RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 9

Trea Turner came and went, Luke Gregerson finally got the boot and James Shields became the first big piece to move as the White Sox fancy themselves a contender and made a proactive trade.  That was just the beginning of the fun that was had in week 9 of the fantasy baseball season.  We really only care about two of these headlines for RCL purposes, as no one whose team isn’t abandoned has been owning James Shields this year.  Nothing changes with a move to a (much) more hitter friendly park.  Turner illustrates the frustration with stashing rookies.  We talked about this a little last week and then Turner got the call, started the first game he was up and only went 3 for 3.  The nerve!  He didn’t hit a homer or even steal a base.  His punishment?  He was benched for the next two games of his call-up and then sent back to Syracuse.  Now, we wait some more, while continuing to burn a roster spot.  The nice thing Turner has going for him is he plays at second base, which is  a dearth of talent.  On the flip side, waiting on a player like AJ Reed, that could be a problem.  While your leaguemate is stashing Reed, you could be streaming Mike Napoli and/or Logan Morrison while they’re hot and be raking in more HRs than the Reed owner could hope to see in a best case scenario.  While you were stashing Reed, the guy rostering Mike Napoli was using that roster spot to hold Will Harris this whole time…that burns.  Especially since you own Luke Gregerson…double burn.  It’ll be fun (not fun) to see how that whole mess shakes out with the Astros save shituations.  I have to believe it’s only a matter of time before Ken Giles (who was waiver fodder a mere 3-4 weeks ago) is the man in the 9th inning.  I expect a lot of Ken Giles/Will Harris trades in the coming weeks in the RCLs.  Sticking with the Astros RCL news, Evan Gattis is now just two games shy of earning the coveted catcher eligibility.  Some were speculating it could take Gattis a month to earn that tag, but thanks to Jason Castro’s illness, that pace got accelerated in a hurry.  If you’re hurting for power, like the majority of my teams seem to be this year, I’d look to make a move for the Catch-162 ASAP. Here’s what else went down in the RCLS in the week that was Week 9:

‘PERTY ‘PERTS

Each week we’ll peek in at our resident ‘perts & other industry names to see who is laying claim to best “expert” RCLer in the land.  We’ll take notes, check the standings and generally stalk them.  Click the heading above to check out the ‘Perts League home page and follow along.

The bigger the Magoo, the harder they fall they say.  Here in the ‘Perty ‘Perts league we have the biggest Magoo of them all and he just went down hard (from first to third) at the hands of outsider, Team McLeod and local prospector, Ralph Lifshitz.  Team McLeod gained 12 points this week to pass Ralph and kept on marching to the top.  How did they accomplish this feat?  A 24 HR week that featured an 8 HR Tuesday didn’t hurt much.  Neither did great games from Madison Bumgarner, Jacob deGrom, Jon Lester, Michael Fulmer and Marco Estrada (a very ballsy play vs. the Sawx in Fenway!).  Meanwhile, Big Magoo hit half as many HRs this week and had 30 less RBIs which led to a 6 points drop.  It was quite the week for offense around the league as we’ll see later.  If you weren’t on the right side of it, there were no doubt some big drops in the standings.  Ralph was able to keep pace with McLeod and at least didn’t lose ground on the leader.  Ralph’s squad clobbered 23 HRs of their own and drove in 66 RBIs (4 less than McLeod).  Ralph’s pitching was great as well and he gained 6 points of his own and now sits just 2 points out of first.  The view might have changed for Ralph as he looks up at first place today, but the goal remains the same.  Rudy and Grey, ever the models of consistency remain locked into 4th and 5th respectively this week.  Jay Wrong joined Big Magoo as the biggest loser of the week, also dropping 6 points.  It was JB however, who joins Big Magoo as the biggest drop in the standings this week.   He too fell 2 spots from 6th to 8th.  JB probably wishes he had Carlos Gonzalez back right about now.  At least Jake McGee has chipped in 10 Saves for him along the way.   JB is in danger of falling into last in the league in HRs however.  Power tends to be a much more difficult hole to climb out of I find.

TOP 10

For those too lazy to check the MASTER STANDINGS, I present to you, the current top 10

Apologies for the lack of a top 10 last week, the long weekend wreaked havoc on Razzball HQ.  We’re all good now though and will briefly touch on the past two weeks of standings.  Last week we saw MauledByPandas squad, Samuel Colt Debate Team (you guys need any guns to help sort this out?), take over first place overall.  This week however, it’s more of the same as Simply Fred recaptures his spot on the throne.  It’s fun to see a couple of old school Razzballers duking it out atop the standings, don’t you think?  Team Bromelia took a three week hiatus from the top 10, but jumped back in with a vengeance this week and into second place overall.  You had to make it weird, S’All Goooood, Man, and Fatuous Jeffreys all return for a third straight week in the top 10.  Newcomers last week Cram it and A Man Named Brady stick around for another tour in the top 10 as well.  Two weeks ago Poe Dameron wasn’t even in the top 50.  They jumped to 11th overall last week and right into the top 10 this week, debuting at number five.  Rounding out the top 10 this week is everyone’s favorite team, the Monsters of Butt Rock.  Butt Rock is piloted by Razzball’s very own, Prospector Ralph.  Congrats Ralph, and when can we all purchase our Monsters of Butt Rock hats and tee shirts?  Make this happen.

TRADES

All the trades that have gone down in the past week.  Public ridicule is not only allowed, but encouraged.

