We are now so close Opening Day that I can taste it. Cold beer, processed meat, and mustard, it doesn’t get much better than that. This time next week we’ll all be in a full on panic over why our first round pick hasn’t hit a HR in the first two games and how we can possibly be in last place with THIS team. We’ll talk you off that ledge when the time comes. However, this week I want to go over a few last tidbits before you dive into you RCL career. I have one last note on the draft as well as a loophole you should know about and take advantage of. These are the last couple of things I couldn’t cram into my other posts but I think are too important to just let go. I’ll also be sharing the newest week’s worth of draft data with you. We’ve had so many drafts the past week and we’re up to a total of 57 drafted leagues and counting. Come check out the latest and greatest numbers as you prepare for the final draft weekend before shizz gets real. We have RCL drafts going off all during the final weekend. You can even create a last minute league like VinWins and I and draft over a cup o’ joe and a bowl of Cap’n Crunch at 7 AM EST Saturday morning. Doesn’t that sound like fun? So go on, go create a league and/or fill one that needs filling. This post will still be here when you get back and then we can talk about your upcoming draft.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
RCL Update: Now Streaming
March 23, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Our Leagues | 68 Commentsby: MattTruss
RCL draft season is well under way now. We’ve got about three drafts per day going off and the data is just flowing in. Hopefully, you are all putting the ADP Spreadsheet to good use. I see plenty of anonymous animals peeping it between seven and ten at night, so I think you are.
This week I wanted to briefly go over some notes on pitching in the RCLs. I say briefly because this subject has been covered many times before, quite brucely, much more succinctly than I could cover it. I’ll tell you young Razzballers a story, about where it all got started, way back in a time known as twelve after twenty, with Simply Fred. Fred was on to something that only a few of the top RCLers at the time were on to and it started a revolution. Rudy felt he could improve the process and the Stream-O-Nator was born! The world hasn’t been the same since. Finally, Rudy covered the importance of maximizing IP and how to value our streamers here. That should be enough clickbait and reading to get you off to sleep tonight where visions of ERA, WHIP and K/9 will dance in your head. If you’re feeling lazy though, I’ll give you the cliffsnotes version with a couple of my own notes.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Last week, we covered why you should join a 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.
I’d like to preface that I’m no expert in the matter. I loved Ralph’s line from a couple weeks back when talking about dynasty leagues and I think the same applies to me here. “See, here’s the thing, I’m not so much an expert as I am avid player.” Bingo. I’ve finished in the top 20 of the master standings a couple times and won the ECFBL in a year when it had the highest league competitive index. It’s not nothing, but far from expert. With that out of the way, let’s jump right into the nitty gritty.
The first and most important item in competing for a top spot in these leagues is TIME.
Please, blog, may I have some more? RCL Update: Join The Fun
March 9, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Our Leagues | 35 Commentsby: MattTruss
Well, here goes nothing. From here on out I’ll be your RCL tour guide. I’ll be guiding you through all the sights and sounds (Are there sounds? The crunch of “All Dressed” Humpty Dumpty potato chips perhaps.) of the RCL season. I, for one, am a huge fan of the RCLs, the format, the League Competitive Index competition, battling hundreds of other managers for the top of the overall standings and of course, the non stop action. It’s kind of like pounding a pot of coffee every hour, on the hour for six straight months. I’m also a huge nerd for all the numbers and data that gets collected from running so many leagues under the Razzball umbrella. I will do my part to share some of these numbers with you along the way and try to glean some info from all that data. VinWins was my hero back when he ran the RCL Updates, so I’ll do my best to be his protege. 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. For those of you that aren’t so eager, let’s sit down and chat it out.
First of all, if you’re on the fence about joining an RCL, that can’t be comfortable. You really should hop down from there and just join a league already. I get it though, back in the late aughts, when I first started lurking around Razzball I too was reluctant to join an RCL. I kick myself now though for not joining in the fun sooner. I’ll give you the reasons I was staying away and then explain why it was complete bunk. Maybe I can sway another 2-3 of you to come join the masses. If you have other reasons for keeping away, by all means, lay them on me in the comments. I love talking RCLs and if we can be doing something better, I’ll be your voice to the big wigs. So, here we go:
Please, blog, may I have some more?I said it last week and I’ll say it again, if you’re still reading our DFS content at this point in the game, then you most likely had yourself a profitable season. Congrats and come on into the comments and brag about your successes. Let’s see if we can finish off the season on a high note and maybe win a little extra spending money before the holidays. Also, if you’ve done well this season (Over $600 in winnings) you’ll need to set a little aside for taxes, you know, if you’re into paying those.
Now, come sail away with me to Arizona. Don’t worry, it’s a “dry” heat. Once we’re there, we’re going to check out Robbie Ray. Ray checks in with a very affordable $6,900. Let’s face it, he’s affordable because he isn’t really that great, but, and it’s a big but, he’s got a couple things going for him. Well, he’s got one thing going for him and that’s his opponent. The Rockies are such a beautiful disaster away from Coors field, that they can make even make the most mediocre pitcher look amazing. Away from home, the Rockies have the lowest team OPS in the majors, about 50 points below league average as a matter of fact. Even more in Ray’s favor is his handedness. The Rocks are bottom five in team OPS vs. Lefties. Add this up and you can see a lefty on the road is death on the Coors crew. It makes sense really, their only scary RHB is Arenado. Does DJ LeMahieu strike fear in your heart? Wilin Rosario maybe? I thought not. Ray’s been fairly respectable in his own right. His 3.53 ERA is right in line with his 3.55 FIP and his 8.3 K/9 is nothing to sneeze at. Ray’s biggest issue is being a little WHIP-y at times and that can get him into trouble. I think this match-up really sets up well for him though and he can be a low-priced star for tonight’s slate. Let’s look at a few more potential stars tonight:
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 7 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more? DraftKings: The Verrettable Cheap Starter
September 22, 2015 | DraftKings | 12 Commentsby: MattTruss
I love when halfway decent starting pitchers are given away for practically free on DraftKings. I especially enjoy it when it happens on a Coors field day. That of course could be read as a “Coors Field” day or as a Coors “field day”, because both are true. When you’re trying to squeeze in as much Coors exposure as you can, a 4K pitcher opens up an awful lot of options. Logan Verrett sits at $4,500 tonight and gets to square off at home against one of, if not the worst hitting team in the majors in the Atlanta Braves. Jon Niese just completely shut them down. That’s the same Niese who had given up 11 runs in his previous 8 IP mind you. The Braves have the lowest team OPS in the majors and their “lead” in the category seems to grow by the day. Verrett has been a more than capable spot starter for the Mets as they try to limit every one of their young pitcher’s innings. Tonight he fills in for deGrom and should be good to go for at least 75-80 pitches, possibly more. He only threw 63 against the Marlins over 5 IP, but the Mets let him air it out for 93 a month ago at Coors field. All he did there was hold the Rockies to 1 run in 8 IP and strikeout 8. The strikeout upside is limited with the Braves as they are pretty stingy when it comes to striking out, but posting zeros works too and a win should be easily obtained. For $4,500 you can’t get too greedy. I do imagine Verrett will be fairly highly owned at this price and Coors field on the docket so despite the low price he may be more of a cash game play than a GPP. Let’s look at some more plays for tonight’s DFS slate:
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 5 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Happy Saturday everyone. If you’re checking in on our DFS content at this stage of the season you’re doing a couple thing right. First off, you haven’t blown your entire bankroll chasing a million dollar pay day. Nice work! You also haven’t abandoned your baseball buddies to focus all your attention to football players turning each others brains into scrambled eggs every Sunday. Nope, you’re sticking around and watching Chris Coghlan turn Jung-Ho Kang’s knee into spaghetti, which is much more civilized. This is part of the season where the rubber meets the road and I would implore anyone with anything left to play for in any leagues to take a peek at our daily fantasy content. I mentioned this very thing all the way back in April with my second DFS article. DFS and your H2H and/or roto team can form a nice little symbiotic relationship this time of year. If you’re in the midst of a heated H2H semi-final match-up and and a little behind your opponent, for example, you could look at adding one of the lower-priced options mentioned here as they’re likely available in your league. H2H points leagues and daily fantasy are essentially cousins and we’re looking for the same things: points. A low-priced, high-upside play is great for DFS but could also help you win a H2H matchup. Smell what I’m stepping in? Big Magoo just touched on the importance of batty calls this time of year. Let’s say you’re a couple HRs back in your roto league and you’re looking for any and all power you can get your hands on. Well, look through our daily picks and see if one of our low-priced calls such as Wilin Rosario might be available in your league. Again, we’re all looking for the same thing here. So, come with me past the jump and let’s look for some players to a) win you some DFS money today and b) win you that virtual trophy to set up on your virtual mantle.
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Glad to see you haven’t completely moved on to fantasy football just yet. There’s still money to be had on the baseball side and as a matter of fact, there’s quite a bit. DraftKings is running a baseball version of the Millionaire Maker. To the best of my knowledge, they’ve never run one of these for MLB and I’m pretty excited to take a few whacks at it. I’ve played these for PGA and of course, NFL and playing for a shot at a million is pretty silly to think about. It’s MLB, anyone can win you that dough on a given night, so let’s see if we can dig up some gems for this evening.
