It seems like the last week has lasted all year, things have taken quite a turn.  This time last year I was blissfully writing about Razzball Commenter Leagues ADP and wondering how I was going to manage all these drafts coming up.  Now, we’re not really sure what the future holds for our silly little game. The only thing we do know is that we have at least two weeks and likely much longer to wait until MLB Opening Day.  In the meantime, while we’re all being home-bodies we’ll do the only thing we can do until we hear “Play Ball” and that’s draft and talk about drafts. We’ve already taken a handful of leagues that hadn’t filled and moved their drafts into the two week window MLB has given us.  We’re drafting into the first weeks of April now, so sign up for another league or two to give yourself something to do the next few weeks. Just make sure to Lysol the laptop in between uses and stay safe out there friends. Remember, this is about keeping those most vulnerable safe, so do your part people.  Now, let’s dive into another week’s worth of draft data and see what info we can glean.

The fantasy baseball season has officially kicked off 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 first week 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 fourteen leagues draft already, so there’s plenty of numbers to look at. We’ve had some close calls, but all leagues have filled so far and we’d love to keep it that way. We don’t want to axe any leagues, so if you notice your league is not full the 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 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 really 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 will be drafting the Writer’s League this week and 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.

Last week we covered why you should join a Razzball Commenter League, so this week let’s start covering what to do once you’re in there.  To be honest, this has all 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.  Grizzled RCL vets can feel free to skip this and just go sign up for leagues at the end of the post. The switch from ESPN to Fantrax a few seasons ago shook things up a little bit since we added some rule changes when we did so, most notably a 500 move limit.  We also 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 Sunday.  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 so we’re trying to make the call early in the evening.  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 Marlins@Padres 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.

Start the drum roll!  Twenty-six weeks down and now we have twenty-six more until the start of next year’s fantasy baseball season.  It’s perfect symmetry, because fantasy baseball is the perfect fantasy sport. Before we turn our eyes to next season we first have to recap this past season and with that, our overall Razzball Commenter Leagues Champion…Backdoor Splitters!  It was a wild back and forth between Backdoor and FFB since week 16 or so. I’m pretty pumped for the Splitters for a couple reasons. Firstly, Backdoor has been knocking on the front door of an overall title for many seasons now.  In 2018, they finished 6th overall, 2017 – 18th overall, 2016 – 3rd overall, 2015 – 5th overall and 2014 – 29th overall. Not too shabby, eh? This also marks the first time an ECFBL champ has won the overall title. I’m partial to the ECFBL, having taken over as commish of the league for the late, great Paulie Allnuts back in 2014 and being a member since 2013.  In that time we’ve had a couple second overall finishes and a handful of top 20s but never an overall. It’s perennially one of the toughest RCLs with a high League Competitive Index that makes it tough to really run away with the league. Backdoor Splitters, in his first season in the league did just that though, running away with things with a 112 point score. That, coupled with the 108 LCI was enough to take the overall crown by 0.8 points.  The Splitters really rake it in, winning themselves a $250 Best Buy gift card! More importantly though, the Splitters get a Razzball T-Shirt and RCL glory. Who can put a price on that? Oh, it’s $25, well then, moving on. You may know the Splitters more by their commenting handle of The Big Yabu, so the next time you see a comment (likely in this post) be sure to heap on the praise and congratulations. The Splitters fended off some very tough competitors this year to claim the RCL crown.  The Fat Fuckin Babies were the toughest competition, I gave it a quick run as did a handful of others. This is The Backdoor Splitters’ moment though, so hopefully they pop in, 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 FFBs are looking to lock down their overall RCL Championship trophy. FFB took the lead once again this week after two weeks in the second place seat. FFB has a 0.7 RCL point lead over Backdoor Splitters with a week to go. Can they hold on?  It’s a two team race and a battle of LCI vs. League Points. More on the FFBs and the rest of the week that was, week 25 below:

This week, I want to bring up a topic before it blows up my comment section like it seems to every season.  This is something veteran RCLers will recall (and likely will be utilizing) 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 nine! 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:

Only three weeks remain in this grueling season, twenty-three down three to go.  It remains a two horse race as we come down the stretch. It’s a new horse leading the pack this week though as Backdoor Splitters were able to gain two points in the ultra-competitive ECFBL and FFB lost one point in RCL #57. That was enough to give the Splitters a 1.8 point lead in RCL Points.  This is really going to come down to the wire for these two. Can FFB get back to 118 or more? Can the Splitters hold on to the 115 mark? This is typically how the Master Standings shake out with two teams really separating themselves. Last year was the aberration when we had eight different leaders in the final 10 weeks.  This year it’s all about these two and who holds on the final week. More on who had a great week, the remainder of the top 10 and an update on the ‘Perts League below in the week that was, week 23:

I hope everyone has recovered from their Labor Day festivities.  The unofficial end of summer means we’re into the nitty gritty of Razzball Commenter League action.  It’s looking like a two horse race for the RCL overall title right now. Maybe even more impressive than those two seasons is the fact that the Squat Cobblers have three teams in the top 12 overall right now.  One of the three, we’ll talk more about later, rocketed up the standings this past week. Having three teams in the top 50 is really something, but three in the top 12 is just incredible. We’ll have to wait and see if all three can hang on, but as hot as they’re running right now, I wouldn’t bet against it.  It will take a real herculean effort to catch the two teams up top though as they really seem to be running away with things. More on the top 10 and the rest of the week that was, week 22 below: