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Welcome to The FAAB Review, the series that looks at the expert bidding in LABR mixed, Tout Wars NL, and Tout Wars AL every week in an effort to try and help you, the Baseball Prospectus reader, with your fantasy baseball bidding needs. Bret Sayre and I participate in LABR Mixed while I have a team in Tout Wars NL, so I can provide some insight on the bids and the reasoning behind them. LABR uses a $100 budget with one-dollar minimum bids, while the Tout Wars leagues use a $1,000 budget with zero-dollar minimum bids. I will also be including Bret’s winning bids in Tout Wars mixed auction league where applicable.

LABR and Tout Wars both use a bidding deadline of Sunday at midnight ET.

All 2016 statistics in this article were as of Sunday, August 28.

LABR Mixed

Alex Reyes $2
Sandy Leon $2
Scott Schebler $2
Seth Lugo $1. Tout Mixed Auction: $24. Tout Mixed Draft: $0
Chad Kuhl $1
Andrew Triggs $1. Tout Mixed Auction: $9

Unlike many in-season prospect acquisitions, Reyes had been in the majors for a few weeks and could have been obtained as early as August 15 in LABR. This is the rare case where someone could have been stashed by a team for future use as a starting pitcher. Carrying a non-closer reliever on your team is not optimal but Reyes is a case where an exception would have been worth making.

It was so quiet this week in all three of the mixed expert leagues that I thought it would be worth looking at the two Tout leagues’ transactions in full.

Tout Mixed Auction: Lugo $24, Nick Markakis $14, Nick Franklin $13, Matt Strahm $12, Eduardo Escobar $11, Andrew Triggs $9, Chad Green $4, Matt Wisler $0, Willie Harris $0, Rickie Weeks $0, A.J. Griffin $0.

Tout Mixed Draft: Adonis Garcia $25, Matt Boyd $23, A.J. Cole $22, Jace Peterson $8, Fernando Salas $6, Kendall Graveman $5, Josh Bell $3, Chad Green $3, Ryan Vogelsong $0, Trevor Plouffe $0, Daniel Norris $0, Seth Lugo $0.

The Tout leagues were a little more active than LABR, but if you take out the zero-dollar bids there were nearly the same number of acquisitions in all three leagues: six purchases of one-dollar or more in LABR, seven in Tout Mixed Auction, and eight in Tout Mixed Draft. The $1,000 FAAB budget in the Tout leagues also gives the impression of more aggressive bidding but when prorated to the $100 that LABR uses, the bidding was fairly similar in all three leagues, even if the top players purchased in each league were different.

From this point forward, the bidding will be driven mostly by the standings. Teams at the bottom of the standings frequently check out, particularly in LABR, where there is no penalty for finishing below a certain points threshold, as there is in Tout. Teams at or near the top of the standings are usually there because their teams are healthy and the players they drafted have mostly been good. In a home league where you can get some money for finishing in fourth or fifth there is incentive for making moves; in an expert league where people play for pride, the difference between finishing fourth and finishing ninth is meaningless. No one remembers who finished second and who finished 14th.

The two most common types of acquisitions this week were starting pitchers and position players. With only five weeks left in the season, the biggest impact a fantasy team can make to its fortunes is by acquiring a starting pitcher. This is a broad generalization. Every fantasy league is different, and in some leagues there might be a large gap in all of the pitching categories while there is a tight race in batting average, for example. Generally speaking, a two-start week from a pitcher like Lugo or Norris could do more to move the needle than a 20-25 at bat week from Markakis or Garcia.

The bids were low because pickings were slim. Next week will be the first week that September call-ups will come into play. In Tout, some of these players will already be stashed on reserve. In LABR, there will be more drama if someone like Jose De Leon is called up to the big club, but as noted above the standings will likely determine how aggressive or passive the leagues are on the whole.

Tout Wars NL

Luis Sardinas $35. Other bids: $2, $1. LABR NL: $1

I’m intrigued by players like Sardinas. He went from Baseball Prospectus’ 86th best prospect as a teenager in 2013 to a lineout (a one or two-sentence blurb at the back of a team chapter) in 2016’s Baseball Prospectus annual. He is 23 years old, yet his future has been written by many baseball writers far smarter than I. He is deemed to be a utility infielder at best, “just a guy” (in the shorthand of prospect parlance) who will never hit enough to be a starter. This is probably correct, but it is still fascinating that 329 plate appearances across three major league seasons is more than enough to say that the die is cast, the fault does not lie with the stars, and that the world is not everybody’s oyster.

As a fantasy baseball writer, I cannot claim any moral superiority over those who write about prospects or about any other corner of the baseball world. Our ilk is generally the worst about this. We commoditize players to the nth degree, categorizing people like Sardinas as “failures” because what they do cannot “fill up a stat sheet” for our fantasy teams. When someone like Sardinas gets an opportunity for a major league team, we are quick to be dismissive and look at him through the narrow gaze of what “he can do for my team”, rather than examine what he may have done to earn his latest opportunity and improve his level of play.

I bring this up because I saw most of Sardinas’ game last Friday, when he went 2-for-3 with a home run and looked like the best player on the diamond. Our eyes deceive us, which is why we use a combination of scouting and analytics to derive conclusions, but when we have reached such a definitive and negative conclusion about a 23-year-old former phenom, I wonder if we have meandered too far away in the other direction, and stop trusting what we see. Sardinas looked really good this weekend. It is one weekend – and he was facing the Marlins’ non-Jose Fernandez pitchers – but maybe it is possible that he is doing something different as a Padre. He is worth a pick-up in Tout because it is an NL-only league and he is a warm body who is getting every day plate appearances. But instead of falling back lazily on the idea that his future is set in stone as a 23-year-old, I am willing to concede perhaps we were right before we were wrong about Luis Sardinas and not the other way around.

