Category: About Tout Wars

Mixed Tout Wars Draft Order Set

Tout Wars kicks off its season with the 15-team Mixed Draft league on Tuesday night, March 6 at 8:00 PM ET. The draft will be covered live on SiriusXM Fantasy by Glenn Colton, Rick Wolf and Jeff Erickson.

Tout Wars allows the participants to select their draft spot based on last year’s finish. The 2017 champion, Razzball’s Rudy Gamble opted defend his title from the top spot. The rest of the picks were far from chalk (last year’s finish in parentheses):

1. Rudy Gamble (1st)
2. Ray Murphy (3rd)
3. Tim McCullough (9th)
4. Greg Ambrosius (10th)
5. Perry Van Hook (12th)
6. Tom Kessenich (14th)
7. Jeff Boggis (15th)
8. Gene McCaffrey (8th, Mixed Auction)
9. Michael Beller (9th, Mixed H2H)
10. Adam Ronis (5th)
11. Charlie Wiegert (7th)
12. Scott White (2nd)
13. DJ Short (6th)
14. Anthony Perri (8th)
15. Corey Parson (4th)

Keeping in mind this is an OBP league, Gamble cited Mike Trout as his reason for wanting the first pick. Was he on the up-and-up? Scott White from CBS Fantasy hopes so, as he elected to slide to 1.12, wanting the option of an elite arm, depending on how things go.

Baseball HQ’s Ray Murphy was prepared to opt for the back end of the snake, but when the second pick fell in his lap, he decided not to overthink things and start near the top.

Tim McCullough from Rotoexperts and Greg Ambrosius from NFBC/SportsHubTech parlayed mid-pack finishes into Top-5 picks, saying they want a shot at the best available player left on the board.

After examining the results from the recent FSTA and Mixed LABR drafts, CDM Sports Charlie Wiegert used the 7th choice to slide to the 11th pick. One spot later, Anthony Perri from Fantistics/Insider Baseball chose to pick 14th, feeling the end of the round is optimal for OBP leagues.

While others were jockeying for early or late starts, Fantasy Football Empire’s Jeff Boggis was perfectly content to be left with 1.07, in a great spot not to miss out on a run.

So far in early drafts, the consensus top-two picks are Trout and Jose Altuve. However, after that, over ten players have been selected from the three-hole, helping to explain the motivation behind the Tout Mixed Warriors selections. This promises to be a wild 2018 campaign, with a myriad of approaches as everyone has their sights on wresting the championship from Rudy Gamble.

Next week we’ll introduce you to the 15 combatants, a day in advance of Tuesday’s festivities where you’ll be able to follow along and comment.

 

 

Let’s Give 10 Year Leaders Some Props

Tout Wars keeps a leaderboard. We imagine that each team pays $100 to be in the league, and that prize money is split up at the end of the season to teams who finish in the Top Third.

The other day we posted about the Five Year Leaderboard. Good for the What Have You Done for Me Lately Crowd, but who are the 10 Year All Stars?

 

Six of these 10 don’t have 10 years in. Attrition is a factor. Which give special props to Tristan Cockcroft and Larry Schechter.

You can play with the leaderboard at this Google Sheet.

The Tout Wars Leaderboard is Updated!

Fred Zinkie has won the most (imaginary) money the last five years, finishing in the money for the seventh straight year! (This post originally said Zinkie finished out of the money in 2017, but that was in error.)

But Fred’s remarkable dominance is being challenged by Rudy Gamble, who has finished second, second and first in his first three seasons in Tout, and Jeff Zimmerman, who has finished first twice in his two years. They both have a long way to go however, and Zinkie keeps on ticking.

You can see and peruse all of the results, and Tout Wars history, on the newly updated Tout Wars Leaderboard.

Tout Wars Rocks. And Goes to the Movies.

Lawr Michaels and Justin Mason host the Tout Wars Hour on the FNTSY Sports Net each week. And each week Lawr, who runs Creativesports.com, asks the week’s guest, usually a Tout Wars member, about his favorite pop culture picks, including movies, music and TV.

Tim McCullough today takes a look at those picks, and finds that there is no shared aesthetic among the Touts. Take a look here.

Enjoy this Eno Sarris pick while reading:

Updating the Tout (and Doubt) Results and Leaderboards

We’re working on it, but slowly. Lots going on getting in the way, and these updates have gotten pushed aside a bit.

We did just update the Tout Wars records page. You can read hit here.

We’ll have more in the coming week.

Tout Wars 2017: What Happened?

This is the place for links to analysis of the 2017 season by the Touts. Read what they had to say before the season here. This page will be updated from time to time, as there are more submissions.

Mixed Auction: Jeff Zimmerman (winner) | Ray Flowers

AL: Mike Podhorzer (winner)

NL: Mike Gianella (this is behind the BP paywall as I post, but that should be lifted later today)

Tout Wars Head To Head Champion 2017: Vlad Sedler

At the end of April, Vlad Sedler, Andrea LaMont and Howard Bender were tied for second place, behind Peter Kreutzer’s hot start. But Kreutzer stumbled the next week, and so did Sedler and Bender, leaving LaMont alone in first.

By the end of May, Sedler had climbed back up to second place, four games behind LaMont, and in the last period in June he moved ahead by three games. While his lead seesawed from series to series, Sedler didn’t reliquish the lead the rest of the way, and finished with a three-game lead over LaMont in the end.

Sedler’s team was built around the power of Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton. He bought Noah Syndergaard as his ace, but when Syndergaard went down he relied on break seasons for Robbie Ray and James Paxton, and the reemergence of Dallas Keuchel as an ace to carry his staff. Plus Craig Kimbrel as a closer.

Tout Wars NL Champion: Grey Albright

Grey Albright had a last-place finish in his first year in Tout NL, and was looking to improve his lot. He aced his auction, buying a Draft Day Roster winner, an easy one, and moved past Tristan Cockcroft into first place the week of May 7, opening up a seven-point lead. It was one he never relinquished.

Gamble built his team around three star offensive players: the reliable Paul Goldschmidt, second-year superstar Trea Turner, and the enigmatic and injury-prone Giancarlo Stanton.

To be able to afford the stars he went cheap and wide with his pitching, missing on John Lackey, getting mixed results from Jeff Samarzdija, and hitting it big on Robbie Ray and pretty big on Aaron Nola.

His only closer on opening day was Jim Johnson.

But the hits kept coming. He added Tommy Pham and Scooter Gennett in the reserve rounds. He also hit with modest buys Zack Cozart and Michael Conforto. And his $1 buy of Felipe Rivero resulted in 21 saves and a championship.