Al Melchior’s 47.16, would have finished 20th the week before. But apart from Lance Lynn, the golden arms didn’t win their games. And so eight different pitchers finished in the Top 10, representing 77 percent of the week’s starters. And only one Top 10 team had Lynn. It was up to the hitters to make some noise.
Al Melchior’s made the most. They overcame a mediocre start from Andrew Heaney, who went 5.2 innings and allowed four earned runs, ending up with only 3.66 points. But the hitters shone across the board. Brian Dozier, Welington Castillo, Xander Bogaerts, Bryce Harper, Lorenzo Cain and Michael Brantley all scored more than five points. Here’s how Al did it (click to enlarge).
Patrick Davitt finished second on the week, behind a nice (but unwinning) game from James Shields, a big night for Mike Trout, and solid performances from Mark Teixeira, Michael Brantley, and Xander Bogaerts.
Paul Sporer took third, with a nice (but unwinning) game from Jacob deGrom, and solid hitting from Jonathan Schoop, Eddie Rosario, JD Martinez, and Lorenzo Cain.
Sporer was the only Top 10 finisher in week one to finish in the Top 10 in week two of Phase 5, and thus finds himself atop a crowded field vying for the final three tickets to the August 28th final.
The top three finishers in each four week phase of Tout Daily receive tickets to the final, which will see $2,000 distributed among the top five finishers, including a $1,000 first prize, by FanDuel, the contest’s sponsor. The winner will also be crowned the first Tout Wars Daily champion.
You can find the leaderboard here.
Touts with tickets already are Jeff Boggis, Lenny Melnick, Scott Engel, Michael Beller, Jeff Erickson, Ray Murphy, Tom Kessenich, Adam Ronis (has two tickets), Charlie Wiegert, Scott Pianowski and Lawr Michaels.
We asked the Touts to share their picks for best pitcher and best hitter in tonight’s Tout Daily Week 18 contest. For more about Tout Daily visit here.
Tonight’s contest is Week 2 of Phase 5 of the five phase contest. The top three finishers in each phase get a ticket to the big August 28 final, with big money and the chance to be the first Tout Wars Daily champ. Last week Scott Engel, Jeff Boggis and Peter Kreutzer finished atop the standings.
Six of last week’s Top 10 already have tickets to the finals.
Scott Pianowski, Jeff Erickson, Adam Ronis (has two!), Lenny Melnick, Lawr Michaels, Tom Kessenich, Michael Beller, Jeff Boggis, Ray Murphy, Scott Engel, and Charlie Wiegert have tickets to the finals already. Everyone but Adam Ronis is eligible to add a ticket in the final phase (two tickets maximum to the finals).
Here are this week’s picks!
For a pitcher, I’ll go with a top pitcher on a hot team: Jacob deGrom ($11,000 at Tampa Bay).
For a hitter, I’m going to dig deep and take the low cost Eugenio Suarez ($2,400 at Arizona), playing in a good hitters’ park.
Tonight is a night for a) light investments in b) multiple teams. So many good pitching bets at a wide range of salaries, at least one is going to throw up a 20-25 point start, but for this game I have to pick one. It comes down to deGrom vs. Sonny Gray and I’ll go with the chance for spectacular with Jacob deGrom ($11,000 at Tampa Bay).
That means cheap hitters, and it looks like Victor Martinez ($2,500 vs. Boston) is over the hump and batting cleanup vs. Joe Kelly.
Jose Fernandez ($11,000 at Atlanta) Fernandez is the only pitcher in Kershaw’s neighborhood as far as FanDuel Points Per Game goes. Kershaw is at 16.0 and Fernandez 15.3. No other pitcher is above 14.0. He’s only been back for six starts, but he looks like he never missed any time. Normally I’d expect some hiccups when recovering from Tommy John surgery, but Fernandez seems immune.
Miguel Sano ($3,000 vs. Cleveland and Cody Anderson (RHP)) Cody Anderson has fallen apart after four great starts to begin his season. Sano’s weakness is the swing and miss, but Anderson doesn’t have that type of stuff. I see a long ball coming tonight for Sano.
Jose Fernandez ($11,000 at Atlanta)
Anthony Rendon ($3,000 vs Colorado)
Jose Fernandez ($11,000 at Atlanta) Most DFS players will probably go with Clayton Kershaw tonight and pay the premium of $13,400, but I am going to pass for several reasons. I could not come up with a decent hitter lineup to offset the highest salaried pitcher on the board tonight. More of a concern is Kershaw is facing a very good Pittsburgh Pirate lineup and facing their ace in Gerrit Cole at $10,500. In fact, there are many great pitchers going tonight, but unfortunately they face each other, and you risk the chance of your pitcher walking away with a win and 4 fantasy points. Using the methods I described in yesterday’s Tout Round table article at https://www.toutwars.com/?p=3979 for using the Las Vegas lines, odds and props when it comes to researching my DFS lineups, I am starting Jose Fernandez tonight at $11,000. Although he may be on a pitch count tonight, Fernandez has averaged 16.3 fantasy points over his past three starts. The Las Vegas number line has the game at -150 in favor of Fernandez vs. Julio Teheran, with the total runs scored at 6 ½. That compares to Clayton Kershaw -132 vs. Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom -120 vs. Jake Odorizzi, and Dallas Keuchel -114 vs. Sonny Gray.
Todd Frazier ($3,300 at Arizona) Frazier is mired in a slump and his price reflects this at only $3,300. I contribute his slump to the home run derby in the all-star break. It usually takes 2-3 weeks to correct your timing and I look for Frazier to turn it around, beginning tonight against Arizona starting pitcher, Chase Anderson.
BOGGIS Top Stack Special: Kansas City Royals
The Kansas City Royals face fly ball pitcher John Danks tonight at home. I am stacking outfielder Lorenzo Cain, catcher Salvador Perez, and shortstop Alcides Escobar. I wanted to also include second baseman Ben Zobrist, but I could not make my lineup work with his $3,800 salary.
It’s one of those days, nobody jumps at me. Vegas lines have a lot of low totals, so I expect a lot of good pitching. I’m going with SD pitcher James Shields ($8,900 vs. Philadelphia) against the Phillies at home, hoping for another solid start and at least 7 k’s.
Leaning heavily on Cincinnati hitters at AZ against Chase Anderson just coming off DL. Joey Votto ($3,700 at Arizona) has looked locked in lately, hopefully he goes deep tonight.
Aaron Nola ($6,100 at San Diego) Down the list, at less than half the price of Clayton Kershaw, is a starting pitcher that will allow you to field a heck of a lineup in Nola. With plus command and a great changeup, his below-average velocity is not so much of a problem. Right now, even his inconsistent curve is getting great whiffs. The only mark on Nola’s resume so far — and maybe related to his velocity — is a tendency to give up the homer. He’s going to be in San Diego, though, which will once again be the second-coldest park in the big leagues. As a bonus, the wind should be blowing in tonight.
Jason Heyward ($3,500 at Milwaukee) Heyward is in Milwaukee, which he should like, and he’s also facing a rookie pitcher in Tyler Cravy. Though rookie pitchers perform better than rookie hitters, we do have enough of a sample to say that Cravy isn’t going to get a lot of whiffs. His swinging strike rate is *less than half* of the one Aaron Nola is showing in the early going. Cravy didn’t get grounders in the minors, either. Heyard’s five-tool skill set can get you points in different places, and a career .281/.367/.462 line against righties is exciting at his price.
Jacob deGrom ($11,000 at Tampa Bay) Kershaw and deGrom are tonight’s top two SP, both working on the road. Kershaw’s the better pitcher, of course… but deGrom’s opposing TAM offense is weaker, as is the opposing SP. The better shot at a win makes him my choice for tonight, and he gives me an extra $2300 on Kershaw owners to build my lineup.
