The rookies are coming, the rookies are coming!  If you’re like me, you’re looking at your roster right about now and trying to figure out where in the world all these guys are going to play.  I’d love to grab Vidal Brujan and sit on him until he’s called up, but as it is I have Joey Wendle, Jazz Chisholm and now Brendan Rodgers battling with Marcus Semien, Dansby Swanson and Francisco Lindor (who I drafted way too much of) for playing time.  When Moustakas gets healthy, I’m going to have real middle infield trouble.  It’s a good problem to have, but it makes playing rookie hot potato very difficult.  Do we cut bait with Wendle despite his heater?  Drop Dansby despite that lineup?  At least Jarren Duran is in the outfield, a spot with slightly more lineup flexibility.  How are you all handling the game of rookie hot potato?  Are you just hoping you can beat your league mates to the wire when the time comes?  Do you have a similar lineup crunch you hope will work itself out via trade or injury?  Are you grabbing and holding or constantly adding and dropping every night hoping your rookie is rostered when they get the call?  All of this is a good reminder to leave those last couple roster spots on offense able to be churned over.  There is no issue with leaving an RCL draft knowing you’ll be hitting the waiver wire for your OF5, UTIL and CI/MI spots.  There are players every year that pop from the waiver wire, just keep those eyes peeled.  Right now, point your eyes below for the rest of the week that was, week 7 in the RCLs:

Five weeks are now in the books.  With twenty to go, quick math tells us we are ? of the way through our season.  To those ahead in your Razzball Commenter Leagues, that might be exciting, but to those at the bottom of the barrel, that could be unwelcome news.  Is it possible you’ve already accumulated ? of your final stats for the season?  As someone with a lot of Mets on their teams, this doesn’t feel right.  This is the time of year when I like to take a peak at what players are killing your Razzball Commenter League teams and what players are boosting your team up the standings.  Our previous RCL Updater, VinWins has already done this work for me, because us Updaters stick together.  After the jump will be a fancy table showing every player drafted in the first round of the Razzball Commenter Leagues (yes, even J.T. Realmuto) and where they rank currently on the Razzball Player Rater.  Spoiler: Drafting Ronald Acuna Jr. has been pretty great.  Let’s take a look at which first rounders are tanking your teams, a flurry of trade activity and all kinds of numbers for the week that was, week 5:

Before we take a dive into our weekly Razzball Commeneter leagues numbers and standings to see how badly Son is clobbering us this week, I want to take a little aside.  I want to chat about K/9 and its importance in the long game of the season.  Since we’re all capped at 1,400 IP, the strikeout category basically turns into a race for the highest K/9.  Once your innings are up, you are stuck with the number of strikeouts you have.  This makes those high K/9 relievers such as Aroldis Chapman and James Karinchak (even without the save opportunities) very valuable pieces.  Something I like to do is sort players by K/9.  You can do this by hitting “Extra” on the player page when viewing pitchers.  Then, just sort by K/9 and make sure you’re looking for players with a substantial amount of IP.  If only Jose de Leon could not give up an earned run every outing, that K/9 (17.28) would be delightful.  If you find yourself without a save vulture target for the day and your offense is full, consider grabbing a high K/9 reliever to help boost those stats.  It only takes a few 7 IP, 2 K performances to put you behind the pace.  It’s important to monitor and keep a balance.  Fortunately for you, and especially those that are bad at math, we’re tracking your K/9 for you on the Master Standings page.  There, you can see that among teams with at least 40 IP/week we have Team KumaDeviL with an impressive 12.4 K/9.  Bringing up the rear is Team Matbrekk77 with 7.7 K/9 in 245 IP.  Ideally, you’ll be looking at a K/9 north of 10.  You can see our current Master Standings leader, Son is a little behind, which could prove his undoing as everyone catches up in IP.  There’s still time to correct though, so fear not!  It’s also going to be important to monitor your innings usage.  You can click “MIN/MAX” on your team page to see your innings used and your pace.  I like to keep my pace pretty close to right on the money, but your mileage may vary.  Just don’t leave innings on the table if you can help it.  Let’s take a look at the rest of the week that was, week 4 in the RCLs:

We have a new leader on the top of the Razzball Commenter Leagues Master Standings this week, which will most likely be the norm as things shift in the early going.  Although, if the current top team continues on the tear they’ve been on, it’ll take some time to catch them.  We have our first normal week of data this week as well, which means we have the bar set for the weekly records.  We’ll dive into that soon, in the meantime I thought I’d toss out a friendly reminder about pacing yourself.  No, this is not a PSA reminding you to mix a glass of water into your whiskey drinking (but do that too).  This is about pacing your innings pitched.  Some simple math tells us there are 25 weeks in the season and we need to get to 1400 IP.  That means you should be looking at about 56 innings pitched per week in order to stay on track.  In other words, you should be sitting at between 170 and 180 IP as of this writing.  FanTrax does offer you a glimpse of your current pace if you click the Min/Max button on your team screen.  I’m not sure I trust their math though.  I followed their pacing in the past and with about a month and a half to go had to stream my arse off in just about every league to catch up.  I’m not sure where the breakdown was, but I prefer my own tracking.  With any luck, you’re reading this early enough this season that you won’t fall into the same trap.