Zach Steinhorn (@ZachMLB) is! By a lot!
Zach’s only weakness, if you can call it that, is Stolen Bases. He’s riding on the broad shoulders of Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Moss, Justin Upton, Kolten Wong, and Josh Reddick on the offensive side of things. Star pitchers include Chris Archer, Mike Leake and Ian Kennedy, with Glen Perkins, David Robertson and Bret Cecil closing.
Greg Ambrosius (@GregAmbrosius) is! But he’s just a nip ahead of Adam Ronis (@AdamRonis), with Perry Van Hook within shouting distance.
Greg is riding fantastic starting pitching from Sonny Gray, Madison Bumgarner, Dan Haren, Shelby Miller, Max Scherzer and Jonathan Niese, while waiting for Kenley Jansen to return and help Drew Storen shore up the saves.
Team Ambrosius’s offense is led by Anthony Rizzo, Dee Gordon, and Nelson Cruz. Not bad!
Mastersball.com‘s comments and charts are in, now that the May 4 FAAB is completed. Read it here!
Mike Gianella covers Tout Wars and LABR FAAB claims for the week. Read it here!
Bret Sayre stayed ahead of the hard-charging Andrea LaMont to hold onto the lead after the first four-week Tout X event.
Month two begins today, with teams creating new salary cap teams from the Shandler Park price list.
Sayre writes about how he put his May team together over at Baseball Prospectus.
Here’s how they finished after the season’s first four weeks:
How Sayre Did It:
Scott Pianowski finished first for the second time in four weeks in Tout Wars Daily by FanDuel, to finish first in the inaugural Phase of the contest, and wins a ticket to the Championship Day, on which the 15 Phase winners will compete for $2000 in prize money.
Pianowski rode St. Louis starter Lance Lynn, and got solid performances from Joey Votto, Dee Gordon, and Joc Pederson for the win. He was trailed in Week 4 by Jeff Erickson and Al Melchior. You can see all the entries and results right here.
The other two Championship Ticket winners in Phase 1 are Week 3 champ Adam Ronis and three-time Top 10 finisher Jeff Erickson. They closely edged out Lenny Melnick, who along with all the other touts will begin with a clean slate for Week 1 of Phase 2, starts next Friday, May 8th. See the Tout Daily Leaderboard here.
Here’s Pianowski’s Week 4 winner:
Friday night is the final tilt of Phase 1 of the Tout Daily at FanDuel contest.
While any number of teams could finish first and pass the current leaders, the more teams a team has to pass seriously diminishes their chances of finishing in the top 3, each of whom will receive a ticket for the August 28th championship. Read all the rules for Tout Daily here.
Going into the final week, here are your TOUT DAILY leaders:
If Craig Mish were to score our highest total so far, 66, he would finish the week with 178. To knock him from the championships, three of our top eight would need to top 46. It could happen, but it will be tough.
Follow all the action Friday night at FanDuel, by clicking the link: http://partners.fanduel.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_7152b_1016.
The Mastersball crew charts and comments on this week’s big moves. Rob Leibowitz goes AL, Brian Walton NL, Zach Steinhorn on Mixed Auction, and Perry Van Hook on Mixed Draft. The big buys were Jimmy Paredes, Addison Russell and John Axford.
Mike Gianella does deep analysis of Tout Wars moves (and LABR, too) over at Baseball Prospectus, including an intriguing digression on Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer in both Norse mythology and Marvel comics.
Ronis also won the Week 3 of Phase 1 contest, edging Tristan Cockcroft, who bounced back after two very soft weeks. You can see all the results right here.
Ronis feasted on Gerrit Cole’s fine game versus Arizona and Anthony Rizzo’s monster game in Cincinnati, and generally good performances across the board.
Cockcroft also rode Rizzo’s mashing, as well as Michael Pineda’s excellent tilt versus the Mets.
After three weeks of Phase 1, no team has finished in the money (Top 10) more than two times.
16 teams have yet to finish in the Top 10 once.
The Top 3 finishers in the four-week Phase 1 will get tickets to the Tout Daily championships on August 28th. Ronis, week 1 winner Scott Pianowski, and Jake Ciely are currently in the top three positions. See the complete leaderboard here.
Here’s Ronis’s winning squad:
