Draft season is done and over.  Did that seem to drag or what?  I’m pretty sure I had a draft every night for about 11 straight days there.  I’m ready for real baseball.  You can close out of your cheat sheets now.  Take a breathe….OK stop….time to get on the RCL grind!  Grab your caffeine vessel of choice and start researching tomorrow’s batty calls.  

We’ll be looking at all the draft data that all of you contributed from the evening of February 22nd all the way until this past Sunday night.  That’s just over a month of draft data to break down, dissect and tear apart.  Next week, we’ll be able to dig into all those RCL teams a bit, but this week, it’s all about those drafts.  Without further ado, let’s dig into how the RCLers drafted this year.

We’ve called off the animals and what’s left standing are 74 Razzball Commenter Leagues.  That’s down from 85 in 2016.  We didn’t have VinWins creating 15 leagues all of his own this year though.  All in all, not too shabby.  If you missed the boat on joining, what took you so long?  If you’re really hankering for a league though, post below and if we get enough interest maybe we can get one last league brewing for all the procrastinators out there.  It will have to be a popular draft time (likely night, think ~9 PM EST) and it should give everyone plenty of time to join (Thursday/Friday/Saturday).  Let me know in the comments and we’ll get you hooked up.

Of our 74 RCLs, 46 of them have drafted.  Simple math tells us that we’ve got a lot of drafts going off this week.  Which means a lot more ADP data to look at.  The RCL ADP sheet has been getting lots of love.  There’s anonymous animals all over that thing from 7-10 PM every night.  I’m glad you’re all finding that useful.  We’ll be going over some more of that data today as well as some early trades that have taken place in the RCLs.  Let’s get to it!

It’s been a long tradition here at Razzball, passed on from generation to generation by word of…keyboard; don’t draft a starter in the first round.  There always seems to be those faces in the crowd that will argue until they are blue in the face that Kershaw is worth a top 2 pick.  All leagues are different, of course.  There are leagues, such as NFBC leagues or other leagues with limited moves where quality innings are hard to come by that top pitchers make more sense.  However, we tend to focus on the ESPN 12 team leagues we know and love, the RCLs.  In this format, you’re doing yourself a disservice drafting a first round pitcher.  I’ve said it, “I’m not here to suggest that if you draft a pitcher in the first round, you’ll lose the league, but you’re not doing yourself any favors.”  Grey has said it, “These tiers are from Kershaw to Lester.  If you draft someone from these tiers, you’ll probably lose your league or get lucky with your hitters.”  Countless other top RCLers have echoed the same sentiment.  Yet, there is Clayton Kershaw with an ADP of 10.5 and a high pick of #2 overall.  Just last week in an RCL I put together there was a spirited discussion as a drafter took Kershaw 4th overall.  The debate raged on as this drafter went on to take Max Scherzer in the 2nd round, 21st overall.  There were talks of “1/6th of my GS will now have elite ratios” and “Elite starters are so valuable with all this offense around the league”.  I’m not typically one to throw out anecdotal claims, so let’s look at some cold, hard numbers to see if the old spiel holds true.

When twelve writers get together for an RCL draft you know they are going to have something to say about it.  After all, we’re all loaded with opinions and clearly love to hear ourselves talk (type).  The Writers League RCL has been debunk for a little while but Grey had me revive it this year.  I was thrilled to get my fellow writers together for a season of RCL fun.  On Thursday, March 9th at 9pm EST, eleven other writers and myself settled in for an early season draft.  You can check out all the draft results HERE to follow along.  This season’s participants in RCL draft order are:

Razzball Commenter Leagues are open! Play against our contributors and your fellow readers for prizes. Join here!

Is it just me or is this offseason crawling along?  There are still three weeks until Opening Day but we’re getting there, slowly but surely.  This week I want to go over a few last strategy tidbits before I get into some in depth draft numbers the next couple weeks.  I have one last note on the draft as well as a loophole you should know about and take advantage of.  These are the last couple of things I couldn’t cram into my other posts but I think are too important to just let go.  I’ll also be sharing the newest week’s worth of draft data with you.  We had a splurge of drafts Thursday night and with one close call Friday we got 15 leagues drafted.  The Razzball Writers League got drafted up Thursday evening and we’ll be posting a Q&A style recap of that draft in the next week or so.  Keep an eye out for that if you’re interested but in the meantime, let’s cover the last few tips you need before tackling your own drafts in the weeks to come.