Overall Razzball Commenters’ League Winner

Drumroll, please…. Mowses!  You have $50 worth of Taco Bell coupons coming your way. (Give me your email in the comments.)  Don’t spend the coupons all in one place.  Really, don’t.  You’ll get very sick.  And whatever you do don’t order a black taco.  I think I know how they decided on this new taco.  “We need to cut back on the quality of our meat.”  “But it’s already the lowest grade we can find.”  “Right, so what’s the best way to take the focus off of a downgrade in the meat?”  “Make the taco look disgusting.”  “I got it, a black taco!”  Enjoy, Mowses!

Overall Fantasy Razzball League Winner

Congratulations, Jay!  Taco Bell Coupons will be coming your way too.  (Give me your email in the comments.)  Get the black licorice tacos, I hear they’re wonderful!

15 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Tim of RotoRob, 2nd place.

Recap – Came down to .002 on average between us and number one.  (Everything was real close though; coulda gained a few points in WHIP with a .02 gain.  Or a few points in ERA with a .05 gain.)  We had some tough breaks — lost Peavy, Beltran, Hawpe and Ibanez in the 2nd half of the season.  Beltran was filled in by The Big FraGu, which is not a push, but it’s pretty close to a nudge at least.  Peavy was filled in by Kevin Correia (on our team, Correia had 72 innings and a line of 5 Wins, 1.88 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP).  We were stacked at starting pitching anyway because of some good drafting/trading — Gallardo, Haren, Josh Johnson and Randy Wolf (that’s stacked in a 15 team league).  Well, we don’t want any of these recaps to sound like crying over spilled milk.  In the end, as John Kruk said, the first place team wanted it more.

12 Team, mixed league, 5×5 (with OBP/SLG instead of AVG/HR) ; host: FSWA, 2nd place.

Recap – If we tried to put a “no excuses” vibe forward on the last recap, we’re not here.  We had excuses.  On this team, we lost Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran/Quentin. This team was in shizzambles for about two months. We clawed our way to first for a second in September, but we didn’t have enough gas to finish the race and ended up getting a second in October.

16 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo! Roto Arcade, 5th place.

Recap – This team was the one that was in first by 15 points a little over a month ago.  In this league, we got freakin’ 3 points in Wins.  In 1319 2/3 innings, we won 65 games.  In the entire month of September, we had only 8 wins.  2 Wins a week.  You can do the math on how awful that is.  Oh, wait, that’s right, no excuses.  As with just about every team we owned, we lost Beltran here too.  Oh, then with a little over a month to go, and the power categories locked up, we traded Prince Fielder for Nyjer Morgan and Heath Bell.  We were really excited about this trade.  Honestly, when it went through, we thought this might get us the league win.  If Nyjer stole 15-20 bases in the last 40 games and Bell saved 10 games, we were golden.  Nyjer stole two bases for us in 3 games and went down for the year.  Bell did fine, but it didn’t matter.

10 Team, mixed league, Razzball format (worst team wins); host: Us, 2nd place (Grey’s team).

Recap – This was just Grey’s team.  I was so far out in front from April until the next to last week of September that I can’t believe I lost this league.  I mean, in over 5000 at-bats, my team only hit 79 homers.  That’s one homer every 63 at-bats.  That makes Brian L. Hunter shudder.  On the flip side, in 1729 and 2/3 innings, my pitching gave up 1030 runs.  That’s a 5.36 ERA.  Yeah, that Razztastic.  So, I didn’t lose this league, R.J. from Fantasy Baseball Cafe won it.  (Oh, in the overall standings, I beat Rudy.  Natch!)

12 Team, NL, 5×5; host: FantasyPros911, 1st place, 5 points in front.

Recap – Yes, Grey beat me in the Razzball league (aka worst team wins), but I brought home the lone 2009 Razzball pennant with a win in my first try at a classic one-league, $260 budget format.  It wasn’t easy as my May-September lead looked like a fleeting affair after Dick Santino jumped past me in the beginning of September and seemed a lock to win until the last week.  How’d I do it?  Looking back at my post reviewing my draft, I can’t pretend I had all the answers in the beginning of the year.  I just spread my fantasy dollars as far as it could go by drafting quantity instead of quality.  Despite having some bad injury luck (Volquez, Conor Jackson, Maine, late-season pickup Harang), having awful Win and AVG karma (2 and 4 points, respectively) and spending $40 on two painfully regressive catcher seasons (Russ Martin and Geovany Soto), I overcame it with the following good values: Mark Reynolds ($14), Jorge Cantu ($15), Michael Bourn ($8), Andrew McCutchen ($3), Randy Wolf ($3), Huston Street ($8) & Ryan Franklin ($4).  I’d take credit for drafting ROY-candidate J.A. Happ for $3 if I wasn’t dumb enough to drop him before he won the starting job in May.  Other big pickups/trades included Jonny Gomes (20 HRs in 255 ABs), Joey Votto (for Uggla and Ryan Franklin), Matt Holliday (a monster 2 months), LaTroy Hawkins (10 early saves), and Brad Penny (3 wins in 5 starts down the stretch).  Best part is that the winner of the league gets a cruise for two and I’ll make Grey buy me margaritas on the cruise.  Not sure what will be more delicious – the margaritas or the irony.

10 Team, mixed league, worst team wins; host: Us, 3rd place (Rudy’s team).

Recap – I came into this year as the defending champion but got beat up in the first month with ridiculous starts by Brandon Inge and Marco Scutaro.  At one point, I jumped ahead of eventual 2nd place finisher Paul Moro of UmpBump.com but soon fell back to 3rd place for good as Paul and Jonathan Halket of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus smoked me.  I did finish 9th out of 88 in the grand standings but I probably could’ve edged closer to 6th if I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel during August/September (holy -124 points from a streaky J.D. Drew!).  I even lost out the bragging rights of drafting the top points recipient as my 1st round pick Michael Bourn (415 points) was just nipped by Jeremy Guthrie (418 points).  Ugh…

In the Razzball Commenter League, Mowses (Home Plate Security) and Mil Mascaras (Tequila Two Step) are separated by a mere .46 points at the top. This looks like a two person race at this point as 3rd place PWNightmare is 9 points behind but crazier things have happened (see Lou Pinella benching Jake Fox to f*** my NL-only team).

In the Fantasy Razzball League, we don’t have quite the photo finish shaping up as Jay’s Willy Wonka crew continues to treat the field like a bunch of petulant Veruca Salts with his crop of bad eggs. His 7,077 points is over 600 points ahead of 2nd place Jonathan Halket of THT Fantasy Focus. The only race of note is whether my team can nip Grey’s for a 2nd straight year. Despite a couple weeks of letting a move and a vacation take my eye off the team, I’m only about 100 points behind him, residing in 9th to his 7th. I will be championing my inner Spaceball and flip the switch so my teams will go from suck to blow (apologies to those of you directed from search because of that coin of phrase).

There’s been a big shakeup in the RCL Standings as previous leader Cruz Control (commenter Anthony) has dropped all the way to 7th as his Gorditas Supreme divisionmate Tijuana Two Step salsas into first.  The new leader – helmed by an unidentified manager whom we’d like to think is ex-WWF star Mil Mascaras – has a whopping 113 points (out of a possible 120) and actually has potential to gain a couple points in the last month.  A look at the masked manager’s Active Stats show that top teams don’t have to get every top draft pick right as Grady Sizemore, Matt Holliday, and David Ortiz are all relative disappointments.  Killer picks like A-Gonz, Joe Mauer, and a three-ace staff of Wainwright, Vazquez, and Beckett definitely helped as did key FA pickups like Kendry Morales, Andrew McCutchen, Ubaldo Jiminez, and Tommy Hanson.

Mowses (Home Plate Security) remains in 2nd with PWNightmare (Halie Selassie Lions of Judah) hopping three spots to 3rd.  Slidenfail ftw and Widespread Panic leapfrogged 10 and 7 spots respectively to crash the top 10.

As for the Fantasy Razzball League, Jay (Willy Wonka) has established a near insurmountable 600+ point lead on second place Jonathan Halket of THT Fantasy Focus.  Paul Moro of UmpBump has chumpbumped his way from 6th to 3rd while Grey and I are now only one spot away from each other in the standings (Grey – 7th, me – 8th).  While it’s sad knowing I’ll have to relinquish last year’s Razzball crown, I hope I can at least have bragging rights in the Razzball office.

BTW Grey, you really need to clean the break room fridge – I know you love your SAGNOF but it doesn’t stand for “Spaghettios Are Great Nasty Old Food”….

15 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Tim of RotoRob, Currently in 1st place, 1 point in front.

Key Pickup – The Big FraGu has a line of 8/4/13/.341/2 so far on our team.  Get well soon!  I fully expect him to be dropped from this team by the next time we do an update, but so far so genius.  Also, two days before Ramon Hernandez went to the DL — but about two months after he was viable — we used our waiver claim and grabbed Napoli.  He’s hit two homers so far for us.  Not really sure why he was dropped in this deep of a league, let alone why he fell to us at 14 out of fifteen teams in the waiver process.  But we’ll take it.

Debilitating Loss – Carlos Beltran will be a recurring theme in our debilitating loss slot for all of our teams.  So far in this league FraGu’s held up his end of the bargain.

16 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo! Roto Arcade, Currently in 1st place, 14.5 points in front.

Key Pickup – Garrett Jones.  Need I say more.  Okay, I will.  I wish I grabbed Jones in every league I was in.  Even in my league that only use players with the last name Rzepczynski.  BTW, Garrett Jones was dropped and we needed to use our waiver claim for him, so if you wanna Razz my leaguemates in the comments, go for it.

Debilitating Loss – Jones filled in for Beltran here.  Also, we lost Kelly Johnson, but that probably helped us, even if EverCab and Lowrie have been less than ideal.

12 Team, mixed league, 5×5 (with OBP/SLG instead of AVG/HR) ; host: FSWA, Currently in 2nd place, 3.5 points out of first.

Key Pickup – On this team, we lost Jose Reyes (actually we never had him because I made the boneheaded trade of Adam Dunn for him around the time of the Mets first lie saying he’d be back tomorrow – which was almost two months ago), then we lost Carlos Beltran/Quentin, then lost Bedard (have since traded him), then had to deal with owning Gerardo Parra for three weeks.  This team was in shizzambles for about a month.  (At the last update we were down to 4th. We fell to 8th at one point.) But we scrambled and made some trades.  I sent Broxton and Bedard away for Carlos Lee and sent Scherzer away for Bourn.  Luckily, we had a 20+ save lead on the pack and were able to do the Broxton trade, while hurting in steals and Scherzer can’t get passed the fifth inning so the 2nd one seemed like a no-brainer.  (The Reyes trade was supposed to help with steals, obviously it did not.)  Right now, I’m proudest of this team because of how hard of a struggle it’s been. When this team tanks again, it will again be the redheaded stepchild.

Debilitating Loss – Did you miss the Key Pickup section where I went over how many guys we lost?

12 Team, NL, 5×5; host: FantasyPros911, Currently in 1st place, 9 points in front.

Key Pickup – This is Rudy’s team. (I’m merely a consultant.)  I can’t speak for Rudy, and he’s off in some far away world doing spy stuff, but I will wonder aloud on this.  Fantasy Pros 911 did about 16 updates of this league on their site when they were in first.  I don’t think there’s been one since they dropped to 8th.  Cust kayin’.

Key Trade – Rudy just sent Huston Street packing for Stephen Drew.  When trading any closer for a top SS in an NL-Only league, you gotta love that.  Especially when you’ve got about two times the saves as 10 of the other 11 teams.

Debilitating Loss – Rudy’s in first, and that’s with Conor Jackson, Volquez, Maine, and Soto being hurt.  Oh, and Rudy dropped J.A. Happ for Eric Stultz.  But Rudy’s a huge fan of the movie Mask.

First up, the Fantasy Razzball League. Jay – a Razzball commenter – is ahead of a pack which includes 30 bloggers and 50 other participants. The rest of the top five are Mike Podhorzer from FantasyPros911 (who is overdue for a league update in our NL-only league), Jonathan Halket of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus, our own Grey Albright and Razzball commenter Freak in 5th. I’m in 7th place and it’s going to take a ridiculous 2nd half to try and defend my Fantasy Razzball title from last year.

In our Razzball Commenter leagues, there’s a 3-way battle for first with Anthony, Mowses, and an unnamed entry whose team goes by ‘Tijuana Two Step’. All three are above 100 points in their 12 team leagues which is pretty damn impressive. The craziest part is that Anthony and Tijuana are in the same league with the next team nearly 30 points out. The team known as “I said You’ve Got No Game’ is in 4th followed closely with Rhymenocerous (no sign of Hiphoppotamus), PWNightmare, ThirdandKing, and Doc.

Here are a few blogger shoutouts for those that are still battling in the Fantasy Razzball league:

R.J. White from the Fantasy Baseball Cafe is just outside the Top 10. For those unfamiliar with the Cafe, it’s full of lively debate and the perfect place to take a date if your date is your right hand. I personally like the brick wall on the home page – makes me feel like I’m at some 80’s comedy joint like the Chuckle Shack or Giggles.

The Fantasy Baseball Junkie is lurking just outside the Top 20 – like a sugar junkie loiters in the back of a Dunkin’ Donuts when they chuck the old batch. The Junkie has some good advice and definitely showed some prescience predicting Nyjer Morgan and Scott Hairston would be traded only a couple days before they did.

15 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Tim of RotoRob, Currently in 1st place, 12 points in front.

Key Pickup – If I sat here (and I am indeed sitting) and told you I’ve made some great pickups to mollywop into first, I’d be more or less lying.  In the past month, I’ve picked up Tony Pena, Dan Wheeler, The Dread Pirate and Dallas Braden to varying degrees of success, but they haven’t done all that much.  Steal here, vulture win there.  As a recurring theme with all my teams, Captain Fancypants for this team is/has/hopefully will be Mark Reynolds.

Debilitating Loss – Oh, Peavy, I give and give and give and you hurt me.  Now I know how Ben Affleck feels about movie critics.

16 Team, mixed league, 5×5; host: Andy Behrens of Yahoo! Roto Arcade, Currently in 1st place, 14 points in front.

Key Pickup – I picked up Edward Mujica, Jon Rauch and David Murphy, but if anyone outside the Mujica, Rauch or Murphy family considers them key pickups, I’d like some of what they’re smoking.  (Mujica, Rauch, Murphy — We don’t just do immigration law, we’re illegal!)

Debilitating Loss – The loss of Lidge and Frank² has put a slight damper on my saves.  Casey Kotchman went down some time in the last month too, but that’s just given me an excuse to not bench Branyan, which has probably been for the best.  Thanks, Kotchman!  May you contract some social anxiety disorder!

12 Team, mixed league, 5×5 (with OBP/SLG instead of AVG/HR) ; host: FSWA, Currently in 4th place, 6.5 points out of first.

Debilitating Loss – First, I lost Carlos Quentin.  Then a few days before Jose Reyes was supposed to return, I traded Dunn and Theriot for him.  Since then, I’m in a tailspin trying to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet of Gordon Beckham, Adam Kennedy, Sean Rodriguez, Tony Gwynn, Mark Teahen, Luke Scott, Gerardo Parra and Ben Francisco.

Egregious Pickups - See 1/8th of an inch above and my schmohawk tourniquet.