Victor Martinez ($2,500 vs. Boston) VMart snapped a long slump with two HR last night. Tonight he faces the execrable Joe Kelly, he only costs $2500, AND I can play him at catcher? Sign me up.
Daniel Norris ($6,000 vs. Boston) Hear that? Yes, that’s the dice rolling. Norris is one of the better young pitching talents in the game, but he struggles with control. He looked better in his return against the Orioles, walking just one in 7.1 IP. The Red Sox offense has been anemic. Plus, after a mediocre first week, I’m going “all in” for a final shot at a ticket.
Anthony Rendon ($3,000 vs Colorado) He looks to be getting back into the swing of things (pun not intended, okay… maybe semi-intended). Rendon is 10 for his last 35 and has a career .304 AVG against lefties. Jorge De La Rosa has a 4.83 ERA in his last nine starts.
I like Lance Lynn ($9,300 at Milwaukee) as a less expensive strikeout pitcher against a team with terrible on-base totals (.293) against right-handers.
As for hitters, Asdrubal Cabera ($3,400 vs. NY Mets) has been hot and as long as he gets to start (he did get hit in the face with a ball yesterday) i like the switch hitter even if he is facing Jacob deGrom.
There are plenty of available aces on Friday, with seven pitchers drawing five figures. The downside, of course, is putting roughly a third of one’s stipend on one arm. Instead, I will drop down to Phillies rookie Aaron Nola ($6,100 at San Diego), who has been solid in his first three Major League outings (3.38 ERA, 7.2 K/9) and will face the Padres offense in Petco Park Friday night.
Mired in a slump for weeks was Matt Carpenter ($3600 at Milwaukee). Returned to the top of the Cardinals batting order, the third baseman has taken off, with three doubles, five home runs and eight RBI in his last seven games. Carpenter and the rest of St. Louis’ lineup draws rookie Tyler Cravy in Milwaukee Friday evening.
Jacob deGrom ($11,000 at Tampa Bay) The top five studs are all on the road, but they are all in favorable parks – PIT, TB, ATL, OAK, and SEA. I’ll take the second-most expensive squaring off against the Rays at Tropicana Field. JdG’s having a fantastic season, but he’s been particularly excellent since mid-May with a 1.47 ERA and 0.70 WHIP in 91.7 IP with 98 Ks and just 12 BBs. He has allowed just 2 ER in his last two starts (13.7 IP), but taken a ND in both. The revamped Mets offense certainly makes you more confident about using their aces in DFS as the ever-important W is much more likely.
Eddie Rosario ($2600 vs. Cleveland) Saving some money with my hitter pick since I’m going with one of the ace arms. He’s been ice cold since his near-cycle with just 1 hit in his last 25 PA. Seems like just a cold snap as opposed to major reason for worry, especially as it comes on the heels of a 13-for-29 run. With Rosario & deGrom, you still have $3K per slot for the rest of your roster.
Jose Fernandez ($11,000 at Atlanta) He’s the ace with the best matchup tonight.
Victor Martinez ($2,500 vs. Boston) Maybe it was yesterday’s dingers, but at this price V-Mart can be my catcher forever.
Jose Fernandez ($11,000 at Atlanta) Nothing tricky or cheap here, but Fernandez matches up to well against the weakling Braves to pass him up.
J.D. Martinez ($3,800 vs. Boston) Top dog on the Inside Edge hitter board this week faces Joe Kelly and his six ERA.
Lance Lynn ($9,300 at Milwaukee) So many good pitching matchups tonight that it seems like Opening Day in August, so I’ll go w/ a pitcher, who while not as glamorous as some of the more expensive names, probably has a better chance of garnering a Win.
Miguel Sano ($3,000 vs. Cleveland) Sure, he’s just a rookie, but $3,000 for a guy averaging 3.0 Fan Duel points per game, facing Cody Anderson, and sporting an OBP over .400 seems like a bargain.
How much, if at all, do you rely on the Vegas lines, odds and props when it comes to researching your DFS lineups?
Brian Walton, www.mastersball.com, @B_Walton: Zero, none. I never even look at them.
Tim McCullough, www.rotoexperts.com, @Tim_RotoExperts: Aside from the expected run totals for the games, I don’t pay much attention to the Vegas lines. I prefer to go with handedness splits, park factors and stats in general. If the split stats point to a good matchup, I’m inclined to go with that even if the Vegas lines disagree.
Jeff Boggis, www.FantasyFootballEmpire.com, @JeffBoggis: I think that the Vegas lines are one of the most powerful tools Touts can use in Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS). The first number I analyze is the number line. The further away from 100 the number is, the bigger a favorite that pitcher is projected to be that evening. The closer to -200, the closer to a lock in the eyes of Las Vegas. I use this as a win counts for a great percentage of a pitcher’s fantasy points score. So the higher the likelihood of the win, the higher the likelihood of a good score. I also look at the total runs scored as that has a negative impact on a pitcher’s fantasy points. If I see several poor pitchers and want to go with stacking hitters all on the same team, I will look at the line for total runs scored and make a decision based on this information.
Chris Liss, www.rotowire.com, @Chris_Liss: I look at the run totals and game odds for stacks to target. Sometimes, I’ll stack different combos of players in game with an O/U of 8 or 8.5 and avoid the 9-plus to get more unique lineups in.
Gene McCaffrey, www.wiseguys.com, @gene2323: I don’t rely on the odds but I pay attention to them and look for differences between my views and theirs. When there is a significant difference I rethink my conclusions, and sometimes change my mind. The oddsmakers are very good, but any team can win a baseball game, any pitcher can throw a gem or get hammered, and any hitter can hit two home runs tonight. I pay no attention at all to daily props, DFS is a superior format for those bets. You don’t have to be right on every long-shot.
Peter Kreutzer, www.askrotoman.com, @kroyte:
I just started playing the daily game this year, and early in the season I didn’t pay attention to the Vegas odds. But for good and productive reasons I started to look at better information, and the Vegas lines reflect common opinion. This isn’t wisdom, but it does often reflect some sort of information that is hard to glean from tables of stats.
First off, a favor. Our friends at FanDuel have been kind enough to sponsor these Tuesday Night Tout Wars Challenge Double Up contests as a fun addition to our private Friday Tout Daily competition. We fell short of filling this week’s challenge which good for your odds of cashing but isn’t so good for continuing the Tuesday Challenge. With the understanding participation in general wanes this time of season, let’s all spread the word, Touts and friends of Touts and fill this bad boy up next week!
OK, last week the Tout’s took one on the chin but this week we, well, most everyone but me, finished in the money. To show just how unpredictable this endeavor can be, the same person that has finished with the highest score twice in the Challenge was barely above the default line-up this time around. What can I say, I chose poorly. Very poorly.
On the other hand, friend-of-Tout jeterson2 and Yahoo!’s Scott Pianowski chose wisely. Scott, who finished second overall, was joined in the top-ten by Jake Ciely and Scott Swanay. Five more Touts landed in the top-twenty.
Jeterson2’s week-leading squad featured Jon Niese (9.5% ownership) who tossed seven innings, allowing just one earned, fanning six while picking up the win for 16 big FanDuel points. The squad got homers from Josh Donaldson (6.3%), Chris Young (25.4%) and Carlos Gomez (6.3%).
Scott deployed Jimmy Nelson (7.9%) as his hurler, watching the Brewer’s righty twirl 6 2/3rd scoreless frames with four whiffs and the win, recording 14.66 points. Prince Fielder (14.3%), Nelson Cruz (4.8%), Kyle Parker (14.3%) and Young all went deep for Scott’s squad.
Scott’s roster is posted below. Remember, this is Week Two of the final phase of Tout Daily where the last three golden tickets into the Tout Championship will be awarded. Follow along with your favorite Tout and remember to look for next Tuesday’s Tout Challenge!
Mastersball.com’s Todd Zola is the Swat for Tout Wars AL. This gives him a front row seat on each week’s moves, and it landed him in the muck last night.
