2017 Tout Wars Head-to-Head Auction: Team Review

Anxiously anticipating the start of the MLB regular season, the fantasy baseball community descended upon New York City Friday to kick off the 20^th anniversary of Tout Wars, the series of industry expert leagues created by Peter Kreutzer, Lawr Michaels, Ron Shandler and Jeff Erickson. As you can imagine, it was a veritable who’s who of fantasy with countless websites and radio shows represented. Just standing there glancing around the room in Rock & Riley’s pub, our home away from home for the weekend, you knew the next three days of auction drafts were going to be good. I mean, really good.

The festivities kicked off with the Mixed Head-to-Head Auction, a league format now in its second year. For those not familiar, the touts run an AL and NL-only auction, a mixed league auction, a mixed league snake draft and a fifth league which rotated formats over the last few years, but has now settled in as the head-to-head auction. For the full rundown on league constitutions, participants and a schedule for this weekend, you can check out the Tout Wars website.

The head-to-head is a 12-team league where we are given a $260 budget to fill out a 23-man roster consisting of 14 hitters and nine pitchers. The position requirements are pretty standard, but as a refresher, they are: 2 C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, UT, 5 OF and 9 pitchers. We also, after the auction, go to a six-round snake style draft to grab our reserves.

The categories for the league are as follows:

Hitting – HR, R, RBI, SB and OBP

Pitching – W, Sv, K/9, ERA and WHIP

Three of the categories were actually changed this season as we went from net steals to just steals, net saves to just saves and from quality starts to wins. It may have been quality starts plus wins, but I honestly can’t remember. What can I say? The gray matter softens with age.

Here are the participants (in no particular order):

** one thing to note is that Stephania Bell was extremely sick and had Justin Mason from Friends with Fantasy Benefits serve as her draft proxy.

As far as thoughts walking in to the draft, I knew I wanted to work the 65/35 budget split, but knew I was going to have to be extremely flexible based on how the bidding was going to go. Last season, people came firing right out of the gate and the cost for elite talent was significant. If that was the case again, I would just have to see where the heavy money was going and look to pivot a few bucks back and forth.

Mapping out my whole draft ahead of time wasn’t really an option because of the need to see how the bidding progressed, but I did set myself a few targets who I vowed to walk away with so long as I didn’t have to make a crazy over-bid. I knew I wanted one elite starter and two high-end closers with strong K/9 numbers to serve as my pitching foundation. For offense, some of my desired position players were Manny Machado, Freddie Freeman, Christian Yelich and George Springer. Obviously I would be in on the bidding for Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt and Clayton Kershaw but I wasn’t going to break the bank and risk falling into too much of a stars & scrubs approach.

So how did it turn out?

Here’s the entire draft board: http://bit.ly/2nO3mdm

And here’s my roster:

As you can see, Paul Sporer blew everyone out of the water with his $40-plus bids for Harper, Nolan Arenado and Joey Votto as well as an auction high of $50 for Trout. Kreutzer paid $43 for Kershaw and Vlad Sedler won Goldschmidt for a $42 bid. I opted to stay away from those prices and try to be more sensible, so I remained focused on my aforementioned targets.

We may as well go position by position here and explain the costs at each spot. Hopefully that provides you with some insight to take away with should you be auctioning between now and Opening Day

Catcher – Definitely an overpay here for Grandal. He’s got great power and usually posts one of the higher on-base percentages at the position. Early prices were fairly high and he was nominated earlier than I would have liked, but nevertheless, he’s a fantastic option after not spending up even more for one of the top three. Leon was a late $1 pick. He should contribute some, but I really just grabbed him as, really, the low-end guy who wouldn’t hurt me just sitting there in my lineup.

First Base – With Goldy and Votto no longer in play, I set my sight on Freddie Freeman. He’s an extremely strong OBP guy and looks like a pretty strong bet to break that 30-homer barrier once again. Considering some of the prices, I was ecstatic to get him for just $28.

Second Base – A bit of a punt play here at the position. The keystone has fantastic depth to it so I wasn’t worried about waiting on the position if the top tiers came off quickly. Solarte was one of my final picks and I have to say, I don’t hate him at all. I don’t love him like I love some other second basemen, but the multi-position eligibility is a nice bonus and if he can give me another 12-15 home run season with a .340 OBP, well that’s one well-spent buck. Just keep in mind though, that I won the bidding on Jose Peraza earlier (see below) and will have him qualifying at second base before the end of April.

Shortstop – What’s not to love about a shortstop who offers you 35 home runs, 100-plus runs scored, 95-plus RBI and an OBP hovering around .350? Machado doesn’t steal bases? Pffffft! I’m ok with that so long as the power and multi-position eligibility are there. The $35 price tag was actually right around where I thought he’d go after the bidding on Trout, Harper and the others wrapped. So in the realm of desired target and not overpaying, this was a win for me.

Third Base – I gotta be honest here and say I don’t really know what happened here. I like Bregman and think he’s got some solid power potential, but he’s got a lot to prove with regard to consistency at the big-league level. I think it was more that I don’t have any shares of him in my other leagues nor was he someone I took very often in the Mock Draft Army. I just wanted a piece of the 22-year old and I’ll hope for the best. The $13 price tag didn’t seem all that steep, so I’m ok with the whole “just wanted a little variety in between leagues” mentality here.

Middle Infield – This is where I have Peraza for now. His OBP is lacking, but he’s got phenomenal speed and should be able to crush it as one of my primary stolen base guys. He also qualifies both in the outfield and at shortstop right now with second base right around the corner. The $15 was probably a little too much in comparison to what I thought he would cost, but not to the point where it would be considered outlandish.

Corner Infield – I had a few targets in mind, but with what I had spent earlier, some of the more-coveted corner-men were out of my price range. I held a few bucks back and waited for Bell, the starting first basemen for the Pirates and a pretty solid OBP contributor as well, so I’m hoping he powers up earlier than later.

Outfield – Well, for starters, I love having both Springer and Yelich. I’m looking for both to take another step forward from 2016. Yes, it would be nice if Springer remembered he was a 40-steal guy back in the minors, but so long as he hits 30 bombs, I’ll consider the 10 steals he gives me as gravy. I’m still a little nervous about how low Yelich’s fly-ball rate is, but even if the power pulls back this year, his speed and high on-base percentage should suit me just fine. Buxton obviously has high speed potential, but needs to show that he can continue to produce closer to what he did last September and Gardner can help out with the stolen bases and OBP if Buxton struggles. And finally there’s Peralta who, if he can stay healthy, can offer me a little bit in both the power and speed departments.

Utility – There it was, super-late in the draft and Healy was just sitting there, waiting to be taken. He’s hitting .319 this spring with five home runs and 16 RBI, he qualifies at third base and should earn first base eligibility as well and he appears to be a guy who will play regularly, between first and the DH slot. If this power is for real and he can so some serious damage.

Pitching – Let’s kick it off with the starters. I targeted Bumgarner as my desired ace for his consistency. The K/9 isn’t as strong as it is with someone like Noah Syndergaard, but he will earn me strong wins, great strikeouts, and he will keep those ratios in line. Due to my need/want for high-end closers, the money really wasn’t there for some of the other starters I wanted, but I still managed to snag a few I liked. Sanchez is expected to take another step forward this year, Gray has proven you don’t always have to fear Coors Field and Snell has an outstanding K/9 expectancy. I’m hoping the four can help me out in wins this year, but I’m likely going to need to make a waiver claim or two to augment that category.

As for my closers, it’s pretty tough to find a tandem stronger than Chapman and Diaz with regard to saves and K/9. Together, these guys are going to not only provide me with a crazy-strong strikeout rate, but they’re also going to keep my ratios stabilized all year. At the tail-end of the draft I added Jim Johnson just for a little saves boost, but also Vizcaino who should end up with the gig once again this season. I’ll probably be looking for Mauricio Cabrera during the waiver process as he could be a dark horse for saves while crushing it in K/9 as well.

And finally, there’s Edwards. Look, I don’t believe Wade Davis’ elbow is going to make it through this season without a potentially lengthy stay on the DL and while Hector Rondon might be the first choice to replace him, Edwards, Jr. has much nastier stuff, a double-digit K/9 and has been 100-percent reliable. I see him being this season’s Kyle Barraclough.

Reserves – On the offensive front, I grabbed Phillips to provide me with some middle infield depth, Renfroe for some nice rookie power potential, Parra who will be filling in for the injured David Dahl and potentially even Ian Desmond, and Maybin for the steals potential. Granted, he’ll likely be on the DL within a few weeks, but I just couldn’t help it. He’s always been my fantasy Achilles’ heel. On the pitching front, there’s Lorenzen, who has a good-but-not-great K/9 but is expected to see a share of the saves in Cincinnati and Karns who just profiles as a decent late-round sleeper for my starting rotation with his solid strikeout rate.

So there it is, folks. That’s my team. I’d love to remain impartial and not tell you how they’re going to win the whole thing this season, but I can’t. I’ll leave that to you in the comments section below.