If you're a hardcore baseball fan, you've probably already mulled through your fair share of 2020 MLB mock drafts. It seems like every website worth a damn posts one, yet no one really knows what to expect, and it only takes one curveball to throw the entire equation out of whack. Even so, I figured I'd give it a try for Razzball's sake, if for no other reason than to give Grey some spicy motivation to tune in on Wednesday night. See, now it's a mock draft.
There's a lot of uncertainty with this draft. Nobody knows for sure just how college heavy teams are ultimately going to go with the unique situation created by COVID-19, and which teams will elect to play the strategic bonus tomfoolery game. It's difficult to project just how these factors will play into each and every team's respective strategy. We might see more teams than ever taking on the "best-available" approach.
But as it relates to fantasy baseball, Wednesday's draft is relevant because it sets the stage for the ensuing trajectory of every drafted player's stock as a prospect. Not only does draft position tend to influence how people value prospects in first-year player drafts, but who drafted said player can also go a long way in determining what their Minor League journey will look like and how confident we are as fantasy owners that they will develop successfully. That being said, here is my carefully-concocted mock draft of the first 29 picks this upcoming Wednesday. Mush! Onward into the unknown!
Monthly Archives: June 2020
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A calendar page flies off and we follow it to the ground. We can't quite make out the date on it yet, then the wind whips up hard and slams the page into a screen door. There, it ominously flaps against the screen door and we see the date. It reads...*dramatic sting*...March. Grey picks, because he's writing this in third person, the piece of paper off the screen door and casually reads it. Slowly, across his face, a dawning of hell, it's March 98th, 2020! AHHHHHH!!! Screams echo out--*shoots up in bed* Oh, wait, it's June, 2020. Haha, silly dreamscape of hell. You're so dumb, subconscious brain. Go back to hiding amongst all my baseball knowledge and factoids. So, today, I bring you my 1,789th Dart Throw, Daniel Vogelbach. Just think, by September, I will have profiled every baseball player as someone to draft. If only you were in a 30-team league with 178-man benches. Shucks, really. I kid, of course, because any day now we're going to find out whether or not there's gonna be a baseball season. I do believe a 100-game shortened season is still possible, but, ya know, they kinda need to figure shizz out sooner vs. later, and it's not a great look when the MLB wants to play less baseball. So, what can we expect from Daniel Vogelbach for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
I've only been loosely following the counterproposals MLB and the MLBPA are exchanging. Where are we at now, 200 to -38? How does a negative game take place? Only position players are allowed to pitch and only pitchers get to hit. You thought that was cute before, huh? It seems like the most likely season is 50 games, which would be wild. Stats like steals are going to be so very hard to manufacture. I'd suggest streaming rabbits against pitchers that can be run on from the jump, to be honest. Here are the worst pitchers when it came to stolen bases yielded per inning in 2019.
Craig Mish (@CraigMish), host of the Swings and Mishes podcast joins the show to breakdown the Miami Marlins. We discuss the veteran loaded lineup. Can guys like Corey Dickerson and Jesus Aguilar bounce back and have a monster season? Will Jonathan Villar carry over his success from Baltimore? We also dive into the young, but promising rotation. Can Sandy Alcantara be the work horse of the rotation? Can Pablo Lopez and Caleb Smith take the next steps to stardom? Their farm system is loaded with talented guys like Sixto Sanchez and J.J. Bleday leading the way. We discuss all these questions and more.
On this week's Patreon podcast, we welcome, Ben Sisto, artist, curator and star of the documentary, Who Let The Dogs Out. Yes, as in the song. *insert barking* The documentary -- available on Hulu -- Who Let the Dogs out -- tells the story of Ben Sisto and how he went looking for the origins of the Who Let The Dogs Out song. You ever Google one topic on the internet like "What's so great about Britain" and five hours later find yourself watching someone make homemade tortillas? That’s what this documentary feels like in some ways — what started from an innocuous moment on the Wikipedia page of Who Let The Dogs Out sent Ben on a 10-year odyssey to find out, finally, who, actually, let out the dogs.
The Rule 4 Draft kicks off this Wednesday! Time to get amped for an actual sporting event!
Or not. I mean it’s your call. Would totally understand if you’re so irritated by big-wig greed you can’t pretend MLB doesn’t suck at being a professional league for a couple of weeknights.
2020’s will be a supremely weird draft, but I’m geeked for it. I’ll post a mock draft here midday Wednesday, after which I’ll continue these rankings. I know some leagues like to do their First-Year-Player Drafts immediately after the July 2 signing date for international amateurs (in a typical season), so I figured the time was right to start synthesizing the talent trickling into our game this summer.
Deep Thoughts: Smith Is A Short-range Firearm
June 6, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball | 15 Commentsby: Coolwhip
Caleb Smith is not an ace. I will put that out there now, and assuage any comment bombs. However looking at a short season, and for funsies, considering an MLB proposed 50-game season that looks closer and closer to reality as the days grow longer, we are now looking at finding value in possibly 2 months of games, bleh. With a long grinding season becoming a short sprint, I was curious about fast-starting pitchers while continuing research on the hitter-side. To my surprise, there was 1 name that appeared in the Top 20 K% for starting pitchers from April–May over the last 2 years outside of Grey's Top 100. That name is indeed Caleb Smith.
Now I know what you are thinking, Smith is kinda sun-dried garbaggio as the season wears on so why are you bothering me with this pincushion? I get it. But hear me out! If the season continues to shrink and we see 2 months full of games, you can spin the wheel of mediocrity and possibly land on a short-term ace. He doesn't have to be Mr. Right, just Mr. Right-now-while-we-have-games (for 2 months). And those kinds of aces come in spades, Mr. Kilmister. One of which could easily be our boy, Caleb.
