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

So the leader has three options, 1) simply insure they get their player (in this case Greinke), 2) Swerve and go for the second best available player (Sanchez), or 3) eschew all the available players and wait and see if other prominent players get dealt across leagues prior to the trade deadline.

Jason Collette executed his FAAB in textbook fashion. First, he took his shot at Greinke, just in case I tried to get cute and bid at little less to preserve my FAAB Budget, and then in contingency bid one more dollar than the third place team to get Sanchez. He also received a substantial, unintentional windfall, as the third place team opted not to max out Jason's bid, getting him Sanchez at $33 and leaving him still at the #2 FAAB leader spot with an opportunity to get a second impact player. This of course was not predictable. Generally in Vickery play you should always place a bid to insure that those ahead of you use up their FAAB. If the team ahead of you doesn't spend that amount, then you end up with a player, possibly at a substantial discount, so no harm done.

If I had opted for choice number 2, then the correct play would have been to bid $93 on Greinke to insure Jason maxed out his bid, in case he went after him. If he didn't, then I would have considered it an unexpected windfall. I also would have, just in case, bid several dollars more than the simple $70 to secure Sanchez as an insurance in case Jason was guarding against the possibility that I might favor Sanchez.

If I had a choice right now, I'd rather be in Jason's shoes given the windfall, but I'm sure he planned to spend at least $70 of his FAAB last night, not just $33. I have greater confidence in Greinke and was willing to forgo a little FAAB flexibility to get him and feel that I can either use Greinke or still have the option to trade him or Verlander to acquire another need and/or FAAB as needed

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Brian Walton's Commentary

Tied for the second-most FAAB total in the league at $90, ESPN's Tristan H. Cockcroft decided not to wait any longer for deadline deals to bring big names into the National League. The league leader in the standings spent $20 on two prospects changing homes - $15 Vickrey bids dropped to $10 each - on Jean Segura of Milwaukee and Justin Turner of the Marlins. No other Tout warrior bid on either player.

If Segura, a middle infield prospect who was a central figure going east in the Zack Greinke deal, is inserted alongside Rickie Weeks, he could be a bargain. For now, he simply moved from one Double-A club to another. Turner, a former top prospect of the Tigers, came over to the NL in the Anibal Sanchez trade and was initially assigned to Triple-A.

Greinke's replacement in the Brewers' rotation, Mark Rogers, had a decent MLB debut on Sunday. His strikeout potential caused me to eagerly jump in with a $5 bid, but $1 would have done the job.

Continuing on the Brewers theme, the closer hot potato with John Axford and Francisco Rodriguez led to reasonable, but cautious speculation. Two bidders went after Kameron Loe ($2) while another purchased Jim Henderson ($1).

The only other non-zero bids were $4 for the Mets replacement starting pitcher for Johan Santana, Jeremy Hefner, and $3 for Donovan Solano, a singles hitting middle infielder with Miami.

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Zach Steinhorn's Commentary

This week marked the first time all year that there was a tie in the bidding for the most expensive player. Cory Schwartz was willing to empty his entire remaining FAAB budget, $17, to grab Starling Marte. But Gene McCaffrey, probably recognizing that thanks to the inverse order of standings tiebreaker, his $17 bid would trump Cory’s, was able to snag Marte. Heading into the final two months of the season, bidding strategy will become more of a factor, as 11 of the 15 teams now have less than $25 remaining.

Alexi Ogando, who could take the place of the injured Colby Lewis in the Rangers’ rotation, also garnered a $17 bid. The good news for Nick Minnix is that he secured Ogando. The bad news is that the Tout Vickrey system requires that you pay at least $10 for all bids exceeding $10, so even though the next highest bid was only $1, Minnix was docked ten bucks. Ogando could be worth it though if he pitches like he did last year as a starter.

As for my own squad, the injuries continue to pile up as I lost not one but two middle infielders to the DL. This sent me scrambling to the waiver wire where I put in claims for five different guys to fill the two spots vacated by Ian Desmond and Erick Aybar. Fortunately, I managed to get my top two choices, Brandon Inge and Willie Bloomquist. I’m not overly excited about either player, but I figure that since my AVG is low anyway, Inge’s batting average woes won’t hurt me too much but his power can certainly help. I felt that Bloomquist was the next best option, as at least he can contribute in runs and AVG while mixing in a few steals.