2025 Tout Wars Mixed Draft Roundtable

The 2025 Tout Wars Mixed Draft took place on Tuesday, March 4, and four of the 15 participants were BaseballHQ staffers:

• Brian "Bubba" Entrekin (2nd pick)
• Ryan Bloomfield (7th)
• Ray Murphy (10th)
• Sara Sanchez (14th)

So what better way to recap things than a good ol' roundtable discussion? First, some league details and links:

• Tout Wars Mixed is a 15-team, 5x5 league with OBP in place of batting average. Weekly lineups and FAB ($1,000), and trading is permitted. 
• The full draft board can be found here.
• A live stream of the draft, hosted by Ryan and Bubba on their Bubba and the Bloom podcast, can be found here.

On to our chat…

 

We hear a lot of coverage on Draft and Holds/NFBC-centric standard 5x5 leagues over the winter months — how did you shift your draft strategy to Tout's unique rules (OBP, weekly lineups, trading allowed, unlimited IL, etc.)?

Ray: I’ve been in this league for a long time and still haven’t quite figured out how to properly value the switch to OBP. Related, I feel like the rest of the league is also fairly all-over-the-place with it. Some years I’ve drafted with a borderline obsession on OBP, and that hasn’t necessarily worked better than other years. The best thing about the OBP change is directly related to your question: it throws the NFBC ADP out the window and freshens up your look at the player pool. 

The other change is in the endgame, where D&H is about furiously chasing playing time before it vanishes, and this league is more about throwing darts late. I took a couple of closer shots, some high-variance SPs, and some injury stashes. All would have been questionable picks in the same round of a D&H.

Bubba: The shift to a redraft league is always a shift in the process. For the most part, I still got one lock down closer, but did not back it up immediately. The biggest shift was the OBP scoring difference. A lot more players come into play with OBP and some players get a major bump while others fall. I was more focused on not drafting a drain at OBP. 

Sara: I agree that the shift to an OBP league generally means that I need to be more flexible about when I’m going to get the players I want. That was especially true in this draft because I was picking at the end and it’s a long way back to the turn in a 15-team league. 

I leaned on the unlimited IL rule in a couple of spots, specifically with first base where I took a couple of shots on injured first basemen who I think have a lot of upside (Steer and Fry, who will bolster my late catching situation) even though I know I’ll need to open the season with someone else.

Ryan: Agree with Ray that the move to OBP gives this league a clean slate, which frees us from the ADP we've been looking at all winter, and makes for some unique picks. I also don't have a good thumb on how to translate to OBP, but I did notice that the curve is "flatter" as you go deeper into drafts, meaning OBP wasn't as much of an early priority as it would be in a FAB league. The unlimited IL came into play here too, as you'll see plenty of injured flyers taken throughout all stages in the draft. Put them on IL, and get an open spot for the first FAB run before Opening Day.

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There was a ton of crossover between managers in this draft. Ray and Ryan were using BaseballHQ projections, Sara and Shelly Verougstraete co-host the Fantasy Feud podcast, Ryan and Bubba co-host Bubba and the Bloom, etc. How did you adjust (or use this to your advantage) when making your picks?

Ray: I listened to Bubba and the Bloom’s livestream to figure out what Ryan was targeting next, and sniped him as much as I could. (Kidding… mostly). Better answer: it wasn’t that much of a factor here. It was a much bigger issue two nights earlier in my LABR Mixed Auction, where 4/12 of the room were using the same projections…. And in an auction format, that led to bidding wars. Straight drafts provide more easy pivot points, even if it made for some good livestream content.

Bubba: I did not adjust too much. I was far enough away from the rest in the draft room as I continued to do my thing. I also didn’t use a spreadsheet or projections for the most part, so it was a lot of knowledge from all the podcasts and articles this season. 

Ryan: Honestly, it made things easier. Bubba and I disagree on a bunch of players, and I was ready for the inevitable snipes from Ray (I called his Arozarena and Story picks in the 8th and 20th rounds, respectively). The Sara vs. Shelly dynamic was hilarious to watch in our livestream chat.

Sara: I honestly did not adjust to this as well as I should. Shelly and I tend to have different draft styles so I didn’t think about this a ton going into the draft. However, she was half a round early on three guys I really like this year (Willson Contreras, Iván Herrera and Alex Bregman) and that changed my strategy on catcher and CI considerably. It’s not really a snipe when you’re picking so far apart but no one has ever gotten to me so much in a single draft. Hats off to Shelly. 

 

Various pitching strategies were deployed among your four squads. What was your pitching strategy going in (starters and/or relievers), and did you execute it?

