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Last week we chatted about deep league starting pitchers outside the top 300 ADP that we might consider taking a flier on, and this week we’ll get even crazier and bump it down to a few pitchers outside the current top 400 NFBC ADP. Obviously, you’re not going to want to put too much faith in anyone at this point in a draft in even the deepest leagues, but it doesn’t take too much production for picks this late to be worthwhile, and of course, there is little risk given that you’re not passing much up to get them.

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Well, it’s been another tough week to be a baseball fan, Razzball friends, as instead of watching pitchers and catchers report to spring training, we’re left with radio silence when it comes to good news on the labor negations front. I understand the reaction some fans of both real and fake baseball are having: choosing to ignore it entirely for the time being, until and unless there are positive developments on the lockout front, but I hope you’ll join me in taking the opposite approach. While I too have felt like just sitting in a corner and sobbing at the thought of another year of losing baseball games that count, I’m pressing forward and instead, trying to take advantage of the extra draft prep time with no outside noise, ‘best shape of his life’ reports, or trade rumors. Yes, I’ll need to change my rankings and perceptions of player value significantly once I have more injury news, free agent signings happen, and we start to figure out what rotations and starting lineups will really look like. But because once things do move forward, we can expect a mind-blowing amount of information in a short amount of time, I want to have a good idea of how I feel about players now so that I can adjust my thoughts based on all of said new information once it arrives.  I don’t want to overreact to every snippet of news or put too much stock in a few at bats or pitches thrown once we finally have some exhibition games to watch. Since Grey has finished all of his rankings, why not enjoy taking your time perusing them and figuring out how to turn them into your best possible fantasy baseball team, while others are sitting around unprepared, just waiting for tidbits of news that may not come for a while.

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Last week we chatted about players whose ADP has been rising over the last few weeks and months as more drafts take place while we (hopefully?) inch closer to the start of the season. This week it’s time to look at guys who I think could have big jumps up the ADP ranks once we finally are released from our collective news-free bubble where we don’t get to hear about free agent signings, trades, or even so much as a “reported to spring in the best shape of his life” declaration to help guide our draft preparation. We’ll keep it on the deep side as I’ll only be talking about players whose current NFBC ADP over the last two weeks is outside of the top 300. Everyone wants a late bargain or three in their drafts and auctions – and it’s possible that the next few weeks could be the last chance we have to feel like we’ve gotten a bargain on some of the following players.

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The last two weeks we’ve talked about fantasy baseball from more of a mixed-league perspective, but this week I’m ready to start swimming back to the slightly deeper end of the pool as we continue to look at ADP and how it may affect early drafts. Even with ADP readily available, it’s tricky to know just how high you’ll need to grab ‘sleeper’ targets when there’s little to no ADP information out there. If you start drafting in November, as I do annually, it really can feel like a complete crapshoot. What I’m going to look at this week is a handful of players who I had at least loosely targeted and figured I could get very late, but have recently been going off the draft board earlier than I originally expected or hoped they would. Getting back to the deep league theme: while these players could ultimately prove to be options in shallower leagues, they all had an NFBC ADP outside the top 250 for the months of October and November combined.  As you’ll see, some of them have already creeped significantly higher up the ADP ranks now that we have an additional two months of draft data (i.e. numbers from December and January combined) to compare to the original October/November marks.  Obviously a solid spring (should spring training be a thing that ever happens again) could propel any of them even further up the draft board.

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Last week we discussed the ugly, top-heavy mess that is the third base position, and this week we’ll move on the still top-heavy, but much less messy, world of shortstop. As I mentioned last week, for now we’ll look through a medium lens when it comes to roster construction and who to target; there will be plenty of deep-league talk as the season gets closer but for now I am basing most of my thoughts on my 15-team mixed leagues that have already drafted.

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Happy New Year, Razzballers! Yes, we’re in the middle of what already feels like an extra-long offseason, but I’m going to try my best to stay positive about both the upcoming year of baseball, and everything else currently happening on our little planet.  As I usually do, I started drafting during the week of Thanksgiving and have now drafted four teams (all mixed league, 15-team 5×5 redraft variety – two 30-rounders with FAAB starting in April, and two Draft and Hold leagues). So before I get to my regular weekly deep-league grind, we’ll spend the next several weeks taking a broader view of the fantasy baseball landscape, going position by position to talk about depth, approach, draft trends, hits and misses from last year, real-life or fantasy roster construction, predictions, hunches, and/or anything else that strikes our fancy. And I do mean “our”:  this winter, I’m finding diving headfirst into draft preparation and fantasy discussion that much more therapeutic, so I hope to hear from those of you like-minded individuals out there as often as possible in the comments — whether it’s a question, a comment, a piece of advice, or just a random thought about fantasy baseball.

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We’ve made it to the final week of the regular MLB season, friends, and somehow I’m both thoroughly relieved, and yet already feeling an intense sense of withdrawal. I don’t have as many leagues going down to the wire as I feel like I usually do, so I’m already doing a lot of reflecting on what went right and wrong for my fantasy teams in 2021. For today, let’s end the season on a positive note by taking a look at a few players that were instrumental to my second-half success in the leagues that went particularly well for me. While guys like Wainwright and Votto were mainstays in even the shallowest leagues by the end of the year, they also have another thing in common:  they were strictly late round or deep-league options (or went undrafted altogether) to open the season.

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Last week here at RITD, we talked a bit about a few low-ownership National League hitters who’d had a great month or so in terms of fantasy stats, and how that might impact their value for what’s left of this season as well as 2022.  This week we’ll do the same with a few AL hitters, though as I peruse the numbers it’s immediately clear that there are not as many hidden gems at the top of the leaderboards in the Junior Circuit, as least when it comes to the last four weeks of production.  Most of the top names are just that — top names — as the three most valuable AL players over that time period in terms of 5×5 fantasy production are Salvador Perez, Vlad Guerrero, and Jose Ramirez. There is no one in the top 20 who isn’t at the 50% owned threshold or higher; the first ‘deep league’ type player is D.J. Peters, who’s just 9% owned in CBS leagues, at #21 (and whom we just talked about a few weeks ago).  Since I’m looking for guys at the 10% owned level or less for the purposes of this exercise, we’ll drop down a little further, and see if we find anyone that might be of interest to those of us in deep or deep-ish leagues, either to close out the last two weeks of the season or as someone to keep an eye on heading into next year.  Spoiler alert: don’t get your hopes up too high.

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Happy mid-September, friends!  The excitement that was in the air this spring as we headed into a full year of baseball after 2020’s bizarre mini-season feels like it happened a lifetime ago; we’re at that point of the year where it’s just about impossible to care about your fantasy baseball teams if they’re stuck at or near the bottom of the standings.  Congratulations to everyone who is still in the thick of things with something to play for as we enter the home stretch, and let’s do what we like to do here — this week we’ll stick to the National League, as we look at a few NL hitters of varying ownership levels that may be of interest to those in deep — or maybe even slightly shallower — leagues.

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Here we are with less than a month left of the regular MLB season, and when it comes to fantasy teams, if yours isn’t in the thick of a pennant race it can get a bit difficult to focus on the task at hand.  As I’ve mentioned before, though, I like to take this time of year to pay a little extra attention to under the radar players who are performing well, both in case they can help me close out the season, and to take an early look at who might be undervalued next year.  This week we’ll look at stats from the past 14 days to see which players (hitters, for this week) have provided the most standard 5×5 fantasy help while staying the least owned, and those numbers will lead us to two outfielders who’ve been outperforming most of the competition recently, without too many fantasy owners even noticing.  It’s interesting to see not just from a deep-league perspective, in my opinion, but also as a reminder that even in shallower and standard leagues, you never know what you might find on the waiver wire if you look in the right place and get a little lucky.

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It’s a new week, but the theme remains the same. As we wait to turn the calendar page to September, the free agent pool in your average deep league remains weak, to say the least. I think this weekend was the first time all season where I didn’t even make a single bid in our weekly FAAB bidding in either my deepest AL-only or NL-only league. Part of that is because, unlike the last few seasons, I’m not in a situation in either league where a point or two in a given category might make a difference for me in the final standings. But for those that do find themselves in such a situation as we head into the last month of baseball in 2021, let’s take a look at some players, all 5% owned or less in CBS leagues, that might be of interest to those in AL-only, NL-only, or other deep leagues.

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I feel like we’re in that extra dreadful part of the deep-league FAAB season: the real-life and (in most leagues) fantasy trade deadlines have passed, any player who might be slightly serviceable has been picked off the waiver wire, and folks who have any remaining FAAB money or waiver claims just need to hope that someone interesting comes along once MLB rosters expand. At this time of year, some leagues are as active as cutthroat as ever as owners scramble to do whatever they can to gain that extra point or two that might make a difference in the final standings.  In other leagues, though, I’m seeing lots of completely checked-out owners.  The beginning of football season will only exacerbate the situation, so why not take advantage of it?  Even if you’re buried in the standings, this last chunk of the baseball season is no time to tune out completely.  It’s never too early reflect on what went right and wrong this year, and it’s also a great time to pay attention to what’s happening now  — while other fantasy players are ignoring baseball altogether, why not start making notes on players and situations that may factor into your draft prep for 2022?  While I’m still in a daily battle to make the right decisions in a few leagues where the money spots will come down to the final days (if not hours) of the year, I’m simultaneously already thinking about next season. And this week, we’ll switch it up a bit:  instead of concentrating on a handful of guys at the very bottom of the waiver wire barrel, we’ll expand our horizons slightly by looking at one player in each league who’s closer to the 20% owned threshold.

Please, blog, may I have some more?