That’s a Shame (Bold Predictions) held off A Hill O’Beans to be the overall Razzball Commenter League leader at the break. Adam Wainwright (5th round pick), Chris Sale (acquired in a trade, April 17), and Patrick Corbin (Free Agent, April 23) have paced the staff, combining for 25 wins and 330 strikeouts with an ERA of 2.48 and 1.00 WHIP. They are 5th overall with 107 saves, with free agent pickup Edward Mujica leading the way with 26. Fourteenth and 15th picks Sergio Romo and Greg Holland, as well as FA Kevin Gregg, have added another 58 saves. Their top 4 picks have all posted good numbers on the offensive side, with first overall pick Miguel Cabrera having another outstanding season. Between them, Miggy, Adam Jones, Jay Bruce, and Freddie Freeman are hitting .310 with 242 runs, 77 home runs, 289 RBI, and 14 stolen bases. Nineteenth pick Everth Cabrera has also been very valuable, adding 33 steals while hitting .295. Congratulations, and good luck in the second half!
Check out the Master Standings (you can also access them via the Leagues menu up top) to see where your team ranks in comparison to the other 767 teams through Sunday. The page now includes sortable stats.
The Top 10
| # | RAZZBALL HANDLE | TEAM NAME | PTS. | Last |
| 1 | That’s a Shame | 106.9 | 1 | |
| 2 | A Hill O’ Beans | My Mustache Has a Mustache | 106.1 | 4 |
| 3 | Pitchers! | 104.4 | 8 | |
| 4 | MasterofGrond | Waco Night Terrors | 102.5 | 2 |
| 5 | Cali The Naysayers | 101.4 | 6 | |
| 5 | Your 2012 Champs | Rank Railheads | 100.8 | 13 |
| 7 | Slocemb If You Got Em | 100.7 | 3 | |
| 8 | bughouse squares | 100.0 | 12 | |
| 9 | mauledbypandas | Josh Hamilton’s Fake Stache | 100.0 | 5 |
| 10 | Chris | Retro Vertigo | 99.7 | 28 |
Besides managing the second place My Mustache Has a Mustache, A Hill O’Beans amazingly also owns the 15th place Smuttynose Winter. Well done! The defending champions are sitting in 5th place, proving their win in 2012 was no fluke. Mauledbypandas has impressively stayed in the top 10 all year, including several weeks at number 1. Chris, the ECFBL’s Living Legend, finishes the first half in 10th place, making it a real possibility that the RCL’s best league could produce the individual champion as well. An upstart league, Cougars Welcomed, is trying to wrest that top league title from them though, and is proving fine competition. My money is on the champs though.
MasterofGrond has kept Waco Night Terrors in the top 5 for 5 weeks now. MStark has teams in 14th and 45th. Ichirosan is holding down 17th place, after spending some time in the top 10. Oaktown Steve is battling in You down with PEDs? with Ben, and they currently hold 27th and 28th in the overall standings. Thefaketom is right behind them. Jack Full Of Hate has a team in 32nd place, and another at 125.
Movers and Shakers: The Sask Stealers jumped 86 spots to make an appearance in the top 100, at 72. The clown running this team has already used 137 starts in an attempt to look good at the allstar break. I guess he didn’t consider how the second half collapse would look as other teams catch up to his total with just 43 starts left. The Bingo Long Sluggers (Razzballed), Fightin Shardana (Smokeys Harem), and Texas Tortfeasors (Hu Are Yu?) also made big gains to reach the top 100.
Free Agents: The Arizona bullpen caused some activity this week as Brad Ziegler was picked up in 56 leagues, while Heath Bell was dropped in 22. David Hernandez ownership nearly doubled, rising from 19 leagues to 37. Adam Eaton was added in 15 more leagues, and is now available in just 3 leagues. Ike Davis, who was added in 35 leagues last week, was dumped in 29 this week. Erasmo Ramirez was dropped in 14 leagues after his poor debut and is now owned in 38 leagues. Darin Ruf’s ownership grew from 9 to 35 leagues after he hit .450 with 2 home runs in his first 7 games. Though, he was 0-for-8 with 6 Ks in his next 2. (After typing that, I just went and picked him up in Razzball Commenter and Fantasy Razzball leagues.) Here are some other players whose ownership numbers changed in the last week.
| Player | # Lgs | Chg |
| Matt Adams | 52 | +34 |
| Jeremy Hefner | 48 | +29 |
| Antonio Bastardo | 33 | +28 |
| Corey Kluber | 41 | +25 |
| Gordon Beckham | 62 | +24 |
| Ivan Nova | 33 | +23 |
| Chris Archer | 34 | +20 |
| Evan Gattis | 45 | +19 |
| Marcell Ozuna | 33 | -22 |
| Nolan Arenado | 39 | -13 |
| Adam Lind | 51 | -9 |
EXPERTS: Despite dropping 4-and-a-half points, Dr. Roto is the leader at the All-Star break. His 86.5 points have him six ahead of Mike Podhorzer, who slipped past Rudy into second place this week. Team Roto stretched their sub-3.00 ERA streak to 6 weeks, while Rudy’s ERA was over 4 for the 4th time in 5 weeks. Ray Guillfoyle led in both wins (6) and saves (9), but was last with a .230 batting average and 23 RBI. Ryan Carey hit .319 and had a 2.19 ERA to lead those categories. Grey continued to work on his pitching, and has lowered his ERA to 3.83 from the 4.01 it was 2 weeks ago. He is scoring 50.5 in the hitting categories and only 21 from pitching, a big contrast from last year when when both he and Rudy had very high pitching numbers. You can find all Expert League unofficial Week 15 stats here, and the season stats and standings here.
Writers: Tehol Beddict continued to roll over the competition, stretching his lead to 8.5 points. He led the league in runs (tied with Trevor Gallo), home runs, stolen bases (tied with jaywrong), strikeouts, and saves. Podcast Nick hit .304 and had excellent pitching ratios (1.83/0.86) to move up 2 spots to 8th place. Nick has used only 48 starts, so there is a chance for some big numbers in the second half. Check out all the writers’ week 15 stats.
Trades: There were 23 trades in the past week involving 67 players, making the YTD totals 315 deals and 986 players. Ryan Braun was traded twice, yielding Giancarlo Stanton in one league and Carl Crawford in another. B.J. Upton was also dealt twice, straight up for Craig Kimbrel and paired with Rex Brothers to net Pablo Sandoval. Hunter Pence was used to acquire Felix Hernandez, while Yasiel Puig brought back Matt Harvey. King Felix was also traded with Eric Young, Jr for Jay Bruce. Jacoby Ellsbury was flipped for Wil Myers and Matt Kemp. Ian Kinsler, Cliff Lee, Adam Jones, Starlin Castro, Clayton Kershaw, Jason Heyward, and Yoenis Cespedes were also traded this week. You can check out all the trades in the Fantasy Baseball Forums. Look for the RCL under the heading “Everything Else.” Also, be sure to check the player rater for “Rest of Season” projections when you’re considering a trade.
Weekly Leaders
Kimchi Tigers (Magnificent Mustachioed Men) had one of the top offensive weeks of the season, hitting .330 and leading the RCL in both runs and home runs. Their 56 RBI ranked them #4 in that category. Robinson Cano (.435/7 RBI), Victor Martinez (6 RBI), Chris Davis (7 Runs/4 HR/8 RBI), Justin Smoak (.385/7 RBI), and Alfonso Soriano (4 HR/2 SB) were the key players as the Tigers stretched their lead to 21 points and moved up to 26th overall.
Average: .349 (Attempted Dudacide – Household Appliances)
Runs: 66 (Kimchi Tigers)
HR: 20 (Kimchi Tigers)
RBI: 68 (Bushwood Varmint Cong – Epic Beardmen Division)
SB: 13 (Animus Ramirez – Wake Up!, Pliny the Elder – Dubbels, Tripels and Bocks)
nhv STEELERS (International Razzball) recorded 18 decisions, including an RCL-leading 13 saves, to take pitching honors. They had a fine 2.07 ERA and 1.00 WHIP, along with 58 strikeouts in 61 innings. Adam Wainwright (13 K/13 IP), Matt Moore (10 K/0.68 WHIP), Justin Verlander, and Hiroki Kuroda were the starters with victories. The relievers were particularly strong, with Edward Mujica (1 Win/3 Saves) and Chris Perez (4 Saves) leading the charge. Together with Koji Uehara, Jason Grilli, Mark Melancon, Bobby Parnell, and Rafael Soriano they combined for 24 Ks in 21.2 innings with an ERA of 0.42 and 0.74 WHIP.
Ks: 103 (Manscapers Anonymous – You Say Potato, I Say Schmotato)
Wins: 9 (Sask Stealers – You down with PEDs?)
Saves: 13 (nhv STEELERS, Albuquerque Rhinos – The Art of Fielding, Big Empty – Fantasy Champions, Toledo Dirty Fuzz – Daily Bases)
ERA: 1.10 (40 IP min) (DrEasy’s Anthapologists – Invisible Horse Riders)
WHIP: 0.78 (40 IP min) (Charlie Says – Household Appliances)
Daily and full season stats are available, and in the RCL forum there are team and league of the day threads, as well as the top batting and pitching lines.
 Power Slave |
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| 105/344 (.305) 52 R/14 HR/51 RBI/6 SB |
57.2 IP 48 K/3 W/2.03/0.87/12 S |
| Power Slave (The Big Rzepczynski) led Sky’s league in Batting Average, Runs, RBI, Saves, ERA, and WHIP this week. Kendrys Morales (.367/9 Runs/3 HR/6 RBI), Albert Beltre (.407/3 HR/8 RBI)and Chris Davis paced the offense, while Cole Hamels led the pitching staff, throwing 16 innings and compiling an ERA of 1.69 and WHIP of 0.94. As with the nhv Steelers, the relief corps was stellar. Koji Uehara, Mark Melancon, Drew Smyly, Greg Holland, Grant Balfour, and Chris Perez gave up just 1 run in 21.1 innings and struck out 27. | |
