Competing in Tout Wars AL Auction in 2014
In order of reserve round pick (available FAAB in parenthesis)
* new to league this year
Larry Schechter (100)
Mike Podhorzer (100)*
Joe Sheehan (100)
Jeff Erickson (100)
Rick Wolf/Glenn Colton (100)
Lawr Michaels (100)
Andy Behrens (97)
Jason Collette (95)
Rob Leibowitz (91)
Steve Moyer (90)
Ron Shandler (90)
Chris Liss (89)*
Tout Wars AL Auction will take place March 23rd in NYC at 10am ET.
While we’re putting the final touches on the 2014 Tout Wars league rosters, we wanted to make one significant announcement regarding the league rules. This year all four Tout Wars leagues will use On Base Percentage (instead of Batting Average) in their 5×5 scoring.
Last year’s experiment with OBP in the Tout Wars Mixed Draft and Tout Wars Mixed Auction leagues was a success. The patients survived, for one, and more importantly the owners in those two leagues adjusted without any obvious difficulty.
Expansion into the only leagues involves one further bit of business. The change means that Tout Wars will no longer be quite as good a draft price guideline as it was for leagues that use batting average. It was this issue that caused us to wait a year, and it was this issue that was forefront in our discussions this year about making the change. An online poll we ran in December, however, helped guide us to a decision.
Half the respondents who hadn’t played OBP thought we should make the change. And the vast majority of those who have played with OBP thought we should make the change.
We know the transition will be uncomfortable for some, but we feel strongly that having bases on balls count for hitters (as they count against pitchers in WHIP) is a very positive step in the evolution of fantasy baseball. We hope that our making the change now will make it easier for leagues that want to modernize their categories to make the jump sooner rather than later.
Tout poohbahs Ron, Lawr, Jeff and Peter all play in the XFL, a mixed keeper league that adopted OBP in 2003. We all feel that the tires have been kicked, any wrinkles have been pressed, and OBP is the stronger way to play. Â And just as we did when we adopted 5×5 rather than the still (back then) prevalent 4×4, we hope you’ll come along if it makes sense for your league. As support service providers we’ll be including OBP in our materials this year, and we think you’ll start to see 5×5 (OBP) pricing become more common immediately and going forward.
Have a happy new year, and please welcome OBP!
Tout Wars
Each of the winners will receive: A package of Ron Shandler’s 2014 Baseball Forecaster, the 2014 Mastersball Platinum Package , Rotoman’s 2014 Fantasy Baseball Guide, the 2014 Rotowire Baseball Guide and the 2014 Patton $ Software and Data.
UPDATED: Oct. 5, 2013 at 6pm, with additional teams in the spreadsheet, and the NL champ’s name spelled correctly. UPDATED January 17, 2014 Spelled AL Civilian Champ’s first name correctly.
DOUBT WARS AL: Glenn Colton/Rick Wolf.
Civilian Champ: Andrew Pappas.
Runners Up: Eugene Freedman, Noah Hirsch
DOUBT WARS MIXED: Tim George
Pro Champ: Paul Singman
Runners Up: Jon Hrobuchek, Brent Crossman
DOUBT WARS NL: Jeffrey Pelletier
Pro Champ: Tristan Cockcroft, Todd Zola
Runners Up: Scott Katz, Justin Dowling
Tristan Cockcroft finished second to Todd Zola in the Draft Day Standings for Tout Wars, but his strong ERA and WHIP elevated him past Todd in Doubt Wars. Tristan, however, finished 200 innings short of the Tout Wars minimum. We didn’t anticipate that in Doubt Wars, but it seems less an issue for a Pro team than a Civilian team. Tristan certainly wasn’t gaming Doubt Wars.
Here are the standings for each league (click to enlarge):
DOUBT WARS AL
DOUBT WARS MIXED
DOUBT WARS NL
If you would like to download the spreadsheet compiling the final standings, please click here.
While everthing was a first and a record in the innaugural Tout Wars Mixed Draft season, new records were set in the other three Tout Wars Leagues.
In Tout Mixed Auction, Fred Zinkie of all people set new league records for ERA and WHIP, eclipsing David Gonos’ (2010) and Nick Minnix’ (2011) records, while runnerup David Gonos broke Tim Heaney’s strikeout mark.
In Tout Wars AL, Larry Schechter’s total of 100.5 points edges Sam Walker’s 2008 record by half a point, and Matthew Berry broke Jason Grey’s 2011 record for team strikeouts.
In the Tout NL, Champ Tristan Cockcroft set new record for WHIP, with a 1.151 WHIP, breaking Greg Rosenthal’s 2004 record of 1.16.
Check out all the Tout Wars Records at the Records page.
Schechter has won three straight AL titles and is now a six-time Tout Wars champion. Well done, Larry.
His total of 100.5 points edges Sam Walker’s 2008 record.
Matthew Berry broke Jason Grey’s 2011 record for team strikeouts.
Larry also won LABR AL this year. And he has a book about winning coming out, no coincidence.
Results and analysis for all four leagues, from mastersball.com.
Joe Sheehan, down many points but with a glint of hope, wrote:
What has to go right for you to win?
 I have to, at minimum, steal points from Larry where I’m directly behind him — WHIP (I trail by .012) and runs (I trail by 19). That means getting a couple of starts from Felix Hernandez, it means maximizing playing time that last week. Honestly, I need Larry to have another bad week, and there aren’t that many places for him to lose points with a week to go.
 What could go wrong that would cause you to lose?
 Lack of save opportunities. I can make up ground if Frieri, Balfour and Rivera can finish big.
Larry Schechter wasn’t taking anything for granted:
As I write this, I’m ahead by 12 points with 11 days to go. Not much has to go right for me to win, I just need to avoid an epic collapse. It’s not over, because Joe Sheehan (and possibly even Wolf/Colton) theoretically could win. There are enough points they can gain, and I can lose, in the various categories, that it could happen. But it’s highly unlikely, almost everything would have to be great for one of them and everything awful for me, in almost every category, for the last 11 days.
But being a Red Sox fan, and having watched their collapse two September’s ago, I’m not celebrating anything yet.
Read about this week’s next-to-last gasps.
