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, Returning Champ all but sealed is overall championship this week.  When you’re already the #1 team in the Master Standings and then you go out and win Team of the Week honors in the second to last week of the season.  Well, that is just the clutchiest of the clutch moves right there.  Last week Returning Champ held a 2.9 point lead over Cram It, this week that lead is up to 5.7 points.  Those numbers don’t even take into account that as of Monday morning, Returning Champ hit 119 league points.  Last year saw the first perfect score in the RCLs when Team Levy hit 120.  Until that time the highest league score had been 119, set by the Rank Railheads back in 2012.  Both Team Levy and Rank Railheads were in leagues with an LCI of 98, so Returning Champ has his league’s 101 LCI working for him.  Unfortunately, Returning Champ will have no shot at a perfect score since one of the teams in The Giant and the Jew has hit all the home runs.  Hot Ham Water currently has 390 HRs to Returning Champ’s 329.  329 is good enough for 2nd in the category, but unless Giancarlo wallops 60 dingers this week, 119 will be the best Returning Champ can muster.  That should still be plenty good enough to take home the overall championship.  Come along, there’s plenty more about Returning Champ and the rest of the week that was, week 25:

It’s that time of year again, when teams looking to max out their counting pitching stats (strikeouts and wins) or who hope to get lucky (or have nothing to lose) and lower their ratios, stack up nine starting pitchers on their final day of starts and see what happens.  This is a strategy that has caused quite a bit of consternation over the years of the Razzball Commenter Leagues, but in the end, it’s not against the rules and if you want to take the risk, that’s your prerogative.  Y! Leagues feature the same characteristic where, on the day you go over your IP limit, all stats count.  This is no different. Thus far, 4 teams have maxed out with 188 Games Started.  I have two teams that have taken the plunge, as has Simply Fred of ECFBL and # Sozo of Cougs R Us.  ECFBL and Cougs R Us are routinely two of the most competitive RCLs and, speaking on behalf of the 5 years I’ve played in ECFBL, typically 75% of the league will hit the 188 threshold.  Strikeouts and wins are usually so tightly contested, that every inning counts.  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.  So, how have our trio managers made out?  We’ll look at that and more from the week that was, week 24 below:

Three weeks remain in the battle for overall Razzball Commenter Leagues dominance and Grey is once again pushing for the top spot.  How fun will it be if Grey actually wins this thing?  Will we ever hear the end of it?  Doubtful.  Deity of choice knows that Rudy will never hear the end of it.  If Grey does win, what will he buy himself with the Best Buy card?  Who wants to speculate?  It would have to be something absurd, right?  Maybe that mini, waterproof television he can install in his toilet so he can watch TV while taking a pee?  A Swagtron perhaps?  My vote is for a pocket drone to track Ted and take aerial photos of him.  Alas, we may never know, that is, if Returning Champ has anything to say about it.  Returning Champ boosted his league total to 116 points this week.  That, with a 101 league index, is good for 108.3 RCL Points or 4.1 more than Grey.  It’s going to be a fun final 3 weeks, that’s for sure.  We’ll look at the race to the top of the Master Standings, as well as the other close races around the RCLs and more in the week that was, week 23:

Knock Knock.  Who’s there?  The robots.  Oh shizz, we’re in trouble now!  It’s been a little while since we’ve talked about the Razzball Commenter League robots.  They all seemed to have a little summer swoon.  Back in week seven there were three bots in the top 10 and four in the top 12.  By week 14 all the bots had dropped out of the top 10.  Rudy is Snooty came storming back into the top 10 a couple weeks later and was the lone bot in the top 10 until recently.  Rudy is Booty has since reappeared and now Grey is Bae has jumped into the top 10 with Rudy is Booty lurking in 19th overall.  Back in week 7 I gave the robots a 25% chance at winning the overall crown.  With three bots in the top 20 and two in the top 10, I’m sticking by that statement.  The bots had a killer week, more on that below, and they will be pushing Cram It and Returning Champ in the final four weeks.  Don’t let up boys, these bots don’t sleep (and if they did, they’d dream of electric sheep).  More on the bots and the rest of the numbers from the week that was, week 22 below:

As the air starts to turn a bit cooler, the calendar flips to September and a large group of fantasy baseballers turn their attention to fantasy football.  There are only five weeks left in the fantasy baseball season but what an important five weeks they are.  As the rest of your league checks out to go play the fantasy sport that requires only one day of roster setting (or as I like to refer to it, chess vs. checkers) the true competitors remain to grind it out for Razzball Commenter Leagues glory.  Cram It remains atop the Master Standings, but his lead got a little slimmer this week, down to 1 point from 1.5 last week.  Returning Champ is making their presence felt.  A couple of Cram’s biggest competitors took a tumble this week, but a lone bot has picked up the slack.  We’ll take a look this week at the year long RCL records and what teams have a shot at setting new ones.  Does your team have a shot at the RCL record books?  Find out this and more in the week that was, week 21:

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but it’s another week at the top of the Razzball Commenter Leagues Master Standings for Cram It.  Cram It had a slim 0.6 point lead last week over Vottoman Empire, but opened up a 1.5 point lead this week as Vottoman slipped down the standings a bit.  Last season, Team levy rode a perfect 120 and a LCI of 98 to an RCL Overall Championship, the first perfect score in RCL history.  During week 20, Team Levy had 114 points and I said at the time that a perfect score was not out of the realm of possibilities.  Well, I’m here to tell you again, it’s not out of the realm for Cram It either.  With Trea Turner on the mend Cram It should be able to put some distance between himself and the next closest SB threat, while also possibly overtaking the next two Batting Average leaders.  The pitching side will be a bit more tricky.  There’s one easy point in ERA there for the taking, but with 134 GS and 0.020 to gain in WHIP it’s going to be tough.  Cram It needs to go from a 1.238 WHIP to around a 1.20.  Choose those streamers wisely!  Fortunately, the waiver pool should be well stocked for Crammy as he and three other managers appear to be the only ones making many moves.  Cram It, of course, has over 300 more moves than his nearest competition.  We’ll all be watching and rooting you on Cram, good luck.  Here’s what else went down in the RCLs in the week that was, week 20:

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The trading deadline for the Razzball Commenter Leagues went out with a bang on Friday with 19 trades being completed, 9 on Friday alone.  I still don’t understand why ESPN insists on the noon trade deadline time, but there it is.  I maintain the opinion that if the deadline was midnight Friday night there would be more last minute deals.  The trade deadline expiring while I’m settling into my lunch break at work just doesn’t feel right.  Who’s with me?  Week 8 saw 19 trades and week 14 saw 20.  In a 4.5 day week we got to 19, not a bad pace.  There were 232 total swaps made this season.  Cougs R Us finished the year with 16 deals made, the most of all RCLs.  Two other leagues finished in double digits, ECFBL (12) and DFSers Anonymous (10).  Is it coincidence that those are both leagues commished by your RCL Updater Extraordinaire?  I think not.  There were 16 leagues that didn’t make a single trade this year.  That makes me sad.  Billy Hamilton was traded 8 times this season, as was Rougned Odor.  Wade Davis takes the cake though, being involved in 12 separate trades.  Gotta get those saves.  You can find all the saves for the year right HERE.  It’s not the best formatting in the world, but if you’re curious about these sort of things like I am, the data is still interesting to wade through.  Let me know in the comments if you find any other interesting nuggest.  Jump below for more about the trades this week and all the other happenings in the week that was, Week 19:

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Happy trade deadline week RCLers.  This is the final week you have to trade for some steals, saves, power or help out those pitching ratios with a big time name.  It’s at this point in the season that you can really see some overpaying going on.  Giancarlo for Ken Giles?  Possibly.  Aaron Judge for Billy Hamilton?  It all depends on team needs and where the most points can be gained.  Remember, there are no extra points for winning a category by 50.  Take a look at the overall standings in your league and see where teams are bunched together.  If there’s an opportunity to leap over multiple teams by taking a category by storm, make your move now.  If you’re in second place right now, make that move for first, play to win, go out and make it happen.  The Razzball Commenter League trading deadline is Friday, August 11, at noon Eastern.  I expect there will be a flurry of activity to break down for next week’s update.  For this week however, we have eleven trades to look at as well as a new overall leader, our former leader regaining his grasp on the top spot in the ‘Perts League and a new name making an appearance as the team of the week.  Come read about all of this and more in the week that was, week 18 in the Razzball Commenter Leagues:

The MLB trade deadline has come and gone and that typically means a lot of scrambling for those in the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  Closers are a necessary evil and there’s never a better time to snag a new one then at the MLB trade deadline.  This trade deadline we gained a Shane Greene, regained an A.J. Ramos and gained whatever the heck is going to happen in Minnesota.  The Twins could name T.C. Bear closer for all I know; it’s not like it would matter much.  To everyone stashing Kirby Yates, my condolences.  The Padres apparently wouldn’t budge on their steep asking price for Brad Hand, and so we got the shaft.  I was sweating the Zach Britton to Houston news for my recently traded for Ken Giles, thankfully that didn’t pan out.  Now that the MLB trade deadline is over with, we turn our attention to our own, RCL trade deadline.  That, my friends, is Friday, August 11th at high noon.  We have 10 days to make the most of our teams for the stretch run.  I expect plenty of trading action for the next two updates.  There were 12 trades this week, up from 10 the previous two weeks.  Let’s take a look at those, and the rest of the happenings in the RCLs in the week that was, week 17: