Category: Data

Lot’s of action in the post-trading deadline FAAB period. Todd Zola and the lads at mastersball.com have all the bids and commentary about what went down.

This year, for the first time, Tout Wars moved it’s transaction deadlines during the All Star break to Friday, with the FAAB Bidmeister running at Midnight on Thursday.

Although announced back in January, this led to some confusion (which Todd and Perry take on in their parts of the Mastersball FAAB Report) and some spirited opposition to the change in FAABing from a couple of owners.

The change was proposed for a few years running by the TW NL’s Phil Hertz, and adopted this past offseason. I think we all thought, Why not? It means that the week’s moves can be made after any information coming over the break has been processed.

The opposition seems mostly to be about making the break a real break, part of Week 17, not an extension of Week 16. There will be offseason discussion, but absent widespread opposition, it is likely to stay where it is.

Not so the FAAB redemption procedures. What we learned today was that the NL and Mixed Auction leagues have been releasing DL players immediately and then awarding the releasing owner his FAAB for the second Sunday FAAB run following the release. In TW AL, it turns out, released players have been held along with the FAAB until the second Sunday FAAB run following.

I doubt this has made any difference, since the reason teams release their DL players is because they’re either sad they ever bought them in the first place or they’re out for a long time. But that isn’t true before our Noon on July 17th deadline this year. At that point, the value of the redemption is cut in half (with odd totals rounded down). It was that deadline that put Phil Hertz on a point of decision.

After trying to deal Votto, unsuccessfully, he decided to redeem him. Phil gets $38 FAAB, which gets him up into the top group (not counting Gianella, who is out of this world), and Votto became a free agent. The fun thing is that no one knows if Votto is going to get back, or when. Bryan Price, his manager, seems to be saying he expects him back in a month, but when he got hurt again earlier this summer, going on the DL for the second time, there was speculation he wouldn’t get back at all.

For a team like mine, desperate for at bats and not in position to pick off any big guys who come over in the interleague trading, a bold play might help if Votto comes back at any point, and won’t likely hurt if he calls it a day at some point. But I hope not to find out if that part is true.

The Mastersball gang makes hay during a fairly slow week (unless you bid and won on Joe Panik or Mark Melancon or Edwin Jackson or Yohan Pino), with some sound strategic advice, as well as the listing of winners and losers and what they bid. Read it here!

Todd Zola, Rob Leibowitz, Brian Walton, Zach Steinhorn, and Perry Van Hook explain and analyze the week’s FAAB bidding in each of the four Tout Wars leagues. Informative and fun, especially if you’re aware that there are $0 bids allowed in all TW leagues.

Mastersball.com provides personal and in depth coverage of all the FAAB moves made in the four Tout Wars leagues, this week and every week! Who bid what, and sometimes why.

(Bidmeister is the software that administers each week’s FAAB auctions at onRoto.com.)