Category: Article

Gene McCaffrey (Tout NL): LET’S TALK ABOUT ME!

I can’t believe how big the whole thing is now. Back in the day we would huddle in the dank basement of some New York bar. One year we drafted in Steve Moyer’s basement, which I thought was great but later heard tell of other putative Warriors who did not. Now there are at least a hundred people there either drafting or media-involved. Even girls! Maybe three! TV cameras, live radio broadcasts, no question we’re big shots.

Gene McCaffrey, with Steve Gardner, Todd Zola and Lenny Melnick.
Gene McCaffrey, with Steve Gardner, Todd Zola and Lenny Melnick.

The best thing is that the people are terrific. The very few assholes who have passed through the expert ranks of fantasy baseball over the years all disappeared quickly. I mean, I’m the biggest asshole there and I’m only an asshole sometimes. But you want to know about my team.

I won the battle but I may have lost the war. Here’s The Conundrum: in NL- or AL-only leagues the bargains are going to come on the pitchers, but you can’t get too many or you won’t have enough money to buy an offense. Everyone is spending 30 percent or less on pitching and bragging about it, which ABSOLUTELY guarantees that 1) pitchers will be undervalued, and 2) hitters will be overvalued. (A corollary is that some team or teams who don’t spend on pitching are going to score some pitching bargains, making them instant contenders.) When it works it looks great, when it doesn’t—which is usually since everyone is doing it—it looks terrible, but no one cares because odds are that’s what the winner did. To me this state of affairs calls for a contrary strategy and hence the conundrum. Continue reading “Gene McCaffrey (Tout NL): LET’S TALK ABOUT ME!”

Tout NL Three-Time Presiding Champ Tristan Cockcroft Tells All!

2012cockcroft-nl2013ToutWarsNLChamps2014ToutWarsNLChampsWinner of Tout Wars NL in 2012, 2013 and 2014, plus a two-time LABR champ, Tristan lays it all out for us Tout NLers who have been chasing him, and tells us (and you) how he wins.

Mixed Auction: Zach Steinhorn, Steady As He Goes.

Zach Steinhorn is one of a half dozen owners in contention for the Tout Wars Mixed Auction title.

Standings as of September 2, 2014
Standings as of September 2, 2014

Zach writes:

Although most of my Mastersball column space this season has been devoted to Mixed Auction Tout Wars, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid patting myself on the back, mostly for superstitious reasons, of course. And I’m not about to pat myself on the back now, not with less than a month remaining in the season and with six teams within 11 points of the lead and a mere four points separating second place from fifth place. I’ve been in that top six for the vast majority of the season, and just to enter September having a legitimate chance to win this league is pretty special. The “second place is first loser” line is nonsense, especially when competing against the best in the business. Would I be bummed if I fall a few points short of first place? Sure. But would I remember 2014 the same way as I remember my first two Tout Wars seasons, in which I finished in 10th and 11th out of 15 teams? Absolutely not.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from league mate Fred Zinkie, and when I saw the subject line, “Tout”, I was positive that it was yet another one of his weekly trade proposals. Instead, Fred noted that while scanning my current roster and comparing it to my post-auction roster, he noticed that almost every player I purchased in the auction was still on my roster. I think the figure was 20 out of 23. He went on to say that this kind of roster stability was something he had never seen in a contending team and that he would not offer me any more trades because he was curious to see how things play out should I continue with virtually the same roster.

I knew I was a patient owner, but even I didn’t realize that the numbers were this extreme. So I guess it’s fair to say that my auction performance is the main reason for my success this year. Adding Mark Buehrle for one FAAB dollar in early-April and benefiting from the good part of his season before cutting ties with him at the right time certainly helped. Picking up Henderson Alvarez for $9 in early-June was nice. But nothing can compare to drafting Nelson Cruz for $10. Or Denard Span for $1. Or even Jose Altuve for $16.

I’m going to stop here though, for superstitious reasons.

Rotoman’s FAAB Story: Cue Tiny Violins

On Saturday Brian Walton published his tale of FAAB Woe in Tout NL the week of August 4. I didn’t read it until after I posted the following, but the two stories are of a piece.  

Sometime around the beginning of July my Tout Wars NL team was in second place, about five points behind Seth Trachtman’s team. At least for a few moments. But since then things have gone terribly wrong.

My Stars and Scrubs squad was built on seven $20+ dollar players. Since the beginning of July Hanley Ramirez, Troy Tulowitzki, and Ryan Zimmerman have gone on the DL, and Andrew McCutchen has been sidelined for more than a week with injury, though he may avoid the DL.

Earlier I lost Joey Votto to injury, in June, but was able to swap him for Jay Bruce. Otherwise things would be worse, though Bruce continues to be a shadow of his former self.

As does Martin Prado, the last of my $20 hitters, who along with Madison Bumgarner (who has been exactly fine) rounds out my tale of woe and fifth place team of injured stars.

With all these injuries, one would think there would be replacements available. And this week in the NL there were.

Jake Lamb is Arizona’s third basemen until he proves otherwise. Hardly a star but maybe a viable regular, he will get at bats for a while, at least.

Rhymer Liriano is being called up to the Padres tomorrow. He’s been a fine minor league hitter who has some pedigree.

Michael Fiers had a great ML season in 2012, bombed last year and has been excellent in Triple A this year. I rostered him early this year, but he was passed by a phenom. Now, with Matt Garza tanked, he has a shot at a few starts. His first one was wonderful. Alas, I let him go in June, so I bid on him.

I also bid on Brad Penny, he’s been pitching well in New Orleans, and Alfredo Marte, who is getting (weak) at bats in Arizona’s outfield.

I had a total of $36 FAAB to spend. The outcome this week?

In Tout Wars we use the Vickery bidding system, which gives the bid to the highest bidder, at $1 more than the second highest bidder. This week’s results are personally painful:

Jake Lamb: Trachtman $36. Next: Rotoman $18. Result: Trachtman $19.

Rhymer Liriano: Walton $50. Next: Trachtman $26, Rotoman $13. Result: Walton $27.

Michael Fiers: Hertz $50. Next: Rotoman $14. Result: Hertz $15.

Alfredo Marte: Trachtman $7. Next: Rotoman $5. Result: Trachtman $6

Brad Penny: Wilderman $8. Next: Rotoman $3. Result: Wilderman $4.

At least I’m enforcing.

Midseason Report Tout Wars Mixed Draft: Tim McLeod

Tim writes:

Miguel Cabrera
Miguel Cabrera
The story in the Mixed Draft League has been all Mastersball.com’s Perry Van Hook, with the rest of the group attempting to stay within striking distance. Perry currently enjoys a 15 point-lead over his second place rival, with a further ten points bacl to the main pack. He’s at or near the top in every offensive category. Led by Miggy Cabrera, Carlos Gomez, and Jose Altuve, with some truly awesome complementary pieces in Khris Davis, Charlie Blackmon, and Michael Brantley. Add in the surging Carlos Santana and it is easy to see why he’s dominating the offensive board.

On the pitching side, Perry lost all-world starter Jose Fernandez early, but his rotation of Anibal Sanchez, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Nathan Eovaldi and two recent $1 free agent additions, Jesse Hahn and Danny Duffy, have allowed him to amass 27-of-30 points in the ERA and WHIP categories. There aren’t a lot of holes in this squad.

Congratulations Perry! We’ve got our work cut out for us in the second half if we’re going to catch Team Mastersball.

McLeod Around the Horn

The closer situation in baseball is about as stable as we’ve seen it since the tumultuous start to the season, and with that stabilization teams have begun to shuffle the deck. The past several weeks have seen numerous trades as teams attempt to shore up their bullpens and make hay in the saves category. There are points to be gained as the closer carousel continues to spin.

For instance, a whopping 40.5 percent of the total FAAB spent year-to-date has been spent chasing saves. We witnessed a mind-boggling 51.3 percent FAAB expenditure chasing saves in the first six weeks of the season. When nearly half of our budget has been spent on one-tenth of the categories in play thought should be given to the rules we use moving into the future of our great game.

Winning is Everything!

Wins are not, says Nick Minnix, in a story at Fangraphs today. He’s talking about pitchers’ wins, of course, a stat that some would say is ridiculously random, while others might say its imperfection accentuates its beauty.

Nick is clearly not sure where he stands along a spectrum that perhaps begins with cumulative Game Score, features PQS and W+Quality Starts and ends up with naked Wins alone. He is properly ruminative about this delicate question, which can provoke some fire. I suggested doing away with the Wins category at ESPN.com nearly 20 years ago and my ears still ring with the dismissive, “The game is all about winning, stupid.”

Some of the commenters about Nick’s story suggest Innings Pitched as a proxy for wins, but I think that’s barking up the wrong category. Innings pitched is a fine substitute for Strikeouts, an ability that often enough has little to do with winning or pitching effectively. A pitcher who puts up the innings is doing some important part of the job, no matter the outcomes.

A pitcher who wins, however, is likely on a decent team AND is getting the job done. He may be Masahiro Tanaka, throwing lots of strikeouts and leading the majors in wins, or he may be Mark Buehrle, who is hardly striking out anyone, and nearly matching Tanaka W for W. Or he could be the antichrist spawn of the two, the master of the unlucky, like Jeff Samardzija, striking them out but crippled by his dismal team, winning but twice thus far in 90+ innings pitched.

Nick throws down a challenge to Tout Wars to wise up and replace the Win category with something, anything, better.

We’ll see. Tout never shys from innovation, but the question here is whether there is a replacement that reflects the vagaries of the game and doesn’t simply mirror the gradations of the qualitative stats, ERA and WHIP. There is something to giving a pitcher extra credit for playing on a good team, or overcoming a bad one.

Fred Zinkie Makes a Trade! Scott Pianowski Writes About It!

Actually, Spianow wrote a story over at Yahoo! explaining why he sold low on Shin Soo Choo, by trading him to Jeff Erickson in the Yahoo Friends and Family League and to Fred Zinkie in Tout Wars Mixed Auction. So the headline here could have been:

Pianowski: Ah Choo!

Or ScottP: The Shin Soo Also Sets.

But we chose to go with the Dog Bites Man hed, though it would seem to foreclose on us using it again. Because Zinkie will make another trade. He also promises us his thinking about taking on a bum like Choo later, after he handles some personal business.

In the meantime, enjoy Scott’s Closing Time piece. There really is something good called Selling Low.

UPDATE: Fred’s angle.