The top two Tout Daily teams last night rostered Stephen Strasburg and Thomas Pham, and when the two players combined for 32 points those teams gained an edge. (Only Hector Santiago (18) and Chris Taylor (18) scored more points on the night, and no team owned them both.)
But after that the two leaders went about accumulating points in different ways.
Winner Jeff Erickson also got strong contributions from Paul Goldschmidt, Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty, and Jonathan Villar. Of this group only Piscotty was owned by more than 5 percent of RTSports.com teams last night.
Jeff also had no players who scored a zero, and got double-digit points from the night’s most expensive pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, even though he failed to win his game.
The second place finisher, Eno Sarris, did get a win from his second pitcher. But Carlos Carrasco only scored .66 more points than Bumgarner.
Sarris also suffered from a no-point night oh-fer from Travis d’Arnaud, but still finished a solid second because of strong performances by Yasiel Puig, Travis Shaw, Howie Kendrick, and Addison Russell. Only Kendrick was owned by more than two percent of RTSports.com owners.
The rest of the night’s results sent the Period 4 competition topsy turvy, as only Todd Zola and Bret Sayre repeated in the Top 10 from the previous week.
Zola, the only player to finish in the Top 10 all three weeks so far, has a huge lead on the whole field, leading Erickson by 16 points and ahead of the rest of the pack by 23. You can see the whole leaderboard here.
While anything can happen, the final week of Period 4 looks to be a battle among Zola, Erickson, and Mike Gianella, Howard Bender, Eno Sarris, Tom Kessenich, Brian Walton and Derek VanRiper for the three Golden Tickets.
Of that group only Jeff Erickson and Brian Walton already have tickets into the Tout Daily Finals, on August 26th. Check back next Friday to ToutWars.com for the Tout’s picks for that night, and Saturday morning for the Period 4 final results.