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Monthly Archives: September 2021
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Another 3 day holiday weekend and boy I like it. Plenty of sports on fantasy football drafts in full force, NFL season starts in a few days and playoff baseball on the horizon it's a great time to be alive for sure. We have about a month left in MLB DFS so let's not stop now and see what we have here on this beautiful Labor Day. It's a robust 12 game schedule today and the pitcher that stood out to me is Chris Sale ($10,700).
Chris has looked great since his return to the mound and faces the Tampa Bay Rays today at Home where he has started 3 out of his 4 games this year and is 3-0 with a 1.04 WHIP. The Rays struggle against lefties and Sale pitched well against them last week in a start in Tampa and don't see any reason why he doesn't go 6-7 INN once again with upside to strikeout close to double digits and give up one run or less. He is the most expensive pitcher on the slate but I believe he is worth the chalk today and the Red Sox win this one handily.
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Yesterday, Salvador Perez hit his 41st homer. Today, you get a Salvador Appreciation Post, or SAP. You might be asking yourself the same as every Y! Answers when you google SAP, "How do I turn SAP off?" You can't turn it off. It's going into your eyeballs and, with each passing word, it becomes harder to turn back. If you remove all pitchers, the top home run hitter in the major leagues is Salvador Perez, a catcher. What a year for fantasy, is what I say right before I wander into traffic wearing nothing but a potato sack. "If you remove all pitchers, the top home run hitter in the major leagues is..." is the funniest thing that's ever graced this site. That a catcher is the next best home run hitter is just a cherry on top of this season. "Wow, I can't believe I can draft Cody Bellinger in the 2nd round this year," that's what the apparition floating next to me keeps saying, because I'm haunted. Salvador Perez is in one of those situations that I thought would benefit Juan Soto too. There's no one in that lineup with Perez, so why not pitch to him? The only difference between Soto and Perez is about .440 OBP or 90-ish walks. If you knew someone like, say, Perez would swing at anything, wouldn't you throw him nothing but junk in the dirt? For Sal Perez to hit 41 homers, he should've only saw 41 strikes all year. Alas, no one wants to tangle with Benintendi, apparently. For 2022, I continue to cackle in a jar and seal it quickly like it's a lightning bug. Only I plan on releasing those cackles in 2022 when someone drafts Salvador Perez in the top 25 overall next year. Anyway, here's what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Another week of great baseball is in the books. Pennant and wild card races are in full swing and every inning matters right now. For fantasy owners, the same can be said. The playoffs are here for most of us so every roster move matters. Every start matters, if you want to reach the pinnacle of excellence in your league, and more importantly bragging rights. With that said let's not waste any time and see what's on tap for pitching this week.
But first, Injury news and notes. Max Scherzer is expected to make his return Monday just in time for a 2 start week. Alternately, another Dodger is looking like he'll require an IL stint in David Price after being scratched from his start Friday. Jacob deGrom is not close to a return to the mound so don't get excited. Jon Gray, however, could return from the IL this week so monitor that. Austin Gomber will miss the rest of the year with a stress fracture in his back. Lucas Giolito hit the IL with a hamstring injury this week. Kyle Freeland will return to start Monday. Also, Aaron Civale will return Monday to start for the Cleveland Indians. And lastly, Michael Pineda is expected to return from the IL Monday and piggyback Bailey Ober's start. That's the news now let's get to the rankings. Good luck to your teams!
Back in the day, Schwinn was synonymous with bicycles the way you say Google when you have a question. So yeah, I'd be pedaling my Schwinn to my buddy's house, then he'd hop on his Schwinn and we'd round up the whole crew and go Schwinning around town. Think of the streets of Los Angeles flooded with Teslas. That's how it was back in the day. One day, I was pedaling my Schwinn then decided to try and peddle my Schwinn. English is freaking unnecessarily difficult at times, no? Anyways, many of us have been pedaling one Frank Schwindel of the Chicago Cubs, as he's been en fuego, slashing .315/.360/.608 with a .292 ISO, and nine home runs in 139 plate appearances. As a result, he's been added in 9.5% of ESPN leagues. So am I here to peddle Schwindel to you? Let's find out.
Top 25 Fantasy Second Basemen for 2021 – Week 23
September 5, 2021 | Second Basemen | 3 Commentsby: Jakkers
Trying to figure out Brandon Lowe is like a day trader trying to figure out when to buy or sell a stock. At the beginning of the season, everyone should have been selling Lowe stock. But based on past performance, they were still buying.
Once they were convinced he was a failed commodity, Lowe stock was being sold and he could be a cheap buy, but he likely cost you a lot while you held on to him. However, if you are the type of investor who plays the long game and doesn't get caught up in the day-to-day highs and lows or if you were able to get Lowe when his price had bottomed out, then congratulations! Because right now, Lowe is carrying your team.
Throughout the season Lowe has produced home runs and RBI. Through June, he had 16 homers and 38 RBI. But he also had slash lines of .182-.301-.364 in April, .196-.312-.380 in May and .241-.337-.542 in June. Lowe also racked up 97 strikeouts in 263 at-bats - a strikeout percentage of 37 percent! But over the last two months, Lowe has been a beast at the plate. In July he slashed .288-.416-.616 with six homers, six doubles and 14 RBI in 22 games. Last month he hit nine double, nine homers and drove in 26 runs in 27 games while slashing .262-.328-.598.
Why the turnaround at the plate, at least when it comes to his slash line? The answer is pretty easy - his strikeout rate. In 180 at-bats in July and August, Lowe struck out only 48 times, a strikeout percentage of 27 percent. That is a 10 percent improvement compared to the first three months of the season. Yes, today's game doesn't penalize players for striking out. The easiest way to beat shifts and score runs is to just hit balls over the fence.
But putting the ball into play still matters, and Lowe is showing what happens when you put the ball in play. In the games Lowe has played this season, Tampa Bay is 79-48, and in those 79 wins, Lowe's slash line is .248-.366-.520 with a strikeout percentage of 30 percent and BABIP of .283. But in the games the Rays lost, his slash line is .190-.256-.430 with a strikeout percentage of 38 percent and a BABIP of .218. The Rays - and your fantasy team - are at their best when Lowe puts the ball in play.
Fantasy Baseball Streamers, Week 23: Ride the Wave
September 5, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Two Start Pitchers | 5 Comments
Last week was far from my best showing. While we got some good performances from Nestor Cortes, Ranger Suarez, and Steven Matz, the other guys were terrible. Avoiding blow-ups is the most important thing when evaluating these streamers, and I didn't do well enough last week to avoid that. It has me as motivated as ever to bounce back here, though, so let's go ahead and get into it!
Our first Sunday in September and last one before the NFL season starts means time is running out on MLB ’21. Before I start getting sad, let’s look under the hood at the 10 Main Slate games and see where we can build from. Please, blog, may I have some more?
Prospect News: Cleveland’s Cody Morris More Careful Than Jack Morris
September 5, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 17 Commentsby: The Itch
I’m working through my final Top 100 update of the regular season, aiming to post it next Sunday, and it’s been a lot of fun so far. After grinding through a much quieter and quicker 2020 season, it’s amazing to me how much an actual season of baseball can change our perspective on prospect world. Earlier this year, we didn’t know if we’d have the Dominican Summer Leagues at all, and the lower level complex leagues were little more than a fuzzy possibility in the eyes of prospect diehards. With the development ladder of baseball reshaped but functional again from the ground up, the full picture of our game is coming into focus. Let’s start with a couple DSL standouts on the cusp of ascending the bottom rung.
Hitter Profiles: To Believe or Not Believe…Something About a Question
September 4, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Hitters | 4 Commentsby: Jeremy Brewer
With a month left in the fantasy season and the fantasy playoffs just ramping up, it is time to look at a few players that are trending different ways in the stat sheet. To do such a detailed analysis, we can certainly look at the key luck drivers such as batting average on balls in play or maybe even home runs per fly ball. But here at Razzball, we like to go deeper so we have pulled out the lucky rabbit foot, horseshoes, magic eight balls and our four-leaf clovers. Using all these tools we have determined one thing; Lou Gehrig was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Maybe that was just listening to a quote from 1939 or the same analysis we will use here to review a few players moving in different directions over the past month in Trey Mancini and Tyler Naquin. Who do we sell? Who do we hold? Who do we buy? Let us find out!
These last two weeks have been a bumpy ride in many bullpens. We've had COVID issues, regular old injuries and wear down, and some long-awaited blow-ups. We're into the final month of the slog that has been a return to 162 games. If you've made it this far you probably feel like a bomber returning from The Battle Of Berlin with more than a few holes. There are likely to be continued opportunities for new faces in the saves chase every day. Straighten up and fly right!
FanDuel: Ho-Lay Mahle
September 4, 2021 | 2021 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel | 2 Commentsby: MattTruss
Congratulations, you made it to the weekend. This time next week, the NFL will have kicked off and the MLB will be an afterthought to all but the most hardcore of MLB DFS degenerates. So, let’s enjoy the final weekend of pools filled with fish before they all start throwing their money at NFL contests. We’re going to kick this weekend off with some Tyler Mahle ($9,600). Mahle gets to take on the terrible Tigers, they of the bottom ten team OPS and top five in team strikeouts. Mahle, meanwhile, has been incredibly useful rocking a 10.6 K/9 and a 3.64 ERA. The Reds shouldn’t have any trouble knocking Matthew Boyd around to get Mahle a win either. I’ll be locking Mahle into a good portion of lineups tonight and hoping to make some cash before contests start shrinking.
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!
