15-team fantasy baseball draft results: Tout Wars — stars, scrubs and regrets

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One of the great scams commonly perpetrated by fantasy analysts (or at least by me) is to write after-the-fact draft recaps in which we craft an ex post facto strategy to fit whatever roster we have built.

That is to say, we (or at least I) may occasionally embellish the details of a pre-draft plan to accommodate the post-draft roster — as if everything went perfectly according to script.

My pledge to you today is that I did no such thing with respect to the Tout Wars Mixed League in 2025.

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league for the 2025 MLB season]

I did, in fact, have a five-point plan in place on Saturday afternoon as I sauntered into the Hotel Edison in New York, where the live 15-team salary cap draft took place. All five points were shared in advance with Mo Castillo, veteran senior editor of fantasy content at Yahoo.

For me, this was an unprecedented step — an uneasy flirtation with accountability. Not sure I’ll make a habit of it, but it was worth trying once.

— A note from Mo Castillo, Senior Editor of Yahoo Fantasy Content: “Yes, I can confirm that, well in advance of his draft, Andy shared his five-point plan for how he was going to attack his picks. And yes, I am sharing this information of my own consent. If you want me to say this while holding a newspaper with today’s date on it, just LMK.”

Let’s review the pillars of my draft plan, and the degree to which I managed to execute any of it. If you are interested only in the full team-by-team results, please hit that link.

Build a team that could never be constructed in a snake draft

This is a guiding fantasy principle for me in any salary cap draft, except in the deepest and most extreme formats (mono-leagues in baseball, 20-teamers in football). If you are gonna give me $260 to build a squad in any mixed baseball league, I am definitely throwing $100 or so at a pair of consensus first-round, five-category maulers. Frugality is the coward’s path. I am a big-market fantasy manager, folks.

Here’s the way we attack batting stats in a mixed league:

Bobby Witt Jr. and Kyle Tucker is a combo you simply cannot land in a typical draft unless your league has six teams. I managed to build a hitting foundation that includes the players who rank No. 2 (Witt), No. 6 (Tucker), No. 14 (Bryce Harper), No. 21 (Manny Machado) and No. 31 (Ozzie Albies) on my overall board.

Again, this is not something you can achieve in a standard snake draft — not if your personal fantasy rankings look anything like consensus.

Over the years, this general approach to roster construction has been given the label “stars and scrubs,” which is truly unfortunate. In a mixed baseball league such as Tout, all the $1 and $2 players — the scrubs — are actually going to be fantasy-relevant names with starting roles at the major league level. Several of them will eventually make the leap to star status in subsequent years. Brenton Doyle was disgustingly scrubby last spring, but I just dropped $17 on him over the weekend, following a 23/30 season in Colorado.

The key to successfully executing the stars-and-scrubs-non-stars approach is to get comfortable in advance with the end-game players — the pool of likely $1 buys. It can be argued that I am perhaps too welcoming of the bargain-bin pitchers.

Allocate $195 to hitting and $65 to pitching, a 75/25 split

So my intended hitting/pitching split is absolutely one of those draft plans about which I would have just straight-up lied to you under normal circumstances.

Had I not discussed strategy in advance with Mo — which I now very much regret — then I would have unapologetically written in this recap that, yes, of course I was expecting to spend only 16.5% of my draft budget on pitching. Very intentional. Nailed it. Not a penny over $43.

Foolishly, I tipped my hand ahead of the draft and must now explain why I couldn’t manage to spend a modest $65 on pitching — which, if I’d gotten there, would still have left me with the second-cheapest staff in the league. As it actually played out, I had the cheapest collection of pitchers by a wide margin; Kelly Kirby was the only other manager who dropped less than 25% of the budget on pitching ($59).

But here’s the thing: I kinda love the arms that I assembled. I have been on record over multiple seasons as a late-draft, low-dollar pitching advocate. This is the roster spot that carries nearly all the injury risk and much of the downside, plus it’s a position in which high-end talent always materializes in-season. Each year, we are treated to unexpected pitching surprises.

I’m pretty delighted with José Soriano and Ryan Weathers as $1 additions — both are groundballists with plus-velocity and strikeout upside — and I’m no less pleased with Hayden Birdsong as a reserve draft flier. Also, I managed to acquire multiple saves sources in Pete Fairbanks and Kyle Finnegan (and whatever we’re calling Tyler Kinley) at very little cost.

