Adam Ronis returns to defend his 2015 crown, with Rudy Gamble champing at the bit for a rematch. They are joined by Tout Wars newcomer Stacie Stern, who is general manager of Head to Head sports and a regular on SiriusXM radio (SiriusXM will carry the Draft live on Rick Wolf and Glenn Colton’s March 8 show at 8pm), and three Touts from last year’s inaugural Tout X league, Patrick Mayo, Craig Mish, and Tim McCullough.
2016 Tout Wars MIXED DRAFT
Tout Wars mandates that each year’s draft order is determined by last year’s finish. Since draft picks are not necessarily valued in the order they come, owners are polled for their preferences of pick. The draft order is not yet set, players are listed in the selection order of picks:
Adam Ronis (1000) 2015 Mixed Draft Champion Rudy Gamble (1000) Patrick Mayo (1000) Transfer from Tout X Perry Van Hook (1000) Tim McLeod (1000) 2014 Mixed Draft Champion Craig Mish (1000) Transfer from Tout X Greg Ambrosius (1000) Eno Sarris (1000) Ray Murphy (990) Tom Kessenich (910) Charlie Wiegert (790) Tim McCullough (1000) Transfer from Tout X Anthony Perri (740) Rick Wilton (490) Stacie Stern (1000) New to Tout Wars
For the third time in five years, Fred Zinkie heads into a Tout Wars Mixed Auction throwing out the first nomination. He hasn’t shown quite the same dominance in the even-numbered years as he has in the odd. Could that open up some opportunity?
Newcomers to Tout Mixed Auction, Bret Sayre (won Tout X last year), and Gene McCaffrey, from the NL league, hope to make a difference.
Players are listed in the order they will choose in the reserve draft after the auction. The numbers in parentheses are the amount of FAAB each team starts the season with.
2016 Tout Wars MIXED AUCTION
Fred Zinkie (1000) 2011, 2013, 2015 Mixed Auction Champion Bret Sayre (1000) 2015 Tout X Champion Scott Swanay (1000) Tim Heaney (1000) won coin flip Zach Steinhorn (1000) Cory Schwartz (1000) 2012 Mixed Auction Champion Scott Pianowski (1000) Ray Flowers (1000) Scott Engel (1000) Gene McCaffrey (960) 2001 NL Champion, Transfer from NL Al Melchior (910) David Gonos (890) 2008 Mixed Auction Champion Joe Pisapia (890) Derek VanRiper (840) 2014 Mixed Auction Champion Nando DiFino (720)
Mike Gianella, the 2015 Tout NL champ, will toss out the first nomination in the March 20th Tout NL auction in New York City (and live on SiriusXM radio). There are two newcomers to the league this year, as Grey Albright moves over from the Mixed Draft league and Andy Behrens arrives from Tout AL.
The numbers in parentheses are the number of FAAB units each team starts with. Teams are penalized 10 units for each point they score fewer than 60 points in the previous year’s standings.
2016 Tout Wars NL Only
Mike Gianella (1000) 2015 NL Champion Tristan Cockcroft (1000) 2012, 2013, 2014 Champion Grey Albright (1000) Transfer from Mixed Draft Derek Carty (1000) Ray Guilfoyle (1000) Phil Hertz (1000) Lenny Melnick (1000) 2002 NL Champion (with partner Irving Swilling) Scott Wilderman (1000) 2003, 2006 NL Champion Andy Behrens (1000) 2010 Mixed Auction Champion, Transfer from AL Brian Walton (920) 2009 NL Champion Steve Gardner (890) 2011 NL Champion Todd Zola (860)
What’s at stake? An item on Foley’s menu in March, for one. (click to enlarge)
There are three days left in the season. Three games left for each major league team, though a massive storm plus a possible hurricane in the east may affect games in Baltimore (versus Yankees), Philadelphia (versus Miami) and New York (versus Washington). None of these series will matter in determining the playoffs, so rainouts on Sunday (or Saturday and Sunday) may not be rescheduled.
How are things looking in Tout Wars? Let’s start with the easy ones.
AL: Chris Liss leads Mike Podhorzer by 8.5 points. Liss’s volatility index gives him a range of 86-97 points. Podhorzer could finish with 79-88. The door is not completely shut, but everything has to go right for Podhorzer and completely wrong for Liss.
NL: Mike Gianella leads Tristan Cockcroft by 11 points. Gianella range is 87-95.5, while Cockcroft’s is 75-86. There is virtually no chance that Cockcroft can make up enough ground, no matter how badly Gianella’s team goes.
Mix Auction: Fred Zinkie leads Scott Swanay by 4 points, and Tim Heaney by 6. It’s good be Zinkie, for sure, but there are still lots of points in play. Zinkie has already gained three points in homers this week, but lost them in Runs, OBP, ERA and Saves, and is tied in Runs and Saves. There’s a lot of baseball left to be played here.
Mix Draft: Adam Ronis is 2 points ahead of Rudy Gamble, who is 3.5 points ahead of Grey Albright. Rudy has gained five points this week, which means he could give back five easily enough. He’s in a three-way tie in wins, with one ahead and one behind. One of the guys he’s tied with is Ronis. Crazy things could happen there. Gamble has five starts over the weekend, while Ronis has just two. There is also a four-way tie in saves. Gamble has Tolleson, Feliz and Robbie Ross(who has yet to get a save and wasn’t listed in the intial post), McLeod has Axford, Vizcaino, and Jepsen, Kessenich lost Huston Street and is left with Hector Rondon, and Paul Sporer has Andrew Miller and Cody Allen. Over three games, pretty much anything can happen in saves. Plus there are a mess of possibilities in ERA and Ratio. Keep your eye on this one folks! That said, Grey Albright doesn’t have much headroom, especially since Gamble and Ronis each stand to either gain or lose in the categories in which they’re tied, so it’s hard to see them both falling. Which makes Grey something of a spoiler, especially since he’s right behind Ronis in ERA and right behind Gamble in strikeouts, with his five red hot starters going.
“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.
Going into the last four week set of Tout Wars X at Shandler Park, Bret Sayre had a 14.5 point lead over Patrick Mayo. But in the game’s final period, Mayo quickly jumped out to a lead, a lead he didn’t relinquish all month. On same days he moved into the overall lead and he won his second month of the competition, but in the end he fell short overall by three points.
Here are the final overall standings (click to enlarge):
Mayo’s 62 points were the most for any one-month winner, but it was not enough to overcome Sayre’s sizable lead. Sayre and Mayo, notably, had no months in which they scored fewer than 40 points, the only players not to, and Sayre’s final margin of victory was also the difference between his worst month (5) and Mayo’s (1).
Congratulations Bret!
Bret says: “My goal was to shoot for a safe 45 points and if Pat scored 60, I’d tip my hat to him for a job extremely well done. It turns out he certainly earned that hat tip, but I was fortunate enough to squeeze out 50 points again, despite not having my SB safety blanket in Billy Hamilton.”
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.
