LOGIN
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 2015 Tout Wars Team – End of Season Recap

October 27, 2015 | Our Leagues | 75 Comments

by:

So much of life comes down to perspective. There are super successful people that are filled with bitterness and anger while others scrape by and are happy. I constantly have to remind myself how lucky I am – great wife & kids, healthy, have money in bank, love where I live – to avoid getting sucked into the craphole of the daily grind.

It is easy for people that do not play fantasy sports to dismiss our joy or anger at our fantasy baseball teams by saying ‘it is just a game.’ You can reduce just about everything people get passionate about with ‘it is just _____’. But that isn’t productive. Reveling in your successes and dismissing your failures only means you ensure less success because you do not fully learn from your failures. And it takes a healthy perspective to isolate the ‘fault’ from the ‘bad luck’ in one’s failures.

I write all this because my first year in Tout Wars was an excrutiating test to keep perspective. Let’s see how good a job I can do….

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

Razzball Roto and DFS MLB Projections Update, August 2015

August 4, 2015 | DraftKings | 25 Comments

by:

July was a great month for the Razzball daily projections. Based on our ongoing testing vs actual stats (aka our Ombostman), July 2015 was our most accurate month ever (tracking since May 2014) for:

  • Projected starting pitcher values – both Roto $ and DFS Points
  • ERA and WHIP
  • Hitter Plate Appearances, At Bats, Hits, Runs (tied with June 2015), SLG %

July also represented our 2nd best performance for RBIs (with tops being last month) so I am feeling very positive about the enhancements chronicled in our July update.

I guess our competitors have been wise not to take us up on our MLB daily projections challenge. And it is only going to get harder based on our latest update….

While the July update might have been a little tough to grasp, the value of our August update should be as simple as playing baseball according to Colin Cowherd. We have incorporated two critical pieces of information that are unique to ‘same day’ projections (and many of you have been clamoring for):

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

The Razzball MLB DFS Projection Challenge

July 16, 2015 | Testing Projections + Player Raters | 29 Comments

by:

A great blonde berobed American once said, “In order to be the man, you gotta beat the man.” When it comes to DFS MLB projections, we want to be the man. We just are not sure who, if anyone, we need to beat to wear the championship belt.

So here is our challenge and it is open to anyone who publishes daily DFS MLB projections online. These projections may be free or sold by subscription (like ours for only $9.99/month!). I am willing to put up $500 to make this worth our while (you’ll have to do the same):

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

Razzball Roto and DFS MLB Projections Update, July 2015

July 2, 2015 | DraftKings | 33 Comments

by:

There has been a lot of work behind the scenes to our daily projection methodology since my last update in May. The impact has been very positive – e.g., June represented our most accurate month ever for projecting DFS hitter points.

If you haven’t signed up already, I implurge (implore + urge) you to sign up for a month of DFSBot as for $9.99, you will get our DFS projections for DraftKings (and three others providers), the Streamonator + HitterTron for dominating Roto AND free access to our partner LineupLab’s MLB lineup optimizer leveraging our projections.

Here is a summary of the recent projections methodology improvements:

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

Razzball and Lineup Lab Partner On MLB Lineup Optimizer

June 10, 2015 | Uncategorized | 21 Comments

by:

Yesterday, I shared the latest confidence-affirming test on the Razzball daily MLB projections. Today, I have some great news on how you will be able to make the most out of our projections.

We have partnered with Lineup Lab to create a fantastic lineup optimizer. It is FREE for all DFS Premium subscribers for at least the month of June. For the low price of $9.99/month (or FREE if you open up a new DFS account), you will get our projections and this lineup optimizer for this month).

The optimizers can be accessed via the below links or via the Tools Menu.

https://razzball.com/dfsbot-draftkings-optimizer
https://razzball.com/dfsbot-fanduel-optimizer

Like some of you, I have been using an Excel-based ‘Solver’ to optimize our DFS projections. After doing side-by-side comparisons, I can say with certainty that the Lineup Lab optimizer is superior. Here are some of the examples…

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

Razzball Daily MLB Projections vs. Las Vegas Odds + Runs Over/Under

June 9, 2015 | Testing Projections + Player Raters | 20 Comments

by:

Fantasy baseball brings out the competitive bastard in me. Expert leagues, NFBC, and DFS sites like DraftKings are the standard targets of my affliction but I also get obsessive about our daily projections. Short of maybe gambling and winning big bucks in DFS (not going to happen with my limited risk tolerance), it is hard to find ways to test the quality of our daily projections.

It is not for lack of trying. I compare our DFS hitter and pitcher point projections against DFS site salaries in our DFSBot on our Ombotsman page and – going back to May 2014 – there has yet to be a month where a DFS site’s salary has outperformed us. I did a 2 month test last year against ESPN Fantasy Forecaster that showed our starting pitcher projections were superior. I tested last year’s projections against hitter and pitcher recent game data to find areas that could use improvement (highlighted pitcher IP should leverage recent starts more).

