Lawr Michaels and Justin Mason host the Tout Wars Hour on the FNTSY Sports Net each week. And each week Lawr, who runs Creativesports.com, asks the week’s guest, usually a Tout Wars member, about his favorite pop culture picks, including movies, music and TV.
Tim McCullough today takes a look at those picks, and finds that there is no shared aesthetic among the Touts. Take a look here.
Enjoy this Eno Sarris pick while reading:
It took some time. Data had to be collected and collated and, in some cases, entered.
Rankings needed to be made.
And finally, a blog post written. All done? We now have final results for Doubt Wars 2017.
For those who don’t know, Doubt Wars is the game in which contestants choose their own fantasy teams based on the prices paid in the Tout Wars Auctions, before the season starts. For the price a player went for, plus $1, teams roster 23 player squads with a $260 budget and compete all season long in the 10 Tout Wars categories (5×5 with OBP instead of BA) using the same rosters. There are no substitutions.
When it comes to collating, the multiple leagues are joined and compared to the draft day results of the actual Tout Wars teams. For the first time this year, all three Doubt Wars leagues were won by Tout Wars owners, not surprising in a year in which Tout Wars winning owners set records for most points and biggest margin of victory.
The winners are:
Doubt Wars NL:
Doubt Wars AL
Doubt Wars Mixed
You can see the entire results here.
Civilian winners will receive some fantasy products from our sponsors Shandler Park, Rotowire, Mastersball, Pattonandco.com, BaseballHQ and The Fantasy Baseball Guide.
Thanks to onRoto for supporting Doubt Wars.
The website Fantasy Postseason is running a fun contest for charity during the playoffs and World Series, and a bunch of Tout Wars players are involved. One, Steve Gardner, is in the lead. You can read the details here, but the bottom line is that Fantasy Postseason is donating $1500 in the winner’s name for hurricane relief efforts.
If you would like to give to the Salvation Army – please give directly through their website.
The leaders are Steve Gardner, Jared Wilk, Paul Shapiro, Rick Wolf and Adam Ronis. Here’s the Top 10:
We’re working on it, but slowly. Lots going on getting in the way, and these updates have gotten pushed aside a bit.
We did just update the Tout Wars records page. You can read hit here.
We’ll have more in the coming week.
This is the place for links to analysis of the 2017 season by the Touts. Read what they had to say before the season here. This page will be updated from time to time, as there are more submissions.
Mixed Auction: Jeff Zimmerman (winner) | Ray Flowers
AL: Mike Podhorzer (winner)
NL: Mike Gianella (this is behind the BP paywall as I post, but that should be lifted later today)
At the end of April, Vlad Sedler, Andrea LaMont and Howard Bender were tied for second place, behind Peter Kreutzer’s hot start. But Kreutzer stumbled the next week, and so did Sedler and Bender, leaving LaMont alone in first.
By the end of May, Sedler had climbed back up to second place, four games behind LaMont, and in the last period in June he moved ahead by three games. While his lead seesawed from series to series, Sedler didn’t reliquish the lead the rest of the way, and finished with a three-game lead over LaMont in the end.
Sedler’s team was built around the power of Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton. He bought Noah Syndergaard as his ace, but when Syndergaard went down he relied on break seasons for Robbie Ray and James Paxton, and the reemergence of Dallas Keuchel as an ace to carry his staff. Plus Craig Kimbrel as a closer.
Grey Albright had a last-place finish in his first year in Tout NL, and was looking to improve his lot. He aced his auction, buying a Draft Day Roster winner, an easy one, and moved past Tristan Cockcroft into first place the week of May 7, opening up a seven-point lead. It was one he never relinquished.
Gamble built his team around three star offensive players: the reliable Paul Goldschmidt, second-year superstar Trea Turner, and the enigmatic and injury-prone Giancarlo Stanton.
To be able to afford the stars he went cheap and wide with his pitching, missing on John Lackey, getting mixed results from Jeff Samarzdija, and hitting it big on Robbie Ray and pretty big on Aaron Nola.
His only closer on opening day was Jim Johnson.
But the hits kept coming. He added Tommy Pham and Scooter Gennett in the reserve rounds. He also hit with modest buys Zack Cozart and Michael Conforto. And his $1 buy of Felipe Rivero resulted in 21 saves and a championship.
He was in contention all year, in fourth at the end of April, in second behind Charlie Wiegert at the end of May, and in second behind Ray Murphy at the end of June, but by the All Star break Rudy Gamble was in first place all by his lonesome. By the end of July there was only dust in his rear view mirror.
After finishing in second the preceding two years, behind Adam Ronis, Gamble finally ended a season in Tout Wars in the driver’s seat.
The result was a bit of draft day magic (he finished first in the Draft Day Roster standings, slightly ahead of Corey Parson, behind a team that featured Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Stanton, Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel. But it was some breakout years, from Mike Moustakas and Keon Broxton, plus late May trade for Dee Gordon that bumped Gambles team to slight favorite to monster.
