“No one cares about your fantasy leagues,” but: I am your 2026 Tout Wars 15-Team Mixed On-Base Percentage (OBP) Auction champion. I’m not sure how helpful draft and/or league recaps are for most people, but I figure debriefing a victory is as good a use of this time as any.
So, yeah: I came 3rd place. That’s cool! I didn’t win, so it’s not that cool, but it still feels good. In our league there are a lot of sharp folks whom I respect. Given the sheer number of leagues in Tout Wars now it’s easy to accuse the talent pool of being diluted. It’s also easy to defend it as being not diluted, seeing as I directly participate and thus have an incentive to save face, but nevertheless. It’s a solid crop of talent.
Additionally, I am categorically bad at 15-team leagues (thus, it feels good to do moderately well at something you’re bad at). For 15-teamers you must have that encyclopedic knowledge of the player pool. It is imperative to minimize mistakes because they cannot be rectified as easily through waivers. You know what it takes to develop that encyclopedic knowledge? Time. You know who doesn’t have time? Parents of toddlers. Or people with full-time jobs outside of fantasy baseball. More than half my opponents do fantasy baseball full-time! How can I possibly compete?
Rather than make excuses, I wanted to prove to myself I, indeed, could compete. Read the rest of this entry »
This is my fourth year in the 15-team mixed league auction, with batting average replaced by on-base percentage (OBP). No one tracks these things closely (except for Josiah Tindor), but I’ll be the first to admit I’ve fared quite poorly in this league. If my memory serves me correctly, I finished 14th, 8th, and 15th. That’s… pretty bad! Embarrassing, even. I expected to perform badly in my first year — I have never quite gotten the grasp of 15-team leagues, with 12 teams being the sweet spot for me, and I had never played in an OBP league before. In 2022, with a year under my belt, it went better but it still wasn’t great.
Last year, though, was an unmitigated disaster. It was time to face the facts: I simply hadn’t devoted enough time and attention to fantasy baseball. My daughter was born during the 2020 season, so before the 2021 season she was still small and decidedly less of a rascal, which allowed me to prepare as I normally would. But as she has gotten older I have found myself with less and less free time. I thought I could simply ride the momentum of my existing knowledge of the player pool. To some extent, it worked; the 2022 season wasn’t so bad, although it was my first losing (overall negative ROI) year since 2011. That should’ve been enough of a red flag. 2023 was somehow worse and, frankly, downright humiliating.
I told myself, not again. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
