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Rudy Gamble

Author: Rudy Gamble

Rudy is the co-founder of Razzball and the wizard behind the Player Rater, Streamonator, HitterTron, DFSBot, Pigskinator, Stockonator and most other statty things on the site. You can contact him at [email protected] or via Twitter @rudygamble.

Read some of Rudy Gamble's 356 posts

Rudy Gamble

Rudy’s 2018 Yahoo! Friends & Family Mixed Draft

March 10, 2018 | Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy, Our Leagues | 47 Comments

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On March 1st, Grey and I took part in the Yahoo Friends & Family Draft – a now 15-team snake draft that is unique amongst expert leagues in that it is a daily transaction league instead of weekly transactions. While it is not quite as wild west as RCLs (125 player add limit + today’s pickups go on your roster starting tomorrow), it requires a different draft mentality.

Rather than belabor my picks, I’m going to just display my roster and just riff on a couple of draft strategies/philosophies and how they applied to this draft. (I only have one of these behemoth draft reviews in me this year – see 15-team LABR Mixed draft).

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

2018 Razzball NFBC Signup

February 21, 2018 | 2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Our Leagues | 21 Comments

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Time to sign up for those of you interested in competing against some Razzball writers (including Grey who won his league last year and myself – I won my league in 2016 and 3rd in 2017) in the NFBC $150 Draft Champions format. It is a 15 team mixed, 5×5 format with 50 rounds (done via a slow draft that takes about 2 weeks). NFBC’s moved to a new site that looks great and they have cut the clock between picks from 8 hours to 4 hours (except overnight).

For those unfamiliar, the major quirk vs most league formats is that there are no trades OR free agent pickups. You can update your starting hitters twice a week (Friday and Monday) and pitchers once a week (Monday). I love this format as a complement to standard formats as it rewards drafters who can find breakout candidates/bargains on draft day. Here is a link to the full rules.

Once we have enough people to fill a league, NFBC will create the league. We’ll try to start the leagues around the first week of March. I recommend creating an account at NFBC if you do not have one as that will expedite everything.

NOTE:  THIS IS SEPARATE FROM THE RAZZBALL COMMENTER LEAGUE.  THAT IS A 12-TEAM MIXED FORMAT WITH DAILY ROSTER CHANGES AND YOU CAN PLAY IN FREE, $10, OR $20 LEAGUES. SIGN UP HERE IF YOU ARE INTERESTED.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Rudy’s 2018 LABR Mixed Draft

February 20, 2018 | 2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 65 Comments

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There is a special day in mid-February where I can freely and shamelessly express my love. Appreciate my partner in life. Get lost in romance.

That is Valentine’s Day. But the day before it was the 15-team LABR Mixed draft which is more fun and less expensive.

As always, thanks to Steve Gardner at USA Today for the invite. Can’t believe this is the 5th year I’ve been in this league.

I was holed up in an NYC hotel for the draft where luckily the wifi did not shit the bed (nor did I). No kids disrupting the draft. A background soundtrack of sporadic car horns and loud-talking pedestrians. I was able to grab the HDMI cord from the cable box so I could rock the two screens. If only I remembered to pick up a pastrami sandwich and a six pack, I could’ve been in Costanza heaven.

Quick Perspective On The Difference Between 15-Team Mixed w/ Weekly Roster Changes vs. 10/12-team Mixed Daily Roster Changes
I am going to share with you the only relevant difference between these two formats. If you are someone who plays shallow leagues with daily roster changes (and typically a high transaction cap), repeat this as a mantra in your head when drafting in this format (like in NFBC).

The 2018 Razzball Commenter Leagues are now open! Free to join with prizes! All the exclamation points!

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Razzball and Daily Fantasy Cafe Partner On MLB Lineup Optimizer

June 1, 2017 | Uncategorized | 12 Comments

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Starting with the 2017 MLB season (and continuing for NFL and NBA), Razzball has partnered with Daily Fantasy Cafe to ensure subscribers to our DFS Premium Package can use our Razzball’s expert projections (here is a FAQ) within the most advanced MLB lineup optimizer in Daily Fantasy Sports.

The Razzball MLB Lineup Optimizer powered by Daily Fantasy Cafe includes projections for FanDuel, DraftKings (Standard mode), and Yahoo. It has the standard features you expect from your standard MLB Lineup Generator (lineup confirmation, weather, lock in or exclude a player, etc.) as well as many advanced features such as:

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

2017 Draft Goals by Category for 5×5 Fantasy Baseball Leagues

March 28, 2017 | 2017 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 65 Comments

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This is a post for the fantasy baseball drafters who use Excel, Google Docs, or some other war room software that automatically totals a drafted team’s stats while in the middle of a draft. Or perhaps for those of you who do mock drafts or simulated drafts.

The below grid represents my projected 75% mark in each stat category across 10/12/14/15/16 team ESPN and Yahoo default roster format leagues.

These numbers should only be used directionally. Please note that each projection source projects to a different league average so your team may look great if using a ‘bullish’ source and look poor if using a ‘bearish’ source. These are based on the Steamer/Razzball projections.

While I stand behind these numbers as they are part of the foundation behind my Player Rater $ estimates, I do not use these as part of my draft. I prefer to add up the dollar values per category. Same difference I suppose but it is easier to see counting totals for ratios and it lets me fixate less on the numbers (e.g., I see $7, I know they are good…I don’t fixate on 20 SBs vs 25 SBs).

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Rudy’s 2017 Tout Wars Mixed Team (15 Team Snake 5×5 OBP)

March 13, 2017 | Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy, Our Leagues | 69 Comments

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On Tuesday March 7th, I took part for the 3rd straight year in the 15-team Tout Wars Mixed Draft. Fueled by good fortune (and perhaps the 5×5 OBP format), I have fielded championship-level teams in both years only to finish in 2nd place to Adam Ronis of Scout & SiriusXM. It is like I am the Patriots but, unfortunately, he is being coached by Tom Coughlin.

I picked 1st last year and had an insane Trout/Scherzer/Sale start to my draft when the room drafted an unfathomable 28 hitters in the first 29 picks. The rest of the draft turned out fairly well and my in-season pickups were strong. Looking back, not coming out of the draft with enough speed (damn you Magoo and Grey talking me into DeShields) or Saves (Boxberger/Storen was brutal, half-salvaged with a Colome handcuff) hurt me in the end.

One reward for top teams is that the previous year’s order is used for determining draft pick. With second choice, I just had to rank my two preferred spots. By reflex, I chose 1st than 2nd since I have found those are the two most valuable spots (followed by 3, 4, etc.). Once Ronis wisely chose 1st, I realized I should have spent a little more time thinking about it as there is not much consensus on a #2 pick in 5×5 OBP this year.

Here are the full results of the 2017 Tout Mixed League Draft. Below are my picks and my analysis:

Razzball Commenter Leagues are open! Play against our contributors and your fellow readers for prizes. Join here!

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

2017 Razzball NFBC Signup

March 2, 2017 | Our Leagues | 60 Comments

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Hey everyone. Sorry for the relatively short notice but we have decided to go back to NFBC for our sponsored paid leagues in 2017. This is the $150 Draft Champions format. It is a 15 team mixed, 5×5 format with 50 rounds (done via a slow draft that takes about 2 weeks). The major quirk is that there are no trades OR free agent pickups. You can update your starting hitters twice a week (Friday and Monday) and pitchers once a week (Monday). I love this format as a complement to standard formats as it rewards drafters who can find breakout candidates/bargains on draft day. Here is a link to the full rules.

Once we have enough people to fill a league, NFBC will create the league. I recommend creating an account at NFBC if you do not have one as that will expedite everything.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

New Prospect Tool + Draft Simulator + 2017 Tools Update

February 28, 2017 | Fantasy Baseball DFS | 35 Comments

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Our daily/weekly MLB projection tools (Streamonator, Hittertron, DFSBot, etc.) will be back for 2017. We are in the process of updating the payment software (our previous vendor, CoinTent, went out of business) so just hold tight for now.