12 Team, NL, 5×5; host: FantasyPros911, Currently in 2nd place, 2.5 points out of first.

NOTE:  Hey all this is Rudy.  I’m writing now since I’m the sole manager of the next two teams.  I co-manage the other teams but Grey only knows how to write in the first person so you’d never know it.  (To his credit, he does most of the short-term adds/drops – he’s better at that than me)  Anyway…

Key Pickup – In a 12-team NL league, there’s not a lot of great pickups to be had.  Given my top two OFs coming out of the draft were Conor Jackson and Cameron Maybin, it’s been shopping off the OF bargain bin all year.  With draft-day stash Andrew McCutchen joining Bourn & Rasmus as respectable starting OFs, I’ve managed to get at least some performance out of 4th OF types Tony Gwynn, Jonny Gomes and Delwyn Young.

Debilitating Loss – See Conor Jackson.  I’ve survived so far without Edinson Volquez and John Maine but hopefully they come back soon as I can pick up a few points in Wins with a good week or two.

Dizzying Pickups - With a plethora of relievers (F-Cord, Street, Franklin, Hawkins) and a crappy team AVG, I packaged Franklin w/ Uggla to get Joey Votto…..right before he went on the DL.  Ugh.  Hopefully he’s back next week.  But if Votto does come back strong and I get something this year out of bench players Conor Jackson, Cameron Maybin, Jesus Guzman (SF) or Jake Fox (trade him to the AL already!), my team’s looking pretty damn good.

Here are the league standings if you’re interested.

12 Team, mixed, H2H points; host: Rudy’s friend, Currently tied for 1st at 9-1

Here’s the background on this one.  A friend of mine at work cajoled me into this league.  It’s ESPN’s default points structure for head-to-head leagues (1 point per Run, Total Base, RBI, and SB.  -1 for a hitter K.   3 pts per IP, 1 pt per K, 10 pts per Win, 5 points per Save, -5 pts per Loss, -1 per hit/walk, -2 per Earned Run)

On the plus side, I like it better than H2H leagues where you compete on the 10 categories.  Those always felt fluky to me.  It’s been a lot of fun trash-talking with my opposing players (especially since I’m chillin’ like Matt Cain at 9-1).  And I’ve never had a team on a better starting pitching run than this team – Verlander, Jered Weaver, Cain, Beckett, Cueto, Wandy, and Broxton!

On the negative side, it feels like the game is too dependent on pitching.  The average start gives positive points so teams are incented to max out their 12 starts.  With wins being worth twice a save, relievers are devalued vs. starters.  So if you’re going to play this format, draft a LOT of 2nd/3rd tier starters as SP depth is more important than having an ace or two at the top.  On the hitting side, it’s just a downer that a HR is worth only 1 point more than a Triple – I’d add a HR bonus.

Key Pickups – I swapped out Gordon Beckham for Jose Lopez in the middle of the week and his series @ COL this weekend helped me get the win.  I picked up Luke Scott when he got off the DL and he’s put up nearly the same amount of points in 16 games as Garrett Atkins had in 43 games.  In a league with perhaps 50-60 SPs owned, snagging Ubaldo Jiminez for a complete game victory was pretty sweet.

Egregious Drops - Dropping Ian Stewart.  I just got tired of him clogging up my bench during his May swoon.

Your leagues are here – Fantasy Razzball and Razzball Commenter League – updated almost every Sunday night!

Unfortunately, ESPN doesn’t do midseason fantasy baseball leagues, so we’re not able to do a master standings (which was updated yesterday) for the midseason leagues. (We need to be able to access the leagues to do a master standings.) So the only real incentive to join one of these leagues is you’ll get some worthy competition.  And, as someone who has dabbled in free leagues before, they suck with eleven other random doodes that you can’t talk trash to or rely on to be present.  So I’ll open up the comments to you guys (and 3 girls) to form leagues here if you like.  I suggest mixed leagues, 12 team, 5×5, 5 OFs, 9 pitchers, 20 game eligibility.  I believe Yahoo’s midseason fantasy baseball leagues begin June 22nd, so you need to act fast!

