Justin Mason’s Tout Wars H2H Midseason Review

Dumb. Crazy. Attention Seeking. These were some of the names I was called after drafting my Tout Wars team in March.

Well, we are halfway through the scheduled match ups for the league, everyone having played each team once in the league. So, it is time to see how it has gone and how I can go from laughingstock to champion in my first season.

The Background
For those that don’t remember (or didn’t read my article on it,) I spent $201 on my pitching staff and only $59 on my hitters. The strategy behind it was to take advantage of the point structure to win the pitching and overall (worth two and four points each respectively) each week and hope to sometimes steal hitting. Here was the I ended up with:

How Has It Gone?
I have been hit by a ton of injuries and underperformances. Here is my team as of 6/25/18:

Players highlighted in yellow were acquired vis FAAB. Players highlighted in red are on the DL and those that have been on the DL at some point are in red font.

As you can see above, my team has struggled with health. Currently, I only have seven players on the DL, but that is on the lower end of what my team has looked like throughout the season. While this would crush most teams, mine has been able to sustain the loses to my pitching staff in large part to my depth. It also gave me the opportunity to stream a lot of starters to take advantage of two-start weeks. I had hoarded my FAAB until recently so that way I could stream easier against the top two teams (Jake Ciely and Clay Link) and attempt to bring them back to the pack. After beating them 8-0 and 6-2 respectively, the standings have tightened up.

In spite of my bad injury luck and the underperformance of players like Michael Conforto, I am currently in third place.

I also recently made a trade with Michael Rathburn of Rotowire, sending him Carlos Martinez for Rhys Hoskins. I needed to add my offense and I was a bit afraid of Martinez coming off of the DL.

While I struggled for a few weeks early in the season, my team has been hot over the last four weeks.

No win was sweeter than my Week 2 victory over my cohost from The Sleeper and The Bust Podcast, Paul Sporer. We had a bet on the week in which the loser had to change their twitter avatar for a week to a player of the other’s choosing. That prize was well worth the risk when someone made this in memory of it:

As you requested @JustinMasonFWFB @sporer pic.twitter.com/9gI38JfWr5

— Josh Sperry (@Josh__Sperry) April 30, 2018

Rest of the Season Strategy

I think I have enough offense to stay competitive week-to-week. However, with the returns of Clayton Kershaw and the impending returns of Robbie Ray, Johnny Cueto, and Jeff Samardjiza, I may look to move some more pitching for offense in the hopes creating a more balanced team. With so many teams in the league not being competitive, I cannot afford to just rely on going 6-2 each week if I want to win. Plus with the added pitching flexibility, I can continue to stream two start guys as that has worked well for me as of late.