Every year many of the best minds in the fantasy industry are invited to leagues that draft in New York City in the middle of March for Tout Wars. I was also invited. 

This year I participated in the Tout Wars Mixed Auction. This is a 5×5 roto league using OBP instead of average. The other wrinkle in Tout Wars is unlimited IL slots, which definitely changes auction strategy compared to NFBC or other formats. 

After pulling a Labadini in my LABR auction, I wanted to go back to my traditional balanced approach to try and take advantage of what is often an over aggressive room. At least a few people expected for me to do something crazy or just go for the Labadini again, so by sticking with my normal strategy, I was hoping it would still throw some people. 

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John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

This past weekend, I participated in the Tout Wars mixed auction. I’ve been in the league for about a decade and have won the league a couple of times. Previously, when I won the league, I used a value approach, but over the last few years, the league winners have leaned stars and scrubs. After some middling performances, I needed to find a way to get back to the top. I decided to lean into the league’s tendencies and rules to get ahead.

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The Tout Wars Recap episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Joe Gallina

Tout Wars Head to Head Auction

• Link to Auction Board
• Strategy & preparation
• What we noticed in the auction
  • Auction temperature
• How we pivoted during the auction
• Our best buys of the auction
• Our worst buys of the auction
• Player analysis
  • Tatsuya Imai
  • Jacob Misiorowski
  • Cody Ponce 폰세
• Relief Pitcher strategy
• Team Recaps
• Reserve round strategy
• Key takeaways

Aaron Judge record Tout Wars bids

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The Starting Pitcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Nick Pollack

Strategy Section

• Which pitcher types should be emphasized on your fantasy rosters?
• What statistics are most helpful in evaluating pitchers?
• Which pitchers are worth watching this year in spring training?
• How will the World Baseball Classic affect pitchers this season?
• Which pitchers are throwing new pitches or changing pitch mixes this year?
• Who are some potential breakout pitchers for 2026?
• Expectations for Tatsuya Imai
• Starting Pitchers
  • General player pool observations
  • Better to have an ace, or 2-3 1A starting pitchers?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Starting Pitchers

• Bryan Woo
• Logan Webb
• Nathan Eovaldi
• Zack Wheeler
• Sonny Gray
• Luis Castillo
• Ranger Suárez
• Matthew Boyd
• Kris Bubic
• José Soriano
• Cody Ponce 폰세

Deep league starting pitchers

Injury Update

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The Auction Strategy episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Frank Stampfl

Strategy Section

• General auction strategy
• Auction rules to live by
• Auction preparation
• The most important items to keep track of in an auction
• How to construct market values
  • What time frame should market values be drawn from?
• How to construct strike prices
  • How strict are you to your prices?
• What should you set as your Hitter % vs Pitcher % split?
• Nomination Strategies
  • When should you nominate “hype” players?
  • Breaking up tiers
• Stars & Scrubs vs. Spread the Risk
• Bidding
  • General
  • Frequency
  • Fast vs. slow
  • Starting bids
  • Price enforcing
  • +2 bids

Mailbag

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With the Ottoneu keeper deadline on January 31, it is possible for auctions for established leagues to start as soon as February 1. In practice, they rarely do, but there are a few auctions either underway (slow auctions taking some time to finish up) or completed, and that gives us a chance to learn quite a bit.

Earlier in the offseason, there were some mock auctions and some first-year auctions for new leagues, but those don’t behave like keeper auctions. Now that we have a few keeper auctions, we can start to get a sense of how your keeper drafts – whether they are Ottoneu auctions or drafts in another format – might behave.

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The Catcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ron Shandler

Fantasy Reconstructed

Strategy Section

• How do you prepare for fantasy baseball drafts?
  • Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS)
    • BABS Risk Budget
  • Should you make a “do not draft” list?
• Risk
  • Precision vs. imprecision of fantasy baseball pricing
  • Evaluating player uncertainty
• Auction tactics – Ariel vs. Ron
  • DEBATE !
  • Pricing methods
  • Nomination strategy
• Drafting
  • “ADP Chicken”
  • How closely do you look at other teams’ rosters during drafts?
• Catchers
  • The catcher “bump” in pricing
  • This year’s catcher player pool and value distribution
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Where should you take Cal Raleigh in drafts?
  • Strategy differences between 2 catcher and 1 catcher leagues

BREAKING NEWS

• Kyle Tucker signs with the Los Angeles Dodgers

ATC Undervalued Catchers

• Salvador Perez
• Will Smith
• Alejandro Kirk
• Ryan Jeffers
• Bo Naylor

Injury Update

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The Auction Championship episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Mike Mager

Strategy Section

• NFBC Strategy
  • What sets the NFBC apart from others?
  • Key components to winning
  • Evaluating players BEFORE looking at projections
  • Which is more important – the draft or in-season play?
  • What goes into lineup setting?
  • How do you prevent overthinking decisions?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you need to solidify early in the year?
  • Are there certain category statistics that you can wait on and pick up in-season?
  • How does strategy change year to year?
  • Auction planning
  • Today’s game
    • Pitching strategy in today’s game
    • Are there sleepers anymore?
• Waiver Wire / FAAB
  • Interaction with the current week’s lineup setting
  • Putting in the time
• Fantasy partnership
  • What makes a successful fantasy partnership?
  • Splitting up tasks

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hot Players
  • Nathan Lukes
  • Dominic Smith
  • Miguel Andujar
  • Luke Keaschall

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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Tonight, I will be drafting my second $1600 NFBC Auction Championship team. This is a 15-team, 5×5 Roto league with an overall prize pool. You can see the live draft board here. 

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When preparing for a draft or auction, it is pretty typical to determine what positions you feel best about the deep options and therefore don’t have to spend big resources upfront. Love a bunch of shortstops you can get after pick 200/for less than $5? Then you don’t need to break the bank for Francisco Lindor.

In keeper auctions, that depth can shift unexpectedly (as we discussed earlier this week), so you need to now only know what positions are deep but what positions are deep among players actually available. But there is another factor that impacts position depth: what other teams need.

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