How Do I Like My Team?

Alas, Risky Not Risqué.

Mar 18, 2024

∙ Paid

A TOUT WARS DRAFT RECAP

Ron Shandler had the idea of a league for Rotisserie baseball experts, like LABR but run by the players for their benefit, unlike LABR at that time, back in 1997. I had played in LABR for a couple of years and loved the idea, though I didn’t have any idea what my benefit would be. Alex Patton, Lenny Melnick, and Irwin Zwilling were early supporters. If you’d like more detail I highly recommend Ron’s book, Fantasy Expert, which tells the tale with wit and grace. It’s a terrific book for folks who love (or like) this game.

When it came time to name the league I thought my idea (Rotisserie Experts Baseball League=REBL) was brilliant, it captured the moment of breaking away from LABR, but Patton came up with Tout Wars and it was obvious how much more universal and durable that was. The first year was a mixed bag for the Kreutzer/Patton teams, but take a look at who the players were:

NATIONAL LEAGUE (there were 16 teams in the NL then)

AMERICAN LEAGUE (14 teams)

Shandler did two masterful things that first year. He invented the leagues, and he launched them with his Low Investment Mound Aces (LIMA) Plan, which worked so well he won them both.

Notice that 27 years later only two Touts remain in the game. Since Lenny Melnick retired last year Ron and I are the last two still playing in Tout, while Keith Law, Jonathan Mayo, and Jim Callis are now masters of prospects, and John Coleman shows up in my Facebook feed from time to time with his good humor, especially if I post something about Brian Eno or Cleveland rock n roll.

Notably, Rick Wilton won the 2023 Zen and Now Award for fantasy baseball community service, given out by the Tout Wars board, in honor of his invention of First Pitch Arizona way back in 1994.

As you might guess, Tout Weekend can be a bit of a memory fest, but it is also a lot younger and bigger these days. Listening to the roar of Touts and friends talking at the Saturday night party is partly inspiring (it worked!) and exhausting (I have to admit I don’t know everyone’s name/face combo any more).

And then there are the auctions. Four over two days (plus three online drafts in the preceding weeks). Though some of us had two teams in the early days, I’ve mostly played in the NL Only since. I spent a few years in H2H trying to invent a new challenging H2H system that no one wanted. Back in NL Only now, I’ve had a terrible run in recent years, primarily in the belief that Jacob deGrom would be Jacob deGrom for more than six starts at a time. Those turned out to be bad bets, though if the timing had been better it’s possible to argue I had the odds right.

This year, without the temptation of deGrom at hand, I set out to build a Perfect Pitching Staff. But let me start with the hitting. Or rather, a pitcher, then hitting.

In writing last week about my low-ish price on Spencer Strider, I realized that there is a good reason he’s going in the high-$30s, despite his closer repertoire and having not earned more than the low $30s so far. That’s because those two pitches he throws are incredible, and they and his youth give him a huge edge over all the other ace-like starters in the NL, who have had recent health issues or strikeout rates that just top one per inning. I decided, going in, to go past my $33 bid limit, which I argued you can do if you’re buying only one ace for your staff.

Strider was nominated first, blew up quickly. I bid at $33, $35, and maybe $37, but when last year’s winner, Derek Carty, bid $38 I bailed. A bid of $39 was too far for me to go.

All the star players came out early and hot. Bryce Harper at $38 in a league using OBP is fair. Ronald Acuna at $52 is risky because his extraordinary $62 season last year is unlikely to be repeated (but kind of save because it could be). Elly De La Cruz at $26 in an OBP league means he’s going to have to hit and run the way he started last year, not how he finished. Grey Albright went big on Matt Olson ($38), Oneil Cruz ($25), Corbin Carroll ($38), and Shohei Ohtani ($41), then, taking a book from Doug Dennis, who has won the last two Tout AL championships by buying no starters, bought no starters. Mookie Betts went for $44, like Harper, a fair OBP price, but by spending so much it makes it hard to navigate through the productive players with bad OBP.

Which is why a few of us didn’t land any of the big names. Brian Walton’s high buy was $26 (Nolan Jones), Steve Gardner’s was $27 (Christian Yelich), Phil Hertz’s was $29 (Pete Alonso), and mine was $25 (Max Fried). My highest-paid hitters were Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ ($20). But I paid single digits for only five hitters. Here’s the hitting side of things:

This lineup lacks a big homer bat aside from Nick Castellanos (and I hope a healthy Joey Meneses bounces back), and no big stolen base punch, but there should be a lot of at-bats and it should be strong in Runs and RBIs. There isn’t an OBP monster here either, but there aren’t any real sinkholes either. So, something like 40 hitting points seems about right out of the box, depending on how the other teams line up.

A note about On Base Percentage leagues: Guys like Harper and Schwarber, who walk a lot and have strong OBPs, went for a premium, as they should. But when the teams that spend a lot for OBP are feeding at the low level there are fewer good OBP guys. Low OBP guys offset high ones, that’s the nature of the qualitatives, so if you buy big OBP guys and then low OBP guys you end up in the middle, just as you do if you buy less high OBP guys and less low OBP guys. Since OBP depends on how all the hitters do luck-wise, their BABIP, unless you manage to pick off cheap OBP guys (who usually come with playing time issues) when the season starts we’re all in a stew in OBP. And as the season goes along and teams scramble to fill holes, team OBP tends to go down. Managing this is a challenge.

I hope that my middlin’ OBP roster doesn’t end up with too many holes to fill, and so my team rises while others fall, but we will see.

Which brings us to the pitching. The starters who came out first were going for more than my bid prices, until Fried came at my price. Closers, too, were going for more than my bid prices, until Diaz came in at my price. Once prices settled down a little I identified hitting targets and when they came in under my price I bought. Thus I put together most of the hitters before adding the cheap pitching I so prize, which is how I spent more on pitching than I usually would.

Here’s how I ended up with my risky staff, despite spending more on pitching than usual:

I nominated Blake Snell for $5. He has a 33 percent chance of signing in the NL, I think, and a fair chance of earning $20. I’m buying at 4:1 for a 3:1 bet. Not fool-proof but a bargain. The bidding went, shhh. Crickets, meaning nobody bumped me. Snell’s an all-or-nothing risk, cheap enough to be well worth it.

My problems began when Jordan Montgomery was nominated. I might even have nominated him, I don’t remember, but I know that when someone else bid $4 I was ready to let him go. He’s a $12 pitcher with a 50/50 chance of landing in the NL. But then a thought, a dangerous thing, came to me. If Snell were to sign in the AL, Montgomery would have a better chance of signing in the NL. Buying another FA would give me a better shot at breaking even on the two! A hedge, as it were. With a slim chance of landing them both, which would be a big win for my staff! Five! I said, nearly shouting, and the bidding stopped there.

And now my troubles really begin.

Taking those two risks was kind of fun, but when I put together the rest of my staff I didn’t factor in the risks I’d already taken and the importance of using your slots efficiently. So, when Braxton Garrett stalled at $6 I called out $7, won him, and had a guy who is supposed to miss just a little time at the start of the season. It’s a great price, but he is also a guy who isn’t throwing right now.

Jordan Hicks is a classic perfect-pitching-staff play, but he’s not someone I’m excited about. I’m not sure he’ll succeed as a starter, though he could. I wish he were on a team that could use him as a closer. Still, he’s worth a shot but is not one of the guys I wanted. And by rostering him I lost space for the guys I wanted.

Not long Hicks came up, Jameson Taillon stalled at $2. I knew he was dinged, but not that badly, which made $2 too cheap. So I bid $3 on Jameson on St. Patrick’s Day. Sue me. At that price, he’s a fair risk, as I told the guys on the radio after I was done, but again, he’s not my guy and now I was down to only one more pitching slot (and two Swingman slots). (Did I mention that we reduced the MI/CI spots to one INF slot this year, and added a second Swing? We did!).

I knew I wanted Trevor Rogers, and I figured I would use one of my Swings for either Josiah Gray or Ryne Nelson. Rogers was easy, I had plenty of money. On my turn I nominated Luis Matos, who is having a good camp, and he was mine for a buck, which left me with $6 for one slot. I was mulling whether to go for Gray or Nelson when my top-hitting target, Brett Baty, was nominated. A quick flurry got the bidding to $4 and it occurred to me that I would spend my money with Baty, while Gray and Nelson would go for a buck or $2. I needed a pitcher, but I was more likely to get what I also needed if I took Baty there. Five, I called out and was happy to win Baty, who has a chance to be much better than he was last year. I really can use all the hitters I can get.

But I could also use pitchers and my team was full. Chatting with Howard Bender and Kyle Elfrink on the radio right after this was a bit of a daze, but they smartly picked apart the risks I’m taking on this year. Different than Jacob deGrom in scale, but equally in need to have at least half the bets come in.

Now, I had to find pitchers in the reserves. There weren’t many. I ended up with AJ Smith-Shawver, who is young but was solid with the Braves last year and in spring training, except for a little problem with homers. Hurston Waldrep, another Braves prospect, not on the 40-man, with enough control problems to be worrisome but an electric heater. Another Free Agent, Mike Clevinger, who could redeem me if I lose the other two. And finally, Wade Miley, who is hurt and at his best and any port in the storm solution.

I was caught short on that last pick because Cade Horton was the last name on my list, but the guy I didn’t have on my list was Robert Gasser, who went the pick before Horton. He’s the right age, 25, coming off a solid Triple-A season and a good spring training. He’s not on the 40-man, but the Brewers should have a fairly porous rotation this year. He’ll get a shot and he could succeed.

The other guy I missed was Luis L. Ortiz, who I have on my XFL roster. Once a top prospect, he hasn’t developed a third pitch that works with a sharp slider and hot heater. He’s also lost velocity and as he’s advanced to the majors seen a decrease in strikeouts and an increase in walks, which is not sustainable development. He’s 25, not too late to figure out how to do it, but he hasn’t shown yet he can.

In conclusion, if my three free-agent pitchers sign in the NL, this was a brilliant auction, especially if Abner Uribe emerges as the lead guy out of the Brewers bullpen. But clearly, many things can go wrong, and then there are the unlucky things one can’t even anticipate that might go south.

The helpful thing about writing up the auction results is that one memorializes their thoughts before the games start, so, at the end of the season, it’s possible to look and see what one understood and what was a surprise with some objective clarity. Plus, you get to think about your new team without antagonizing a spouse or friends who could not care less.

ROTOMAN’S FANTASY GUIDE 2024 UPDATE

Here’s a special sheet for folks who bought Rotoman’s Fantasy Guide 2024. A Google Sheet updated through March 14.

Download it here.

It’s password-protected. The password is the last word in the Ronald Acuña Jr. profile. Lower case. There will be an updated version through March 21st, probably posted on the 22nd.

If you want to make edits save it with a different name.

The Editor’s Letter and Why We Did Pages for Rotoman’s Guide, which are missing in the printed Guide.

Members here at the Substack have an updated spreadsheet linked after the paywall. Paid subscribers, even for one month, get access to that one.

FOR SALE

Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024, softcover, $20, Kindle, $10.

Rotoman’s Fantasy Baseball Guide 2024, PDF, $12.

Ron Shandler’s Fantasy Expert, hardcover, $25, Kindle, $12. I wrote the foreword.

Les Leopold’s Wall Street’s War on Workers, hardcover, $25, Kindle, $23. I did a lot of the data work and some editing.

HOUSEKEEPING

When Will I See You Again Dept.: I’ll be back tomorrow. Let me know what you’d like to know.

I’ve posted the Historical Top Players by Position for 2021-2023 charts after the Paywall.

Thanks for your comments, questions, arguments, and news.

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