Razzball Commenter League drafts are off and running!  Don’t let the chance to play with your favorite writers and commenters in free leagues for an overall top prize pass you by!  We’ve only had a handful of drafts so far, but next week we’ll be able to dive into early RCL ADP and over-analyze to our hearts content.  As for now though, go sign up for a league drafting in the next week or so and contribute to our data pool. It’s so easy to sign-up, it’s really just one click!  Use it as a mock draft that is actually useful. We just had the Writer’s League draft Sunday night and it was nice to get a draft under my belt this season that didn’t have a 4 hour pick clock.  I’ll have more info on the Writer’s League draft in the coming weeks as well. Today, we’ll be going over how to approach your pitching in the RCL format. I’ll let you decide how well I followed my own advice in my recent draft.

Last week we covered why you should join an RCL, so this week let’s start covering what to do once you’re in there.  To be honest, most all of this has been covered somewhere on the site over the years, most often by Rudy. If you haven’t been playing in RCLs though, I could see how some of this has been glossed over, so I’ll try to consolidate some info for the newbies.  Last season we made the change from ESPN to Fantrax and with that we changed a few rules, most notably we added a 500 move limit and we changed from Games Started for pitchers to Innings Pitched. I’ll be frank, I didn’t notice a big change in strategy because of these changes, but feel free to change my mind RCL Vets.  We’ll cover this as well as the basics for anyone still timid about jumping in the RCL waters.

QUICK NOTE: RCL drafts will start going off this coming Friday.  To avoid leagues drafting with less than 12 managers we’ve decided to just kill any league that doesn’t fill by 5pm EST.  We’re going to try our best to get everything filled, but if you are in a league where someone bails late or it looks like it won’t fill, let us know.  Jump in the comments or let us know on Twitter: @Razzball and/or @MattTruss and we’ll try to work some magic. We didn’t want to ruin someone’s night by waiting until an hour before a 10pm draft to kill it.  Hopefully, this won’t happen often, but help us help you.

Pitchers and catchers have reported and the Razzball Commenter Leagues are open, it’s beginning to feel a lot like baseball!  I can’t wait to be half as productive at work and start losing countless hours of sleep staying up to watch the end of the [email protected] game, just in case there is a closer injury.  Football was a fine diversion, but I always feel a little empty without baseball. I’m happy to be back for another season as your RCL tour guide. I love these things. Really, they play to my strengths and offer ample opportunity to test strategy and ideas.  Weekly lineups/moves have their place, I just don’t find them as fun. The daily moves, the League Competitive Index competition, battling hundreds of other managers for the top of the overall standings and of course, the non stop action make this a unique and fun challenge.  It’s kind of like pounding a pot of coffee every hour, on the hour for six straight months. It’s the fantasy baseball equivalent of snorting Red Bull. I’m also a huge nerd for all the numbers and data that gets collected from running so many leagues under the Razzball umbrella.  We’re back for another season partnering with FanTrax. FanTrax makes data collection much better which means it will be even easier to share these numbers with you along the way and try to glean some info from all that data. In order to make the data pool even larger though, we need you, and you, and you too.  You see, what makes RCLs great is all of you. Man that sounds mushy, but it’s true. In an ideal world, every Razzball reader would head on over to the RCL sign-ups, pick a league and all would be right with the world. It’s funny to see how many frequent commenters have never played an RCL. What’s wrong with you?  I was there once upon a time, so for those of you that aren’t so eager, let’s sit down and chat it out.

Well, that’s a wrap everyone.  Twenty-Six weeks down and now we have 26 more until the start of next year’s fantasy baseball season.  It’s perfect symmetry, because fantasy baseball is the perfect fantasy sport. The Fighting Hams weren’t perfect, but they were good enough to squeak out an overall Razzball Commenter League Championship over 1-800-BETTSOFF.  The Fighting Hams won by just 0.2 RCL points, the closest mark since 2014 when Colicky Fuddruckers won by just 0.05 RCL points. The Fighting Hams hung around the top 20 most of the season, entering the top 10 in week 14, but falling back out the following week.  The Hams re-entered the top 10 in week 19 in 4th place overall and wouldn’t fall below 5th for the remainder of the season. In week 23 they took the overall lead and held it for the final 3 weeks to win the title. The Fighting Hams really rake it in, winning themselves a $250 Best Buy gift card!  More importantly though, the Hams get a Razzball T-Shirt and RCL glory. Who can put a price on that? Oh, it’s $25, well then, moving on. I don’t believe The Fighting Hams have checked in via comments at all this year, but I could be wrong. Now would be a fine time to do so either way. It’s time to heap on the praise and accept your congratulations.  The Hams fended off some very tough competitors this year to claim the RCL crown. I gave it a run, LauraHolt was pushing for a top spot for awhile there and Backdoor Cutters and STL Squat Cobblers are some of the best RCL players I’ve played with in my time. This is The Fighting Hams’ moment though, so hopefully they show up, take a bow and soak it up, they earned it.  

Here’s what else what happened this year and this final week of the RCLs:

It’s hard to believe there’s only one week to go in the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  This marathon of a season has seen us torture ourselves for 25 long weeks, agonizing over batty calls, dipping into the streamers with mixed results, cursing players and praising others.  We’ve ignored our families, our jobs and our personal hygiene and now it all comes down to the final week. You may smell like stale Funyuns, but dagummit, that virtual fantasy trophy is all yours!  Speaking of trophies, The Fighting Hams are looking to lock down their overall RCL Championship trophy. The Hams have spent three weeks in the number one spot and with one week to go they added 2.5 points to their league total, bringing them to 113 points.  Those 113 points along with the 103 League Competitive Index has them 2.9 RCL Points ahead of the competition. The Hams are getting hot at just the right time and we’ll see if they can hold on. More on the Hams and the rest of the week that was, week 25 below:

Something came up in the comments of my last Razzball Commenter Leagues article that I thought I’d address this week.  This is something veteran RCLers from the ESPN days will recall and you’ll also be familiar with this concept if you play in Yahoo Pro Leagues or something similar.  The idea is that you can maximize your pitching counting stats by manipulating the day you go over your 1400 IP. In the ESPN days this was manipulating the day you went over the 180 GS limit by getting to 179 GA and then loading up 9 starters and hitting 188 GS.  The same thing applies here with the IP limit (and also in Yahoo leagues) in that on the day you go over the 1400 IP limit all of your pitching stats count for that day. So, let’s say you work it so you get to 1398 IP, then you load up 9 starters the next day. If all 9 starters last 5 IP, you’d hit 1443 IP and thus gain an extra 43 IP of strikeouts and possibly earn an extra win or two along the way.  The risk is obvious. I have a hard enough time pulling one streamer out of the free agent pool that won’t obliterate my ratios, nevermind eight! Unless you are holding a slim lead in the ratios that you don’t want ruined, there’s not much to lose in maxing out your stats though. So far we’ve had one manger take the shot. We’ll take a look at how they made out and more from the week that was, week 24 below:

This is looking like one of the better end of season races in Razzball Commenter League history.  Typically there are one or two teams that really separate themselves from the pack and about this time of year you can tell who the winner might be.  Not this season folks. We’ve had 8 different leaders in the Master standings over the past 8 weeks. I had a week at the top, LauraHolt was up there last week, 8 weeks ago it was the STL Squat Cobblers, two different members of Cougs R Us have been in the lead the past 8 weeks and now this week…well, I’m going to make you click on the link to expand this article to find that tidbit out.  Come on, let’s make Grey 1/500th of a cent and check out the new leader of the Master Standings and the rest of the week that was, week 23 in the RCLs: