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:

With not a whole lot going on in the baseball universe and only so much Razzball Commenter League ADP talk to get us through, this will be the last RCL Update post for a bit until we have an announced Opening Day and some excitement.  In the meantime, we have seven more drafts you can join from tomorrow night at 9 PM ET (Click here to JOIN – We need TWO more) all the way until Star Wars Day on May the 4th.  So, snag a league and do a little drafting to get you through until we have baseball again.  Today, in our final ADP preview, we’ll take a look at all of Grey’s darlings and his schmohawks from the preseason.  This way, when you’re drafting in the coming weeks you’ll know exactly where to pounce on Miguel Sano and Dinelson Lamet.

We’ve now passed what would have been Opening Day, a somber event here at Razzball Commenter League HQ.  On what would have been Opening Day Grimey decided we should draft, so we started our 76th league and got it filled for a late night draft.  We’ve moved several unfilled RCLs out into April, so check out the sheet below and find a date that works with your new quarantine schedule. After April, we can start another league or two during the month of May if it comes to that.  That decision will be based on demand. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage all these teams once the season starts, but it’s all I can do right now is draft away. In the meantime, we have plenty of RCL ADP data to dig through. Today I thought it would be fun to look at some of the biggest differences in high/low overall pick numbers.  We’ll be able to see some of the more outrageous picks and maybe some outrageous deals people got. Let’s dive in!

How is everyone hanging in there?  Hopefully you are doing well, maintaining proper social distancing, washing well and catching up on all those shows you’ve been meaning to binge.  I’ll admit, I’m at a bit of a loss without baseball on the horizon, but what else is a fantasy baseballer to do but draft? You know, we prepare for weeks leading up to draft day and I’ve found drafting to be a bit therapeutic in this time of turmoil.  Many of my bigger money leagues have moved their drafts to a later date to be determined, but I’ve been enjoying drafting RCLs aplenty. We went ahead and moved a couple handfuls of RCLs all through the month of April. Now, you all will be able to draft to your heart’s content while under quarantine.  Go ahead and pop down below and take a gander at the spreadsheet to pick a league to join. We’ll also be looking at how this delay in the start of the season has affected some player’s ADPs.

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.