Category: NL

Hail to the 2012 Tout Wars Champions!

Larry Schechter repeats in Tout Wars AL, Tristan Cockcroft wins Tout Wars NL, and Cory Schwartz is showered in yoohoo to celebrate his Tout War Mixed championship. Well played fellas!

Tout NL Contenders Speak!

I asked the Contending and Out of It Tout owners some questions, and got back some answers. Here are the answers from the Contenders in Tout Wars NL:

TRISTAN COCKCROFT

What are your chances of winning as a percentage? 45 (keeping in mind that I’d say at least four teams are still very much “in it” — or have a 10+ percent chance of victory).

What percentage of your success this year was based on your draft? 90, maybe more. Eleven of my 12 most valuable individual players this season were original draft picks, and two other current starters were also draftees.

What percentage was based on trading? 8. Juan Pierre was a critical pickup, and Shane Victorino and Ryan Dempster have (so far) proved important, but I can’t forget that all three were acquired for players who were original draftees.

What percentage was based on waiver pickups? 2. I can’t entirely discount the contributions of Erik Kratz, D.J. LeMahieu, Andrelton Simmons, Brad Lincoln, Jonny Venters or Mitchell Boggs, but does any one of those names really drive a team? I say no, being that not a single one has contributed more than 125 useful AB or 60 useful innings (so far).

What was the best thing that happened to your team this year. Aroldis Chapman discovered his command. There probably hasn’t been any one more important piece of my team than Chapman; he has stabilized my ratios and his emergence at closer afforded me the ability to trade two closers, Santiago Casilla and J.J. Putz, to fill other needs.

What was the worst thing? And how did you get over it? If it’s not Vance Worley’s elbow problems, then surely it’s the revolving door I’ve had at the middle infield spots. How did I get over it? Well, Martin Prado gained 2B eligibility, which helped, and LeMahieu has been a serviceable pickup. But consider that this season, I’ve used Prado, LeMahieu, Matt Downs, Freddy Galvis, Ronny Cedeno, Jack Wilson, Alex Gonzalez, Jean Segura, Simmons and Emmanuel Burriss between 2B/MI. That’s right, 10 different players for two spots. It’d sure be nice if Simmons could return this weekend at anything close to the form he showed before getting hurt!

PETER KREUTZER

What percentage of your success this year was based on your draft? 55 percent

What percentage was based on trading? 35 percent

What percentage was based on waiver pickups? 10 percent.

What was the best thing that happened to your team this year. My pitchers for the most part worked out, and if I’d executed on draft day and taken a closer instead of Jurrjens and Wandy Rodriguez, maybe I would have a lead at this point. The other big plus this year were some Rockies taken on reserve or during waivers. Tyler Colvin, Chris Nelson and Josh Rutledge didn’t cost me anything but some aggressive claiming, and have bolstered an offense that misfired from the get go.

What was the worst thing? And how did you get over it? My hitting draft was awful. I hit on Jason Hayward and Buster Posey, but everyone else (Gaby Sanchez and Chris Heisey particularly) either stunk or got off to a slow start. Eventually Aramis Ramirez and Drew Stubbs came around, and I was able to add Bryce Harper and Carlos Quentin in a trade, and the team banged in August. If it keeps it up in September maybe I can get to 95-97 points.

The other issue was a trade I made in June. There wasn’t much of a power market for Juan Pierre, but I had such a lead in steals I knew I had to trade him or Emilio Bonifacio. Unfortunately Bonifacio was on the DL, so I eventually traded PIerre to Tristan Cockcroft for one of the best closers in the NL to that point, Santiago Casilla. Unbelieveably, after two and a half years of excellent relief work (I didn’t care about saves so much as clean ERA and WHIP) Casilla began crashing from the first game he was on my team. And Pierre ran and ran for Cockcroft. The difference in that deal may end up being the difference between first and second, if that’s the way we finish.

DEREK CARTY

What are your chances of winning as a percentage? 30%

What percentage of your success this year was based on your draft? 30%

What percentage was based on trading? 60%

What percentage was based on waiver pickups? 10%

What was the best thing that happened to your team this year? Either Ruggiano’s breakout or being able to find tons of trade partners to retool my team for the stretch run

What was the worst thing? And how did you get over it? Injuries. Lots of injuries leading to either lots of missed time or loss of PT/role upon return (Morse, Storen, Stauffer, Helton, Hernandez etc)

PHIL HERTZ

What are your chances of winning as a percentage? Less than 5 percent.

