Tout Wars

Tout Wars NL FAAB Success

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Last night I bid $5 on Houston second baseman Jose Altuve, a youngster who is playing now and should continue to play for the Astros regardless of how he hits. And he might not hit much. I was blown out of the water. My bid beat Steve Gardner’s ($0), but trailed Mike Gianella ($6), Scott Pianowski ($18), Nate Ravitz ($22), Chris Liss ($25), and ultimate winner Cory Schwartz ($37). I bid $5 because Altuve is very young (he started this year in Hi-A), and not really a power or speed guy. He’s had a high BA this year at all levels, but he’s jumping from Double-A (where he had just 150 AB) to the bigs. I think there’s a really good chance he’ll hit .240 with little power, and wasn’t interested in paying for that.

But Cory told me that he’s “not a big fan of saving the money for a better option to come along. If there’s a guy who fits the needs, go out and get him.” I agree with that, yet this year the pickings have seemed thin despite my having needs from Day 1. It seems like a good reason to go back and see what opportunities were missed:

March 31:

The big bidding was on Jose Contreras, who went to Lenny Melnick and Paul Greco for $17 (I’m including the bid here, not the reduced Vickrey bid, which in this case was $11). Contreras has saved five games, with so so quality.

Chris Liss beat out Cory Schwartz, $9 to $8, for Stephen Strasburg.

The big winner was Brian Walton, who bid $4 on the Cubs’ regular second baseman for the year, Darwin Barney. There were no other money bids on Barney.

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My Tout Wars NL Team 2011

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We drafted in Tout Wars NL yesterday. You’ll find a link to the spreadsheet and live blog Jason Collette ran at toutwars.com. You’ll also find his live blog for Tout Mixed and my live blog of Tout AL further down the page, as well as links to the various spreadsheets.

You’ll find more about the event at Toutwars.com, on the Tout Wars page on Facebook, and following #toutwars on Twitter.

Historically, this draft is pretty tight. The best hitters go for a few dollars below my general assessment of their bid price, and the best pitchers the same. You would think this was an exploitable mistake, and maybe it is (Mike Lombardo from Wise Guy Baseball won three times buying good pitchers and catchers), but in my experience if you get a good price for a $35 pitcher (say $30) and then all the other pitchers go cheaper still, the price advantage disappears. The key thing is to stay away from the mid-range hitters, at least the sexy ones, because there will be more money for them than there “should” be. Evidence, Jay Bruce went for $29 yesterday.

In recent years I’ve mapped out my draft sheet with target prices for each slot, and a few players who I would be happy to roster at that price. This aren’t hard guidelines, but serve rather as a structure to help me gauge where I am versus my budget. I feel free to shift resources around if I see a bargain, but it also reminds me that there are available players I “like” who fit into my plan. Until there aren’t, of course.

The ability to adjust is the key thing during a competitive closely fought auction. That’s because the prices that are paid at auction are variable. My $28 player is someone else’s $32, at least at that moment, and certain types of players tend to clump at non-linear prices. So while I may have hoped to buy Pedro Alvarez (16-my bid prices in parens), Pablo Sandoval (16), or Chase Headley (15) at $16, these guys went for 19, 23, and 16. I didn’t pop for Headley because of when he came out and because Casey McGehee, Scott Rolen and Ian Stewart were still out there, as was Aramis Ramirez, at a higher price point. But their prices all blew past my bid limits, and when I didn’t chase them I had to scramble, because there really aren’t enough third basemen.

And that’s the point. While I don’t really believe in position scarcity, the room is smart enough to know it doesn’t want to get stuck with Juan Franscisco, so they borrow money from elsewhere, and the prices of third basemen clump around $20 rather than $16. And they all did. The only cheap corners were Francisco, Mark Kotsay, Brad Emaus, Daniel Murphy, Russell Branyan, Eric Hinske, and that’s it. The next tier of nearly cheap included Melvin Mora 7, Todd Helton 8 and Casey Blake 8.

That elsewhere, where the money comes from, is pitching.

My discipline is to take the shortfall when I have to, and try to load up on the resources that are cheaper. There isn’t a ton of trading in this league, but there is some, and there is the FAAB wire. So I’m the guy who ended up with Melvin Mora (7) and Juan Francisco (1) for $7 and $1. I certainly hope I don’t have to play them all year, but the extra money allowed me to stock up elsewhere. In my case I have four solid outfielders. Some teams only have two or three. I hope that helps.

Here’s the 2011 Ask Rotoman squad:

CATCHERS: Yadier Molina $12–The prices for Posey and McCann were reasonable, but I was hoping for Soto, who blew up to $19, making Posey’s $22 seem cheap. A fair price for a regular catcher is fine by me. Yadier has that.

