It is Bold Prediction season here at Fangraphs and I am ready to improve on my 2.5 correct out of 10 from last year.

This year I decided to do mine a bit different. I have been vacation and busy preparing for my trip to New York for Tout Wars, where I will be crashing/helping out with the festivities and harassing/getting to meet fellow industry colleagues. So, I decided to focus on players and themes that I felt I have not been able to touch on as much on my podcast or here at Rotographs. Read the rest of this entry »

My Tout Wars prep continues. I have already examined the league’s historical aspects which I have used to create initial auction values and a draft outline. With the initial projections out of the way, I am refining them. One step in this process is to find the replacement level player and adjust players who will miss time accordingly.

The concept behind the replacement level player is fairly simple. If a good player is expected to miss significant time, his fantasy value is based on just the games he is expected to play. For the games he misses, some lesser player (replacement level player) will fill. The better player’s total value will be both his and the replacement player’s contribution.

For example, I don’t expect Yoan Moncada to get called any earlier than the Super Two deadline around June 1st. For the months he’s in the minors, a less talent replacement level player will be subbing in for him. The same idea works with pitchers. Tyson Ross is expected to miss at least a couple of months so a replacement is needed until he gets healthy.

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So far in my Tout Wars preparation series, I’ve documented the league’s draft tendencies and the stats needed to win. Today, I’ll create the framework for player pricing. Along the way, I will show how there is no position scarcity except with catcher. At least for this league

Completing this step brings the preparation is laborious, but necessary. Once it’s done, I can spend most of my time evaluating players and their projected playing time.

For evaluating players, I utilize the Standings Gain Points (SGP) method. I previously outlined the procedure and it‘s the same method Larry Schechter recommends in his book, Winning Fantasy Baseball. Normally, this procedure is fairly straight forward since I’ve historically used three-year average values. Last year’s offensive explosion complicates the math. With more offense available, home runs, Runs, and RBIs become less important. Predicting 2017’s run scoring environment is impossible so I won’t for now. I feel I need to use a weighted average system with 2016 getting the most weight but I am just not sure how much to weight them. To get the process started, I will use the average standings from 2014 to 2016 for this work.

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I’m continuing to step through my Tout Wars auction prep. Last week, I broke down the league’s draft including the pitcher/hitter mix and some ownership trends. Today, I am going to examine the league’s final standings to see what it takes to win.

Every owner may try to win every category but that approach is completely unrealistic. I believe an owner should never win a category if they are behind in any other one. Every bit of distance between them and second place is a waste. Get to second in every category and then starting taking over the top spots. There is no reason for an owner to win RBIs by 50 if they’re 8th in Runs.

To find what it takes to win the Tour Wars league, here are the average points per category for the past three winners. As a reminder, the league is a standard 15-team 5×5 league with OBP instead of AVG.

Season: Average Points per Category (1st place = 15 points, 2nd place =14 points, …, 15th place = 1 point)
2014: 12.1
2015: 11.3
2016: 12.7
Average: 12.0

A fourth place finish in every category puts me in good shape to win while averaging third place almost guarantees me a win.

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Last year, Tout Wars was nice enough to allow me to join their Head-to-Head league which I preceded to barely win. I just got informed that I will not be in this league anymore. Instead, I was upgraded and will join fellow RotoGraphs author, Al Melchior in the 15-team mixed auction league. Previously I’ve stepped through my preparation process for these industry leagues but this year I can’t. We are picking our player in New York City right before the season starts on March 25^th.  Besides Tout Wars, most local leagues will be drafting this weekend just before Opening Day. Anything I write about my procedure leading up the auction will be useless. Instead, I will write about my preparation over the next two months leading up to the auction.

Unlikely last year, this year’s preparation focuses on an established league with the same good owners. It will be a different animal to conquer than last year the league with some unique rules (H2H and Roto), which I exploited as much as I could. The new league is different in that it has been very constant.  Many of the same owners stay around for years and it has few if any rule changes. I will first begin my prep by breaking down the other information from past auctions.

Note: I know reading about another person’s team is unexciting and some information might be not applicable. I’ve added “Key Points” to summarize how the procedure can help individual owners in their own leagues.

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A week ago, I was able to hold on a win to win my first Tout Wars league. The extremely gratifying experience was the culmination of too many years of managing fantasy baseball teams. From the early auction to the results coming down to a Christian Yelich at bat, the season was great. I am not going to talk about the team in detail because no one wants to hear about someone else’s fantasy team. Instead, I will stay away from the details and go over some of the keys to winning the league.

Know and exploit the rules

This idea is hard to implement in leagues which have the same set of rules for years, but in new leagues with unique rules, this is the biggest key to winning. Since it was my first year in Tout Wars, I was added to the lower/experimental league. Tout Wars has four other leagues, AL-only, NL-only, mixed-draft, and mixed auction. If any rule is being considered for any of the other four leagues, like moving from batting average (AVG) to on-base percentage (OBP), it is done first in this league. The league got hit straight on with new rules this year with net steals, net Saves, K/9 vs strikeouts, and a head-to-head format (detailed in a previous Rotographs articles).

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Author’s Note: The article you see below was completed before Andrew Miller was injured by a comebacker on Wednesday. I believe the thought process and information below is still relevant and useful, even in light of this injury.

I love this time of year. Sure it’s fun to be doing my own draft prep. But a much underrated part of draft season is all the talk by others in the industry about their own processes. If you’re trying to learn about other strategies and improve at this game, the expert draft season is a treasure trove of goodies. A lot of the strategy and thought provoking discussions will dry up as we get further away from March.

I gobble up the draft recap articles and podcasts that come out of the LABR and Tout drafts because I’m such a junkie for the strategies and decision making processes others use.

And there were some interesting ones this year. Ron Shandler took his new BABS approach to Tout Wars. Steve Moyer attempted the Labadini plan. And there’s now a Tout Wars head-to-head draft with some interesting rules that will lead to interesting strategies (as Jeff Zimmerman wrote about on Rotographs (free!), Rotographs again (free!), and Rotowire ($$)).

But the one outcome I want to discuss wasn’t so much an overall strategy as it was a specific plan or series of decisions. Chris Liss, of Rotowire, drafted Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Dellin Betances for a combined $38 in the AL Tout Wars draft (click here to see the entire results of all the Tout leagues).

Was this a good move? Or not? Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, I asked our RotoGraphs readers on how they would approach my Tout Wars mixed 12-team head-to-head auction. The strategies stated in the comments were similar to the approach I took. But that is not how the rest of the teams operated and it threw me for a loop.

A person must remember the rules to this league are fairly unique with a head-to-head component making up 80% of  the league’s wins and a roto component being the other 20%. A full rule set can be found here and the abridged set here.

Going back to the comments from Friday’s, here are the approaches the various readers would have taken.

Pitching Strategy

Few high K starters to make minimum IP, RPs otherwise
dparker713
jbona3
David
schulni
HappyFunBall
OutOfTheBox
Brad Johnson Read the rest of this entry »

3/25/16

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer
• @enosarris
• @jasoncollette
• @jeffwzimmerman

Strategy Section

• We deep-dive our Mixed H2H Tout Wars Auction (a brand new format in Tout Wars)
• Tout Wars Rules
• Part 1 of Jeff’s Write-Up
• Tout Wars Auction Boards

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A week ago, I participated in a new Tout Wars league which is called the Head-to-Head league, but it has a roto component. It was interesting to prepare for a highly competitive league with no previous similar leagues to reference. With the new format, first I had to decide how I would approach the league and second how my opponents would approach it, and how to find some advantages. Today, I will go over the rules and then ask you, our readers, about how you would approach the league. Later, I will go over my approach.

Here are the simplified rules with the full set being available at the Tout Wars website.

Rules Read the rest of this entry »