What percentage of your success this year was based on your draft? 65%

What percentage was based on trading? 10%

What percentage was based on waiver pickup s? 25%

What was the best thing that happened to your team this year. A very good reserve round draft! I took Aoki, Lombardozzi, Parnell and Arredondo. While I eventually cut Arredondo, the other three made significant positive contributions. That’s among my best reserve round draft ever – I’d say best, except in one league a long time ago, I drafted some guy named Pujols in the reserve round.

What was the worst thing? And how did you get over it? Pitching injuries – my three most expensive starters coming out of the draft were Luebke, Lilly and Nicasio, all of whom wound up out for the season (although there are a few noises that Lilly may resurface briefly this month). I tried trading, but eventually gave up when I traded for Gee two days before he wound up in the hospital. For the last few weeks, I’ve been going more and more with just relief pitchers – I’d probably have gone even more in that direction, but for the league’s minimum innings requirement. So far I’ve netted 4-6 points by sacrificing wins – I was already last in strikeouts – for whip and ERA improvement.

Assessing the Odds of Winning: Tout NL

At the start of the year we all like our chances, and even if we think someone else did a better job in the auction, our trading and waiver skills can make up the difference. Plus, if one or two of our coveted sleepers come in, we’re golden.

But in early September the scales have fallen from our eyes. Most teams know they don’t have a prayer. In Tout Mixed Cory Schwartz says he’s got a 90-percent chance of winning, but when he describes how he might lose he can’t. His lead is too big. A loss is impossible to imagine, though not impossible to happen. Another team or two claim a slim chance of prevailing, but all know that realistically the door has closed.

In Tout AL Larry Schechter says it’s a tossup between him and Jeff Erickson at this point. Responding to the question of what bad thing happened to hurt his team this year, Schechter says it was Erickson owning Mike Trout.

The story in Tout NL is a little different. Tristan Cockcroft has opened up a sizeable lead over the last few weeks by climbing from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. He’s in good position, but a slump could drop him back into the 80s in a hurry. Peter Kreutzer (that’s me) is in second place, in the high 80s. In the middle of June, when I starting trading to maximize my points, I thought if I finished with 88-90 points I had an excellent chance of winning. Now the target has moved.

Third place is fluid, shared from day to day by Lenny Melnick, Derek Carty, Todd Zola and Phil Hertz. As I write this the standings are:

Cockcroft 97.5
Kreutzer 87
Carty 83.5
Hertz 83.5
Melnick 79
Zola 78

When I asked earlier this week what everyone thought their chances of winning were, the answers were:

Cockcroft 50
Kreutzer 20
Carty 30
Hertz 5

Which got me to thinking about what it means when we assign ourselves win percentages. I expected that we would be overly optimistic, but us NLers are barely over the threshold. Which doesn’t mean I think they’re right. I’m pretty sure that even last Monday, when Tristan’s lead was 96, 89, 81, 81, 79.5, he was better than a 50 percent favorite. If I could have bet a buck to make two on his team I would have done it in a second. And as the week has gone on his position has improved. With only weeks to go, every advantage multiplies. It is way better to have stats in hand than not.

But my team wasn’t/isn’t out of it. I’ve made all the right moves, I don’t think I’ve played the game better. I have three or four points to gain in homers and a less likely two or three to gain in RBI. If I got to 93 or 94, just a bad week or two for Tristan (and he hasn’t had many of those) might slip me past him. But realistically, I think his chances are more like 65 percent.

I like Derek Carty’s enthusiasm. He has points to gain, so I don’t feel that confident about beating him for second place, but a few places he might lose points there are points at that will go to Tristan. So, while Derek has done an amazing job changing up his team in ways that have been surprisingly effective, maybe he has a 10 percent chance of things breaking his way. That said, if I could get 10:1 on Derek’s team I don’t think I’d bet energetically.

And this is what it all comes down to: Our good analysis and where we would put our money. I may think Tristan is underselling his position, and Derek is overselling his, but the fact that our estimates add up to about 100 percent (as do the estimates in the other two Tout leagues), is a sign that at this point in September we’re not deluded. We just don’t know what’s going to happen.

And I’m hoping that Tristan is right, that his chance is about 50 percent.