Ivan Rodriguez $1–By the time we got to second catcher I was trying to save money, and didn’t want to push Ryan Doumit, Chris Snyder or Nick Hundley, each of whom went for a buck more than I wanted pay. I didn’t want to pay +$2. Thus, I-Rod, a Hall of Famer.

CORNERS: James Loney $19–I was trying to put together a squad of ugly hitters, guys who would play and perhaps not reach their bid prices, but it wasn’t to be. Loney was the centerpiece here, and he didn’t stop until he reached my bid price for him, which is on par with his earnings the last four years. Only growth in his game will bring a big profit. Only bad luck will bring a loss.

Melvin Mora $7–Supposedly in good shape and ready to play following a minor car accident, he should get a few hundred at bats if his body holds up. If I could do it again I would have bought Headley for $17, though there’s no guarantee he would have stopped there. There are reasons to hold your nose and go with cheap guys, rather than pay up for the more expensive guys. Cheap guys can earn profits. Cheap guys are fungible, easily dumpable if someone better comes along. Cheap guys at a scarce position don’t inflate as much as pricey guys, which leaves you more money for better priced and equally productive resources, like outfielders.

Juan Francisco $1–A ton of power, but no guarantee that he’ll play even if Scott Rolen gets hurt. Still, a ton of power could do some nice damage if he gets a chance, and when hasn’t Rolen gotten hurt?

MIDDLE: Orlando Hudson $10–Another year another new team for him, but he’s got an important role in the Padres’ lineup. He’s not a roto star but rather a solid guy with plenty of AB at his price. Sometimes you want profits, sometimes you’re happy to take solidity.

Jason Bartlett $14–I don’t like this price at all. He’s a $10 player in SD, but the thin ranks left me with no place else to go here. Stubbornness and discipline sometimes have to give way. Should get plenty of AB, but now I have to hope that he’ll bounce back toward 2009 levels. That’s not likely in that ballpark and at his age. On the other hand, should get plenty of AB, which helps even if he ends up losing a few bucks.

Luis Castillo $2–This is how thin the middle is. I was going to nominate him and, I assume, buy him for a buck, but when someone else tossed him out I bumped. My rationale is that he stunk with the Mets. Many a ballplayer is reborn with a change of scene, and why not in Philly for Castillo? A little modest one. Okay, I know I’m going to be looking for a middle. Probably. But it’s worth a shot.

OUTFIELDERS: Carlos Gonzalez $36-You worry about regression, he can’t be as good again, but will he be near as great? He earned $52 or so last year, so this price factors in 30 percent regression. I like that.

Colby Rasmus $26–He’s the right age with the right skill set to blow up in the good way, but he’s immature and ticks La Russa off. Or did. He earned $24 last year and seems to have proved himself as far as talent goes. I expect better than that, possibly much better, but have to admit that expectation comes with a dose of risk.

Marlon Byrd $15–Right at his price. The good thing is he’s in the middle of the Cubs lineup and should get plenty of chances to do everything he does.

Nate McLouth $17–Power and speed here, and proof that no matter how ugly a season a guy has (and McLouth’s 2010 is as ugly as they get) our perception of his potential doesn’t dim. I hope we’re right.

Gerardo Parra $3–He can hit and may actually get a chance to put up some AB in Arizona. He has to in order to help much, because he’s not a power or speed guy at this point. At this price, he works even as a part time player.

Jordan Schafer $3–Last player, I spent my remaining money, nobody bid $2. A handcuff for McLouth. Last I checked he wasn’t burning up Spring Training, but was in the running for a backup spot in the Braves outfield, or more likely, the guy to call up from Triple-A if someone goes down.

PITCHERS: Chris Carpenter $19–I had him on my list of guys to take for $20, but didn’t think that would happen. He seems to be past the hamstring problem, knock on wood. Another guy I wanted for $20 was Marmol, but I didn’t get to the price point first, and after that I found the closers to be pricey.

Roy Halladay $32–The original plan was to buy Halladay or Lincecum for $30 and Marmol for $20. When I failed to get Marmol and Halladay stalled at $31, I bid one more rationalizing that it was only $1 above budget (and a few dollars less than my bid prices for those two guys). This is where it gets tricky however, because when the whole market shifts down five bucks for top pitchers a bargain becomes a player for par. That’s what Halladay represents here, but pitchers at par include a hedge against injury in the best. If he stays healthy Halladay will earn $40+. The discount is for injury risk.

Roy Oswalt $19–Cockcroft and Gianella had loaded up with three top starters, and it was clear that the money we were saving on pitchers was going to hitters. I judged that with a third ace I could compete and would still have a shot at a couple more starters I liked financially. Not of the Gallardo/Billingsley sort, but guys with real upside.