All things considered, I think my pitching staff is better than what I probably deserved.

Prioritize potential upper-tier pitchers who are discounted due to perceived injury risk

OK, this did not go exactly as I’d expected, but I still satisfied the basic goal.

My general outlook on MLB pitchers is that all of them — including the guys you likely consider most reliable — carry an unacceptable level of injury risk. You might feel better about the health and reliability of Corbin Burnes or Zack Wheeler compared to Tyler Glasnow or Shane McClanahan, but I certainly do not.

Honestly, I see the entire position as a minefield. I don’t trust anyone’s UCLs, flexor tendons, latissimus dorsi muscles or labrums. If you do, cool. Spend away. I think you’re paying up for the illusion of security.

To me, the most tempting potential aces in drafts are guys like Glasnow, McClanahan, Jacob deGrom, Sandy Alcantara and Spencer Strider. In an era in which basically no one can be projected for 200 innings, I’m happy to accept however many frames those guys can give me, if I can land them for $10-$12.

I passed on all those names in Tout for various reasons — usually price or timing — but I did acquire Kevin Gausman at very little cost. You might recall that he entered last season with shoulder fatigue, and thus carried an injury red flag all year, never quite matching the effectiveness he maintained from 2020 to 2023. Gausman has looked suspiciously like his old self for much of this spring, complete with the familiar movement, velocity and K-rate. (Admittedly, Monday’s start against the Yankees could have gone better.)

At $8, I’m in. This is the pitching pocket in which I prefer to operate, thank you very much.

Let’s be an active, high-motor early bidder on pretty much every star

I kinda crushed this one. Always do. When the bidding on good players is in the early stages — the $7 to $15 range — you want to be involved. Don’t be a casual onlooker. Don’t take breaks.

By the end of any salary cap draft, live or online, you should feel as if you placed the most individual bids. My usual rule of thumb is that if I value a player at $20 or more — even if they don’t fill a glaring need — I want to be active in the bidding as we approach full price.

One benefit, of course, is that you don’t want your competitors scooping up outrageous values on top-tier talent. Someone needs to be in charge of salary enforcement; it might as well be you.

The other clear benefit to this habit is that when outrageous values do materialize — as will inevitably happen in any draft — you want to maximize the odds that you are the beneficiary.

And this is how I landed Albies at $14 in Tout. Whatever you might think of him (and he is not without flaws), he’s certainly a locked-in consensus top-three fantasy second baseman who should not go for half the cost of Ketel Marte ($28) and less than Matt McLain ($15).

If you’re a chirpy participant in the early action on impact players, eventually you are going to get a filthy steal.

Draft both members of at least one of the MLB brother combos — the Naylors, Díazes, Megills, Contrerases, et al.

There’s zero strategic value to this one, obviously. I just enjoy doing it. Traditionally it’s my signature move, dating back to the era of J.D. and Stephen Drew.

Alas, I failed to achieve it in Tout — and it was right there for me. An incredible whiff. A violation of one of my most cherished draft principles. Days after the fact, I am appalled.

It always seemed unlikely that I would draft the Contreras brothers, because I almost never throw money at catchers. Elevated risks, minimal rewards. And the Díaz brothers were likely to be budget-breakers. (Edwin went for $22.) The Megills and Naylors were much more attainable, but, regrettably, I missed on the alpha Megill and alpha Naylor.

And so it came down to the Tuckers (Kyle and Preston) and the Jungs (Josh and Jace). Preston Tucker hasn’t appeared in a major league game since 2018, so I managed to summon the discipline necessary to avoid him. But after landing bounceback candidate Josh Jung for $3, it is genuinely inexcusable to have passed on Jace as my final reserve pick.

I hate to keep siblings apart in this way. If there’s one thing I needlessly value as a fantasy baseball manager, it’s family. Assuming Jace is recalled from the minors at some point in 2025, I’m gonna pounce. It will be the most satisfying FAB dollar I’ll spend all season.

For now, I am content in the knowledge that my greatest draft regret is not landing a guy who hit .121 during the spring.

This news was originally published on this post .

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