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The Itch

Author: The Itch

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The Itch

Fantasy Baseball Prospect Podcast: The Itch Recaps the 2020 MLB Draft

June 22, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 4 Comments

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The Itch recaps the 2020 MLB Draft. Spencer Torkelson leads an ambush of young Tigers. Austin Martin books a surprise gig with a band of Blue Jays. Nick Gonzales leads a promising crew of Pirates. Ed Howard hops the El train to join the Cubs.

Throw in a whole bunch of other players along some conspiratorial thoughts connected to the post-draft signing period, and you’ve got mail! Or a notification, anyway. It’s a Razzball podcast! Back after an MLB-sized hiatus to gather around the prospect fire, gaze into the dancing future flames, and see what we can see.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 20 Prospects for 2020 First-Year-Player Dynasty Drafts

June 21, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 10 Comments

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Major League Baseball teams have to draft a lot of young pitchers. You do not. 

This discrepancy is a big part of what makes dynasty prospect rankings fascinating and fun for me. Simply put, at any given moment, more quality pitching prospects exist than dynasty leagues have minor league roster spots to accommodate. 

You can always pick up a relevant pitcher. 

You cannot always add a relevant speedster, and you very rarely add a legitimate bat with stolen base upside. . 

The TheoCubs tried to build a dynasty the way we would in fantasy baseball: drafting high-floor, well-developed hitters and buying pitchers via free agency and trade. This brought the Cubs a title but has proven difficult to maintain once they started stealing from the future to tread water in the present.

I attempted something similar in this space before the draft, building my Top Ten for 2021 First-Year-Player Dynasty Drafts by anticipating which international signings would crack the list on both the amateur and professional sides. 

A funny thing happened on the way to part two: MLB owners decided they didn’t want to pay up on the July 2 signing date and pushed that all way into January. Just like that, illegal handshake deals worth millions of dollars went poof. Families sacrificing toward this date for a decade were told to eff off, if they were personally told anything at all, and the dynasty draft season went up in smoke, at least in its typical form, at least for the time being. 

To that end, I’m ranking just the draftees here this time. Can’t really count on January signings or international free agency to actually happen in this climate when MLB just makes shizz up as it goes along. 

It’s not a coincidence that baseball’s head McDucks waited to see how the $20,000 per player free agent bonanza went before pushing the international deadline. Very dark timeline stuff all over in 2020, including the post-bonanza, post-postponement note from MLB for teams to be miserly with any scholarships connected to the ultra cheap sweepstakes. 

Just so ironic to bang the drum about pace of play and fan interest for years only to say screw it all in 2020, but here we are. Let’s talk baseball! 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Taxi!! Follow That Bus!! (40-man Scuba Dive: American League East)

June 17, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 6 Comments

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At the end of my last post, Baseball is Back with a Whimper: Pandemic Draft Week Recap, a Razzballer named Homer’s got the runs asked if Austin Martin might spend some time in the majors this year, and I had no idea. Well, I had some ideas, but they mostly circled the spires of HellifIknow Mountcastle, the official building of Major League Baseball in 2020. 

We got another noise out of Manfart this week completely disagreeing with the sounds Manfart made last week. Now he says there might not be baseball at all after saying there would definitely 100,000 percent be baseball in 2020. Hindsight, man. Farts. 

Main reason he said anything is the players were like, okay, we’ll play, let’s get started, and ownership was all, but wait, we’re not ready, and you might sue us because we don’t know if what we’re doing is legal. The players wouldn’t sign waivers that said it didn’t matter if the owners were street legal or not, so the owners trotted out this fool who gave away leverage on national television because he momentarily forgot every syllable is a war aimed at the 2021 Competitive Balance Agreement.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Baseball is Back with a Whimper: Pandemic Draft Week Recap

June 14, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 13 Comments

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I was having a blast watching the 2020 Major League Baseball Rule 4 Draft, but at some point in the 4th round, the whole pageant started to feel gross. 

All these billion dollar teams focused on doing little maneuvers to afford the high school kids they actually wanted. 

In the draft.

When you presumably add the players you want. 

It’s incongruous. 

And it’s not some pandemic 2020 thing. 

That’s just the base design of the thing made even more salient by the compressed variation MLB farted together in what passed for their attempt to rise to these unique circumstances.

Seniors’ ages are leveraged against them.

Juniors’ ages are leveraged against them.

Sophomores’ ages are leveraged against them in a slightly different, Wilcoxian way.