Here’s what happened: Tout Wars uses the Vickrey auction system, in which players are awarded to teams for $1 more than the second highest bidder bid. You bid $10, the second highest bidder is $6, you get the guy for $7. This sometimes works very nicely. An economist named Vickrey won a Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating that this method of bidding produces truer and more robust bids, because bidders don’t fear the risk of being embarrassed by a big overbid.
And this is true in Tout Wars, for free agents that two or more owners might covet.
But a problem arises at the claims following the midseason trading deadline. All the teams put in many bids and many contingency bids. When things go to form, as they did this year in TW NL, it’s all easy, but when they don’t, when there are a mosaic of interlocking contingent bids, which is what happened in the TW AL, it is a bear to figure out. Such a bear that onRoto’s Bidmeister stumbles. It struggles to figure out that a $73 bid in an owner’s third block is actually now $36 because of previous purchases reduced by Vickrey. And that’s only a part of it.
Todd worked late into last night trying to determine who should get who in Tout Wars AL. The problem was caused, mostly, because most teams avoided bidding on Troy Tulowitzki, apparently for some fatalist reason, and he fell to Mike Podhorzer for half price, after the Vickrey adjustment. This gave Podhorzer’s bids on other players (he bid his max on most everyone) extra influence and confused things no end.
Not that it’s Mike’s fault. He did the right thing, absolutely, but coupled with Steve Moyer’s attempt to buy lots of players for cheap, rather than spend all his money on one guy, hell broke out.
Which may be why that at this late point on Monday, we don’t yet have a Tout Wars report from Mastersball.com. Todd just tweeted that the report should be posted on his site around 9pm. He says it’s a goody, but not yet here at close to 11pm. Oh, here it is!
Maybe Mastersball is sick of us. Maybe they’re breaking up with Tout Wars. I know they’re sick of Vickrey (Todd tweeted that today). In any case, we’ll post when they post. And I will initiate a discussion about whether Vickrey is really a good thing in our little leagues this winter.
And tomorrow, Tuesday, we’ll post the observations of TW NL Leader Mike Gianella, who went into Sunday’s bidding with the hammer, and managed to spend quite a bit of his money. You’ll learn how and why then.
Here’s Mike’s column, which has lots of good insight but was headlocked by the wrong data that posted at the league stat site for the reasons detailed above. It will eventually be corrected, but here are my notes, which should help you read it until it is.
CORRECTIONS
Rob Leibowitz
Carlos Gomez Vickrey price is $71.
Seth Trachtman
Gerardo Parra Vickrey price is $39
Mike Podhorzer
Mike Fiers Vickrey price is $30. And change the comment to:
The biggest beneficiary of the diversification strategies of other owners with higher FAAB budgets was Podhorzer. Not only did Podhorzer snag Tulowitzki at slightly less than half of his raw bid with a smooth $35 Vickrey price, he also picked up Fiers for $30. Fiers certainly isn’t in the class of Cueto or Hamels, but in the watery pitching market of AL-only, this is a win for Podhorzer. I really dig the aggressiveness of Podhorzer’s bids on the whole, and even though he didn’t have much of a chance at most of these players in the FAAB sweepstakes, I am more of a fan of being aggressive and getting the best player on the board than worrying about the bargains other owners may or may not get if the league doesn’t bid aggressively on the whole. Marte at $6 is a nice, sneaky play in a week where nearly everyone was focused on the NL imports.
Steve Moyer
Comment edited
Moyer needs a lot of help to get to the 60-point threshold, so instead of putting all of his eggs in one basket with one big purchase, he decided to diversify. I like the strategy to a degree. There is enough variability with the 57 or so games most major league teams have left to play that there is a better chance that two good players could earn more than one great player, especially in an AL-only, where the replacement level consideration is hardly a factor. However, had I been in Moyer’s shoes I would have probably tried two $30 bid blocks in the hopes that I could have walked away with two players of a higher caliber.
Ron Shandler
Johnny Cueto Vickrey price is $39.
