I do not believe in authoring the typical expert draft recap article. I do not believe in writing a recap simply to illustrate one’s favorite players, or as a means to boast about one specific draft outcome. I do not believe in only going through a few undervalued players for the given year which happen to appear on that particular fantasy squad. I do not believe in writing recaps just for the heck of it.

I believe in imparting important lessons that one can take to their own drafts. More importantly, I prefer to communicate wisdom by talking through my process and preparation. I like to discuss various elements of strategy that can be of help to the astute fantasy player – which can be used in any given year.

I hope that in my draft recap series of articles, but especially in this 2020 season in limbo – you will be able to adapt and add many of my strategy components to your arsenal of fantasy baseball tricks.

For the TGFBI draft recap this year, I related the time-specific hitting and pitching landscapes of 2020. In my recap of the 2020 Tout Wars Head-to-Head auction, I provided insights into the process of preparing your own valuations and how to assemble comparative market pricing. I also discussed (at length) how to use your opponents’ tendencies to your advantage.

For my recap of the LABR Mixed auction, I will focus on a few critical strategy aspects:

• Setting an auction budget
• Developing a plan
• Auction nominations

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The following is the second part of my 2020 Tout Wars Head-to-Head Points League recap. You can read Part I of my recap here.

For the second straight year, I had the honor and privilege of participating in one of the most prestigious fantasy baseball industry leagues – Tout Wars (toutwars.com). This was my very first live Tout Wars auction. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we drafted online on the Sunday of March 15, 2020.

In Part I of my recap, I discussed the league rules, some of the homework that I had done on last year’s auction results, and how I obtained my auction values. I also talked about some of my other adjustments made due to the postponing of the MLB season.

Part II of my recap will be different than the typical recap article you tend to see. It will certainly differ from my usual writing style.

In today’s article, I will go through some of the intel that I had gathered on my opponents. I will dictate to you what I was looking for from the other touts and how I picked up on particular strategies during the auction. I will talk about what went right for me at the auction table and what went wrong. Finally, I will give a brief overview on my player selections.

The Touts

Well, I’m not sure that I would call members of the Tout Wars Head-to-Head Points my enemies. However, they most certainly were my opponents … at least for that Sunday afternoon in March. The quote above has appeared in folklore from many cultures, and of course, was one of the great lines of the movie “The Godfather.”

Fantasy baseball is largely about the numbers. If you often read my articles, you likely already know the importance that I place on projections and valuation.

Almost as important … perhaps even more important … is knowing your opponents. It is an advantage to be aware of the types of players that they bid on, how high they press bids, whether they nominate players they want to buy, the typical construct of their fantasy squads, etc.

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Introduction

This year, I again had the great fortune and the amazing honor of being invited to one of the most prestigious fantasy baseball industry leagues – Tout Wars (toutwars.com). It was my second year participating in Tout Wars.

Last year, I was a member of the inaugural Tout Wars Draft & Hold league. This year, I was invited to take part in one of the four live auctions – the Tout Wars Head-to-Head Points league. It was originally scheduled to be held live in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday, March 15.

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we were unable to hold this auction live. Though the NFBC had chosen to cancel their live auctions, and many of my home leagues agreed to postpone – the Tout Wars board had decided to proceed onward. Rather than postpone – all four remaining Tour Wars leagues competed online, with Fantrax as the provider platform.

Aside from the benefits of the social aspect of a live auction (one of the key reasons we do this in the first place), we lose many of its intangible aspects when moving to the online arena. You can no longer look a league mate in the eye as they bid. It is much harder to pick up on ‘tells’ by simply reading out your computer monitor. The art of using my voice to hypnotize others goes away (yes, that’s right – I said hypnotize). It isn’t the same.

Personally, I have played in many online auction leagues. It was a dynamic that I was used to, and I have previously played on the Fantrax software. My home office setup is quite decent for an online auction. I use two 27-inch monitors, plus a side 15-inch auxiliary monitor. I used one screen to see the auction room. One screen contained my homemade draft software. Displayed on the third monitor was my plan of attack for the day. Technologically, I was primed for the event. Perhaps, this medium of fantasy baseball drafting was even an advantage for me.

You can view the results of our auction on Fantrax here. Full spreadsheet results of all Tout Wars auctions and drafts are compiled here.

For Part I of my Tout Wars auction recap, rather than simply break down my player selections – I wanted to share with you some of my process and preparation. I might comment about one or two of my player selections along the way, but I thought that you – the reader – would benefit more from a discussion of my approach and from my overall observations.

Both in fantasy sports, as well as in real life – the process is always more important than the specific or situational results.