All this so owners can acquire laborers who’ll make less than minimum wage as cheaply as possible. It’s a salary cap for amateurs, designed to be much, much smaller budgets than a free market would generate. 

One might think the Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers or just about anyone competitive would campaign for more, maybe even better, but it turns out: who doesn’t love the leverage provided by an artificial line beyond which you must not go?

Easy way to end negotiations. 

Just like writing some bullshit god-power rule into the bylaws of a short-term agreement built to get through a pandemic. I knew the players shouldn’t have signed that noise. 

Anyhow, onto the shizz, making my best Karl Ravich face. 

Let’s start with my least favorite few drafts so we can end on a high note. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Mock Draft 2020: Major League Baseball Invites Chaos Theory

June 10, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 12 Comments

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During the Major League Baseball Rule 4 Draft, I am usually in China, eating my favorite breakfast in the world: a crispy pork bun and a pizza-shaped, spicy-salty bread that I don’t think I could describe, except maybe to say “mouth heaven.”

And that’s kind of the thing about China: the food. The cultures are old and the ethnicities are varied. Mainland China is comprised of some 57 different people groups with different cultures and cuisines. Food is a national pride and pastime. The word “variety” doesn’t even begin to describe the diversity of dishes and flavors. 

Mock drafts are not like Chinese cuisine.

Sure you might encounter a spicy pepper or two, but you’re not going to find sauteed eel, boiled jellyfish or barbecued squid on a stick. 

Maybe you’ll think it’s good to not find these specific foods, but if you don’t try everything once, you’ll be missing out on that miracle dish you’re surprised to find is perfect for you—the flavor combination you’ve been waiting a lifetime to find–and I’m happy to report that sauteed eel is incredible. 

So that’s what we’ll do here: saute some eel, boil some jellyfish, taste some chaos.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top Ten for 2021 First-Year Player Dynasty Drafts

June 7, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 5 Comments

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The Rule 4 Draft kicks off this Wednesday! Time to get amped for an actual sporting event! 

Or not. I mean it’s your call. Would totally understand if you’re so irritated by big-wig greed you can’t pretend MLB doesn’t suck at being a professional league for a couple of weeknights. 

2020’s will be a supremely weird draft, but I’m geeked for it. I’ll post a mock draft here midday Wednesday, after which I’ll continue these rankings. I know some leagues like to do their First-Year-Player Drafts immediately after the July 2 signing date for international amateurs (in a typical season), so I figured the time was right to start synthesizing the talent trickling into our game this summer. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

WonkaVision: Jasson Dominguez and the Search for Gold in Bowman

June 3, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 29 Comments

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Before taking a single at bat, Jasson Dominguez is dominating the baseball card world.

2020 Bowman Baseball is nowhere to be found in the retail universe. Year over year, Bowman baseball cards are one of the only products in late-stage capitalism that corporations cannot keep in stock.

Stephen Strasburg is to blame for some of this. Back in 2010, I was stopping at Wal-Marts off the highway, tiny town Targets and roadside Casey’s in search of 2010 Bowman blaster boxes. They cost 19.99 in stores and sold for about $40 online. Inside a blaster box were eight packs, two chrome prospect cards per pack. (Today, Topps has shrunk the pack count to six but kept the pricing.) Some of the craze was that a Strasburg base 1st Chrome rookie went for about $50 on eBay. Some of the craze was due to the high-end market. An attorney bought the Strasburg 1/1 Superfractor–not autographed–from 2010 bowman for $10,000 and sold it a short while later for $26,000.

Ten years later, Bowman is the biggest thing in baseball, and Jasson Dominguez is growing the game yet again.

Here’s a table I put together built from the elite group of my Top 200 for easy viewing and comparing.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Dynasty Draft Guide: Rankings Omnibus for 2021 Fantasy Baseball

May 31, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 17 Comments

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I’ve been looking forward to this post for a while.

The shut down threw the content-creation world one hell of a curveball. Many outlets have been using the dead time to catch up on unfinished 2020 organizational prospect rankings, but I completed Razzball’s back in January, so I moved on to another large project I didn’t have the winter minutes to complete but spun it forward to next season, ranking just about everyone across each position from a long-term perspective. 

Got some push back early. “So we’re just skipping to next season? smdh”

But I kept riding through the Wild West of dynasty baseball’s future, mapping middle-aged aces alongside yet-to-be-drafted youngsters. This led to wonderful conversations with Razzball’s brilliant readers, who helped me build a set of rankings I hope we can all use to find fantasy fun and glory in the seasons to come. 