Teams were back at it this week with 14 trades being completed after only 7 last week.  Let’s touch on the major deals.

Simply Fred made a deal this week with yours truly, a little SAGNOF for SAGNOF action.  My team is DFL in saves in the ECFBL, which is no picnic trying to vulture saves from.  Meanwhile, at the time I was leading the league in SBs.  The trade made sense for both parties involved.  Fred already added another two closers in a trade that will appear in next week’s update and I was able to scoop Billy Burns off waivers.  Fun for all.

See JB, this is how you trade CarGo for a closer, you get David Robertson and Nick Castellanos back for him!  Nice haul for Donald Trumbo.

Justin Upton got moved twice this week after Grey mentioned he was a solid buy low target.  I traded him away with Madison Bumgarner for Josh Donaldson.  I didn’t feel like that was selling too low and it beats starting Matt Duffy at 3B, do you agree?

Our favorite neighborhood streamer, Hoboken Squat Cobblers was busy this week.  I just realized he’s got two teams in the RCLs however.  Interestingly, the one here in Diickin Around has 100 less Games Started (58) than his team in the RCL, Brave Frontier (157).  Clearly he’s having himself some fun with his Brave Frontier team and trying out a new strategy.  I’m interested to see if next week we have our first team to crack the 180 GS limit.  Make it happen Cobblers!

Cram It got in on some SAGNOF for SAGNOF dealing this week too, however, both of these pieces could be heading for the waiver wire in the next 2-3 weeks.

Gerardo Parra was moved twice this week, and both times for a second baseman.

People are still trading for Dallas Keuchel too, or maybe he was the throw-in in what was actually a deal for Drew Pomeranz.  Let’s go with that.

Finally, in what can only be assumed to be a case of drunk-trading VinWins scored a major coup.  In a deal that was proposed to him and couldn’t be accepted fast enough, he scored Max Scherzer for Santiago Casilla.  Let that one sink in.  I get being desperate for saves, but my goodness.  With the rumors of the Giants having interest in Andrew Miller, this could be an epicly bad deal for Colorado ShoelessJoe.

WEEKLY LEADERS

The best of the best from the week that was.

R – 74 – Kid A (Original Recipe 2016)

HR –28 – Team Salter (Robust Herd) & Boggy Depot Winged Monkeys (Talkin’ Baseball)

RBIs – 73 – Kid A (Original Recipe 2016)

AVG – .356 – Team NY ISLANDERS (Riverboat Fantasy)

SB – 14 – ThrowTheHeat Meat (ECFBL) & Besaid Aurochs (Take on the JayWrong 2)

W – 10 – Calgary Cannons (Razzballero1) (Back to back to back weeks with a share of the RCL lead)

K – 103 – Grow Up PeterPan (HodgePadres ‘R’ Us)

SV –  12 – Tehol Tossed My Salad (Myers Superfoods), The Iron Horse (Gettin Frisky) & Rudy is Booty (Baba Booey) (Back to back to back weeks with a share of the RCL lead)

ERA (Min. 40 IP) – 0.38 – Don’t Wake THE BEAR (2016 Shades of Grey) (in 47.2 IP)

WHIP (Min. 40 IP) – 0.58 – Lucky Number (Take on the JayWrong 3) (in 43 IP)

Records were meant to be broken and a few were smashed this week in what was a huge week of offense across the league.  Kid A set new weekly highs in Runs and RBIs with 74 and 73 respectively.  Cram It’s weekly high of 71 Runs last just one week and Kid A squeaked over the RBI record by 1.  The previous weekly high for HRs was 26, back in week 3.  The record stood for 6 weeks and then was beaten by not one, but two different teams.  Mookie Betts has some explaining to do.  A week after VinWins set a new low in ERA, along comes Don’t Wake THE BEAR who decimated the 0.58 record with a 0.38.  That’s an amazing accomplishment to avoid all this offense this week and post that tiny number.  To top it all off, the weekly WHIP record was tied this week as well.

Congrats to Calgary Cannons, who have found a way to make winning predictable.  The Cannons have led all RCL teams in wins 3 weeks running.  Sure, they’ve tossed up 354.2 IP in that time frame, but still, that’s no easy.  You try streaming that much and coming out with that many wins and tell me how it goes for you.  Rudy is Booty topped the saves charts for the third week running this week as well.  They also topped 1000+ moves and now sit with 1098, 600+ more than the closest team (Simply Fred).  I’d say Fred is making slightly more of his moves at this time.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Our weekly shout out to the team that killed it the previous week.

Team: Team Salter

League: Robust Herd

Stats:   H/AB: 95/327, AVG: .291, R: 58, HR: 28, RBI: 69, SB: 7

IP: 76, ERA: 2.25, WHIP: 0.95, K: 71, W: 8, SV: 7

Summary: I was looking to give Kid A the TOW honors, but in the end, Team Salter’s pitching was the trump card.  Co-leading the RCLs in HRs is always nice too and Salter accomplished this without the 5 HR week of Mookie Betts!  Salter kicked things off Monday with a 7 HR day that included 5 from the CIN@COL game.  That was followed up with 5 dongs in 3 of the next 4 days.  Talk about an F5!  C-Mart, Harvey and Verlander led the way on the pitching side with two start weeks that went smooth as butter.  Danny Salazar threw a gem as well and Kenta Maeda, well, he got to face the Braves.  Nice week Team Salter!