J. A. Happ is the pitcher I’m going to be looking at the most when building tonight’s lineups. I can’t understand a couple things about Happ, first is his price. Happ is $7,500 tonight, cheaper than John Lamb. Happ has been on an impressive run lately, much like Josh Tomlin. Tomlin costs $3,000 more tonight and is facing the K-stingy Royals. Happ’s ERA in August was a tidy 1.98 and he’s kept that momentum rolling into September with a 1.38 ERA in 2 starts. Also included in those 7 total starts is 42 Ks and 7 BBs in 40.1 IP. The other thing I don’t quite understand is the Streamonator’s hate for Happ tonight, ranking him as the 12th best pitcher on the day. That seems criminal, much like what the SON wants to do to my kitchen appliances. Maybe DraftKings and SON know something I don’t here. The Cubs are a solid hitting team, sure, but they lead the league in strikeouts and strikeouts mean points in the daily game, so that’s a plus for Happ. The Cubs are also in the bottom 8 in team OPS vs. LHP. This makes sense as their typical 2-4 hitters (Schwarber, Coghlan and Rizzo) are all lefties. Seems like another plus for Happ. Kris Bryant you say? PNC Park is one of, if not the hardest park for RH hitters to go deep in. If that’s not enough, Happ will be pitching the second game of a double header, which means he could be facing an even shakier lineup as the studs take the night off. I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. Let’s all hope Happ is just awesome and look at a few more picks to help us win that million.
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable Labor Day Weekend and if all went well, a profitable one. Labor Day weekend is a fine time to cruise for overlay as it’s a busy outdoors weekend for many folks. I, for one, took the weekend off from DFS. I enjoyed some of the great outdoors and took part in a few fantasy football season-long drafts. I’m ready to hit MLB hard for the last five weeks as people become less focused on it and turn their eyes instead to NFL. With any luck, that will lead to some dead money out there. Terrible transition time as we go from dead money to the Grateful Dead. I know there’s a few deadhead fantasy baseballers out there reading Razzball, I’ve seen the steal your face avatars. Truth be told, I’m a fan via love as the woman whom I live with and to whom I’m related by marriage is a huge fan. When I saw that both Sonny Gray and Jon Gray were pitching tonight and both had nice match-ups, I couldn’t help myself. I’m choosing to focus on Jon Gray since, frankly, Sonny Gray has, and will continue to be, a great play all year. Jon Gray on the other hand, gets the hard to handle task of pitching in Coors for his home games. We saw the effect this can have when he faced the Mets at Metco and was on the golden road (6 IP, 1 ER, 5 Ks) and then faced them again a couple weeks later at Coors and had the Mexicali blues (1.2 IP, 7 ER, 0 Ks). Gray faced the Padres in Coors a few weeks ago and made barely a ripple, giving up just one run in 5 IP and striking out five friars. Doing some quick math means he should only give up negative five runs when he faces them in Petco Park. It’s like a box of rain when a promising young arm gets drafted into the Rockies system, but we always have their away games to look forward to. Gray’s got a pretty nasty looking 95+ MPH fastball and a nice change-up (85 MPH)/slider combo that makes him at least serviceable with upside for more. Thanks to his home park and some rough outings there, he’s practically free for $4,600. The pitching friendly Petco Park and a bottom three team OPS for the Padres makes me pretty excited to roster the young gun tonight. You should be too and if nothing else, we will get by, we will survive.
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Tonight we get to play everybody’s favorite game, “Guess the lineup for Game 2 of the Coors Double Header”. Just rolls off the tongue really. I love me some Coors field, but I dread days like this when there’s a double header with start times spaced 5 hours apart. What stinks about this is when the first game gets finished up around 6:30 EST or so, there’s 30 minutes until most games kick off and zero percent chance that Walt Weiss can muster up a lineup in that small amount of time. This leads us to either fade Coors, yikes, or take a guess at what we think the lineup will look like and leaving our lineup flexible enough to make changes late. This might mean we fade the early games entirely and it creates some interesting opportunities depending on how much you want to gamble. Here’s what I mean: if you think a lot of people will be off the Coors game due to lack of lineups and not wanting to sit around and wait for them, stack away and hope for a big leg up on the field. On the other side, if you think a lot of people will be waiting for those lineups to post and thus ignoring the 7:00 EST start times, load up on earlies, find a nice stacking option and hope you can shoot the moon. If you are going to wait around for the Coors lineups, I’d suggest having a lineup ready and being prepared for as many scenarios as you can. This means going through the options if each player is out of the game 2 lineup. There’s a handy feature DraftKings has that I’m not sure a lot of people know about or use. If you click on “My Lineups” up at the top there’s a button that reads, “Create New Lineup”. Here you can play around with all the lineups you want to create, you can make one for every scenario you can dream up and save them all to your lineups page without entering a contest. Having these lineups ready to go will not only give you a better handle on your options when, say, AJ Pollock is suddenly out of the game 2 lineup, but will also make for a little less sweating as you can simply import your “No Pollock” lineup and be ready to roll while others are floundering. I love fish puns, let’s get to some more picks, just for the halibut.
