Sam Walker is the 2005 American League Tout Wars champion and the author of Fantasyland: A Sportswriter’s Obsessive Bid to Win the World’s Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball League. His Web site is fantasylandthebook.com I have a pretty nice lead in AL Tout Wars right now. In fact, to be totally honest, it's a Texas-style, code-orange, call-in-the-National-Guard, stop-squeezing-the-Charmin kind of a lead. Right before the All-Star break, my team topped out at 104 points, which was 24 points ahead of my nearest competitor. When I saw this, I felt the need to show my laptop screen to somebody who could act as a witness. The only person around was my three-year-old son, Gus. He looked at the screen for a few seconds, blinking confusedly, then he said: "Cool, daddy." So there you go. It’s the sort of beatdown even a three-year-old can appreciate. I planned to use this space to gloat. I was going to quote liberally from Ron Shandler's essay on Baseball HQ earlier this season about how ESPN's Jason Grey had the best draft of anyone in AL Tout and how Jason is one of the leading intellectuals of our time. I figured I'd mention Steve Moyer of Baseball Info Solutions, who basically called me an idiot savant, or Lawr Michaels of Creativesports, who sent me a very nice and gracious note that still manages to imply that I should be careful because anyone who gets this lucky is liable to be crushed by a falling piano. I imagined I'd round this column out with a heartfelt note of thanks to my partner, WSJ.com fantasy sports columnist Nando DiFino, who is the shrewdest general manager and the best buddy a guy could have. Then I took a long look at my team and realized something: It's not the team I thought it was. Most people who look at my roster have a three-part reaction. First they see the name Josh Hamilton (he cost me $22 at the auction and has returned $34 so far in 5x5 value). Then they see the name Justin Duchscherer (who cost me $11 and has paid back $30 so far). Step three is to open their mouths, insert both index fingers and begin making three minutes of gagging noises. "No wonder you're winning!" they say. This reaction is understandable. Having these two breakout studs on my roster does make it seem like I'm winning Tout Wars by smacking my opponents over the head with a pair of giant cast-iron sewer pipes. But if you look closely, that logic unravels. The real reason I'm winning this league is because I'm pecking these guys to death with a fistful of toothpicks. Other than Hamilton and the Doowhacker, I only have two other players who've earned more than $20 in Roto value. In fact, if you subtracted those stars from my team and replaced them with two of the absolute rock-bottom worst players who sold for the same amounts at our draft -- let's say Victor Martinez and Phil Hughes -- I'd still be within two points of the lead. There are three reasons, other than my dynamic duo, why my team is so competitive. The first one is the performance of all the spare parts I picked up at the auction. Here they are: The takeaway from this chart is that for the same price somebody in my league paid for Miguel Cabrera, I got the equivalent of almost three Duchscherers in Rotisserie value. The second reason is that by focusing my FAAB spending ($51) on the first half of the season, I've been able to rack up some serious points by getting a lot more playing time from my pickups. I'll take four months of Mike Aviles over two months of Xavier Nady any day. For about half my total $100 FAAB budget, I've been able to pick up $38 in actual value, which is $4 more than our man Mr. Hamilton has contributed. Reason No. 3 is a small adjustment I made to my auction strategy back in March. Since so many great strikeout pitchers had migrated to the NL, I came to the auction table with two lists. On List A were all the starting pitchers in the AL who were likely to have great ERAs and WHIPS and to win a fair number of games without striking out a ton of batters (think Chien-Ming Wang). List B contained the names of every starting pitcher who was liable to strike out a ton of people but because of concerns about youth, wildness or injury, wasn't likely to cost a great deal of money (think Daniel Cabrera). If my Tout Wars opponents seemed to be paying huge premiums for Ks, I planned to start targeting the great non-strikeout pitchers on List A, who would likely then be selling at a discount. But if the market for strikeouts seemed like it was the same as last season, then I was prepared to target the fireballers on List B. After both C.C. Sabathia and Erik Bedard sold early for more than $30 each, I thought I'd be going the finesse-guy route. But within a round or two, prices for strikeout pitchers were back to normal, or even a notch below last year. So I broke out List B and wound up with two more important pieces of the puzzle. For an auction cost of $17, or roughly the price of Clay Buchholz, I ended up with about 42 percent of the total strikeouts I would need to lead that category in Tout Wars. Peck, peck, peck. The last chart is a little gratuitous, but I have to mention it. I'm also winning AL Tout Wars by a whopping margin despite the best efforts of my own little army of Halloween freakshows. I'll wrap this up with all the usual caveats. Sure, I've had luck on my side. Yes, there's a chance my entire team will catch polio and my lead will dwindle to nothing in two weeks. Possibly I will be remembered as the dope who had a 24-point advantage before the All-Star Break and blew it. Maybe Omar Minaya will show up at my apartment in the middle of the night and fire me, too. But if I do maintain this lead, don't delude yourself. Drafting one or two of the season's biggest monsters won't make you a winner. If you want to dominate your league, you'll need a toothpick. You can e-mail Sam a question or a comment about this column to DMFantasyBaseball@cbs.com. Be sure to put "Attn: Tout Wars" in the subject field. Please include your full name, hometown and state. Be aware, due to the large volume of submissions received, we cannot guarantee personal responses to all questions.
|
