2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft

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Fantasy Baseball Look At WAHHAW

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, 2009 Sleepers, Hot Stove Rumors | 17 Comments

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That’s a Fantasy Baseball Look at the signings or trades of Randy Wolf, Bobby Abreu, Aaron Heilman, Rich Hill, Andruw Jones and Ty Wiggington.  And, yes, I couldn’t resist the palindrome.  I’m real late to the discussion on some of these.  Not because I didn’t hear about them, but I just didn’t feel like they warranted immediate attention.  So here’s a fantasy baseball breakdown for these offseason signings and trades:

Ty Wiggington – Last year at 2nd base he was nice to have.  At 3rd base this year, he’s okay.  I’d slot him in between 21 and 25 on the top 20 3rd basemen for 2009 fantasy baseball.  I’d prefer to take a flier on someone like Gordon or Sandoval though if you’re that deep into the position.  This acquisition hurts Luke Scott’s value, but Luke Scott hurts Luke Scott’s value anyway.

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Grey

Top 20 Middle Relievers for 2009 Fantasy Baseball

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 33 Comments

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No, this is not the bottom of the Top 20 2009 fantasy baseball rankings barrel.  No, next we’re not going to do the Top 20 Guys Who Will Have The Most Balks.  Chillax.  It’s one post.  The only fantasy baseballers (<–my Mom’s phrase) that seem to pay attention to Middle Relievers are those that play in a Holds league.  This is wrong, I tell ya.  A great way to balance out your ratios is by carrying a few middle relievers on your staff.  (BTW, Ron Jeremy can carry three middle relievers on his staff.)  Say you had Aaron Harang last year and he mistook your team’s ERA for his toilet, but you also had Waking Joey Devine.  With just Harang, you had the unsightly dump of a 4.78 ERA.  With Devine and his brand new toilet brush, you had a 3.95 ERA.  Voila, snitches!  If you also carried Brad Ziegler, you had a combined 3.36 ERA.  Not to mention, you had saves when Ziegler took over for Street.  Middle relievers can also help balance out your junky closers.  Okay, school’s out, Alice Cooper.  Anyway, here’s the top 20 middle relievers for 2009 fantasy baseball:

1.

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Grey

Top 60 Starters for 2009 Fantasy Baseball

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 24 Comments

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After I posted the top 40 starters for 2009 fantasy baseball, there was a public outcry in the comments.  Where is so and so?!  It was as if I butchered their bunny rabbit like the Roger and Me lady.  No one’s butchering your bunny rabbit, friend.  Your bunny rabbit’s fine.  Unfortunately, I don’t think your bunny rabbit’s a top 40 starter.  Your bunny rabbit, friend, is a top 60 starter.  How’s dem carrots?  BTW, while the 2009 fantasy baseball rankings are the gospel, they aren’t set in stone.  I update them occasionally.  Anyway, here’s the top 60 starters for 2009 fantasy baseball:

41.

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Grey

Razzball Commenter Leagues

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 323 Comments

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It’s that time again.  No, not time to take a whizz.  It’s time to join some fantasy baseball leagues that you abandon by June 1st and then pretend to never visit the site again that sponsors them because you’re a scared baby inside that ten inch crust of orange Cheetos stain.  That’s all right, we here at Razzball have figured out a way around all of you nogoodniks sucking the fun out of our 2009 fantasy baseball leagues.  We’re going to have a bunch of leagues and crown a winner from each, then we’re going to crown ONE winner from all of the winners.   We will be be crowning the winner by taking each team’s points and multiplying it against a ‘league competitiveness factor’.

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Grey

Closer Look

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Closers | 22 Comments

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It’s time to take our beginning of the month look at all the major league closers.  Before we get to that, I want to clear up a potential misconception.  Donkey-corns are not the only closers I’ll draft for my 2009 fantasy team.  I’ll more than happily draft closers from the Brain Freeze category.  Cause, see, I’m a save vulture.  It is what it is.  I’ll take saves from anywhere, except probably from the $12 Salad category.  I think those guys are great.  I just don’t believe in paying for saves.  I said “probably” because at the right draft spot, everyone’s worth looking at it.  Some of these closing jobs aren’t finalized just yet.  That wouldn’t stop me from grabbing both guys if I had room and the price were right.  Just because everyone thinks Brandon Lyon should be the closer doesn’t mean Fernando Rodney has no place on a team until Leyland makes a formal announcement.  Anyway, here’s all of the closers for your 2009 fantasy baseball draft, as of right now:

$12 Salads

You know that restaurant your girlfriend/wife/what-have-you likes to go to that charges, like, $12 for a salad?  Every time you go there, you have a thoroughly solid meal.  No complaints, except you just paid $12 for a salad when you could’ve went to McDonald’s and stuffed you and your woman for ten schmools and had $2 in quarters left over to make the hotel bed vibrate.  These closers are $12 salads.

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Grey

2009 Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Top 20 Closers

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 40 Comments

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Phew.  The 2009 fantasy baseball rankings come to a semi-close with the top 20 closers for 2009.  (I say semi-close, cause I will tweak them from time to time and I’m going to have a top 100 and 300 overall soon too.)  The top 20 closers are a bit different than all of the other lists.  The closers on the top of this list you should not draft and there are closers that aren’t on this list that you should be targeting.  The 2009 projections are a bit wonky too since you can’t predict how many saves a closer is going to get.  I mean, you just can’t.  To the point where some well-respected projections…ers don’t even attempt to.  Saves come down to opportunity.  Also, I’ll have a separate post shortly for every team’s closer.  For a broad idea of where players are in relation to each other, see the 2009 Fantasy Baseball Player Rater.  Anyway, here’s the top 20 closers for 2009 fantasy baseball:

1.

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Grey

Wandy Rodriguez, 2009 Fantasy Sleeper

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, 2009 Sleepers | 56 Comments

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If you do like moi (That’s French.  Face it, I’m cultured like yogurt.), you’ll avoid top level starters at your 2009 fantasy baseball draft and you’ll try to find value later on.  Hey, I really like Roy Oswalt! And I like Wandy Rodriguez, what’s it to ya, random italicized voice?  Last season, Wandy Rodriguez finally put together a season that hinted at his respectable minor league numbers and suggested he might be someone to look at late.  To stick with the French theme, let’s take out a scalpel and dissect this frog.  So could Wandy Rodriguez be a 2009 fantasy sleeper?

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Rudy Gamble

20 Risky Pitchers for 2009

| 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy, Rudy Gamble | 49 Comments

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This post picks out 20 starting pitchers who look like risky propositions in 2009.  It leverages findings from our analysis of previous year pitch counts and how this information can help predict a pitcher’s chance of breaking down (defined as less than 2000 pitches which is ~ 120 IP) or performance drops (0.50+ increase in FIP) in the following season.

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