Mastersball

Each week, your friends at Mastersball will post the results of the weekly Tout Wars FAAB run, featuring the winning bid as well as the runner-up bids. There are three LABR leagues, a 12-team AL only, 13-team NL only and 15-team Mixed League. You can see the complete standings for each league by clicking on the appropriate heading, located just under each player photo.

Tout Wars uses a modified Vickrey system to award bids. For a complete description of the Vickrey system, click HERE for the Tout Wars constitution.

Included with each league report will be commentary from a Mastersball staff member participating in that league. We invite you to ask questions and post comments at the bottom of the report.

All contingency bids for awarded players are included. Sometimes, this is a bid tied to a player that the owner received, so at times the bid amount is larger than the winning bid. We are including it to provide as much information and context as possible with each report.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Rob Leibowitz Commentary

Jeremy Guthrie’s reentry to the American League garnered the highest bid of $7 (4 Vickery) by Larry Schechter. The former Oriole had continued to throw strikes during his stay in Colorado while at the same time showed a lack of ability to miss bats earning a 6+ ERA and a trade for the equally underwhelming Jonathan Sanchez. Guthrie has been an inning eater at best for the last several seasons  and while a move out of Colorado might help a little, the right’s skill set is more likely to hurt than help most teams.

Nevertheless, with my team free falling with my starting staff in shambles, I played a bit of darts, taking chances on a number of players with coming starts while at the same time trying not to deplete my lead in FAAB. The results were the acquisition of Will Smith and Tommy Hunter on my roster. Neither are great additions and could potentially do more harm than good to my team, Hunter has shown glimpses of being a competent starter while Will Smith has actually translated his minor league skills to the majors fairly well over four starts. Unfortunately the results have not been there yet. But at this point in the season, I have to take some shots and $0 FAAB acquisitions can be guilt-free dispensed with if they fail to work out.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Brian Walton's Commentary

Chasing offense, the NL Tout warriors this week engaged in spirited bidding for Arizona call-up Ryan Wheeler. The corner infielder fetched an $81 bid from Dean Peterson, which was dropped to $30 via the Vickrey bidding process.

It feels funny to call new Houston closer Francisco Cordero “new”. After all, he has 328 career saves. Derek Carty’s $52 bid became just $17 via Vickrey, making this a solid pick up. Still, my lack of confidence in Coco is illustrated by my relatively tepid bid of $6 and backed up by my ongoing ownership of Wilton Lopez.

My secondary bid was a $1 flyer on Edward Mujica of Florida. Whether he receives a real chance in Ozzie Guillen’s “closer by committee” remains to be seen. Since I am short on saves, I am willing to join the parade at a bargain price.

The on-again, off-again injury situation with Washington’s Ian Desmond went from the high of seven at-bats on Saturday to the low of the disabled list on Sunday. With Desmond as my shortstop and no other eligible player on my roster other than St. Louis’ Daniel Descalso (who fortunately played in his fifth game at shortstop on Sunday), I clearly needed help. Though Marwin Gonzalez of Houston is an injury risk himself, he owns the job as Jed Lowrie remains out indefinitely, so I went in at $7 and won a tie-breaker with our own Lord Zola.

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Zach Steinhorn's Commentary

I honestly can’t remember the last time I was the buyer of the most expensive player in Mixed Tout FAAB. I think it was all the way back in April when I snatched up Santiago Casilla. This week, I decided to place an aggressive $17 bid on another newly anointed closer, Francisco Cordero and, through Vickrey, landed up shelling out $15 for his services. Look, I understand Cordero’s been pretty awful this year, but maybe he finds his groove now that he’s back in the Senior Circuit. Plus, I figure that his 329 career saves will earn him some margin for error when it comes to keeping the ninth inning gig. Not to mention that at this point in the season, I don’t think there will be many more opportunities to bid on category difference makers. Four saves separate me from gaining two points and six saves separate me from losing three points.

After Cordero, the power-hitting Travis Snider garnered the next highest winning bid, going to Cory Schwartz for the Vickrey adjusted price of $10. Cory must be very enthused about Snider’s potential as an everyday player as his $21 bid marked the highest actual bid this week. The third and final double-digit dollar player Sean Doolittle, who went to Patrick Davitt for $10. Doolittle boasts excellent ratios and did pick up his first career save over the weekend, but Ryan Cook remains the closer in Oakland, so Davitt is really gambling on a closer change with that high of a bid.

Francisco Cordero wasn’t my only purchase this week, as I also decided to address my woeful catcher situation by finally cutting ties with the frustrating Ryan Hanigan and adding Ramon Hernandez for $3. The 36-year-old Hernandez has been banged up all season and remains an injury risk, but I figure he has more upside than Hanigan, who has been giving me virtually nothing. Low risk, medium reward. That’s how I see it.