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?So you’re telling me if the Mets played in Coors field every night, they’d be the highest scoring team in baseball instead of bottom 5, where they were pre-Coors? Huh, 33 runs in 3 games ain’t too shabby and I hope you benefited from Yoenis Cespedes’ onslaught Friday night. I managed to somehow cash without him, but I couldn’t touch the top spots. The Mets have clearly sacrificed some chickens to Jobu over the past month. The good fortune continues as they go from beating up on Rockies pitchers in Coors to now getting to feast on Philly pitching in Citizens Bank Park. Here’s some fun with numbers: in the month of August, the Mets are 5th in Runs, 1st in doubles, 4th in HRs and 3rd in team OPS, one of my favorite stats to look at. As I write this, I just watched Daniel Murphy hit the 7th HR of the the game for the Mets, tying a franchise record. So, how much of this new found offense is Cespedes induced? Well, he hasn’t exactly been cold, his slash line since joining the Mets: Tonight the human Cespedes gets to dine on the shizz that is Jerome Williams’ right arm. Sky, in his recent roundup, mentioned Jerome’s reverse splits this season. Much like the hips, Sky don’t lie. The numbers this year vs. RHB: .336/.363/.597 and vs. LHB: .315/.379/.399 tell you all you need to know. Of course as you can see, everyone is hitting for a hall of fame average off the guy, so you really can’t go wrong when throwing anyone and everyone out there at him, but righties are especially brutalizing him. Reverse splits are fairly screwy, I tend to think they normalize over time, but there are exceptions, like in everything. For his career, Williams’ marks are generous to both handed hitters. Lefties enjoy a better batting average and OBP while righties have a higher slugging percentage. That’s over a 12 year career of course and things change with age. For example, a bag of garbage left in a black trash can in the middle of summer gets much worse with age. Jerome is said bag of garbage and the hot summer months aren’t being kind to him. With any luck, people will take a quick glance as guys like Curtis Granderson (L) and Michael Conforto (L) are highly owned and Cespedes sneaks under the radar. I need you tonight, Yoenis, don’t let me down. Here are some more picks for tonight’s slate:
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more? DraftKings: Catching Pollock with Holmbergers
August 21, 2015 | DraftKings | 8 Commentsby: MattTruss
I also considered “Yas Many More Holmbergers Please” but the title isn’t really what’s important here. What’s important is how awful David Holmberg is and how happy I am to load up on some Diamondbacks this evening, especially AJ Pollock. First, let’s touch on the dumpster fire that is David Holmberg. Well, he has a 5.95 ERA for starters. That could be a small sample size, though, as he’s only pitched in 4 games and is fresh off a 2 IP, 7 ER outing at the Dodgers. So, before that trainwreck was a 3.06 ERA. Not too shabby you say. Well, his FIP and xFIP tell a different story, they are 7.33 and 5.81 respectively and even before the 7 ER outing they were each sitting around a 4.90. We can even go back and take a look at last season’s 30 IP and see the 7.60 FIP and 5.86 xFIP. Those numbers are eerily similar to this year’s numbers through 19.2 IP. Holmberg has spread the love quite nicely with righties and lefties as each has a wOBA over .350, with righties earning a slight bump (.390) which is why we are focusing our attack there. In addition to all of this, all of Holmberg’s pitches have a negative value and his fastball has been especially bad this season. Guess who the second best fastball hitter (behind Goldy who is simply a beast vs. everyone and every pitch type) on the Diamondbacks is this year? AJ Pollock, come on that one was easy! Pollock is enjoying a very nice breakout season. One of the many great things about Pollock this season is it doesn’t matter who he’s facing, he’s raking. The trouble in DFS sometimes can be when you identify that mint matchup vs. a certain handed pitcher, only to have that pitcher pulled after 3 IP and 6 ER and you mint matchup goes out the window as your play is pulled for a pinch hitter. No fear with Pollock, he’s an equal opportunity masher. Here are Pollock’s slash lines plus wOBA vs. first righties: .309/.365/.471/.361 and then lefties: .316/.368/.490/.372. Pretty remarkable right? All this is to say Pollock is a stud and Holmberg is a dud, so fireworks should be in the air at Great American Ballpark tonight.
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Please, blog, may I have some more?