With baseball officially inching closer to an actual season, it is time to update draft ranks for those of you that are like me and still have leagues that still need to draft. I will likely be updating each set of ranks I release once or twice before opening day as news of the schedule, players opting out of the season, and other information could shake things up tremendously. However, here are my current starting pitcher ranks as of now. (Beginning of tiers are highlighted in blue)

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Here they are!

I’ll have a whole column of notes on different guys on Monday. I just wanted to get the ranks out and we can start discussing them in the comments. This 60-game season is going to be so wild!

Previous list for comparison, though comparing a full season list to a 60-game one is tough.

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Previously, I analyzed the first eight rounds and did an overall comparison at the various ADP’s. Today, the draft continues with various ADPs disagreeing even more.

As a reminder, the draft contains 14 teams with each website’s ADP collected by FantasyPros. No effort is made to balance each team in any way. Just the top player is picked but I had to ignore some picks. To get going, here are the results.
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The following is the second part of my 2020 LABR Mixed Auction recap. You can read Part I of my recap here. This was the inaugural season of the new LABR Mixed Auction league, and my very first expert auction league.

In my Tout Wars recap series, I talked about how to adjust projections for a particular league format, the proper hitter/pitcher splits to use, and how to create a market pricing curve. I also discussed at length about how to scout your opponents, and to use it to your advantage.

In Part I of my LABR recap, I talked about how to create an initial plan, and how to set an auction budget.

Today’s article will focus on a topic that is barely discussed in the fantasy community. However, I believe it to be a large key in managing your auctions, and crucial in the quest to accumulate the most fantasy value at the draft table. I am referring to player nominations.

“Tactics is to know what to do when there is something to do and strategy is to know what to do when there is nothing to do”. – Gary Kasparov

If fantasy baseball drafts are akin to a game of checkers, auctions are in many ways a multi-player game of chess.

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After working my way through the first eight rounds of the website ADP draft,  some sites leaned heavy pitcher while others were drafting just hitters. Before continuing the draft, I wanted to determine the split difference for each website. The difference wasn’t as big as I thought considering the results seen to this point in the draft.

Just for reference, I used the ADP data collected at FantasyPros from ESPN, Yahoo, NFBC, CBS, FanTrax, and Real Time Sports (RTS). Next, I assumed people were drafting a 12-team league with 23 players (14 hitters, 9 pitchers) which works out to 276 players. Then, I gave each player an auction dollar amount based on their ADP. Finally, I divided them into two groups and added up their auction dollars. Here are the results
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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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While I had little luck finding the next Lucas Giolito, he still intrigued me. He was possibly the worst major league starter in 2018 (6.13 ERA and 1.48 WHIP in 173 IP). Last season, he remade himself by throwing harder (avg FBv from 92.4 mph to 94.3 mph), throwing more strikes (4.7 BB/9 to 2.90 BB/9), and reworking his pitch mix (dropped the sinker and curve).

The problem is that standard projection systems still incorporate the previous three or more results which hurt his projection. Our auction calculator (Steamer) ranks him as the 45th pitcher while he’s going as the 14th pitcher in the NFBC. Fantasy owners knew to reset his projection but to what? I decided to create a projection system called the GM (Giolito – Marte) based only on the previous season results. Nothing more.
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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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I know some drafts are still going forward despite the delay to the MLB season so I wanted to get these RP rankings out as I did promise them on the podcast the other day. I’ll probably do an update to every position once more before the season starts, but here’s the initial run of RPs.

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