Ryan: I've typically started drafts with three hitters, sometimes taking my first closer in the 4th round before I grab a starting pitcher. I took that approach one step further in Tout, starting with four hitters, following that up with three pitchers (Shota Imanaga, Andrés Muñoz, Bailey Ober) in Rounds 5-7, and filling out the staff later with Nick Pivetta (12th round), Nathan Eovaldi (13th), and Zach Eflin (15th). I like the plan given the depth of the SP pool at those spots in the draft.

Ray: My takeaway about the trend in this league is that it’s way less strikeout-obsessed than the NFBC, maybe because of the lack of an overall. I won this league a couple of years ago running a 5 SP/4 RP split most of the year, which would be heretical in the NFBC (and wouldn’t work). So, my plan was to collect at least three bats to start, then get a closer and maybe a couple of SP around rd5-6. 

But then I couldn’t pass on Skenes in Round 2 (pick 21), and took Clase as the first closer off the board in Round 3… not because I really wanted to do that, but because I couldn’t find a hitter I really liked in that spot. Then I added Michael King in Round 6 and Jansen in Round 10 before alternating SP/bat for basically the next 10 rounds.

Sara: I like to have at least one starter and one closer heading out of Round 5 and I like who I wound up with there in Burnes and Miller. In the middle rounds I just drafted the best player available to me, while adjusting to what was unfolding earlier in the draft. I thought Cole was a great option in Round 6, but I wound up taking all bats between Round 7-12. I really like my pitching but there is some injury risk. I’ll be active here on the waiver wire.

Bubba: I went with my usual plan. I drafted one of my top closing options and got one of the second-tier closers I like. For starting pitching, I got my ace, grabbed a couple of pitchers in the next tier, peppered the later rounds with a ton of upside, and then filled my bench with more starters. I like the options I left the draft room with; they just need to stay healthy now. 

 

Everyone's looking for "late-round sleepers" this time of year. What were your favorite picks (not necessarily on your own teams) after Round 20?

Ryan: Trevor Story (20th round; Ray), Ryan Weathers (21st round; Bubba), and Miguel Amaya (24th round; Sara).

Ray: My own favorite was probably Kumar Rocker in round 22. Others that pained me were Ryan Weathers (Bubba, Rd 21), Kyle Manzardo (Aniano, Round 21), and Griffin Jax (Gianella, Round 23).

Bubba: I was looking for an extra middle infielder late, and I loved the Caleb Durbin and Christian Moore picks by Dr. Roto. I thought they would get back to me, but they never did. Miguel Amaya for Sara was another great pick late when waiting on a catcher. Amaya had a sneaky good 2H. 

Sara: I really wanted Jeffrey Springs to make it back to me in Round 21 but he was taken at 21.8 by Thorne. Josh Bell played some of his best baseball the last time he was with the Nationals and I was hoping he’d fall a bit more, but Gianella took in at 24.13. In terms of my own team, I was extremely happy to get Miguel Amaya in the 24th (although I’m not sure how much his second half was a BABIP fueled mirage) and weirdly, Mike Tauchman in the 25th, which I’m not sure I ever thought I’d say. Tauchman is a high OBP guy leading off for the White Sox and I just don’t see a lot of threats to his roster spot on that particular team so I liked grabbing a guy who had a skillset built for this league and a solid role that late.

 

Any other unique team builds in this draft (again, not necessarily our own teams) that readers might want to entertain for their own teams?

Bubba: The most unique one was Scott White for me. He punted the catcher position, waiting until Rounds 27 and 28 to take two prospect catchers in Drake Baldwin and Dalton Rushing. It allowed Scott to load up elsewhere in the draft, which could work, but was still very surprising. 

Ray: Both Ryan and Dr. Roto executed the pitching plan that I had originally scripted, opening with four straight bats before hitting pitching hard in the Rounds 5-7 range. Shelly had a similar implementation, opening with five bats before coming back with four straight SP and a closer in Rounds 6-10. Then she had a bat-heavy mid-game before closing with a bunch of late SP shots. If her early bats give her enough of a base, that could work really well.

Sara: I agree with Ray, I thought the pitching strategy that Ryan, Dr. Roto & Shelly implemented was solid. I have wondered what it would look like to load up on bats before taking my top pitchers in the middle rounds this year given the slew of pitching talent available in the middle rounds, and really like how all three of those teams wound up. 

Ryan: Mike Gianella (Team 3) punted steals, which I think can work in a format like this. If you're going to punt, you need to be sure you're good in all other nine categories, and I thought Mike did that well with two early-ish closers (Raisel Iglesias, Tanner Scott), two early-ish catchers, and nice balance across the other categories.

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