As many of you know, Tout Wars is a special league that brings together the nation’s leading fantasy baseball writers and experts each year in competition. If you haven’t heard of Tout Wars, we highly recommend Sam Walker’s enjoyable book, “Fantasyland: A Season on Baseball’s Lunatic Fringe” for more details.

Over the weekend, participants took part in three auctions for three leagues (AL-only, NL-only, and Mixed) in New York City. Here are the results of the auctions, interesting to see as a window into the bets that experts are making this year. Of course, all auctions are different, and pricing is dependent on a number of unique factors, but we still see some bids that provoke a little bit of eyebrow raising. For example, here’s a look at some relative pricing on hitters in the mixed-league auction:

Is Mauer’s injury woes enough to make him no more valuable than Bengie Molina? Is there any difference between Mike Jacobs and Carlos Pena? Is Manny Ramirez the second most valuable outfielder in the Dodgers lineup? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the relative pricing on pitchers in the mixed league format:

Some interesting valuations above. We’ll be eager to see how things turn out. Right now, according to projections, Yahoo’s Andy Behrens comes out on top, with a roster that will depend on the success of youngsters like Matt Wieters, Cameron Maybin, and Justin Upton,  as well as a well-balanced pitching squad. One trend we’ve noticed in the early going heading into the 2009 fantasy baseball season is that teams with Carlos Beltran project extraordinarily well, stacked against competition. We offered one possible reason for Beltran’s statistical superiority in an early post, and we tend to think that Beltran is undervalued this season, even as a 2nd round pick.

Of course, being a preseason MVP doesn’t necessarily add up to much.