But I do have two good pieces of news to share!

First, we partnered with our friends at FantasyPros to bring you a free fantasy baseball draft simulator where you can: 1) set the league preferences, 2) choose between either Grey or Rudy’s cheat sheets (you can see them when you scroll down from your player selection screen) and 3) see how it compares with the consensus (a decent proxy for ADP).

Second, given the demand from dynasty leaguers and redrafters who like rookie nookie for MLB prospect info, we just launched a new tool called Prospectonator (links for hitters and pitchers) that can now be found in the top menu (under Tools) and linked at the top of all the Preseason Projections/Player Raters.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Projecting Injured, Injury Prone, and Prospects (Power of The $/Game Metric)

February 23, 2017 | Fantasy Baseball Injury Report | 31 Comments

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One of the bigger challenges for fantasy baseball drafts and auctions is how to value players who are not projected for a full-season’s worth of at-bats or innings. If you run their partial-season projections through any standard player rater, they are unfairly penalized as it assumes zero replacement stats when we know we can get someone on waivers to fill in for them while they are not on the major league roster.

These types of players fall into four buckets:

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Rudy’s 2017 LABR Team (15 Team Mixed Snake Draft)

February 18, 2017 | Our Leagues | 64 Comments

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The LABR mixed-league draft has taken place in mid-February since its inception a couple of years ago and I have been lucky enough to be a part of it. Steve Gardner at USAToday.com is a gracious host, it’s a good group of people and competitors (even better with the addition of Dr. Roto and Scott Pianowski of Yahoo) and the timing of the draft is a great incentive to get my preseason projections, values and research done about the same time Grey finishes his marathon of player ranking posts.

Every preseason, I do things a little differently. I would like to say I am inspired by Einstein but his brilliance does not excuse his mediocre bagels. Yes, it’s not like I live in a bagel mecca nirvana heaven Garden of Eden in Austin, TX (Wholy Bagel excluded) but the theory of relativity does not extend to bagels IMO.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Razzball MLB Tools Projections Update Is Live!

June 6, 2016 | Uncategorized | 31 Comments

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We have released an update to the daily MLB projections beginning with June 7th games.

This upgrade took a longer time than expected to complete as it required almost a full rewrite of the code but I am psyched to finally release it!

Thanks to all of you – especially you rabid DFSers – who have provided suggested improvement areas throughout the season. Behind the scenes, we automated several processes to ensure that daily projections are updated as early as possible (~6:15 AM EST) and then updated throughout the day regularly to reflect posted lineups (every 10 minutes. increased to 5 minutes between 4-7PM EST).

Below are some of the noteworthy upgrades with our new projection system:

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

No Cracks In This Win Shields

May 13, 2016 | Uncategorized | 327 Comments

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Big Game James went into Milwaukee and clinched at least a 16 win season for the Padres. Clutch!

This was a flashback Shields start – 7 IP, 9 K, 1 BB, 0 HR. I thought the NL would extend his fantasy acehood a little longer – like it did for Jon Lester and his fried chicken and beer buddy, John Lackey – but Shields’ BB and HR rates spiked insanely last year.

The HR rate (a near league-leading 1.47 HR/9 IP) was due to regress a bit (now around 1 HR/9 IP) but his BB rate is still 3.6/9 which relegates him to streaming in shallow leagues and an Ian Kennedy-like SP4/SP5 in 15-team leagues. If he could regain his control, he has a shot at a 3rd act as a KaBoB.

So Grey handed me the roundup keys on a short slate Thursday. I’m so excited. I’m so scared. I’m so tired (I’m shocked Grey hasn’t moved to Hawaii yet so he doesn’t have to write at night). I asked him to return the favor and give me a title and all he came up with was, “Brooke Shields Is Handsome” and “The Shields Start Was RiChiklis”. Oy.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
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