Technically the first “week” was from (Re)Opening Day, July 23rd  to Sunday, July 26th, but that was just too short, with too few games and just didn’t feel right.  Instead, I’m going to combine that short week with this week to form week 1.5 of the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  How has the first week plus gone for you?  Are you overloaded on Blue Jays and Phillies like I seem to be everywhere?  Did you draft Roberto Osuna, Nick Anderson, Wade Davis and Mychal Givens as your closers?  Perfect!  Unlike in past seasons at a similar point in the season we can’t really say, “It’s still early” this season, because it’s already getting late!  If you are sitting in last and haven’t been trying to maximize those empty roster spots left by Mike Trout, Lourdes Gurriel and Rhys Hoskins, then it’s time to drop a would-be closer and start working that waiver wire like a boss.  This is where the RCL battle is won and lost.  We’ve already had races for more closers than I care to remember, the latest being Jairo Diaz and Ryan Pressly and we’ve had races for prospect call-ups in Nick Madrigal and Jo Adell.  Again, there can be no resting on your laurels this season, so set those Twitter notifications and hit the wire.  Let’s take a look at which RCL teams are getting an early jump on their league standings in part to streaming and batty-calling their butts off:

With only four-ish days of games so far, the RCL overall standings don’t amount to a whole lot, we’ll get those running in full force for next week.  In the meantime, I thought we’d finally take a look at all the draft data we collected over the period known as the longest draft season of our lifetime.  Our very first draft of the season was way back on March 1st, in the before times.  Our final draft was July 22nd.  During those 143 days we drafted 77 Razzball Commenter Leagues (four more than last season!) and 463 different players.  It’s been a long time coming and it could be short lived, but we’ll be here for every bit of the MLB season that we can piece together.  If you didn’t get in on the fun, well, there’s always next year, we hope!  For now, let’s crunch some numbers on our RCL drafts.

It’s hard to believe that there will be some real baseball being played in just a few days.  I still feel woefully unprepared as I feel like teams have hardly any clue who is starting Opening Day.  We’re still getting opt-out news for crying in the clouds!  We just found out a couple days ago that the Nationals could play Opening Day in their park and we have no idea where the Blue Jays are going to be playing, AH!  Regardless, we soldier on and make the best of what we get, I’ll be watching Thursday night because I’m a sucker for baseball and because I have about 30 Razzball Commenter Leagues to try and manage this season.  Speaking of which, we have a league, drafting tonight at 9 PM ET and you can click HERE to join and draft one last team this season.  What’s one more at this point?  If you’re just coming out of your long spring stupor and starting to check your RCL team pages again, I have a few tips and tricks below on how you can customize your teams to make viewing things easier.  Unfortunately, there is no way to copy settings from one team to another, so if you have many teams *raises hand*, you’ll have to do these steps on every one.  Let’s get to it!

Typically I write a “Why Join” article when the Razzball Commenter Leagues first open for business.  I did that this year too, way back in February.  You remember February right?  We were younger then, it was a simpler time and you imagined all the fun you’d have managing your various fantasy baseball teams to victory.  While all the initial leagues are filled, we have opened up a couple more RCLs for those of you who would like to draft a team or two given what you know now.  These have been open for a couple weeks now and the most we have is two managers in these leagues.  So, I thought perhaps you all may need a little coaxing.  Let’s look at a few reasons you should join and then give you the skinny on how to go about signing up.

I will be honest with you, I’m still not sure how to approach this season strategy-wise.  I was pretty certain we were heading to no baseball, then Manfred dropped 60 games on us and even said we were never going to play more than that anyway.  What exactly was the point of dragging your league through the mud for two months of negotiations then?  This makes no sense to me.  Couldn’t we have just announced a 60 game season back in April?  Oh baseball, why are you so screwy?  Now I’m scrambling trying to figure out how to approach this season all while keeping tabs on who has tested positive, who is asymptomatic and who isn’t and also who has opted out and if I’ve already drafted them.  This is bonkers with a side of crazy.  I do have some thoughts on how I’ll be approaching this crazy Razzball Commenter League season though, so let’s dive in.

We finally have a start date for the MLB and that means we also have a start date for our Razzball Commenter Leagues.  FINALLY!  MLB sure doesn’t do anything fast.  I’m starting my mini-season RCL prep with cautious optimism.  I really don’t know how this is going to work if players start dropping out with positive tests.  The way things are going in Florida right now, will baseball even be in an option in three weeks?  In a nine week season, does a DL stint just make a player droppable?  Rosterbation will be at an all time high, that is for sure.  So many questions, so few answers, but we’re along for the ride.  We’ll play this thing out one way or another and have fun trying to make sense of it all.  To say this season will be a strange one is an understatement.  We’ve got 60 games to take home RCL glory and that also comes with a couple of rule changes.  We’ll be pro-rating the MIN/MAX on IP to 370 and 525 and we’ll also be adjusting the maximum add/drops to 185.  Even with increased rosterbation, that should be plenty for everyone…he says before half his team is quarantined and the Marlins have called the season quits in week five.  On a brighter note, we’ve also opened up some leagues drafting in July, so you can draft knowing more about the season than anyone who has drafted thus far!  Click below for the info on those leagues as well as some early season trades that have gone down so far (almost entirely in one league).

Another Razzball Commenter League Update with still no Opening Day in sight.  MLB is killing me, smalls. Is there any doubt that the owners and the MLBPA will drag this out until the last possible minute?  It’s like when we have a government shutdown looming and miraculously at midnight they come to an agreement.  With the lack of news and the lack of knowing it’s still hard to do a whole lot.  I imagine our legacy leagues will all look to get drafted up in June, but until an announcement on Opening Day is made, who knows.  If you’re really itching for a league, we still have one more RCL that I’ve been pushing the draft date back and back on.  The current draft date is Thursday, June 11th at 9 PM ET.  I figured that would be close-ish to whatever is going on with the season.  If you’d like to join and draft one more team, you can click HERE and you’ll be in!  It’s that easy.  While there, you can draft all of Grey’s Dart Throws and have the all dart throw team.  I figured we could take at the RCL ADPs of all those dart throws just to see where they land, if they aren’t just 100% free for the taking.

Happy Star Wars day one and all!  We officially have two Razzball Commenter Leagues remaining, one of which is drafting tonight!  Click HERE and you are in!  Check the spreadsheet below for the last remaining RCL draft on Thursday night.  Who doesn’t need a little draft therapy these days?  You can snag up all of Grey’s dart throws and be ready to rumble once the season rolls.  Way back on Tuesday, March 3rd at 9:00pm EST, a gaggle of Razzball Writers (well, most) settled in for an early season draft.  Twelve fantasy writers in one league and you thought we weren’t going to take this opportunity to hear ourselves talk (type)?  Well, then you thought wrong!  We’re all loaded with hot fiyah taeks!  This isn’t the ‘Perts League that Grey hosts, this is just anyone that writes for Razzball and who wanted to join an RCL.   You can check out all the draft results HERE to follow along.  This season’s participants in RCL draft order are:

B_Don – Podcasts & Chill

Thomas Howland – Spring Training Position Battles, DFS & Weekly 100

Will Scharnagl – Small Sample, Big Outlook

Coolwhip – Deep Thoughts

Butters – DFS Content

Hammer – The local ambulance chaser

SON – A two sport star, running the basketball side of Razzball and writing Bear/Bull for MLB

MattTruss – DFS and RCLs are my game

Richardo – Former DFS Guru turned H2H All-Star

Kerry Klug – Team Previews & Sleepers

Pat – Pitcher Profiles

Mcafeeeee – OPS is his bag

Now you know who is in the league, next we’ll hear what they had to say about it.  I interviewed each writer with some questions; some personal and some generic and here’s what they had to say: