Rudy is the co-founder of Razzball and the wizard behind the Player Rater, Stream-o-nator, and most other statty things on the site.
Razzball Point Shares are now up for the following 5×5 league formats:
Point Shares are our proprietary methodology for ranking players. See here for a primer. If you’re in a rush or don’t care to read a methodology post, these rankings estimate a player’s impact on a team’s points vs.
Please, blog, may I have some more?We here at Razzball take a perverse, Nelson Muntzian joy in pointing out the failures and shortcomings in fantasy baseball and baseball in general – whether it be identifying overrated players (see Grey’s Fantasy Schmohawk series), highlighting historically bad seasons (see my Historical Spotlight series), or just talking general smack about players in our daily roundups.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Last year, I did an analysis searching for indicators that can help predict which pitchers are most likely to miss extended time due to injuries or have a huge dropoff in performance. I followed that up with a post where I chose 20 Risky Pitchers for 2009 with the ambitious goal that 12 of the 20 would either fail to throw 2,000 pitches in the next season or see a FIP increase of 0.50 or higher (note: for the analysis, I’m switching to xFIP which is a new addition to FanGraphs and adjusts fly balls to the league average HR/FB rate).
Please, blog, may I have some more?We’ve posted the first version of 2010 Razzball Point Shares (also available via the 2010 Fantasy Baseball Rankings header). For end of year 2009 Point Shares, please click here.
This first version is based solely on CHONE projections except for Saves which we added (CHONE doesn’t estimate saves).
Please, blog, may I have some more?It must be remotely close to a new fantasy baseball season as the Fantasy Roundtable returns from a couple months of dormancy.
This week’s Fantasy Roundtable is being hosted by the roundtable creators over at FantasyPros911 – the only fantasy baseball blog that my namelganger Rudy Giuliani reads.
Please, blog, may I have some more?We have now posted the 2009 Point Shares for 12-team MLB leagues.
For those unfamiliar, Point Shares are our home-grown methodology (inspired by Bill James’ Win Shares) for rating fantasy players. They represent the estimated difference in an average fantasy team’s points if they were to substitute a given player for the average player at his position.
Please, blog, may I have some more?It’s the beginning of a new year. Time to reflect on the year that has passed. Time to make resolutions in the new year. Time to hope the Baseball Hall of Fame voters make a resolution to vote better.
Last year’s nomination was a mixed bag for us. Only one of our 5 nominations made it in (Rickey – the other four were Bert Blyleven, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, and Tommy John) and one of our ‘nays’ made it in (Jim Rice). For those who missed our HOF analysis from last year, we do our best to create objective parameters for measuring success at a specific position/role. Rather than focus on just a player or just those that are on the ballot, we look at all players that filled a specific type of role and analyze everyone outside the Hall of Fame to unearth any perceived injustices. Last year’s analyses were on (with returning nominees in parentheses):
Starting Pitchers (Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris)
Leadoff Hitters (Tim Raines)
Middle of the Lineup Hitters (Mark McGwire, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker)
This entry is going to focus on middle infielders since there are two prominent middle infielders that are on the ballot for the first time (Roberto Alomar, Barry Larkin) and one returnee for review (Alan Trammell). We’ll review Fred McGriff and Edgar Martinez at another time (betting they’re not going to make it this year).
Please, blog, may I have some more?Note: Besides providing advice and news on fantasy baseball, we at Razzball created and sponsor a fantasy baseball variation where the goal is to manage the worst team possible. These Historical Spotlights honor those players who would’ve excelled in such a format.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yovani Gallardo (IP count, young arm), Ross Ohlendorf (ditto) & Michael Young (hamstring) are the latest players being ‘shut down’ as teams outside the pennant race start playing for 2010. Don’t they realize that every player is part of at least thousands of fantasy baseball pennant races? For the 99% of you in non-keeper leagues, dump these guys for someone who might actually compile some stats this next 10 days or so. Some other (hopefully slightly less obvious) observations…
Kevin Correia – While most Dodger, Giant, and (surprisingly) Rockie starters lived up to the fantasy SP adage of “When they’ve drafted the best, go NL West”, San Diego pitchers have been big disappointments this year. Peavy, Cristal (Chris-Tall) Young, Chad Gaudin, etc. The one pitcher who lived up to the adage has been SF discard Kevin Correja who threw 7 shutout innings yesterday and has a respectable 4.08 ERA, 11 Wins, and 130+ K’s for the year. Imagine how much better his stats would be if he got to face the Padres!
Please, blog, may I have some more?I’d like to dedicate this opening paragraph to one of our 2008 faves Mark ‘Mini-Donkey’ Reynolds as he reached 200 Ks and is poised to shatter the previous record of 205 Ks set by the very same Mark Reynolds last year. (Luckily, he’s also shattering his record for Runs, HRs, RBIs, and SBs too.) We are tempted to call up MLB to ask how much it would cost to sponsor a Razzball Windmill of the Year Award. It’s got to be hard to fail that much and still have the overall success that Reynolds is having this year. It’s like that guy in the bar who comes onto 10 girls out of his league and then scores with the 11th. You have to be impressed with his triumph but the 10 failures are, in their own way, more impressive. Anyway, kudos to the Grand Diamondhack and onto the rest of what’s going on…
Derek Lowe - D-Lowe forfeited a favorable start tonight when he left after two innings (and 3 ER) with a blister on his ring finger. Luckily the blister isn’t on his little finger or his thumb or he’d really be in dire straits.
Please, blog, may I have some more?