Category: News

Tout Daily Picks for Friday Night, Todd Zola Leads Edition

After two weeks in Period 4, Todd Zola has 31 point lead over Andrea LaMont and a bunch of other touts who are right behind her. That is a nice lead, but hardly an insurmountable one.

You can see the leaderboard here.

Tonight’s Tout Picks:

TODD ZOLA

PITCHER Chris Sale ($13,400): Lock it in, figure out the rest

HITTER Bradley Zimmer ($3,800): Not a huge bargain, but still well worth the cost. Zimmer’s been hitting leadoff lately,a nice spot to be facing Marco Estrada, whose been quite generous with hits and homers this season.

LAWR MICHAELS

Chris Sale ($13,400): I like Sale versus an Angels team that ranks 28th in the Majors in OPS against southpaws (.668).

Jabari Blash ($3,200): Blash has hit in each of his last five games and gets to face the Shark, who has pretty good peripherals, but not much else.

PHIL HERTZ

Ian Kennedy ($8,100) and Bryce Harper ($5,500) are my picks.

TIM HEANEY

Aaron Nola ($8,400, vs. MIL): The Brewers have been mighty at the plate all year but strike out aplenty, and Nola is finding his peak form.

Josh Bell ($3,900 at COL): With the clash at Coors Field, Rockies and Pirates hitters will flow throughout many lineups, but this could be the best value. The switch hitter has smashed 12 of his homers against righties, and for as good as Jeff Hoffman has been, his home starts still put him at risk.

 

The Week In Transaction Analysis: 7/18/17

I didn’t write a piece this week for the Mastersball H2H transaction roundup, because there were only two purchases, but Todd Zola and his band of merry men take a look at all five Tout leagues. Read it here.

Mike Gianella made a big splash for Jose Quintana in Tout Wars NL, and has so far lived to tell about it and other transactions this week. Read his article here.

Todd Zola takes the lead in Period 4 Tout Daily!

Week 1 of Period 4 of Tout Daily was a nailbiter, with Andrea LaMont squeezing out a tiny lead. Week 2 couldn’t have been more different. Todd Zola racked up the points and one the period by 23 points over Phil Hertz.

Zola’s team was powered by Charlie Morton, Josh Bell, Robinson Cano and Bryce Harper. Here is his team (click the image to make it larger):

Zola’s big win puts him atop the Period 4 leaderboard, well ahead of Hertz, Lamont, Derek Carty and Howard Bender, who may all be fighting for the second-place ticket to the finals on September 1. See the Leaderboard here.

Zola, Carty and Bender already have one ticket each to the finals. An extra ticket goes to the team with the most overall points at the end of the 20 week season. So far, Carty leads Bender by 36 points in that race.

The Tout will line up this coming Friday for Week 3 of the four-week Period 4.

Friday Tout Daily Preview for July 14, 2017.

Andrea LaMont is in the lead, but not by much. The Touts are getting their Period 4 Week 2 entries in for the 2017 Tout Daily championship. Here is the leaderboard.

Some are sharing their picks with us.

PHIL HERTZ

James Paxton at home and Bryce Harper at GAB.

JEFF BOGGIS

Top Hitter – Matt Carpenter (1B-$3,800) St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh Pirates

Top Pitcher – Jacob deGrom (SP-$11,800) New York Mets vs. Colorado Rockies

LAWR MICHAELS

Jacob Faria ($8200): Crapshoot on the next Tampa future ace facing the Angels, who do indeed like to swing the bats. Faria has 37 whiffs over 38.1 frames.

Whit Merrifield ($4300): It has taken a bit for Merrifield to own second, but he has 13 hits over his last ten games and goes up against Southpaw Martin Perez for the day.

CHARLIE WIEGERT

Top Pitchers…going on the inexpensive side with R. A. Dickey at home against AZ, hoping the knuckler will be dancing around in the hot humid weather, and Charlie Morton at home in Houston to shut down the Twins.

Top hitters…with the $ savings on pitching I’m able to put an All-star lineup out there tonight; Buster Posey, Anthony Rizzo, Jose Alltuve, Machado, Lindor, Harper and Judge.  Sleeper pick is Alex Presley.  While this strategy has not worked very well the last couple weeks, I’m sticking with it…tonight might be the night!
TIM HEANEY

Jose Berrios ($7,300 at HOU): I’ll go with the contrarian play against the hot offense to try winning a tournament format.

Avisail Garcia ($3,500 vs. SEA): Similar theme here. Not many people will pick against James Paxton, but I’ll roll with Garcia, who holds a .427 wOBA against southpaws during his breakout year.

GENE McCAFFREY

Pitcher – No such thing as a sure thing but Jacob deGrom at home is always a good bet.

Hitter – It’s about time for Robinson Cano to start feasting; James Shields should provide the meatballs.

Andrea LaMont takes Period 4 Tout Daily Lead!

Andrea LaMont won the first week of Tout Daily Period 4 by the slimmest of margins, riding a fine start by Zach Greinke and big nights from some stud hitters, including Freddie Freeman, Francisco Lindor, Giancarlo Stanton, and Roughned Odor.

Still, she topped Howard Bender (James Paxton, Lindor, Nolan Arenado and Seth Smith) by 1.4 points; Steve Gardner (Dan Straily, Jesus Aguilar, DJ LeMahieu, Arenado, and Nelson Cruz) by 4.1 points and Derek Carty (Paxton, Jason Kipnis, Lindor, Arenado, and Michael Brantley) by 9.05.

Todd Zola finished fifth for the the week, and is one of three Top 5 finishers this week who already have tickets to the finals. The others are Howard Bender and Derek Carty.

You can see the whole leaderboard here.

The Touts will gather next Friday, July 14, for Week 2 of Period 4. See you then!

Carty and Zola Draw First Tout Daily Blood. Again.

Derek Carty already has a ticket to the Tout Daily finals. So does Todd Zola. These two finished 1-2 in Week 1 Period 3 of the Tout Daily contest hosted by Draft Kings.

Howard Bender also has a ticket to the finals, and he finished fourth on the week, eight points behind Zola.

Sandwiched between the ticket holders was Steve Gardner, looking for a ticket of his own.

A csv file with each team’s picks and totals, plus point totals and draft percentage for all players, can be found at the link: contest-standings-41499229

The Top 2 finishers in each four week period win golden tickets to the September 1 finals.

The June 5 Tout Wars FAAB Reports Links!

Todd Zola and his merry band weigh in on this week’s pickups in all the Tout Wars leagues. Be forewarned, one goofball thought picking up Dinelson Lamet and Adam Wainwright were good ideas. As the Pink Panther once said, The Goofball? C’est moi!

Mike Gianella’s Expert League FAAB Roundup is a weekly gem. Good analysis, goodly humor, an excellent analysis of Eric Young Jr. this week, with historical context. Plus details about a man named Cactus, and another man named Anthony. This week is a particularly good one. Even if you didn’t care for baseball you might enjoy it. Though, probably not.

 

Zola and Melnick Take Tickets in Tout Daily Period 2!

Todd Zola put up more than 150 points in Tout Daily at DraftKings for the second week in a row, which was enough to land him atop the standings in Period 2 of the contest, and win him a golden ticket to the finals.

Lenny Melnick, the third-week winner, finished second for the period, 11 points ahead of Vlad Sedler, whose hot streak ended with a crash in Week 4, when he finished with just 81.8 points, in 23rd place for the week. Sedler finished third for the period, tantalizingly close.

In what is becoming a theme, Zola rostered two aces (Kershaw—32 percent of teams did—and Strasburg—64 percent rostered him) and then relied on the kindness of lesser hitters. This week it was Yangervis Solarte, Nick Castellanos, and Franchy Cordero who left a mark.

The week’s winner was actually Tim Heaney, who finished Top 5 for the first time in the period, which left him in 12th overall. He started with Ty Blach (12 percent) and Michael Fulmer (32 percent), and then got big nights from a Detroit stack (Miguel Cabrera and JD Martinez) and Nolan Arenado.

We start Period 3 next Friday with a clean slate.

Period 1 winner, Derek Carty, has the most points overall so far this year. The overall points winner will earn an extra golden ticket to the finals.

You can see the whole leaderboard right here.

If you’re moved to try out Draft Kings, who are hosting Tout Daily this year, they have a special offer for new signups. Deposit $5 and gain free entry to a $3 contest. Click here to for more details and how to sign up.