Podhorzer’s 2025 Tout Wars AL Only Auction Recap

This past Saturday morning, I hopped on the NYC subway for the quick trip to Hotel Edison to participate in the annual Tout Wars live auction and defend my championship. It’s one of the most exciting days of the year, and it’s always bittersweet when it’s over, knowing that I’ll have to wait an entire year to auction with these lads again.

Before I share my team, let’s review my auction philosophy and the Tout league rules. For every league, whether an auction or snake draft, I calculate dollar values on my own, which helps me understand general replacement level stats at each position.

I don’t generally come in with a “strategy”, as I simply want to maximize the value of my squad by the time my last player is rostered, while being cognizant of statistical balance and risk. The only way to do that is to buy as many discounted players to my calculated values as possible, all the while ensuring I spend my entire budget (obviously it does you no good to buy 23 $1 players, even if they are actually all worth $5 each!). Therefore, it makes no sense to target players (“get your guys”) or allocate a budget to each position. Doing so increases the likelihood that you end up buying only $260 worth of value for your $260, or worse, less than that. That’s not going to result in a championship team without a heavy dose of good fortune and shrewd in-season transactions.

The Tout Wars AL-Only league is a 12-teamer composed of 23-player starting rosters, with the only wrinkle coming from the usage of OBP instead of AVG in the 5×5 categories. This is a massively important distinction, as the switch could dramatically alter a hitter’s value (think Kyle Schwarber, who owns a weak .230 career AVG, but above average .343 OBP thanks to a 14.1% walk rate). So keep that in mind when reviewing the team. In addition, we only require four starting outfield slots instead of five, switching one of those slots to a “Swingman” role. That spot could be filled by either a hitter or a pitcher and can be changed each week. Because hitters contribute in four counting stats and pitchers only three (starting pitchers only two!), I play a hitter there like 99.9% of the time.

In addition, there was another tweak to roster slots last year, as the Middle Infield (MI) and Corner Infield (CI) slots were merged into Infield (IF), while a second Swingman slot was added. That means there are now three of 14 hitting slots that could be filled with any position, and two of those three could be filled by a pitcher. Talk about flexibility! It makes rostering a DH-only guy far more palatable, as the inability to move such a player around to another slot isn’t as problematic. Lastly, we have just four IL slots, making rostering already injured or injury-prone players a bit riskier than in the past when there were unlimited slots.

With that background out of the way, let’s check out my roster. You can view the results of the entire auction here.

Overall, I ended up with a 198/62 hitting/pitching split, equating to a whopping 76.2% spent on hitting, which was the most spent on hitting in the league. This is typical for a Podhorzer squad. The league finished at a 68.5%/31.5% split overall, nearly perfectly matching the 69%/31% split I use in my player valuations.

It was a tough room this year and really a bizarre auction for me. As stated above, I have never targeted a player at an auction or draft, but there are of course players I think I probably like more than everyone else and therefore expect to roster. However, I won’t chase these players and will still only roster them at projected value or below, perhaps going the extra buck only if I have good reason to believe they’ll beat the projection their dollar value is calculated from. So as usual, with auctions you should always expect the unexpected, as my team looks absolutely nothing like I thought it would. I blame most of that on my strong leaguemates, particularly as I competed in multiple bidding wars and ended up bailing on most of those as prices ended up well above what I figured I would have to pay, winning just a couple of them at prices I still deemed acceptable.

One of those bidding wars I fondly remember was for Brandon Lowe, who I think will easily beat his projections given his new temporary home park. Sadly, I was clearly not the only one to feel this way and failed to roster him. In hindsight, maybe I should have gone $14, and I wonder how that would have affected the rest of my auction. Similarly, I was fully expecting to buy Casey Mize for a buck or two, but when the bidding war drove his price up to $6, I was out. It was more fun when everyone wasn’t looking at the same data gosh darnit!

Let’s get back to the team I actually did roster. The majority of the players I ever buy at auctions join my team solely because I think I’m getting a discount, and it’s not necessarily because I have any sort of strong opinion of them that differs from the crowd. Though, sometimes the circumstances dictate I buy a certain type of player, whether it’s because I’ve screwed up and have too much money and need to spend it on someone or didn’t roster enough power or speed and need to buy the best available in that category, etc. So I’ll go with a bullet point recap of observations from the auction and discuss players I actually do have strong opinions on.