A.J. Cole $26. Other bids: $4, $1.
I picked up three pitchers in Tout NL this week. The first pitcher was A.J. Cole, a former top prospect whose luster has dimmed somewhat for the Nationals after an uninspiring campaign in the minors. All of my picks this week were about matchups. I’m trying to hang onto sixth place in NL Tout (woo hoo), and while my offense has been fine I have struggled mightily on the pitching side. I can pick up a significant amount of points in wins, and while chasing wins is a fool’s errand, there are no other categories where I can make up significant ground (and, if you have been reading The FAAB Review long enough, it is fairly clear that I am a fool). Cole is slated to face the Mets this week at Citi Field, and while a matchup there against Noah Syndergaard is a poor bet for a win, Cole was one of the better options available this week.

Matt Wisler $26. Other bids: $12, $3, $2, $0.

My second addition. Wisler is on a weaker team than Cole but he gets two opportunities this week against subpar offenses: home against San Diego and then at Philadelphia. Even better, he is not facing Syndergaard, and gets to face off against Edwin Jackson and Jake Thompson. He is far from a sure thing performance-wise. He threw a gem in his last start at Arizona, but that start was preceded by four clunkers against the Phillies, Rockies, Reds, and White Sox. Wisler does have a good amount of potential (he was a weekly component of Baseball Prospectus’ Stash List in 2015), but I’m pushing for the wins and 2016 only, not making a play for the future.

Robert Gsellman $26. Other bids: $22, $0.
Gsellman was my third addition. When I put this bid in, it appeared that Gsellman would be starting this week against the Nationals. As I write this on Monday (in your past and my present…I just blew your mind, didn’t I?), it appears that Gsellman will not start this week, and that Seth Lugo will take his place in the rotation. I have Steven Matz in Tout NL, so I’m OK with stashing Gsellman as a hedge in case Matz cannot go later this week. I’m more impressed with Gsellman now that I have seen him face major league hitters. His fastball has more life than I expected, and the slider looked like much more than I thought it would based on the scouting reports. The Mets are likely to use Gsellman as a starter again at some point between now and the end of the campaign. If they don’t, I have so much FAAB left that losing the $26 on him will not matter.

Raimel Tapia $5
Seth Lugo $2.
Other bid: $0. LABR NL: $9.
Rafael Montero $1
Oswaldo Arcia $1.
Other bid: $0. LABR NL: $1
Rene Rivera $0
Trevor Cahill $0
Tyler Holt $0
Alex Wood $0

In LABR NL, Rich Hill was still available because you cannot bid on injured players in LABR so he went for $42 to Derek Carty of ESPN. Hill is extremely likely to be better than the best player to come over from the American League via trade between now and Wednesday night.

Tapia is a fun stash, but the Rockies outfield is already a crowded house. Phil Hertz of Baseball HQ grabbed both Lugo and Montero. I passed on Lugo and bet on Gsellman; I probably should have picked up both. Despite his decent numbers in Double-A, I had no faith in Montero, although he did look solid against the Marlins despite the walks. Arcia is a very solid pick-up if he can pick up regular at bats for the Padres and live up to his power potential.

Tout Wars AL

Kaleb Cowart $58. Other bid: $26.
Cowart has been filling in for Yunel Escobar (concussion). He has been much better with the bat this year in a small sample size than he was in 2015 in a small sample size, but neither one of these small sample sizes tells us much about Cowart. His fantasy value is marginal unless he plays every day, so unless the Angels decide to shut Escobar down entirely, Cowart will not be worth much. Escobar is expected to return Friday. Cowart is light on the power and is a lower end third baseman in AL-only even if he does play regularly.

Ubaldo Jimenez $20. Other bid: $0.
September is a funny month. Yes, I am aware that it is still August but by the time my next FAAB Review is released it will be September 6 and it seems less silly to say “September is a funny month” now than it will be on six days into September.

Jimenez has pitched extremely poorly this season, but he did put up a solid outing against a strong Nationals team last week, which is probably why he earned this bid from Lawr Michaels of Mastersball. I don’t trust Jimenez as far as I can throw him, but given the Orioles willingness to pull him from the rotation in the past, the gamble is that if he works out, great, but if he doesn’t he won’t get too many terrible starts for Michaels. Jimenez also strikes out a bunch of batters; it is always better to take a risk on a bad pitcher with a lot of strikeouts than a bad pitcher who cannot strike anyone out. Although if we are being honest with ourselves, you should not pick up a bad pitcher in the first place.

Enny Romero $18
Chad Pinder $9
Willie Harris $7.
Other bid: $0
Erasmo Ramirez $5
Bryan Shaw $0
Matt Bush $0
Dan Otero $0

Safe relievers dominated the low end bidding in Tout AL. Teams were looking for decent relief innings as opposed to subpar starting pitching (see Jimenez above). Pinder is a fairly cheap play for a hitter who could get regular at bats the rest of the season, even if those at bats are not particularly potent ones.

Thank you for reading

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kraigy1973
8/30
Re: Sardinas--That was the most impassioned defense of a player with a career .679 OPS...IN THE MINORS...and a .589 OPS in AAA THIS YEAR. Glad he had a good weekend, but he's not the player to hang on which to hang your "maybe we should trust our eyes more" argument.
MikeGianella
8/30
Eh, you're probably right
bpsinger
9/12
Um, Mike... isn't kraigy1973 making exactly the kind of argument you're trying to show as wrong? He's just being a stat geek - what the hell does he know anyways, other than how to read a BP player's card??