Category: Links

Chris Liss is a winner, FakeTeams.com declares!

Screenshot 2015-09-27 10.05.29Scoby Snacks, at FakeTeams.com, has posted a story called How Chris Liss Ran Away With AL Tout Wars.

Liss has a seven point lead over Mike Podhorzer today, with eight days left in the season, so Snacks is almost surely right. As Podhorzer noted yesterday, he has a lot of ground to make up, but he does have ways to do it. So let’s wait and see.

In the meantime, you can read Snacks’ article, which errs in one important detail. While Liss didn’t spend big bucks in FAAB during the year, he did make some big bids. When he bought Carlos Correa for a buck, he bid $34. Tout’s Vickrey FAAB bidding reduced it to $1 because no one else bid.

While he acquired Shawn Tolleson for $1 on April 13th, he actually bid $5. The bid was reduced to $1 because no one else bid.

Liss’s bidding in both cases was especially impressive when you look at the timeline. Correa wasn’t called up to the majors until five weeks after Liss bought him, and Tolleson didn’t earn a save until five weeks after Liss bought him.

I took a closer look at the standings and roughly added up the close points up and down for each player. Call this the volatility index.

Liss has five points to gain and nine and a half to lose. His range is 95.5 to 81.

Podhorzer has eight and a half points to gain, and eight points to lose. His range is 92 to 75.5.

Liss is in the driver’s seat, for sure, but there is a lot of overlap there.

Bret Sayre: How I Won Tout Wars X.

Tout Wars X Champ Bret Sayre.
Tout Wars X Champ Bret Sayre.

Let’s let Bret set the scene:

“If the entire final month left me seasick, the final weekend made me schizophrenic. In fact, it almost made me jealous of the fantasy writers who cover both baseball and football, as I would have had a healthy distraction. Almost. By the halfway point, Pat had taken the overall lead and I was staring down the barrel of what would easily have been my worst period of the entire contest. A week later, my luck had turned and my offense started hitting–pushing me to a 5.5-point lead overall and a little more comfort, which would hold until the final lineups were set on Friday. From that point on, my team’s performance became irrelevant, as Pat’s team was absolutely firing on all cylinders. My lead was down to one at the end of the day Friday and gone by the evening games on Saturday.”

You can read Bret’s story at Baseball Prospectus. It’s on the free side of the paywall.

Tout Wars FAAB Reports for September 21!

Mastersball.com’s notes column on the four Tout leagues is here.

Mike Gianella looks at this week’s moves in Tout AL and NL, and analyzes the pennant races, too. He’s leading in the NL.

Your Tout Wars FAAB Report, September 14 style.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

The Week’s FAAB Commentaries, Linked Here on August 10th.

In a surprisingly interesting week, thanks to big starts for Abraham Almonte and Chris Johnson and the potential of Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher, Todd Zola and his happy crew discuss this week’s FAAB moves in Tout Wars (and LABR, too, for that matter.

Mike Gianella will post his thoughts about the Tout AL and NL moves on Tuesday morning. We usually link directly to it here, but travel this week precludes that. But there will be a link to it on the front page at Baseball Prospectus.