Todd Zola explains one of the challenges of the Vickrey auction rule, and his merry band talk about this week’s moves at Mastersball.com.
Mike Gianella’s discussion of the Tout AL and NL moves can be found here.
Category: About Tout Wars
September 7 FAAB Notes!
From Mastersball, Todd Zola and Co. chat about Tout AL, NL, Auction and Draft.
Mike Gianella goes over the AL and NL moves each Tuesday morning at Baseball Prospectus. This week features a dark anti-sabermetric blues rant about JP Arencibia.
Who Is Winning Tout Wars? An Overview
With a month left in the season we’ve crowned one Tout Wars Champion for 2015: Charlie Wiegert is Tout Wars Daily champion. But what about the other leagues? While you can alway check in on the standings and transactions by using the links in the right nav at toutwars.com, at this point it might be a good time to check in on the pennant races.
Chris Liss is having a classic Liss season, young pitching, lots of hitting, lots of risk, and is seven points ahead of Jeff Erickson and nine points ahead of Mike Podhorzer. The three have bubbled up and down around the top of the standings all season, but Liss has benefited from Chris Davis’s spectacular season, and Carlos Correa’s emergence after being called up earlier in the year. There are plenty of points in play for all three teams, up and down, for this to turn any which way at any time, but Liss is clearly the fave.
Mike Gianella is seven points ahead of standing three-time champ Tristan Cockcroft, but just two weeks ago his edge was only two points. For Cockcroft, the problem has been a freefalling pitching staff, which has won just a single game in the last 13 days, allowing Gianella to pass him. These teams have lots of points in play, too, so while you have to prefer to have the lead, there is no sitting comfortably at this point. Still, Gianella has to appreciate that he was the best team in the first half and has been the best team in the second half. Now he just has to bring it home.
At the halfway mark on the season Zach Steinhorn had a commanding lead, but that was before Fred Zinkie went to work. Zinkie was in 12th place on June 28, 39.5 points behind Steinhorn. From that point to the August 31 trading deadline he made 19 trades, and has taken a slim lead ahead of Scott Swanay and Steinhorn. Swanay was in 10th place on June 28th, and has nearly matched Zinkie in the second half. Meanwhile, Tim Heaney is just five points behind Zinkie, in fourth place. There’s a lot of pennant race to come in this one.
Adam Ronis and Paul Greco have been near the top of the standings all year long, but their weak second half performances have given Rudy Gamble a chance to open up some space ahead of them and Eno Sarris (whose had the best second half of them all). Gambles position is pretty strong, but he’s vulnerable in Wins and the pitching qualitatives,
Bret Sayre entered the last four-week contest 14.5 points ahead of Patrick Mayo and 31 points ahead of Doug Anderson. As we approach the halfway point, Sayre is 15 points behind Mayo, who has moved into a tiny lead. What looked like it might be a blowout has ended up a a nail-biter, if you’re Sayre and Mayo.
Shake Some Action, Not. The August 31 FAAB Reports.
Mastersball finds Tout Wars far more active than LABR, but really, the well is running dry. Rotoman, for his part, bid hard on Rodney and Verrett, while Phil Hertz bid big for Rotoman castoff Michael Lorenzen. The standings say trust Hertz. But at this point all of us, except maybe Mike Gianella, are looking for a hero.
Gianella will weigh in on Tuesday at Baseball Prospectus on this week’s moves in Tout NL and AL. In fact, the moves are less than half of it. Mike does a nice job dissecting the NL pennant race (which he is atop) in his piece, and discusses the AL race, which Chris Liss currently leads.
Charlie Wiegert, the Godfather of Fantasy Sports, Kicks It In the Tout Daily Final, by FanDuel.
Here’s something the old and new can agree upon. Back in the day, when Major League Baseball tried to appropriate all rights to fantasy sports, Charlie Wiegert put his business on the line to challenge that notion.
You will have to look elsewhere for the history, but karma is paying back, as Charlie Wiegert has won the first Championship of Tout Wars Daily by FanDuel. That’s a $1,000 prize, and validation for the fact that the Daily Fantasy Games are not only the domain of the younger fantasy players.
Wiegert won the Tout Daily championship going away, riding the broad back of Clayton Kershaw. He was the only team to choose the day’s most expensive, and most productive, player.
Here’s how he did it:
Tout Daily by FanDuel Finals! An Update!
There aren’t many innings left to play, but this thing is far from over. Here are the current standings. You can follow the real results at FanDuel.
Adam Ronis has a small lead, but it is tight! Key number is in the next to last column. That’s how many innings are left.
UPDATE: Charlie Wiegert has 14 innings left to play. Other contending teams have players playing, but only Wiegert has Clayton Kershaw. A win for Kershaw catapults GodfatherCharlie to victory. And the Dodgers just went ahead, thanks to Chases Utley (who Charlie has, too).
ANOTHER UPDATE: Wiegert got more from Danny Valencia and has moved into the lead, even before Kershaw wins his game. Adam Ronis needs a miracle, a Kolten Wong homer and a Dodgers collapse to regain the lead.
NOTE: Of the Top Six teams, all started different pitchers.
Tout Daily by FanDuel Finals Are Tonight!
And then there were 15.
Tonight, at 7:05pm ET, the 15 Tout Daily by FanDuel Finalists will compete for $2,000 in prices. That’s $1,000 for the player with the highest score tonight. Second place is $500. Third place is $250. Fourth is $150. And Fifth place is $100.
The names are familiar. See the leaderboard here. Three players, Scott Engel, Adam Ronis and Scott Pianowski, have two entries each. How big an advantage does that give them? And how will they handle their two chances? We’ll find out tonight!
FAAB Reports for August 24!
Mastersball.com surveys a surprisingly active week and notes one of the invidious effects of the Vickrey auction system.
In Tout NL, there were a number of interesting hitters available, and a number of bidders:
Steve Gardner: Domingo Santana 30 (27)
Brian Walton: Domingo Santana 26, Aaron Altherr 26 (25), Travis Jankowski 26, D Sweeney 26, Tommy Pham 2. Travis Jankowski 0
Phil Hertz: Domingo Santana 22, Aaron Altherr 22, Darin Ruf 22 (1), Travis Jankowski 22, D Sweeney 0.
Gene McCaffrey: Aaron Altherr 24
Scott Wilderman: Aaron Altherr 13,Tommy Pham 7 (1), Travis Jankowski 6, Darin Ruf 0
Tristan Cockcroft: Travis Jankowski 15 (1), Aaron Altherr 11, Jason Bourgeois 5 (2)
The bolds are the guys who bought the player, and the number in parentheses is the Vickrey reduced price. The issue here, I think, is the way Vickrey distorts the market, rather than reflect it. Clearly Domingo Santana and Aaron Altherr were preferred over Travis Jankowski, but in terms of pricing, the difference as set by Walton, Hertz and Wilderman is slight. But because of Vickrey, Santana and Altherr went for full price, while Jankowski’s price was cut from $15 to $1. It seems arbitrary, though it is worth noting that Jankowski was Cockcroft’s highest ranked hitter for the week, so it is fitting he got him.
I just think reducing big bids down to $1 demeans the process, making the reduction lucky rather than a reading of the market.
Mike Gianella discusses the week’s Tout AL and NL moves at Baseball Prospectus.