2026 Tout Wars Mixed Draft recap

The Tout Wars Mixed Draft took place on the evening of March 3, 2026. It featured some BaseballHQ writers—Ray Murphy, Brian “Bubba” Entrekin, and yours truly—as well as 12 other industry friends.

I live-streamed the draft with co-host Bubba on our Bubba and the Bloom YouTube channel. Streaming this while drafting with someone else in the league was particularly challenging.. and fun! Click here for the livestream.

The full draft board can be found here. Here are five takeaways from the draft:

1: League rules can dictate draft strategy.

Tout Wars Mixed is a 15-team rotisserie league with on-base percentage in place of batting average—more on that in our next point—but there are other wrinkles that affected draft strategy:

Unlimited IL slots: I mostly play in NFBC formats with seven-man benches and no IL slots, where drafting and “stashing” injured players is tough since they take up a valuable roster spot. Not the case in Tout Wars, which has unlimited IL spots. We saw a number of injury stashes in this draft, starting with Carlos Rodón (15th round), Gerrit Cole (17th), Jared Jones (22nd round; a great buy), Ha-Seong Kim (24th). My two injury stashes were Tommy Edman (23rd round) and Lourdes Gurriel (27th). There is a FAAB run the week before Opening Day when these injured players can be stashed and replaced via the waiver wire.

Trading is allowed: Drafting a balanced team is paramount in non-trading leagues, especially in NFBC-style formats that have an overall component against hundreds or thousands of other teams. I still wanted to have a semi-balanced team—you never know which of your picks will be bust, and you want to be as redundant as possible—but it's not as high of a priority. My result (team roster posted at the end) was kind of a half-punt on stolen bases to finish in the middle of the category as opposed to the top third.

FAAB Reclaims: While this doesn't affect draft strategy as much as the other two, you can accrue extra FAAB if one of your players gets injured and you drop them. A minor silver lining if you lose an early arm, but could play into a tiebreaker-type role if weighing the likes of Hunter Greene, Shane McClanahan, Cole Ragans, and other hurlers with a history of arm injuries.    

Two Ohtanis: I took advantage of this one (perhaps) by taking the pitcher version of Shohei Ohtani in the 7th round, between Joe Ryan and Jacob Misiorowski. That felt like a decent price—Ray even made a comment in the live stream that he liked the pick… always feels good. I'm not sure how many two-start weeks Ohtani will get this year, but our projection (131 IP, 2.95 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 168 Ks) would be a boon where I took him.

---

Unlock all of our insights on your way to a fantasy title! See what our season-long coverage offers and then subscribe to BaseballHQ.com.

---

2: OBP can make a huge difference. 

The OBP factor is a big one. Heck, I drafted Kyle Schwarber in the first round because of it. Using Custom Draft Guide settings for 15-team mixed leagues, here are the biggest risers and fallers in projected $ value in OBP leagues vs. batting average:

RISERS			FALLERS
Player	OBP $	AVG $	Player	OBP $	AVG $
Judge, Aaron	55	42	Arraez, Luis	7	18
Soto, Juan	48	35	Wilson, Jacob	9	18
Ohtani, Shohei	44	35	Turner, Trea	22	29
Schwarber, Kyle	31	22	Diaz, Yainer	11	18
Trout, Mike	20	11	Harris II, Michael	10	17
Muncy, Max	10	2	Clement, Ernie	-2	5
Tucker, Kyle	33	26	Hoerner, Nico	10	16
Acuña, Ronald	36	30	García Jr., Luis	6	12
Raleigh, Cal	29	23	Tovar, Ezequiel	5	11
Devers, Rafael	23	17	Sosa, Edmundo	-2	4
Happ, Ian	17	11	Peña, Jeremy	13	18
Chapman, Matt	16	10	Edwards, Xavier	11	16
Ozuna, Marcell	12	6	Bichette, Bo	11	16
Alvarez, Yordan	24	19	Simpson, Chandler	9	14
Grisham, Trent	10	5	Sanoja, Javier	-5	0

It's a bit of a mental curveball to re-evaluate these hitters in OBP settings, but as usual, use data (and our projections!) to help guide that thinking.

3: Expensive relievers, and the SP4 debate

A common theme this draft season has been the exorbitant price of relievers, particularly at the top end of the pool. That seeped its way into Tout Wars, though to a lesser extent than what we've seen in NFBC-style drafts. Mason Miller and Edwin Diaz went in the 3rd round, I joined the party with Jhoan Duran early in the 4th, and sure enough, five more relievers were taken before my next pick in the 5th round (in order: Cade Smith, Andres Muñoz, Devin Williams, David Bednar, and Aroldis Chapman). I'm resigned to the fact that this is the price of admission, as I don't want to be throwing FAAB money at relievers all season. I followed up Duran with a 9th round Emilo Pagan, who went with five other relievers in the 9th-10th round. Maybe a double-tap in those two rounds would have been a better move?

Another common theme is “who is this year's SP4”? The market sees a clear “Big 3” in Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, and Paul Skenes… then we usually see a slight pause on pitching until the wave of SP4 candidates goes off the board. Tout Wars was no different, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto went late in the 2nd round, followed by Cristopher Sánchez, Logan Gilbert, Hunter Brown, and Bryan Woo in the 3rd. 

4: The “Gianella Effect” 

One rule we didn't mention at the top of this article—and I admittedly didn't realize until during the draft—is that there is no innings minimum in Tout Wars Mixed. Mike Gianella of Baseball Prospectus used this to craft his draft strategy. Mike took all relievers: three closers (Muñoz in the 4th; Fairbanks in the 7th; Walker in the 11th) and followed that up with six more middle relievers, five of which were his final five picks in the draft.

Will it work? We'll see (obviously), though it may be more viable in deeper -only formats. Mike was able to use the extra draft capital from not drafting starters to build an elite offense. If his pitching goes as planned, he'll have 47 pitching points (15 in saves, ERA, and WHIP; 1 in strikeouts and wins), which could easily lead to a triple-digit roto total if the offense comes through. 

5: My own team turned out… ok?

Here's the damage from the 14th pick:

Favorite pick: Max Muncy (10th round). I'm buying the production he put up after getting glasses in April, and he's OBP gold in an elite lineup. Just stay healthy, Max. Honorable mention to Mike Burrows (20th round), who I flagged as a This Year's Drew Rasmussen candidate in the Speculator last week. 

Least favorite pick: Willy Adames, who's kind of a boring, plug-and-play shortstop. Shortstops were flying off the board in this draft—as they usually do—and it felt like I got caught in the run, not wanting to miss out. Adames is fine; this just felt a bit early.

We'll see how things play out, but if I can't win the league, I hope to at least have HQ bragging rights over Bubba and Ray!

More From Rotisserie