• Early on, every single starting pitcher was going for well above my values. That’s not such a big deal since I rarely spend more than $20 on a starting pitcher anyway, but it did make me perform multiple checks to ensure I didn’t screw up my dollar values! Eventually, prices normalized as the bottom of the mid-tier and below were either priced fairly, came at discounts, or weren’t even bought at all (Ben Lively 라이블리 & Michael Lorenzen, for example, whose ratios will likely hurt, but do figure to win more games and record more strikeouts than a middle reliever).
• Similarly, the catcher prices were far too rich for my blood, so I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for even just a fair price in my eyes, and one never came. Once again, these prices combined with the starting pitcher prices had me convinced I messed up my dollar values. Anyhow, that explains my thrilling catcher duo! Yes, I spent the least amount on catchers in the league, which is not something I typically do.
• You will rarely, if ever, buy one of the top 10 (arbitrary, let’s just call it 10) players at a discount. Since my goal is to buy as many players at as great a discount as possible, missing out on all the top names would risk me not spending my entire $260 budget. Since the top guys often go well above value, I always remind myself to buy any top player at value if the opportunity arises. If you feel everyone is overpaying, overpaying the least is a viable strategy to ensure you spend all your money. With the exception of Aaron Judge who went for $50 (I had him valued at $53, but couldn’t bring myself to call out $51), every single other top hitter went for above my value, except for…Yordan Alvarez, who I snagged for exactly what I had him valued at. He doesn’t steal bases, but provides a massively important OBP base to build off of.
• I totally forgot I also rostered both Randy Arozarena and Luis Robert Jr. last year! Unsurprisingly, I bought them for $8 and $7 cheaper this time around, as both are coming off disappointing seasons. Both are still young enough to feel like a rebound is a better bet than another disappointing season, and even the disappointing seasons still brought a nice blend of power and speed. At this point, 20/20 projections are the floor for both assuming good health, and that’s all that’s needed to just earn right around their cost.
• Finally, I have a strong opinion! I think I got into another bidding war for MJ Melendez, who I was quite sure I was the only fan of. I was clearly wrong, or perhaps the circumstances for my bidding war partner required another potential 20-homer guy and he was the best left in his eyes. Either way, I eventually won out at a smaller discount to my value than I expected, but alas, still a discount. I talked about Melendez three weeks ago as part of my $14 NFBC offense and shared how he overhauled his swing in the offseason, which gave me hope for a breakout. He hasn’t done anything during spring training so far to suggest this new swing is going to pay dividends, so we’ll just have to see. At that point in the auction, I felt I really needed more power, so overhauled swing or not, he seemed like a good fit for the team.
• Remember Spencer Torkelson?! I couldn’t believe I had to pay $7 for him, but perhaps everyone else noticed he had the best home run potential out of the remaining hitters and bid up his price. He was added back to my first base rankings yesterday, as he should serve as the team’s starting DH at least until their incumbent starters return from the IL. At that point, his fate is in his hands, as if he’s hitting well, I can’t imagine he loses a starting job. So I’d guess that by June, it’ll be clear whether he ends up being a bargain at $7 while on a 30-homer pace, or gets dropped as he’s back in the minors.
• My pitching, oh my pitching. As I mentioned earlier, starting pitcher prices were higher than I expected for a while, as even guys I thought I’d be able to nab for a buck or two below my value went above. So I sat on the sidelines for a while, watching as there were fewer and fewer good starters left and I was getting more and more nervous I would leave money on the table and my staff would be grotesque (which you still might think it is!). At some point, Shane McClanahan was the best name available and I knew I absolutely had to buy him, hoping it wouldn’t be for significantly above my value. Wellllll, I did pay above value, but that value was mostly suppressed due to a conservative IP projection as he’s returning from TJ surgery. That’s the type of pitcher I’m most okay paying over value for as I know the quality should be there and I could deal with the lack of quantity in-season. McClanahan’s velocity this spring has been fine, which is a great sign, while he has generated an absurd 28.3% SwStk% over a tiny sample so far. So far, everything suggests that his skills should return, which would make him one of the top starters in baseball.
• No, I wasn’t thrilled to depart the auction with Yusei Kikuchi and Jack Flaherty as my second and third most expensive starters. I was really buying strikeouts in that tier as that gives these guys a higher floor, as opposed to the lower strikeout names relying more on good control or batted ball luck. We heard that Kikuchi has added a sweeper to his pitch mix and so far over a tiny sample of Statcast data, it’s been his second most thrown pitch recording a 33.3% Whiff%. He has also posted an elite 25.8% SwStk% during spring training, so so far so good with this new mix of his. Flaherty’s skills worsened nearly every month last season and really deteriorated in September and during the postseason. His fastball velocity declined from 93.5 MPH over the first 5 months to 92.6 MPH over the final month, though it rebounded slightly to 93 MPH during the postseason. So far in spring training, his velocity has rebounded and has actually been a bit higher than what he averaged over the first five months of last year. That’s a good sign and gives me confidence that the poor postseason performance, and even the September skills slip, won’t carry over.
• Zebby Matthews is a primo sleeper with spring fastball velocity up over a mile per hour versus last year. He was already the team’s fourth ranked prospect, so the added velocity could be a really big help here. He was just optioned to the minors, though, so we’ll have to wait a bit for his first MLB start of the season.
• I have no idea what Lucas Giolito is going to give as he returns from elbow surgery after missing all of last season, his lone Spring inning was not a Statcast game, and now he’s headed to the IL with a hamstring injury. But, is there any starting pitcher with more profit potential than him at $2?! His results were awful in 2022 and 2023 after breaking out in 2019 and continuing that level of success for another two seasons, but he also vastly underperformed his SIERA each of those two seasons, so much of that was seemingly bad fortune. He’s a crapshoot for sure, but give me this $2 crapshoot rather than a near-guaranteed mediocrity all day.
• Have I mentioned Triston McKenzie enough in recent posts?! He’s been one of the largest spring velocity gainers so far, throwing his four-seamer an average of three miles per hour faster than last year, and 1.3 MPH faster than his best velocity, recorded during his 2020 debut. That’s huge! Of course, his spring results have still been awful, so I’m really just betting on the velocity leading to vastly improved performance (and of course spring ERA is absolutely meaningless). Don’t forget that he enjoyed a mostly skills-supported breakout back in 2022 when he posted a 2.96 ERA and he was formerly the best prospect in the Guardians system. I’m still going to be nervous as heck starting him in all my leagues, but I just can’t ignore that velocity gain.
• Richard Fitts?! If you told me I’d be buying Fitts in Tout Wars this year, I’d be like “haha, very funny, and WHO THE HECK IS RICHARD FITTS?!”. I’m not much of a prospect guy so I had no idea who he was before spring training. He, too, has gained velocity, throwing his four-seamer two miles per hour harder during spring training versus last year. He has already maxed out at 99 MPH and has thrown two pitches at 98.1 MPH. Last year over 160 four-seamers, he maxed out at 97.2 MPH and just 11 were thrown over 96 MPH. So this is a serious gain. He looks to have a rotation spot while the expected Red Sox rotation is banged up, so he’s the perfect early speculation.
• I hate paying for closers and none of the secure names came at a discount, so I decided to just buy whoever was locked into the role and was cheapest. I’m not enamored with Carlos Estévez, but the Royals signed him to a 2-year, $22.2M deal, so I have to assume the closer job is all his and it would take some real struggles for Lucas Erceg to take over.
• Moving to my bench, there were no hitters I had any desire to roster, as all were part-timers or minor leaguers I won’t have the patience to wait months on to be promoted. My pitching already needed replacements for Giolito, likely Mathews (who was optioned a day after the auction), and possibly Reid Detmers if he fails to make the rotation (that would be sad). So I ended up going with an all-pitcher bench, which I typically like doing anyway to give me more bullets to find potential breakouts with.
• I began the reserve round with Rangers closer candidate Marc Church. Manager Bruce Bochy still hasn’t named a closer, but did specifically mention Church when talking about candidates. He’s already throwing over a mile per hour harder than last year’s tiny sample and has generated an elite 20.4% SwStk% during spring games. With an average of just 1.25 closers per fantasy team, speculating and winning on a second closer is important.
• Quick, which pitcher ranks second in strikeout percentage among 51 qualified pitchers in spring strikeout percentage? Kenta Maeda, of course! He also ranks fifth in SwStk%. Of course, looking at his spring history, he’s done this before, and they typically haven’t led to strong regular season results. But here’s why I think this time might be different — his four-seam velocity has jumped to 91.7 MPH and splitter to 84.6 MPH, velocity he hasn’t averaged since 2019. For a guy flirting with 90 MPH, such a velocity jump could be pretty important. Given his contract and spring performance so far, I think he has locked up a rotation spot, though we’ll see if that’s a good thing for my ratios or not!
• Finally, my last reserve pick is a complete crapshoot I landed on because the pickings were super slim at that point. I’ve talked a lot about velocity gains in these bullet points, and I won’t stop now. Joe Boyle already averaged a scintillating 97.8 MPH with his four-seamer. This spring, he’s been at an absurd 100.3 MPH, already maxing out at 101.3 MPH, which is just above last year’s max of 101.2 MPH. It has undoubtedly helped him record a fantastic 20.3% SwStk% during the spring. Of course, we always knew he had strikeout potential given his velocity. The elephant in the room has always been his control. I have no idea if and when that will be fixed to the point he can become an MLB quality arm, because those walk rates are super duper high. But if any organization could tease out his full potential, it’s the Rays. I’m betting on some surprising value in some sort of role, whether starting or multi-inning relieving.

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So there you have it, the weirdest, mostly surprising group of players on my AL Tout Wars this season. I think that my offense is well balanced and are projected to perform well compared to last year’s category totals. As usual, it’ll come down to my pitching. I’ll need a healthy Shane McClanahan, loads of strikeouts from Kikuchi and Flaherty, and some breakouts. I nailed a bunch of breakouts last year, so hopefully my luck remains for another year to give me that rare two-peat.