Category: Mixed Draft

Friday Edition: Mastersball FAAB Report, July 18, 2014

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 July 7 FAAB Report

Mastersball does its usually fine job reporting and analyzing the moves this week in the four Tout leagues, as they do every week.

We had another transaction-deadline kerfuffle this week in the leagues. As you surely know, the Cubs and Athletics made a big interleague trade on Saturday. The trade was processed on Saturday and Jeff Samarzdija and Jason Hammel were available in the AL Bidmeister this week, and Dan Straily was entered into the minor league list of the NL.

Then, on Sunday morning, the Yankees and Diamondbacks made a trade of Vidal Nuno for Brandon McCarthy. Whatever the merits of the deal, it clearly took place sometime around noon ET Sunday officially. That’s when the Dbacks tweeted that the deal was done.

The wrinkle was that some enterprising Tout Warriors were able to find McCarthy’s and Nuno’s names in the list of “Minor Leaguers” that our stat provider adds in addition to our regularly eligible list, because Tout Wars allows teams to buy minor league players on waivers (provided they keep them on their active roster for one week afterwards). It turns out the minor league list is actually a list of all ineligible players, so other-league guys like McCarthy and Nuno were listed though they clearly weren’t eligible.

The claims were unravelled. A note has been sent to all Tout Leagues about who is legal and who is not.

Just to clarify one thing: The reason Tout Wars determines eligibility based on the previous day’s legal ML rosters is because these are reliable and vetted and available to everyone via the MLB website. In-day moves are subject to lots of interpretation, misleading tweets and timing issues that cannot be regularly and fairly applied.

We know that some leagues approach the transaction wire like a stream of info to be acted on immediately, which is great fun if you choose to play that way, but for Tout Wars purposes a more orderly process has been chosen instead. Alas, this means that Brandon McCarthy and Vidal Nuno are free agents all week, this week.

Mastersball FAAB Report June 30, 2014: Most Betts Are Off.

In two of the three Tout leagues in which Red Sox phenom callup is eligible, he’d been bought in previous weeks, because of a quirky in the Tout rules that rewards foresight and advanced thinking. So it was only in Tout Mixed Auction that there was bidding on the young speedster. It wasn’t surprising that Fred Zinkie was aggressive, he always is. It was surprising that Scott Swanay didn’t wade in at all.

Todd, Brian, Rob, Zach and Perry let you know what happened and why in this week’s report.

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.

The June 23 Tout Wars FAAB report, from Mastersball.com

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!

The Mastersball.com June 16, 2014 FAAB Report

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’s FAAB Report June 9, 2014: Scott Swanay Props Edition

The Mastervision FAAB report continues to develop, including more opinion and analysis of moves. It has gone from being an invaluable record of bids and winners to a lively commentary on the goings on in Tout Wars.

This week Todd Zola points out the Scott Swanay, bedeviled on auction day in the Mixed auction league with too much money, has managed his team into a competitive position in the first division (barely as of today). This despite losing Jose Fernandez, everybody’s ace, for the season. Keep clawing, Scott!

Brian Walton speaks of my own bedeviled situation in Tout NL. In dollar days I took a flyer on Kris Bryant, the Cubs future slugger, but when he started slowly in Double-A and it became clear that he wasn’t going to be a June callup to the majors, I offered him around the league. Crickets, so I released him in order to hold onto someone I valued more. In May, Bryant got hot, and Mike Gianella picked him up for $1 FAAB a couple of weeks ago.

Apparently, Mike also came to the conclusion that Bryant’s next stop would be Iowa City, not Chitown, but when he offered him up yesterday Gene McCaffrey leaped with $50 of FAAB. What a difference a day (well, more like 45 of them) makes.

 

Tout Wars Weekly FAAB Report, from Mastersball

The boys at Mastersball look at this week’s excited bids for Rubby De La Rosa, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Tommy La Stella. Read their comments here.