Category: Tout Wars Head To Head

We Have a Tout Wars Head-to-Head Champion

All season long two teams hung out at the top of the Tout Wars Head-to-Head standings. Lauren Auerbach and Sky Dombroske survived the playoff process and faced off last week in this year’s finals.

In the semi-final week, Auerbach topped Dombroske, 449 to 376.5. But that just got them to the finals. And now we crown a champion.

Sky Dombroske is the Tout Wars Head-to-Head champion for 2024! He’ll get to choose the scoring system for the league in 2025.

Dombroske’s team the final week was led by Yordan Alvarez, Jose Ramirez, and Blake Snell.

Here are the complete playoff results. Lauren and Sky drew byes for round 1.

We Have Winners! Frank Stampfl Wins Tout Wars Head to Head Again!

Make it two years in a row. Frank Stampfl, the H2H champ in 2021, caught up to Greg Jewett at the wire to win the H2H finals this year. He will no doubt choose to play with the CBS Sports scoring system again in 2023.

Tout Head to Head, the Playoffs are Set

The regular season is over.

The final regular season standings

Clay Link edged 2021 champ Frank Stampfl for first place in a tight race, with both teams earning a first-round bye.

Greg Jewett wins the tiebreaker for the sixth and final playoff spot over Geoff Pontes. He’ll face 2020 champ Ariel Cohen in the first round.

In the other opening week game, fourth-place finisher Ryan Hallam will face Paul Sporer, who finished fifth.

Next week Link will face the winning team this week with the worse record, while Stampfl will face the team with the better record.

Two Days, Four Auctions! Tout Wars Weekend is complete.

Check out the Draft Sheets here:

Tout Wars AL (Draft Sheet: Click here)

Mike Podhorzer writes about his auction.

Jason Collette on his auction.

Ryan Bloomfield’s review of his AL team is here.

Patrick Davitt and Doug Dennis talked at length about Tout AL and Doug’s weird strategy on the BaseballHQ Radio pod.

Patrick Davitt pivots to his own team at baseballhq.com ($)

Tout Wars Mixed Auction (Draft Sheet: Click here).

Alex Chamberlain’s recap.

Eric Karabell wrote about the auction for ESPN+($).

Scott Pianowski’s piece is here.

Scott Engel on his draft is here.

Zach Steinhorn’s draft review can be found here.

Scott Swanay’s team review is here.

Tout Wars NL (Draft Sheet: Click here)

Tristan Cockcroft wrote about his auction for ESPN+($).

Grey Albright hates his team enough to like it.

Tout Wars Head to Head (Draft Sheet: Click here)

Dan Strafford’s pod is here.

Ariel Cohen and Chris Welsh talk about the auction on The Beat the Shift podcast.

Todd Zola and Clay Link talk about Clay’s auction.

The more traditional spreadsheets are linked to in the sidebar later now.

Tout Wars Weekend is Coming! Here’s how to follow all the drafts.

For the third year in a row the Touts are gathering for a virtual Tout Weekend. No party at Foleys, no hanging out at the Stewart Hotel and SiriusXM talking baseball with friends. No intense, fast-paced in-person auctions led by savvy auctioneers pushing the pace ever forward.

For the third year in a row the Touts will be gathering in a draft room at Fantrax, some of them connected on a Zoom call, putting their teams together from the four corners of the US, from Florida to Hawaii, from Maine to the Columbia Valley. Here’s how you can follow along (note that the moderator will need to admit you to the public Zoom Rooms, which might take a moment):

Tout Wars AL (Saturday March 19, 2022 10 AM ET)

Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 896 5031 8894, hosted by Tim McLeod and Eric Cross.
Draft Sheet: Click here

Tout Wars Mixed Auction (Saturday March 19, 2022 4 PM ET)

Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports (The Lawr Michaels Zen and Now Award winner will be announced on SiriusXM in the 15 minute block before the auction starts)
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 864 7710 5666, hosted by Clay Link.
Draft Sheet: Click here

Tout Wars NL (Sunday March 20, 2022 10 AM ET)

Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 895 0366 4657, hosted by Derek VanRiper.
Draft Sheet: Click here

Tout Wars Head to Head (Sunday March 20, 2022 4 PM ET)

Radio broadcast on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports
Public Zoom Room can be accessed at 853 3504 2173, hosted by Adam Howe and Shelly Verougstraete.
Draft Sheet: Click here

This Year’s Touts!

With one exception, this year’s Tout Wars leagues are filled. See who’s playing who on the Touts 2022 page.

This year’s Tout Wars Draft and Hold league kicks off on March 1st. We’ll have a link to monitor the slow draft once we begin.

Tout Wars Draft 12 league also kicks off on March 1st, starting at noon, covered by the Rotowire show with Jeff Erickson and Todd Zola on SiriusXM fantasy sports radio.

Tout Wars Draft 15 league will take place on March 8 at 8pm, covered by Colton and the Wolfman on SiriusXM.

This year’s live auctions, on Tout Wars weekend, will be remote again, alas. They take place on March 19 (AL at 10am, Mixed Auction at 3pm) and 20 (NL at 10am and H2H at 3pm). More details the week before Tout Weekend.

Some other announcements:

Head to Head will again play by CBS Sports H2H Points scoring system, as selected by 2021 winner Frank Stampfl. Unsurprising if you know who Frank works for.

To address the mess of major league free agents because of the lockout, who may or may not have signed by draft day in the AL-only and NL-only leagues, the Touts in those leagues may roster anyone on a major league roster of their respective league, as usual. But in 2022, while they may also draft free agents, any free agents who then go on to sign in the other league may be kept active accumulating stats even as they play. In prior years those players would have had to be released. While the extra talent is going to dilute the draft day pool if the labor issues aren’t solved soon, allowing the stats of the talent acquired to accumulate seemed the fairest way to deal with the issue for all involved.

Finally, this year Tout Wars is acknowledging that for a variety of reasons, some temporary and some permanent, some Touts need partners. We’re now accepting proposals from Touts in some cases, if there is a good reason and both partners meet Tout Wars’ eligibility standards. In the future you’re likely to see more partnered teams than just Colton and the Wolfman in Tout AL. Once we go back to live events, however, with the grandfathered exception of the Colton/Wolf team, only one of the partners will be allowed to sit at the table during the auction.

The Touts: In their own write (or radio, or podcast)

Each year we publish links to the Touts writings and ruminations about what happened in the season that just ended. Here they are for 2021:

Draft and Hold: Michael Stein |

NL: Fred Zinkie | Phil Hertz |

Mixed Auction: Zach Steinhorn |

Head to Head: Frank Stampfl |

Tout Head 2 Head Finals Update: Ariel Cohen on Week 1

At 8 PM Sunday night at the end of week one of the two-week H2H final contest – Frank Stampfl of CBS currently leads my team (Ariel Cohen of FanGraphs) in the 2021 Tout Wars Head to Head Championship. His current lead is a large one, sitting at just over 106 points. For now I am the reigning champion of the league, but I am in trouble.

After heading into Sunday down by over a hundred and fifty points, I managed to cut Frank’s lead down to about 100. At one point, the margin of victory was as large as 175 on Sunday … but I still had four starting pitchers throwing late afternoon out on the West Coast, which helped my team climb back.

Still, it was a miserable week. I haven’t scored fewer than 328 points in a week since back in July. Meanwhile, Frank is on a roll, scoring more than 400 points in four of his last five weeks. Stampfl picked the right time to get hot, while I have picked the wrong time to stumble.

Frank managed to generate his solid first-week lead despite not having Max Scherzer in his active lineup. But Nick Castellanos has carried his team through the weekend, homering in three straight games. His pickup of the week, however, was Tampa Bay’s Shane Baz. Baz is now 2-0, securing 50+ points for Team Stampfl.

I was done in this week by poor team play across the board, that happens, but I also made some poor managerial decisions. I left Kenley Jansen sitting on the bench while in real life he earned two wins and two saves. Jansen would have hauled in more than 40 fantasy points for my team if he’d been active. Marco Gonzales was my top performer – notching a seven-inning victory on Sunday against the Angels.

A 100+ point deficit is not insurmountable, but it is still a very tall order to overcome. Consider Frank the favorite to knock off the defending champ this week, denying me the chance to be the league’s first back-to-back winner.

Follow the action at onRoto.com. The results update each morning around 8 AM eastern. (Editor: We’ll have updates during the day next Sunday here at Toutwars.com if the race is close.)

If Frank does win, I wonder what scoring system he’ll choose next year? Did I make a mistake choosing CBS this year?