Sergio Romo $4–He should earn this even if he doesn’t start the year as the Giants’ closer. And he might.

Tyler Clippard $3–Same here, with Storen struggling. Any saves you can get early help when it’s time to sort out the closer situation later. Being within striking distance can make one either a buyer or a seller at the deadline.

Carlos Zambrano $8–Awesome finish last year after he came back. I had him with a bid price of $12.

Jair Jurjens $5–He seems to be healthy, which means this is a low risk high reward pitching pick. He’s not as good as he was in 2009, but I’ll love 2008 numbers.

Jarrod Parker $1–More of a reserve pick in the end game. He’s coming back from surgery and is doing fine. Will start the year in the minors and has the maturity to get the call as soon as they’re confident in his health. But as a future No. 1 or 2 he’s on a short leash inningswise.

Barry Enright $3–One of those guys who doesn’t blow people away, but can just plain pitch. When things go wrong they can get ugly in a hurry for this type. but they can work out if you keep him on a short leash.

RESERVES

Wade LeBlanc–Depth, like Enright, in a good ballpark to pitch.

Kyle Kendrick–Another one of those sorts, though his role is less clear and less potentially helpful.

Jesus Flores–Handcuff for Ivan Rodriguez.

Luis Durango–I’ve always liked this guy’s speed. Chris Liss said, “What, are you over the team weight limit?” It was close.

This is a weak set of reserves, though no list stands out particularly. I think we’re seeing the increasing effects of teams going with a shorter list of hitters and more pitchers, and a greater fluidity between the majors and the minors. These trends are playing havoc with our deep AL and NL only leagues (the way the owner’s move to 24 man ML rosters did in the 80s), but in general we’re being very slow to adjust, maybe because there aren’t any obvious fixes.

This team will need to scramble for saves and it will work better if the Francisco, Castillo and Schafer holes are filled quickly and substantially. More analysis is needed to figure out what everyone else did. I look forward to their write ups.

The Rules of the Game: Name Your Payout

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Over the winter I came up with the idea of posting a Tout Wars Leaderboard at toutwars.com. The idea would be to assign an entry fee for each team, and then award prizes at the end of the season reflecting the payout, based on the number of teams in the league (since we have 12 in AL, 13 in NL, and have had anywhere from 12 to 17 in the Mixed league).

One sensitive issue was the prevailing ethos when the first 12 years of Tout Wars were played, which said that, “Second place is first loser.” I know that there were times when, dealt a tough hand, I made the high-risk high-reward (if only) trade rather than grind into battle for fourth place, the way I would have if there was money at stake. I’m certain others played this way, too, so these retroactive results are imposed from above. They don’t reflect how behavior might have been changed if this way of measuring was known when the games were played. In spite of this limitation, I forged forward.

Choosing a $100 entry fee was easy. It’s round, easy to average, like an index. Done.

Deciding how to pay out fairly was more complicated. I’m not going to go into all the round and around I did, but I decided to pay out to the top 33 percent of the teams in each league. In 12 and 13 team leagues this means the top four teams are paid. In 14-16 team leagues five teams are paid. In 17-19 team leagues 6 teams are paid. This seemed in keeping with the original roto rules of Top 4 being paid in a 12 team league.

But the standard roto payout is the somewhat awkward 50-25-15-10, which not only isn’t linear, but it doesn’t scale to the larger-sized league payouts. Since the idea was to compare across leagues, the payout reflecting the difficulty of prevailing, it seemed to me to be a good practice to have the percentages be fairly consistent as they scale up. So I made a simple equation, assigning X to the last money spot and then doubling the value of X for each higher spot. For a 12 team league this looks like: 1x+2x+4x+ 8x. In this case x = 1200/15 = 80. The payouts go:

Fourth=$80
Third=$160
Second=$320
First=$640

Sweet. The same process was used in the larger leagues, all of which–I think–does a fairly good job of representing the value we take away from our standard roto leagues, which were the models for Tout Wars. But this isn’t the only way to do this.

I’ve played (and play) in leagues with a more graduated payout. That is, last place may get nothing, and each place up the standings earns a little something more than the one below it. This is more like the way real baseball works. It isn’t all or nothing between fourth and fifth, but a graduated scale reflecting success in winning and managing costs. It would certainly be instructive if we could see the profil/loss statements for the actual teams in addition to the won/lost records. A graduated payout changes the way teams play, since there isn’t the same desperation to get into the money, but there is incentive to win more money.

I’ve played in leagues with no salary cap, where you could spend as much or as little as you wanted (and deemed prudent), in order to win a percentage of the pool. This, I found, turned out to be less interesting than (I think, because we never got that game together) )if we’d played for fixed amounts for first, second, third and fourth, with no salary cap, and any extra money that was spent was paid to those who finished fifth, sixth, seventh and so on, down to next to last.

