Archive for 2022

The 2023 season marks my fifth year in Tout Wars. My tenure to date can be characterized graciously as mediocre; I accomplished a head-to-head semifinals appearance (a benched Kole Calhoun home run away from a finals appearance) in my 2019 debut but succeeded it with consecutive ghastly, basement-dwelling finishes and last year’s extremely turbulent middle-of-the-pack showing.

Entering my third year of the 15-team 5-by-5 roto mixed league auction (salary draft) with on-base percentage (OBP), I feel like I’ve finally found my footing. I had little enthusiasm for fantasy baseball in its pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and the 2021 season was my first after my daughter was born. Needless to say I had (and still have) a lot less time (and sleep) to prepare than I did in my glory days. And having freshly moved from 12-team head-to-head to 15-team OBP, playing a new format against a high level of talent, I got absolutely clobbered. Last year marked my second in 15-team OBP, and it went a little better.

I vowed to do better this year, despite the impositions—my performance last year gave me a faint glimmer of hope that I could—but that, of course, remains TBD. Truthfully, I have less time than ever before. But I don’t want that to be an excuse. I just knew I’d have to be more focused at the draft table. I think I was. I’ll get to all of that shortly.

First, a review of last season:
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the original post. No dilly-dallying, let’s dive in.

1) Steven Kwan is a top-30 outfielder.

Kwan walk more than he stuck out, and while he only hit six home runs, he stole 19 bases and slashed .298/.373/.400 (124 wRC+). Only five qualified hitters had a better strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB), and only Luis Arraez had a lower swinging strike rate (SwStr%). Ultimately, Kwan finished the season 19th among outfielders on Razzball’s Player Rater. The haters will point to volume (he accumulated 622 plate appearances) but Kwan finished 20th among qualified outfielders on a per-game basis—that is, ignoring volume.

You may remember Kwan started the season scorching hot, then predictably fell back to earth, which entailed a somewhat grueling slump. Da Haters pointed to this slump as an indication of Kwan’s lack of viability as a Major Leaguer rather than simple gravity. The slump actually cost Kwan some starting time—he could’ve notched 700 PA if the Guardians didn’t lose faith in him in May, like everyone else did—but he rebounded by showcasing his tools. More excitingly, his counting stats increased as the season wore on, and he compiled three home runs, seven steals, and a .309 average in September alone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I published 15 starting pitcher blurbs, just because. It involved a long prologue behind the what, when, and why of the matter. In short, I spent much of the offseason secluding my digital self from outside noise (fantasy baseball articles, Twitter opinions, etc.), forcing myself to develop opinions on as many relevant players as possible. I isolated my brain from outside analysis and biases, leaving me with only my own. I wanted to document my thoughts, both to have a point of reference during drafts and to have a record of those thoughts for accountability’s sake. If nothing else, be accountable to yourself.

At the end of yesterday’s article, I solicited recommendations from readers for more pitchers to feature. That, my friends, was an enormous mistake. Although I alleged I would pick names at random, instead I combed through 85 comments (and counting) and tallied up the most combined recommendations and up-votes. Those are the ones I’ll present here.

Read the rest of this entry »

This offseason I set out on a personal journey. Sentences like that usually precede stories of enlightenment, and I suppose this story features some enlightenment of its own. We won’t know how much enlightenment until after the 2022 season concludes.

I’m not asked this question often, but I have been asked it often enough to have a stock answer for it. It’s some variation of, “What’s the best thing someone can do to improve as a fantasy baseball player?”, to which my answer is some variation of, “Develop an opinion about every player—well, not every player, but you know what I mean.”

This is something that, when I had more time on my hands, I used to do. But in 2020 I became a work-from-home/stay-at-home father navigating a pandemic, and I burned out. Although I managed sporadic success and positive returns on investment in the 2020 and 2021 seasons, I was lucky to escape unscathed—I was all but flying blind. I was, and still am, fortunate to have years and years of watching baseball and playing fantasy baseball to have built an encyclopedic knowledge about most players.

It’s easy, however, to miss the big changes—the breakouts, the fall-offs, the rookies. It’s easy to dismiss them, and easier yet to enter a draft room and ignore them all together. Indeed, you can build a winning team without deeply investigating these types of players, instead relying on existing knowledge about existing players. You can do it, but it’s difficult, and it’s foolish.

So, I dedicated myself to the task of developing opinions about nearly every player.

Read the rest of this entry »

No prologue, just bold predictions. Bold, but not stupidly bold, and actionable in a way that can tangibly affect your fantasy season (for better or worse). Let’s go.

1) Steven Kwan is a top-30 outfielder.

The marquee peripheral prospect hitter for 2021, Kwan comes from a long line of peripheral prospects who boast elite contact skills (José Ramírez, Jeff McNeil, Jake Cronenworth, Josh Rojas) and a smattering of other fantasy-relevant skills, be it a little bit of power, speed, or both. Kwan looked David Fletcheresque, hitting only three home runs in his first 600ish professional plate appearances, but boasting the minor leagues’ best plate skills, bar none.
Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, Tout Wars’ mixed salary cap (auction) league completed its draft. It’s a 15-team league that uses a 5-by-5 rotisserie scoring convention, except it replaces batting average (AVG) with on-base percentage (OBP). I transitioned into this league last year—and got absolutely eviscerated (I finished 14th of 15). I can make excuses—it was my first time playing in an OBP league and also my first time participating in a 15-team salary cap draft—but at the end of the day, the blame falls at my own feet. I planned very poorly for last year’s draft. In fact, I planned very poorly for all my drafts last year. I was a new stay-at-home/work-from-home father navigating parenthood and a pandemic. I was burned out! Fantasy baseball was not the reprieve it should’ve been; it felt like a chore.

I am rejuvenated this year. I didn’t want to embarrass myself again. I studied and wrote unique comments for more nearly 350 players (I wish I could have done more in time). I recalibrated my internal encyclopedia of player knowledge to better understand players’ OBP tendencies rather than their AVG tendencies. I was as prepared as I could possibly be given the limitations and constraints of daily life.

I will say up front: my draft went OK. I feel a lot better about it than I did last year, but I’m still not thrilled. I think that is a side-effect of drafting in a 15-team league. The pool of worthwhile players exhausts itself at just the right time in a 12-team league. In a 15-team league, you feel like you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels… not great!

An eternal pessimist, I may be underselling the quality of my team to myself, not allowing me to get my hopes up, lest I implode gloriously for a second year. ATC projections like my team, and I drafted guys I like because I think they are projected accurately or even slightly bearishly, allowing for upside. I didn’t really draft anyone who left a bad taste in my mouth. That’s a minor victory in and of itself. Of course, if my team sucks, then maybe the lesson learned is not that my team didn’t leave a bad taste, but that I simply have bad taste.

Read the rest of this entry »