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

You can put the 2012 FAAB pick-up season in the books for AL Tout. The last hurrah consisted of a single bid above $0 with Steve Moyer targeting Cleveland second sacker Cord Phelps. Phelps had a nice season in Triple-A showing plate discipline and good pop from his position. What Phelps really needs, however, is a different organization where he might actually get a shot to play. The 25-year old is somewhat entrenched in organizational player land in the Indians’ organization.

The 1^st/second place battle has already been well noted, but there is also a a race for the top 5 with 3 or 4 teams including my own sliding up and down the standings every day. My shift from a reliever focus to a starter focus has been awful to watch, but has not been the reason for my drop to 6th. What has been has the injury to Josh Willingham and the ill-time cooling down of my offense.  Without a little bit of luck, I’ll be looking from the outside in. On the 2013 front, AL Tout deducts FAAB totals from the next season for every point you finish below 60 points. Chris Liss is right at 59 and Mike Siano is at 57. It will be interesting to see if they climb back over that 60-point hump these last 3 days.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Brian Walton's Commentary

For the final partial week of National League Tout Wars action, all bids were $0. The main news is that Mets closer Frank Francisco is likely out with a sore elbow. The beneficiary is Bobby Parnell, who had already picked up two saves this past week while a Tout free agent. I snagged him for $0.

At this time, I am among a group of three owners hovering around the 65-point level. We have every motivation to fight until the end, as do the four teams below us. Each point we finish below 65 this season means we begin 2013 with one less dollar of FAAB than everyone else’s standard $100 stipend.

To that end, I looked for a few innings plus a few more at-bats for the associated counting stats. Specifically, I re-acquired a couple of my former pitchers in Drew Pomeranz and Joe Kelly. I also added outfielder A.J. Pollock and infielder Nick Punto.

Hot hitting St. Louis shortstop Pete Kozma went to Dean Peterson, working to escape the cellar. Among pitchers finding homes this week were Tyler Thornburg, Jeurys Familia, Jason Grilli, Josh Lindblom, Jose Mijares, Francisco Peguero and even Stephen Strasburg. Hey, with the Nationals still unable to clinch the NL East, you never know!

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Zach Steinhorn's Commentary

Scott Swanay’s decision to drop both Jose Altuve and Angel Pagan last week was a curious one since one more FAAB period remained. So Nick Minnix decided to use his FAAB dollar edge over the other contenders to snag both players. Whether or not Altuve and Pagan will make a real difference in Nick’s goal of holding off Fred Zinkie in the all-important battle for second place is anyone’s guess, but it’s not like FAAB dollars carry over into next year. If you don’t use them, you lose them! Travis Wood, John Lannan and Luis Mendoza are all scheduled to make a start during the season’s final three days, so that was enough of a reason for Fred Zinkie to purchase the trio. Fred stands to gain some ground in wins and strikeouts and is unlikely to lose anything in the ERA or WHIP categories, so this was pretty much a no-brainer.

Meet Bobby Parnell, my final FAAB acquisition of the 2012 season. I could lose as much as 3.5 points in saves if everything goes wrong in the next three days, so this was a defensive move more than anything else. Maybe Parnell could be the difference between opening 2013 with a $92 FAAB budget or an $89 budget. Hey, every dollar counts.