I’ve also played in winner take all games, and others that paid bonuses for rare events, like no-hitters and hitting for the cycle, or allowed the roster to carry over into the post season, for a second pool. These payouts weren’t major enough to change regular season play, but if they were incentives might be skewed and teams might play differently. The point is that designing the payout structure of your league (which pertains even if you don’t play for actual money) reflects decisions you’re making about how you value winning, being the runner up, the importance of participation all season long, and a host of other things that make your game fun or more or less so.

There isn’t a right or wrong way in the end, but whatever decisions you make will inevitably reflect the values you bring to the game and the value of winning (or not). That’s pretty darn interesting, if you ask me, and relates to whole lot of things we do outside of our fantasy sports pursuits.

Come See Us at Foleys!

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Tout Wars preparty this year is open to the public at Foleys Restaurant and Bar in New York City on March 18th. It’s the day after St. Patrick’s Day so there will be no vouching for the bathrooms.

Management has seen fit to release a March 18 Foleys Tout War Party Menu that gives a wink to some Tout Wars veterans and champions. If you’re in town and want to meet some so-called fantasy experts, please drop by.

I went looking for a clip of John Prine’s “They Oughta Name a Drink After You,” but the covers were all unlistenable, and then I found this great clip of Prine and band back in the day. Enjoy.

Tout Wars Results

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I’m going AWOL for a few days, though how would you know it by my frequency here? If you’re interested in the seriously interesting Tout Wars results, you can find roster spreadsheets for AL, NL and Mixed, at toutwars.com.

I say seriously interesting because I think we’ve moved past the point where everyone has the same values. But the disassembling of the old way is hard to pin down. We still clearly all have the same price lists, but the way we value the intangible of risk (in all its colors) is different. And risk is a really hard thing to value. Just ask AIG.

Fantasyland, the Documentary: a short review

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The movie of Fantasyland, Sam Walker’s book about his season as a fantasy rookie taking on the Tout Wars experts league, is coming out on Friday at www.snagfilms.com. I got an early chance to see it and here are some thoughts.

I wasn’t a part of the Tout LLC when the movie was made, so I don’t have any behind the scenes info. Jed Latkin, a trader in New York, was chosen as the regular guy to join Tout AL (which included Sam Walker) for the 2008 season. The movie takes a general approach to setting up the fantasy game, including graphics with statistics indicating the bigness of the fantasy sports world, and interviews with Jed and others who applied for the regular guy role, in which they brag about their charmless obsessiveness. Some of this can be ascribed to their competing for the job, but it isn’t pretty.

Jed, somehow, is the most charmless of all (he has a line where he says, with his child scheduled to be born on draft day, that being an involved parent doesn’t necessarily mean being there for the birth), but his alpha trading personna is actually winning as a character. Perhaps that’s why the filmmakers focus almost exclusively on his exploits, and ignore most of the expert players in the league. Jed also has the perfect sidekick, his patient and generous wife, who softens his rough edges. If she can put up with him, well, maybe we can, too.

Of the other 11 members of Tout AL, the film makes Ron Shandler the big dog, the guy Jed wants to beat. Ron plays the part to perfection, adopting a “what’s that, a fly?” attitude toward Jed, disdainfully criticizing him for trying to make a trade in April, and for driving down to Roanoke. Virginia, to Ron’s house, without calling, to try to seal a deal. These scenes are funny, and made me wish there was more interaction between Jed and the other combatants. The film feels, in terms of storytelling, a little thin, but the set pieces (Jed goes to Spring Training to introduce himself to his guys: “Hey, Justin Verlander, welcome to the Jedi Knights”) are funny, and as we go along the movie’s focus on Jed’s voice pays off.

It turns out that this is a story of one man’s attempt to live his dream, and really all we need to see of it is his point of view. His reactions and attitude are strong enough to open the window into all fantasy players’ psyches, at least partway. Fantasyland, the Documentary, is competently made with unflagging energy and should be of interest to everyone who has played this game that obsesses me. That it is a bit of pathology as well as entertainment might be uncomfortable, but it isn’t a bad thing.

There are many clips and outtakes at YouTube, which will give you an idea of the film’s flavor.

Convince your league to replace BA with OBP

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Rotographs

In standard 4×4 and 5×5 leagues, OBP is clearly so much superior a rate stat to BA and we all know it, that I’m shocked everyone hasn’t made the change. Once you’re tried it you’ll never go back, because players values actually reflect their values (minus defense) in the major leagues.

But it’s hard to get people to change, which is why only one of my leagues use OBP instead of BA. We’ve talked about making the change in Tout Wars, but since part of the league’s goal is to offer draft guidance, it isn’t going to happen until you all switch over. Get going!