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Roto-Wan is at the Jersey Shore this week, home to the iconic reality show of the same name. Much like the cast of misguided Jerseyites our MLB season is already riddled with disease. I won't depress you with talk of how this kind of travel and interaction is a slap in the face of a contagious virus. COVID will do that enough. I'm here to try and catch up on the widespread bullpen carnage of this very early season. Hopefully, you headed my advice and discounted closers in your drafts. Now's the time to plug those holes. You've got plenty of options. Unlike the guys that settled for going home with Snookie.

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Sun 5/18
ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | OAK
Everyone else having as much fun as I am now that baseball is officially rolling? Soto, Kershaw, Verlander, Moustakas, Meadows, Yordan, Marlins fans all shake their heads. Secret time - I started writing this Opening Night and the list just kept growing. We're in the second part of the extended Week 1 and hopefully, you're already cruising in your matchups. If not, here are some lower-owned options to give your team a little jump start. Brady Singer, SP: 8.1% ESPN; 17% CBS - Just in case you missed it over the weekend, Brady Singer struck out 7 Indians through 5 innings, while allowing 2 runs. The second run was allowed on a wild pitch and he allowed just 5 baserunners. Singer moved rapidly through the Royals' system, throwing exactly zero pitches in AAA before making his major league debut. In his debut, Singer coupled a two-seamer with a lot of movement with a slider to keep hitters off-balance. At one point, he threw the slider ten times in a row, so he shows a lot of confidence in the pitch. Singer is slated to face Detroit on Thursday, making him an easy start this week and a potential add target for the long run.
What is up party people? Here we are with real live sports. Welcome to the 60 game sprint which means that fantasy baseball has turned into one long DFS contest. Good thing you’re here at Razzball to get some DFS advice and dominate your contests. We’re down a few players today owing to the recent spike in Covid cases in Miami. We’ve got some big time pitching names on the docket today, but as we’ve seen so far guys are still getting warmed up. My advice is to not overspend on pitching since guys don’t seem to be going deep into games yet. I wouldn’t fault you for taking one of the studs but I think your money is better spent on bats. So buckle up and party on. New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!
Yesterday, the Mets debuted their 2017 1st round pick, David Peterson, and he went 5 2/3 IP, 2 ER, 9 baserunners, 3 Ks. Here's bit of tid on him:  Tall dude, stands about 6'6". *standing on my chair, arm up in the air* About yay high. Fastball velocity sits *gets off chair, points at my framed picture of Angela Lansbury* low 90's. Slider and curveball are *looks around to illustrate, points at colored-in Denny's placement of a cowboy, realizes that won't be enough, takes crayon and draws a cape on the cowboy* That's a super okie. As in okie doke. C'mon, that was an easy one. So, lots of okie-doke usually equals okie-dookie, but he has solid command, so he might be a four to five real-world starter, which makes him good for Streamonator in shallower fantasy leagues. In a short season, there could be some value here. He should at least limit damage, as he did last night in Fenway. Also, Prospect Itch wrote about 500 words on David Peterson in his 2020 Mets fantasy baseball prospects writeup, and only one overt threat directed at me. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
When I was a young pup, say around eight years old, my pops entered me into the Mt. SAC Relays, which was and still is to this day an annual track and field festival. I had never run before. I didn't have cleats. I was dressed in a freaking izod polo shirt for goodness sakes. I still remember it being the red one. Later in life, I asked my pops why he did it. He answered, "I wanted to see how fast you could run." LOL. For full disclosure, my pops was not a degenerate gambler. Anyways, it was actually a cool experience running in a stadium with people for the first time. And I held my own, which meant not coming in last place. My most distinct memory of that race, though, was a fellow who jetted from the starting line and galloped his way around the track. We ran the 800m race, which is two laps around the track. And said fellow almost lapped us. I've never been in awe of someone running before. Which brings me to this fantasy baseball season. It's not the marathon we are accustomed to, but it's not a 100m dash either. It's going to consist of a few laps around the track. Normally, I would eschew hot starts because of the length of a normal season and the fact that the rest of the league would have time to figure out and humble hot player, but these are not normal times. 60 games. That's it. A player could get hot and remain hot for the entire season! One player who's sprinting out of the gate is Kyle Lewis of the Seattle Mariners. In 13 plate appearances, Lewis has clubbed two homers with a slash of .364/.462/.909. The sample size is obviously small, but I'll dig into the data and try to find nuggets that will show whether or not the hot streak is sustainable.
Happy Opening Week, folks -- I'm exhausted as I've had more to do over the last week than I had in the previous four months combined, but I'm not complaining!  Let's get right to what we're here for... a look at some under-the-radar players (all of the following guys are 5% owned or less in CBS leagues, and let's just say the pickings are slim when using that metric) who might be of interest to those of us in AL-only, NL-only, and other deep leagues as we navigate the weirdest baseball season ever.
With only four-ish days of games so far, the RCL overall standings don’t amount to a whole lot, we’ll get those running in full force for next week.  In the meantime, I thought we’d finally take a look at all the draft data we collected over the period known as the longest draft season of our lifetime.  Our very first draft of the season was way back on March 1st, in the before times.  Our final draft was July 22nd.  During those 143 days we drafted 77 Razzball Commenter Leagues (four more than last season!) and 463 different players.  It’s been a long time coming and it could be short lived, but we’ll be here for every bit of the MLB season that we can piece together.  If you didn’t get in on the fun, well, there’s always next year, we hope!  For now, let’s crunch some numbers on our RCL drafts.
Welcome back to 2020, home of the Black Swan event, home of the brave, but less brave if you're required to wear a mask. Here we are, less than a handful of days into the season and we already have a true outbreak. Grey and I jump into all the current madness, before putting the problems aside to dive into the debut of Brady Singer, the forthcoming debut of one Nate Pearson. We talk some strong early showings and cuddle at the end to calm our fears of a world without baseball. It's the latest episode of the Razzball podcast with all the feels.

You are commended for persevering through all 2020 has thrown at you thus far, and doing your best to enjoy whatever remains of this baseball season. Baseball may be weird at the moment, but baseball is here, at least mostly. As of this writing the Orioles and Marlins game is already postponed, and who knows what else the day will bring us. But most of baseball is here. So let’s make this a super Tuesday, and enjoy it by doing what we do best: ~dominating DFS.

Read below to see how we’ll do it.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Live for today. That's what they tell me. "They" are BASE jumpers, so I'm not listening to them, which is why I'm living in a bubble with the NBA players. "Hey, LeBron, where can I get some bubble tea?" "Ah, man, I hear ya, players be gossiping like crazy." "What are you talking about? I want boba." So, the Marlins vs. Orioles and Yankees vs. Phils had to be canceled due to an outbreak within the Marlins' clubhouse. The Marlins couldn't play back in Florida vs. the O's, and might've infected the Phils' visiting clubhouse, so the Yankees weren't going in there. All in all, a totally well-functioning pandemic. By which I mean, it's terrible for us, but this virus is doing well for itself. "Manfred, man" hasn't been uttered so much since "Blinded By The Light" was a hit in the 70's. Now PPD stands for Pandemic Please Desist. Right now, the MLB is waging an age-old war:  Everyone's safety vs. Capitalism. Not to impersonate the Garbage Pail Kid, Nihilistic Ned, but capitalism usually wins that. Of course, don't misunderstand my glibness for not caring (that sounds like a Common lyric); I'm just trying to be real with you. As for fantasy, I moved all Marlins, Orioles, Yankees and Phils out of my lineups until further notice, and tried to bench all Marlins in my weekly leagues. As they say, WHEEEE!!! Again, "they" are BASE jumpers. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

July 27-August 2, 2020

We're watching baseball again! I'm watching baseball again! The Japanese and Korean and Taiwanese people, well, they've been watching baseball for like a month because they stayed home instead of going to Uncle Johnny's Cinco de Mayo party. Be a hero, wear a mask! This top 100 starting pitchers series is, as David Bowie would stutter, Ch-ch-ch-changing. For the duration of summer training, I treated readers to a daily update in the Top 100 Starting Pitchers while they went through their draft boards. Feedback on the constantly updated list was super-positive for the most part, because most sites weren't providing news links and sleeper articles and rankings--all updated daily--in one spot. Now that drafts are finished, I'm shifting back to the usual weekly updates. It'll be like Friends used to be, before you could watch it 24/7 on every streaming platform and TV network.
On the one hand, it's unbelievable that Opening Week happened at all. On the other, it's a mad mad mad mad world Sid Caesar would love. Juan Soto, you're out! Clayton Kershaw, you're out! Anthony Rendon, you're out, but Mike Trout is back in! We've got masked players sometime, then other times standing next to each other chatting and laughing at first base. We've got players spitting, as if that wasn't going to happen. We've got Angel Hernadez strike zones when we were hoping beyond hope that he would be one that would opt out, instead of one of the few we would depend on. As will likely be the case all season there will be big shifts in this week's rankings. On top of all the above info the Yankees look healthy (for now), and the Blue Jays are settling Buffalo. What?! I'm bumping the Jays just because they'll feel a little better now actually having a home. Even more because most of the team had a great time in Buffalo in the not too distant past. Also because, I mean, I love Duff's, beef on weck, the Anchor Bar and tailgating at Bills games, but there's much less of a chance of catching Covid in the quiet nightlife of Buffalo. With an expanded playoffs you would think all the players who have half a chance would stop messing around and get to work, but you never can tell. You can find last week's controversial list here. Here are some of the movers for this week, followed by the list: