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.

We are in the thick of draft season now and we have real, live draft data to sift through.  Numbers nerds, assemble!  We have spreadsheets, charts and ADP, oh my!  It was a busy couple of weeks here at Razzball Commenter Leagues HQ but I’ve gone through each league that has drafted and added their drafts to a master spreadsheet in order to calculate RCL ADP.  We’ve had twenty leagues draft already, so there’s plenty of numbers to look at.  All leagues have gone off without a hitch and we have plenty more to fill up, including a couple spots in some of the legacy RCLs.  There are two spots in Original Recipe, the longest running RCL, two spots in the $100 NOTLZ RCL, on of the most competitive leagues every year and five spots in Crab Army which drafts tonight and features a few regular Razzball Commenters.  Join or post in the comments and we’ll get you taken care of.  PSA: We don’t want to have any leagues get axed, so if you notice your league is not full the day of or day before the draft, hit us up on Twitter: @Razzball or @MattTruss and let us know.  You can also leave a comment in Grey’s most recent post and/or invite a friend to join.  I know, sacrilege to tell your fantasy baseball friends you read Razzball, but sharing is caring.  Speaking of sharing, jump below and I’ll share with you a fancy RCL ADP spreadsheet for your perusing pleasure.

Razzball Commenter League drafts are going off in full force!  It’s officially DRAFT SZN.  Don’t let the chance to play with your favorite writers and commenters in free leagues for an overall top prize pass you by!  Almost every spot is taken in our first round of drafts, but we’ve added more!  Based on comments from you all we’ve added another draft for our European friends and a few more money leagues.  With the drafting of leagues comes the return of the RCL ADP spreadsheet!  Now we can really dive into the data and over-analyze to our hearts content.  From the spreadsheet you can see all the RCL ADP data, the ADP over time as well as a breakdown of round 1 data.  Ronald Acuna is dominating the number one draft pick so far (10 of 11 leagues) and 15 different players have made a first round appearance.  Granted, we only have 11 leagues worth of data to comb through, but it’s a start.  Go sign up for a league drafting in the next couple weeks and contribute to our data pool.  The more data, the better I always say.  It’s so easy to sign-up, it’s really just one click!  Use it as a mock draft that is actually useful.  We drafted the Writer’s League this weekend and will be covering it in the coming weeks.  Today, we’ll be going over how to approach your pitching in the RCL format, hopefully to get you prepped for the first draft of the year.