Mike Podhorzer’s 2026 Tout Wars Champions Draft Recap

Last Thursday night, I was honored to be invited to participate in the inaugural Tout Wars Champions league. The league included competitors with a combined 36 Tout Wars championships. It’s one impressive bunch, to say the least!

Full rule summary:

What’s the first thing that stands out to you? Not only is it a H2H league, but it’s a one-win format, meaning that whether you win all 10 categories or merely edge out your opponent 6-4 for the week, you get the same one win. I may have played a H2H fantasy baseball league once in my life and I know I did once in football. Needless to say, after that first experience, I vowed never to play in such a format again given the significant luck element of the H2H play. Of course, this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, so it could have been the silliest format ever created and I still would have accepted the invitation.

Learning about this H2H one-win format, I knew immediately that I was not going to play it straight. Many of us were likely using the same projection sets to begin with, so how much of an edge was any team really going to get coming out of the draft? I had the 12th pick, so I was already at a major disadvantage, which made my optimal strategy even clearer. Let’s see if you can figure it out from my roster first.

Is it obvious yet?!

The one-win format convinced me the best strategy was to punt, punt some more, and then punt even more. It’s pretty common knowledge that the most correlated hitting categories are HR, RBI, and R. Any type of player can steal a base, so a high or low total doesn’t suggest anything about the rest of his fantasy contributions. Batting average is a ratio, and we already know it fluctuates significantly from year to year thanks to the vagaries of BABIP and other inputs. So if we already know AVG is tough to nail down over a full season, imagine trying to predict a hitter’s average over any random week! Not only is batting average not really correlated with the other stats, given the extreme volatility of the stat on a weekly basis, it seems prudent to just…ignore it.

If you’re counting, that means I was already going into the draft punting two of the five hitting categories. I chose to focus solely on HR, RBI, and R, which I felt was more predictable on a weekly basis and correlates highly so I can essentially get all three when targeting one.

But wait, there’s more! Let’s move on to pitching. The closer landscape this year is a mess. It feels worse than ever before, whether that’s just my perception or reality. Furthermore, closers, and relievers in general, might throw just two to three innings in a week, which barely moves the needle in any category aside from saves. They are also expensive in drafts given the current landscape, but don’t provide the value that justifies the cost. So rather than join the crowd in buying closers, I decided to go punting again.

I didn’t want to punt closers and just draft middle relievers for those 2 RP spots either, because they would contribute almost literally nothing without saves. Luckily, there were a bunch of starting pitchers with RP eligibility, so I knew I had to draft two out of that group. Also luckily, those pitchers were actually potentially good! I didn’t have to settle on some veteran projected for a 4.50 ERA and a poor strikeout rate, but young guys with real upside.

Punting saves meant that I was going all in on my pitching staff, which is never a Podhorzer move. I wanted to own the most starting pitchers and make sure they were high quality as well. The plan is to win strikeouts and wins every single week.

With three category punts, the expectation and hope is I win HR, RBI, and R the vast majority of weeks, if not all, though the site projections suggest I screwed up on drafting R, even with top HR and RBI projections. Then combine that with guaranteed wins in strikeouts and wins. That’s now 5 near lock wins every week. Then I just need to win one of batting average, ERA, or WHIP to win at least 6-4.

My team batting average stinks — my best guy is only forecasted to hit .257! But even the worst batting average team is going to win the category every so often just due to sheer randomness. My ERA and WHIP should be strong as I intentionally went hard on top starting pitchers, which is something I just don’t typically do. It was fun this time though since I was finally able to roster many of the names I’m a fan of.

Early on in the draft, I was watching other teams to see if anyone else was following a similar strategy. Initially, there were two teams I thought it was possible, but eventually proved they were playing it straight. That was a relief, because multiple teams following this strategy would kill it, as the cost of these low batting average, high power guys would skyrocket and I’d have slimmer pickings.

I’m not a fan of Cal Raleigh, so I had to hold my nose taking him as part of my 1-2 punch at picks 12 and 13. The thing is, he fits my strategy perfectly, even if he merely does what he did in 2024. He’s so head and shoulders above the rest of the catchers in the categories I targeted that he was an easy choice at that pick.

I was really, really hoping to draft Eugenio Suárez as my third baseman and fully expected to given how I was valuing players versus traditional valuations and his ADP. Sadly, he was drafted well before his ADP, so I settled on the next guy that perfectly fit into my strategy. Hopefully Munetaka Murakami makes enough contact to actually hit 30ish home runs!

I actually made two big mistakes. In rounds 15-16, I didn’t feel it was necessary to draft my 2B yet and I knew I could wait until the end to fill my 2 RP slots with those starting pitchers, so I decided to start drafting reserves. I guess in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I should be filling my reserves with five starting pitchers to ensure I lock down wins and strikeouts. Instead, I drafted Adolis García and Jake Burger, my fourth first baseman (fifth once Murakami gains eligibility). That was dumb, even though the value suggested they were good picks for my team. While there will be off days for my starters and opportunities to start these two bats, two extra starting pitchers would have been a much better play. There were still some solid names out there I could have drafted at the time, but my brain must have just been screaming “HOME RUNS, HOME RUNS, CHICKS DIG THE LONG BALL!”. I did draft three more starting pitchers on my bench later, so it’s possible I have enough, but we’ll see how it goes.

I don’t have a lot of unique opinions about the players I drafted, though it’s always funny when I draft guys I highlight in red, which is a quick way to remind me not to pay up. That guy is Taylor Ward, who is coming off a power breakout and moving to a significantly worse home run park. However, the projections seem to factor that in well enough, projecting him for barely better than 2024. Plus, he’s slated to hit second in an Orioles lineup that looks like it could be quite exciting. At his price, and given my strategy, I was satisfied with the pick.

The other name I want to mention is Nolan McLean. At the time, there were numerous other pitchers I had valued higher based on projections. I chose to draft him anyway. I think I’m officially drinking the Kool-Aid, which is shocking considering I was so sure he was going to be massively overvalued this year. His Stuff+ ranked fifth among 198 starting pitchers last year with at least 40 innings. FIFTH! That was one point ahead of both Garrett Crochet and Tarik Skubal.

What’s crazy is it’s possible that mark gets even better! His already strong velocity was up in his first spring start and during the WBC, he topped out at 99.2 MPH, 0.8 MPH faster than his hardest pitch thrown all last year. I don’t know how much more upside he has on the already elite 30.3% strikeout rate he posted during his MLB debut last year, but the increased velocity is giving me confidence that he’ll blow past all his projected strikeout rates, which surprisingly top out at just 23.4%. Oh, and he’s an extreme ground ball guy too. At this point, it’s just his control and command that could give some pause, but with the strikeout potential and high GB%, he seems like a legit Cy Young candidate if he gets the innings.

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All in all, it was a fun draft and the H2H format pitting us against a different competitor each week should be a blast.

Is this team a winner? Would you ever dare punt three categories in this format or is it too risky for your blood?