My 2025 Tout-AL auction in review

On the Saturday evening after the Tout Wars 12-team AL-only auction in New York, about 70 Toutsters gathered at a nearby saloon to have a couple of snorts and talk about what had transpired in the AL-only and the 15-team Mixed Auction drafts held earlier that day.

Quite a few of them stopped by to ask me about my unusual strategy in Tout-AL. 

History of the strategy

To start forward by looking backward, I must acknowledge that this strategy was not entirely original. It was based on strategies that have evolved for leagues without innings minimums, and Tout removed the existing 1,000-inning requirement for its only-leagues in 2020.

In that 2020 season, only Mike Gianella of Baseball Prospectus had read the updated league rules and thus only Mike knew the innings requirement had been dropped. In response, Mike adopted a no-starting-pitcher strategy, finishing fourth in the COVID-shortened campaign.

In 2022, Doug Dennis of BaseballHQ won the league with a no-SP strategy that saw him sweep all five hitting cats and almost do likewise in the available pitching cats: first in Saves, first in ERA, second in WHIP. His 97 points was one short of a perfect outcome. The next year, Doug won again, almost sweeping hitting again (second in SBs) and finishing seventh in WHIP (first in Saves, second in ERA). The year after, the strategy didn’t work, largely because of injuries—his second- and third-highest-priced players, Mike Trout and Triston Casas, cost $54 and had a combined 352 PA. Doug finished ninth.

It's a game of adjustments

I wanted to emulate Doug’s successful strategy of 2022-23, but with a couple of adjustments. First, I wanted to spend even more than Doug’s $200-ish on hitting (out of a $260 overall budget), so I set my hitting budget at $210 (81%/19% hitter/pitcher split). Second, I wanted to avoid the risk of losing important, high-cost hitters to injury. Since there will be injuries, I decided on an extreme “Spread the Risk” approach, and since $210 for 14 hitters is exactly $15 per hitter, I decided that I would get 14 hitters within a tight range around $15 apiece. I would offset a $17 hitter with a $13 one, but in general would try to stay pretty close to $15 for each hitter.

On the pitching side, I budgeted $50 for my nine pitchers: $43 on closers, probably two, and seven $1 LIMA relievers.

It seemed like a sensible plan. But I carried a worry into the auction room: For this plan to work would require a lot more bidding discipline than my usual—no impulsive hunch bids or price-enforcing. It would be more discipline than I have exercised in Tout auctions since … well, ever.

My draft: Hitting

My discipline held up pretty well. I was pretty much shut out of most of the early going, when the players of $20+ value were on the block. I was tempted more than a few times to sneak in and grab a “bargain” beyond my $15-ish limit, but I held my ground. I bid up to $15 on almost every hitter, ’cause, hey, you never know. I did overpay for my catchers, after Rutschman, Raleigh, Sal Perez and Diaz all went above my $15 cap (Diaz went for $17, and in hindsight I should have beat that bidder that price).So I ended up paying $28 total for Ryan Jeffers and Danny Jansen, my two biggest lossmakers compared with projected value.

I did reach very slightly for Jordan Westburg at $19, but I thought I could afford the variance, since I had Westburg as a $19 value and his 2B/3B eligibility provided some needed positional flex. I later offset the $4 budget overpay by getting a $13 Wilyer Abreu for $10.

Here’s the hitting roster (over/under my projected $ in parentheses):

C1 Ryan Jeffers, $15 (-$1)
C2 Danny Jansen, $13 (-$2)
1B Andrew Vaughn, $11 (+$4)
3B Jordan Westburg, $19 (+$0)
2B Andres Gimenez, $17 (+$0)
SS Jeremy Pena, $17 ($17 (+$0)
IF Ryan Mountcastle, $11 (+$1)
OF1 Byron Buxton, $14 (+$0)
OF2 Lane Thomas, $16 (+$2)
OF3 J.J. Bleday, $16 (+$0)
OF4 Evan Carter, $13 (-$1)
UT Daulton Varsho, $13 (+1)
SW1 Wilyer Abreu, $10 (+$2)
SW2 Masataka Yoshida, $4 (+$3)

That’s two hitters each at $17, $16, 13 and $11, and one each at $19, $15, $14, $10 and $4. In all, I spent $189 on hitting ($13.50 per hitter), so in hindsight I might have been better off going the extra buck here and there, especially for OBP support. My hitting roster came out as about a $9 profit, which doesn’t sound like much but in this league is actually pretty good.

My draft: Pitching

I was in on every top closer early, until they went past my self-imposed $23 limit. Clase went for $23, Devin Williams for $24. I had thought briefly in the planning stages about getting a top closer and two lesser ones for my $44, but stuck with the original two-closer plan, so getting Jhoan Duran and Felix Bautista for $42 was right in line. The two are a combined $4 loss to projected value, but closers are closers. Josh Hader later went for $21, and Mason Miller for $22, but I was glad to have nailed down that part of the strategy by then.

The part of the strategy about those $1 LIMA relievers changed when I had my two closers and all 14 hitters and I still had $26 left. Of course I had misgivings about spending so much less on hitting that I had planned, but to make chicken salad out of... well, you know, in the late game, I was able to up the quality of those filler guys:

• Griffin Jax, $8 (+$4), Cole Sands, $1 (+$5): Jax and Sands are Duran handcuffs, but also good pitchers in their own rights. Jax had 2.03/0.87 decimals last season, 34% K-rate and 51% GBs. Sands went 3.28/1.00 with a 29% K-rate and 4% walks.
• Edwin Uceta, $5 (+$1) Uceta was called a sleeper so often this spring that everybody woke up to his 2024 record of 1.51/0.82 with 35% Ks (and he was even better in a handful of second half innings). His 1.51 ERA was third best overall among pitchers who threw at least 40 innings last season, behind only Cleveland’s Emmanuel Clase (0.61) and Texas’ Kirby Yates (1.17). And his 36% K-rate was 10th best among all relievers who faced at least 150 hitters.
• Matt Brash, $6 (-$3) Brash had Tommy John surgery last May, so he won’t be on a big-league mound until May at the earliest. The Forecaster blurb said that before the surgery, Brash “was a LIMA favorite with electric skills and good shot at closing.”
• Justin Slaten, $5 (-$1): News out of BOS says Aroldis Chapman will start the year as the closer, after Liam Hendriks and Slaten were unimpressive or worse during spring so far. But Chapman is not the dominant factor of yesteryear (or yesterdecade), so any stumble could open the gate for Slaten, who had a breakout rookie season in 2024 (2.93/1.01 in 44 appearances).
• Robert Garcia, $3 (+$5): TEX sees Garcia as one of the main arms in the closer mix, despite nerve irritation in his left forearm that delayed his spring debut. Garcia's Statcast metrics—98th percentile hard-hit and barrel rates, 94th percentile chase rate—make Garcia look like Chris Martin’s main competition for save opportunities in the Rangers' rebuilt pen. Garcia had 4.22/1.19 decimals in 2024, but his xERA was 3.09, thanks to a 64% Strand Rate. And that TEX pen still looks there will be opportunities to get at least some saves.
• Chad Green, $1 (+$2): Green ended 2024 as the Blue Jays’ closer, and starts this year third in the bullpen pecking order. With Erik Swanson on the shelf coping with a median nerve entrapment in his pitching elbow, Green’ slot looks safe. But he’ll be my first upgrade as opportunities arise.

Supposed to be a total of $7 for relievers, ended up at $29, but with $13 in projected profit. 

Analysis: Auction review

Overall, I was very pleased with the strategy and my execution. I was uncharacteristically well-disciplined, and overbid only modestly, except for catchers.

I did mess up a couple of opportunities when I had the bid at $13 with a max of $15, and bid $14 hoping to save a buck; the other bidder then went $15 and left me with a Hobson’s Choice of overpaying or not getting the player. I opted to lose the player.

I should have targeted a few more multi-position players, who have extra value in an only-league because of the paucity of replacements in the free-agent pool. I have only Westburg ($19, 2B/3B) and Ezequiel Duran of TEX (Reserve, 3B/OF), whose sub-600 spring OPS and a TEX OF that has more players than the New York Philharmonic, make him unlikely to make the Opening Day roster.

Analysis: Outcomes

The first good news about my draft was that I projected from multiple sources to have more than 7,100 PA, well above the field except for one leaguemate. Tout-AL stats provider OnRoto provides projected standings using BaseballHQ and Davenport projections, and I projected to first place in both, but with very thin margins (78.0-77.5 in the Davenport, 81.0-78.5 in the BHQ).

Both projections put my points at 12-12-12-8 in HR-Runs-RBI-SB, and both have me at 12-11 in Saves-ERA. The Davenport has me with 6 points in OBP but only 3 (!) points in WHIP. With all those relievers! (If my WHIP starts spiraling, I have a somewhat inventive plan to correct the problem.) Conversely, BHQ has me with 10 points in WHIP but only 2 (!) in OBP. Which seems likelier.

Both projection sets give me a huge margin in saves, thanks to a bunch from my non-closing relievers. In fact, I project to more than 100 saves, with the second place team in the category in the 50s. The fourth-to-ninth saves are in a tight pack from 46 to 35, so at some point I might be able to trade my saves surplus, maybe to shore up SBs, where I’m fifth in both projections, and just eight bags or so from second place.

One issue that is nagging at me is that the BABS profile of my team has a few too many INJ and inj tags, led by Byron Buxton (of course) and Daulton Varsho. I'll definitely need some good luck on the health front.

Conclusion

One other aspect of this auction was interesting for me. I have been using a laptop with draft software for several years, but I always felt like I was spending more time looking for players than thinking about my draft. So I went into the Tout-AL room old-school, managing my draft with two 11x17 sheets of cardstock containing my player values (thanks to the good folks at FedEx office on 47th St. in Manhattan), and a pen. I did bring a computer, but only to follow the Google spreadsheet of the draft that Tout puts on its site (it’s also shown on a big screen in the room).

Of course, all of the projections and analysis will stop mattering once Opening Day arrives on March 27, for all the teams except TAM and COL. There’ll be 14 games, and I won’t be checking the probable starters for any of them.

My thanks to everyone at Tout Wars who works to make it a successful event for participants. Peter Kreutzer and Todd Zola deserve added plaudits for doing a lot of the heavy logistical lifting. And thanks to all the fantasy managers throughout the Tout Wars community, especially in Tout-AL for a fun and intense draft.

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