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In my Tout Wars auction held just over a week ago, 72 players were rostered who cost just $1. While I rostered my standard four, one owner got 10 with two others at nine*. I wondered if there is a point that having too many $1 players on a team is a detriment.

First, a little background on the auction. Here is the plot of the auction bids compared to the actual 2019 results.

The 2019 production leader was at $47 (Razzball) and $43 (FanGraphs auction calculator). Six players went at or above the $47 mark and eight over $43. The idea of spending more early on is to grab some $2 to $8 guys in the end game for $1. In this auction, everyone was taking that approach. I used my standard “lesser stars and scrubs” approach.
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Last Friday, we held our first best ball auction on Fantrax. Today, I’m here to report both some of the results and a few tricks I learned along the way – and will be subsequently fixing. Lastly, I’m announcing Best Ball Auction #2 to be held on the evening of Wednesday, March 25.

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This past weekend, I missed out on one of my favorite weekends when I head to New York for the Tout Wars 15-team mixed auction and the NFBC Main Event. While the NFBC Main Event was postponed, the Tout Wars auction went on but from the confines of our homes. Here are a few observations on a team I may not get to manage this year and how can these industry drafts help the people in their own leagues.

Thanks to Fred Zinkie and Tanner Bell who both jumped on Skype with me to bounce ideas off and at least giving me someone to talk to.

Preparation

Simply, I have a whole book on how I prepped for the auction. I didn’t deviate from it except in the following few ways. Each will be incorporated into future editions of The Process.

First, I split apart the player pool into four groups: Catchers, non-catchers, starters, and closers. The tendencies of the league are set with each group having their own valuations. The big change for me is a separate catcher group. I didn’t go through the whole replacement level valuations that boost up some catchers into the top-20 players and mess with the auction dollar distribution. Instead, I made them their own player pool. After catchers messed up my hitter valuations in LABR, I adjusted and fewer in auction adjustments were needed.
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As part of the socially distanced festivities here at FanGraphs, I will be hosting a series of best ball auctions on Fantrax. Entry for this first league will be free. The only requirement is availability for the draft which be held at 11:00am ET on Friday.

I know this is an awkward draft time for many of you. The intent is for this to be the first of many such auctions, some of which will even run during reasonable nighttime and/or weekend hours. With that out of the way, shall we explore the settings?

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03/08/20

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• @justinmasonfwfb – Host/Producer
• @atcny – Guest, Ariel Cohen

Mixed LABR Auction (Ariel’s Strategy and Team) (3:30)

General Auction Strategy

• Do you have a nomination strategy? (~12:47)
• Accounting for in-draft inflation (~18:45)
• Stars and Scrubs vs Balanced (~21:55)
• How does moving from mixed to a mono-league format change your strategy? (~26:45)

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This past Sunday, I participated in the first-ever 12-team mixed LABR auction. I have a whole Process on how to create auction values, though one input that was missing for my analysis was any historical league context. While I’ve competed against some of the other owners, there was no league or ownership history like the other LABR leagues to incorporate. Here is how I approached the league and where I failed to take the market into account and rostered a subpar, unbalanced team.

Just so everyone knows, it’s a 12-team standard (AVG) mixed league with 14 hitters and nine pitchers with five reserves (which dropped from six mid-draft). We have $100 FAAB with $1 minimum bids and any player (besides minor leaguers or players on the IL) picked up must be started that week. After that week, they can move freely to and from the reserve list. Also, there are unlimited IL slots.
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Our undervalued player series continues now with the final offensive scoring category for 2020 – Runs Scored.

For those of you that are new to this series – in each article, we uncover potential undervalued players by comparing the Steamer projections to the current NFBC ADP. So far I have gone through undervalued speedsters, power bats, outstanding batting average players as well as possible RBI Bargains.

In 2019, there were 60 players who scored at least 85 runs. There were 41 players who exceeded the 95 runs threshold, and 20 hitters scored at least 105. Four players managed to eclipse the lofty 120 runs plateau. Leading the majors were a pair of Red Sox – Mookie Betts (135) and Rafael Devers (129). Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Braves followed them with 127 runs.

Once again, just as in runs batted in, prospective projections are far more conservative than the final season long distribution. Steamer only projects one player – Mike Trout – to score more than 120 runs. Only four additional players are projected to score over 110 runs (Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Christian Yelich and George Springer).

Teams that win fantasy leagues are often highly correlated with the runs scored category. Finding a few undervalued players that can help pad your fantasy team’s run totals is a worthwhile exercise. For this year’s analysis, I will focus on all players with a Steamer projection of at least 85 runs. This should give us several helpful players.

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