If interested, please contact the commissioner — Josh — iamjoshlacey [at] gmail.com

In our Razzball Commenter League, the top three have been consistent for several weeks.  Anthony G leads the pack by 7 points as he has a remarkable 111.5 points out of 120 in the Gorditas Supreme division.  You’d think the division would suck but the overall league performs about equal with the rest of the divisions.  ThirdandKing and Mowses are the other two teams over the 100 point mark in their leagues and own the 2nd and 3rd slots. I thought it would be interesting to see what players were on more than one of those teams.  No player was on all three; here are those on 2 of the top 3: Adam Lind, Adrian Gonzalez, Mark DeRosa, Shin Soo-Choo, and Zack Greinke.  Most of the other likely prospects you’d expect show up on one of the teams like Ibanez, Broxton, Nelson Cruz, etc.  Perhaps we’ll do a test on the top 10 and bottom 10 teams to see who are the lucky and cursed players…. As for notables in the rest of the top 10, a pack of commenters have risen into the top 10 over the past 2 weeks:  VanHammersly, Rhymenoceros, NoonTime, and PWNightmare.

In the Fantasy Razzball league, Mike Podhorzer of FantasyPros911 still is in the lead with Razzball commenter Jay and Jonathan Halket from The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus in 2nd and 3rd, respectively.  Only three players of note made it on two of the three teams:  Emmanuel Burriss, Brian Anderson (White Sox), Shane Loux.  Just goes to show there are many ways to both skin a cat and to assemble a crappy fantasy baseball team.  Other notables in the top 10 include the Razzball duo of Grey (#4) and myself (#7).  Razzball commenters ZK & Freak, and fellow bloggers RJ White from the Fantasy Baseball Cafe and Paul Moro of Umpbump.com.

Here are a few more shout-outs to the participating blogs.  We appreciate them putting their reputations on the line to compete against bloggers and commenters in our little masochistic game:

Melissa from the ESPN Podcast “Play Ball with Amanda and Melissa“.  This is the podcast that is ‘by women, for women”.  I’ve tried the blog and found it to be strong enough for a man.  I’m not sure why they haven’t had Grey or I on as it’s a well-known fact that more females visit our site (3) than any other fantasy blog.

Lee Perrault from RotoSavants - This blog is run by Troy Patterson and has been our friend since he came with us to Vegas and counted cards for us in blackjack.  Lee has held his own in the league so far, lingering just outside the top 10 for the past couple of weeks.  Luckily, rosters are finalized on Sunday nights so it doesn’t interfere with Monday night fish stick dinner.

Tirico Suave -  One of the funnier sports blogs around, Tirico Suave took the bold step of referencing an ESPN anchor as part of their blog name.  Loved this post/screenshot and it makes me want to buy MLB ‘10 The Show to see what it says about Conor Jackson and Joey Votto.

15 Team, mixed league, roto; host: Tim of RotoRob, Currently in 4th place, 9.5 points out of first.

Key Trade –  Moved my Heath Bell and Huston Street for Dan Haren and David Aardsma.  This trade isn’t quite as lopsided as it seems because at some point I needed to make the hard decision between C.J. Wilson on waivers or holding Aardsma.  I went with Wilson because Morrow was just pitching poorly and Frank Frank was actually hurt.  In hindsight, I would’ve held tight, but hindsight has Wade Boggs vision.  Anyway, the trade is still in my favor because I’d still want Haren over Street and Bell.

Key Pickup –  Michael Bourn.  No idea where the guy from last year went, but someone’s been *pinkie to mouth* re-Bourn.

Egregious Pickups — Ah… Where do I start?  Actually, this reminds me of a valuable insight that you’re all going to enjoy.  No need for your thinking caps either; I’m thinking for you!  All of my terrible pickups (Hochevar, Grabow, Julian Tavarez, Shawn Hill, Wang and Anthony Reyes) and I’m still less than one good week out of first place.  This shows you that you can take fliers on guys as long as your core is fine.

16 Team, mixed league, roto; host: Andy Behrens of Y!, Currently in 3rd place, 17.5 points out of first.

Key Trade — I’ve only made one trade, sending Elvis Andrus and LaTroy Hawkins for Julio Lugo and Ian Stewart.  I still like my side better, but it’s basically a push so far.

Key Pickup — In a 16 team league (this one is much deeper than even the 15 team league with more outfielders and bench spots), there’s really not much out there.  My best pickup so far is Randy Wolf.  Yee-haw!

Egregious Pickups — Again, there’s been quite a few.  Most of the same schmohawks as the other league as I tend to like the same guys across leagues.  And end up disliking the same guys.

12 Team, mixed league, roto; host: FSWA, Currently in 1st place, 2.5 points in front.

Key Trade — I’ve made one trade and it happened today.  Pending approvals, I receive Jose Reyes for Adam Dunn and Ryan Theriot.  It’s an OBP league, so Dunn has a lot more value than in a regular league.  I’m hurting most for steals and Reyes should correct that problem.  I plan, nay, hope Reyes goes on the DL and misses a few weeks.  This way he returns to doing what he do by July at the latest.  I figure July through October of Reyes will be all I need for steals and can play a waiver guy at shortstop for the next few weeks.  Since this is only 12 teams deep, there’s waiver guys to be had.

Key Pickup — LaTroy Hawkins.  This league I had a few things working for me that actually worked against me thus far.  I’ve been in first for 95% of the season, so I didn’t want to mess with success (Isn’t that a Deepak Chopra book?) and I had a solid core of pitchers (F-Her, Wandy, Wolf, Bedard, Scherzer, Papelbon, Rodney and Broxton) so I couldn’t grab closers or starters as I like to do.

Egregious Pickup – Kenshin Kawakami, Spaz and Cameron Maybin didn’t do me any favors, but they were all drafted.  Haven’t had any egregious pickups in this league, because I haven’t needed to take many gambles thus far.

Your leagues are here – Fantasy Razzball and Razzball Commenter League

For those unfamiliar with ‘Fantasy Razzball’, it’s a fantasy baseball variation where you aim to manage the worst team possible.  (See here for rules).  We expanded from one Blogger league last year (won by me – suck it Grey) to 6 10-team divisions:  3 blogger leagues and 3 commenter divisions (note:  we may actually have some satellite leagues – need to check on this).  We then compile a total standings based on each team’s total points and an index based on league performance (basically, it’s total points of league divided by average league points).

The standings can be found here.  For future reference, we have a link to this page in our Razzball Leagues section in the top left of the homepage.

Big shout-out to the top 3 so far:

1) Mike Podhorzer of FantasyPros911.com

2) Grey Albright of Razzball

3) Freak of the Razzball Commenters

27 and rising) Rudy Gamble of Razzball (still smarting from Brandon Inge and Marco Scutaro’s hot starts)

As part of these standings posts, I’m going to throw a few shout-outs to the participating blogs.  We appreciate them putting their reputations on the line to compete against bloggers and commenters in our little masochistic game.  Here it goes:

Jonathan Halket of THT Fantasy Focus – Jonathan writes for The Hardball Times’ Fantasy Baseball section and currently is leading the Jose Lima Division (of which I am in).  Definitely some strong content throughout that whole site – ranging from very statistical to smart but entertaining (e.g., Shysterball).  From his post-article bio that states “Jonathan Halket is graduate student in New York”, I have learned two things:  1) Jonathan Halket is in graduate school and 2) He is not studying English.

Paul Moro of UmpBump – Paul is one of a stable of awesome bloggers at what would’ve been Billy Martin’s second favorite blog after Razzball (Billy would’ve appreciated Grey’s ’stache).  Rather than copy/paste his whole bio, I figured I’d just copy his picture and give you the link to his bio.  If you’re a baseball fan beyond the fantasy aspect, definitely check out this site.

Cory Humes of MVN – Cory – who is also in my FantasyPros911 NL Blogger league – has a leg up on everyone in this game as he’s a diehard Pirates fan.  Cory’s too busy overseeing MVN these days to post some entries on Pirates Revolution but I’m looking forward to his coverage of the Pirates’ inevitable Razztastic slide this year.

That’s it for now.  We’ll try to keep these standings updates posts coming every 2 weeks and update the standings at least that often.  We’ll change the date on the standings page when we update it.