Super-duper Post Hype Sleeper – The Smoak Monster
June 5, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball | 2 Commentsby: Richardo
We're heading into month three of quarantine and my wife and I are running out of shows to binge. So we're revisiting one of our favorites in Lost. Secret time - we got our son's name from the show, not from the Mark Twain novel. We've watched the full series at least four times through and the thing I love is how well they developed the characters. Sure, by the end there are plenty of unanswered questions, but I love the ensemble and I love how flawed every character is. Since my mind is back on "The Island", I decided to look into The Smoak Monster himself, Justin Smoak. Entering his age-33 season, is a return to fantasy relevance in the cards for Smoak who batted a paltry .208 in his final season with the Blue Jays, or will he be scratched off Jacob's candidate list?
Eric Cross (@EricCross04) from Fantrax joins the show to dive into this years prospects and MLB draft. We discuss his top 10 highlighted by Wander Franco, Luis Robert and Jo Adell. We also go over guys he thinks could work their way into the top 50. Julio Rodriguez or Jarred Kelenic? We look at the loaded Seattle Mariners farm system and who we think could become the next wave of MLB stars. Eric gives us his top 5 draft picks and why that organization will take them. Who goes first overall? Spencer Torkelson, Austin Martin, Nick Gonzales.
This is a less-than-straight-forward dart throw. "Watch your head! Incoming dart!" Mostly because Rowdy Tellez has a minefield of playing time concerns. I don't fully trust Travis Shaw, even though I predicted he'd win the NL MVP in 2019. That never stops getting funny. You can mock me about Delino DeShields Jr. You can call me a giant dope for five years of adulation over Josh Rutledge and Ian Stewart. You can even say I might've been a little goofy about loving German Marquez last year. But calling Travis Shaw my preseason NL MVP selection is so off-the-wall bonkers in retrospect, even I have to shake my head. How many players qualified for the 2019 NL MVP? 300? 400? Well, I think he finished dead last. Yo, Grey, you are smart in the opposite sense of that word. Any hoo! Travis Shaw is blocking Rowdy Tellez. At worst, Shaw is a platoon player, which hurts Tellez and Shaw, and, in a shortened season, I don't want any part of any platoon player, outside of daily leagues with bench hitters capable of filling in. In a shortened season, maximizing at-bats is going to be critical. Optimism for Rowdy Tellez will also incidentally hurt Teoscar Hernandez, another dart throw, and Derek Fisher, who I like more than most (and might Dart Throw too). As Karens say, something's gotta give, as they snap for help at nail salons. If Rowdy plays 1st base and Shaw gets DH, Fisher goes to the bench or to the outfield in place of Teoscar. Not great for those other guys, but Rowdy can be interesting in his own right. Audience screams, "Tellez something we don't know!" I'm about to. So, what can we expect from Rowdy Tellez for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a great dart throw?
Determining what truly constitutes as a sleeper is an age-old debate. Take Duke's Bryce Jarvis from the 2020 MLB Draft class. About two months ago, I ranked him 15th in my top 25 college fantasy baseball prospects while other 'perts' were tabbing him with third round status at best. Was he a sleeper then? Maybe. Is he now? No, because he's risen all the way to No. 25 on MLB.com's top 200 rankings. How about Pete Crow-Armstrong in this year's class? Is he a sleeper if he indeed falls to the latter half of the first round? Maybe he goes in the twenties and we spend the next 20 years comping the prep schooler's draft fall to that of Trout's in 2009 (unlikely, but you get the point). And what about your 57-year-old Uncle Ed who just passed out on his La-Z-Boy after pounding five Millers and ghosting a Juul hit? Now that is a true sleeper my friends.
For this segment, what qualifies as a sleeper is this: a player sitting outside the top 50 2020 MLB Draft prospects according to both MLB.com and Baseball America who is considered a long shot to be drafted in the first round by the industry consensus (with bonus pool tomfoolery, we can never ensure who won't be a first rounder with 100% accuracy). Out of this group of players, I have selected several which I believe will outperform their draft position as a future professional. I then separated these players based on where I anticipate they will be selected in this year's five round draft: early, middle and late.
But wait! It gets better. I've even expanded into the high school prospect pool by including one, yes you heard that right -- one -- prep prospect in this post. Although the college circuit is my specialty, I feel confident enough in my knowledge of the high school crop to dig into a name here and there. If you're playing in a dynasty league and looking for some high-upside deep finds in this year's draft to target moving forward, look no further. And wake up Uncle Ed while you're at it. That guy needs all the help he can get.
B_Don and Donkey Teeth are back to talk some college prospects leading up to the MLB Draft with 2 resident Razzball prospectors, Hobbs and The Itch. We start by discussing the newest proposal from the MLBPA and how a shortened season might affect our willingness to play in high stakes leagues.
Then, we move on to discuss Hobbs's top 10 college prospects. We start with at the top with Spencer Torkelson, the projected #1 pick. Hobbs and The Itch talk us through what kind of profile we can expect from Torkelson and whether they'd have a comparable asset from last year's draft, Andrew Vaughn. We then ask our prospect gurus to give us some information on the top college pitchers including: Reid Detmers, Emerson Hancock, Max Meyer, and Asa Lacy.
Our analysts then move on to discuss how this different season could affect this, and future, drafts along with how a minor league system may look down the line. Finally, we wrap up with some Jasson Dominguez talk to find out if he's worth all of the hype.