I’m proud of this project, thrilled to be working with so many smart fantasy players, and eager to distill the past few months of work into this one post. Can’t wait to keep chatting and building with you all! Happy scrolling!

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Dynasty Rankings: Top 100 Relief Pitchers for 2021 Fantasy Baseball

May 27, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 8 Comments

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In Sunday’s introduction to the top 50 relief pitchers for 2021 dynasty baseball, I explored how Rolaids may have played a role in early analytics by assigning point values to relief pitching events in their quest to annually reward each league’s best pitcher in the 1970’s. 

During these years, Rolaids commercials claimed that their company name spelled relief. Now I know it was just a bit for a commercial, and I appreciate Rolaids bringing shine to an oft-shadowed position (especially to that point in baseball history), but I don’t appreciate—as an English instructor and father of an almost two-year-old human—that a company can build its core marketing strategy around obfuscating the spelling of words. Morphemes matter, y’all. Mastering the English language is heartburn-inducing enough without Rolaids playing fast and loose with phonics.

This reminds me of major league managers playing fast and loose with bullpens while the rest of us scramble to figure out how that team is going to spell relief for the next few weeks. 

But scramble we must, and relish the hustle I do, so let’s get to the list.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Dynasty Rankings: Top 50 Relief Pitchers for 2021 Fantasy Baseball

May 24, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 29 Comments

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I take a lot of antacids.

Rolaids created an award (not for me)–a gold-plated firefighter’s helmet–to honor baseball’s best relief pitcher every year from 1976 to 2012. The history behind this fascinates me. Feels like some seeds of analytics were born in the bowels of Rolaids’ 1970’s corporate office.

Relief pitching events were each given a point value. Three points per save. Two points per win. Two points per loss. The biggest end-of-season number won, period. 

Blown saves (-2) were introduced in 1987.

Tough saves (+4) came along in 2000. Surprises me that I’ve never seen this as an option by fantasy providers, especially in points leagues or daily games. An antacid company was using it 20 years ago ffs. Refers to any time a reliever enters the game with a tying run on base and secures a save. 

Relievers might be my favorite thing about fantasy baseball, for reasons I can’t explain except to say I love games that resist attempts to shrink/minimize/categorize/rubricate them. The more multi-layered the better. And saves bring that to fantasy baseball. (As do stolen bases.) I also love Holds leagues because they throw the math off a nudge further and open another market of elite players who just happen to pitch the not-ninth. 

Ranking RP’s is kind of a paradox. It might be the least accurate yet most useful of any positional ranking, especially for dynasty leagues.

So that’s the caveat. 

These rankings are for standard 5×5 leagues, btw. Would look totally different in a holds league.

Relief pitching is a strength for me in fantasy, year over year. I tend to trade from it and trade for it on a regular basis, sometimes within the same week. Still, I’m a little leery to put fingers to keys on this one. The yearly upheaval at this position is like no other, so I’m not surprised there’s very little on the market right now covering relief pitching in dynasty leagues. 

The very thought of the task has my hand reaching for the (insert highest-bidding antacid company here).

Kidding. I love this stuff. My full geek breathes fire when researching the K-BB % leaders across all leagues, digging into their game logs, skipping to their innings, even watching/reading an interview here and there.  

Let’s get to the list.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Dynasty: Starting Pitcher Finds for 2021 Fantasy Baseball

May 20, 2020 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 6 Comments

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On Sunday, I imagined a hypothetical post-rona bar scene being akin to the deep pitching pool in dynasty baseball.

Today I’ll let you know whose drinks I’m buying if I’ve got the budget (and the roster space). 

I’m going to focus first and most on the 150-200 range because that’s the origin of this article–a comment and question by Harley Earl regarding which arms among the group I’m buying. To which my brain responded: Farts! I should’ve been doing that for every position!

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Dynasty Rankings: Top 200 Starting Pitchers for 2021 Fantasy Baseball

May 17, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 24 Comments

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You see a girl across the bar.

She’s gorgeous.

An angel.

Maybe.

It’s dark.

Tough to see real well.

But one thing you can say for sure is there’s a human sitting across the bar in this post-rona scenario. 

You’re eager to move a little closer, maybe buy a couple drinks. And who knows? Might be the start of something long term. 

You can feel the competition looming. Lotta hungry eyes in the house. Can’t sit around much longer. Have to move in before you’re certain.  

What I’ve just described is the free agent pitching pool in most dynasty leagues. It’s also the general pitching landscape between spots 150 and 200–this week’s focus point. The situation can seem dire most nights, but people get picked up all the time, and some turn out to be great finds. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
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