Tout Wars NL Draft: The Askrotoman Team

Ah, the best laid plans.

I really thought I had a shot at buying the team. No problem on Posey, Aramis Ramirez, Stephen Strasburg and the young and blooming starting pitchers, but either I didn’t play the auction right on Ian Stewart, Aaron Hill, Willie Bloomquist, and Jordan Schafer, or the dynamics of this particular auction doomed me.

What I know for sure is that Nate Ravitz spent a lot of money early and then repeatedly tried to pick off guys off the lower auction tiers by surprise, and thus I lost Jesus Guzman.

I thought I had Loney at my price for him, but then Phil Hertz blurted $17 and I let him go. Phil didn’t love the purchase. I would have been happy at $16.

And that was the point of this exercise. To try to identify soft spots and get players who play at prices below par. The problem was that I lost Hunter Pence to Lenny Melnick, who adopted a My Guys at Any Price approach. So I ended up with Drew Stubbs and Jason Heyward rather than Pence and Jose Tabata.

The steals I lost there caused me to buy Emilio Bonifacio rather than Zack Cozart, who went for a buck more than my budget (but afterwards). The loss of Aaron Hill drove me to buy Chris Heisey for a par price, I hope.

And the way the draft developed, I decided to put my eggs in Devin Mesoraco’s basket rather than buy a cheap catcher and overpay for Ian Stewart or Jordan Schafer. Mesoraco is not without risk, but he’s my guy, he’s going to hit in the major leagues, the big question is whether that will happen this year.

Pitching went according to plan, except I ended up with Wandy Rodriguez and Jair Jurrjens at okay prices, though I didn’t really want them, while price enforcing. I would have preferred Mike Minor, who was part of my plan, but I got Norris, Cueto, Niese, Leake and Volquez at fair prices. If two or three of them bloom this year, it could be fun.

Finally, the story of this draft was one of teams going Stars and Scrubs. The argument for it is that when the talent level is so thin, even teams that try to spread it out end up with some scrubs. This was certainly true for my team. I haven’t looked at it closely enough to be sure, but it looks to me like every team has massive holes. So the question is how much of the load a few guys can carry, no matter how good they are. Nate bought guys who can carry a big load.

We’ll have more information when we load the rosters into onRoto, our stat service, and they are linked to projections, but I suspect that there are far too many open questions at too many positions on every team to guess how things are going to break until we get going.

But feel free to guess all you want. One place to do so is the Tout Wars NL league at fantasysquared.com. It’s a free game, brand new, that lets you trade shares in the Tout Wars experts (and many other leagues). We haven’t played it enough to know how addictive it will be, but in about 10 minutes I hit refresh repeatedly.

Here’s team Askrotoman

C: Buster Posey 19
C: Devin Mesoraco 8

1B: Gaby Sanchez 19
3B: Aramis Ramirez 23
CI: Nolan Arenado 4

2B: Mark Ellis 3
SS: Emilio Bonifacio 17
MI: Freddy Sanchez 3

OF: Drew Stubbs 26
OF: Jason Heyward 22
OF: Chris Heisey 15
OF: Juan Rivera 9

UT: Lyle Overbay 1

SWING: Juan Pierre 6 (this was my last player, and I got stuck with money, which can be redeemed if he goes on the DL)

P: Stephen Strasburg 22
P: Wandy Rodriguez 12 (please be traded to a pitchers park soon!)
P: Johnny Cueto 12
P: Bud Norris 10
P: Jair Jurrjens 8
P: Jonathan Niese 8
P: Mike Leake 5
P: Edinson Volquez 6
P: Rex Brothers 2

R: Tyler Colvin
R: Matt Adams
R: Ryan Theriot (Sanchez insurance)
R: Alex Sanabia

Come visit us at pattonandco.com for more discussion.

3 thoughts on “Tout Wars NL Draft: The Askrotoman Team”

  1. I’d place your drafted team somewhere in the middle, so it’s definitely playable. Too bad you adopted the Melnick strategy of punting Saves. Balance wins leagues. Good luck.

    • So far, plenty of speed and not so much power. I will note that I didn’t “adopt the Melnick strategy.” As old as Lenny is, I’ve been not overpaying for closers for longer, I bet, than he has, because I’m plenty old enough myself.

      Right now I have to figure out how committed I want to be to Leake and Norris. The reason I don’t have a closer is because I rostered Wandy, which has worked out, and Jurrjens, which hasn’t.

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