As I was contemplating new targets to compare against, I was IM’ing with our lead DFS writer (Sky) and he noted that he looks at Vegas Over/Under estimates for Runs when considering teams to stack. That got me thinking…I could go for some pancakes. After eating those pancakes, I thought, “What if I test our projections against Vegas!”. Then I napped.

Yada yada yada, below are the (favorable) test results versus Las Vegas MLB lines. See bottom of post for some testing notes. As an added bonus (until someone pays me to take them down), DFS Premium subscribers can see these team run projections updated every day (for today + at least the next 6 days) on our Teamonator page.

Please visit our Subscription page for more information on our daily projection subscription packages. We offer daily, monthly, and season long packages – catering both to the Roto and DFS player (if you play both, even better).

Also, stay tuned tomorrow for an awesome addition to DFSBot!!!

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

Does A Pitcher’s Last 3 Start Performance Matter For Projecting Their Next Start?

April 8, 2015 | fantasy baseball strategy, Testing Projections + Player Raters | 42 Comments

by:

Razzball’s daily fantasy baseball tools – Streamonator, Hittertron, and DFSBot – are available by subscription in 2015. If you play in roto leagues with daily roster changes or Daily Fantasy Sports like DraftKings, these tools will rock your world. Please see our Subscriptions page for details – including how to get a free subscription by opening up a new Daily Fantasy Sports account.

In my previous ‘hot hitter’ post, I found that a hitter’s recent performance (measured as last 3 games and last 5 games) had no value in projecting next game performance once you account for the player’s known skill (as measured by Steamer Rest of Season projections) and the relevant gameday matchup info incorporated into our Hittertron/DFSBot (e.g., quality of opposing pitcher, handedness of opposing pitcher, park factors).

This post will cover whether recent performance by a starting pitcher helps improve the next start projections in our Streamonator and the pitching component of DFSBot.

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

Does A Hitter’s Last 3-5 Games Matter For Projecting Their Next Game’s Stats?

April 3, 2015 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball | 77 Comments

by:

Razzball’s daily fantasy baseball tools – Streamonator, Hittertron, and DFSBot – are available by subscription in 2015. If you play in roto leagues with daily roster changes or Daily Fantasy Sports like DraftKings, these tools will rock your world. Please see our Subscriptions page for details – including how to get a free subscription by opening up a new Daily Fantasy Sports account. 

Fantasy baseballers are becoming increasingly analytical. Estimating a player’s future batting average now reflexively leads to checking their BABIP, their batted ball profile (GB/LD/FB) and a hitter’s K%. Any discussion of a pitcher’s ERA will likely reference their FIP/xFIP/SIERA/etc. Aside from the whole bastardization of baseball outcomes for the illusion of empowerment and erosion of professional productivity, the average fantasy baseballer is much closer in perspective to a sabermetrician than the average fan watching from his/her couch (or the remaining indoctrinated baseball journalists that still roam the land).

One area where I admit I have a tough time reconciling my analytic side with my fantasy baseball instincts is the value of a hitter’s recent performance.*

* I know many fantasy baseball players look at hitter/pitcher matchup data. I think the chapter on this in The Book clearly drives home the point that these results are not predictive because of small sample sizes. I always ignore matchup data and think it is a total waste of time…well, except for Goldschmidt vs Lincecum
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

Rudy’s Yahoo! Friends & Family Draft

March 26, 2015 | Our Leagues | 71 Comments

by:

On March 18th, Grey and I took part in the 14-team mixed-league Yahoo! Friends & Family league. I really like this one for two reasons:

  • Daily roster moves let me leverage Streamonator and Hittertron – although it’s tougher than RCL because pickups must be made the day before (no starting lineup-based pickups) and there is a newly-instituted 125 add/drop rule (i made 180 or so last year)
  • We get to play with our Friends at Yahoo (Behrens, Pianowski, Dalton, Funston) and Rotowire (Erickson, Liss) plus the polarizing and prolific tweeter Michael Salfino and some folks from Rotoworld. If you can successfully snag a closer or free agent from this group, it is a real accomplishment (my 2015 snags included Hector Rondon, Jake Petricka, Kennys Vargas, and Josh Harrison)
Please, blog, may I have some more?
Rudy Gamble

The Free Razzball Dell XPS 13 Laptop Winner Is…

March 24, 2015 | Y to Z | 21 Comments

by:

Frank Grimes of Sunnyvale, California! He was lucky number 401 of the 993 submissions in our Win a Free Awesome Dell XPS 13 Laptop Like the One I Use! contest. I am psyched that the randomizer function I ran picked a longtime reader/commenter (Frank’s been commenting on Razzball since 2013).

My condolences to the 992 of you who failed to win (none of you are losers in my book) and those of you who failed to enter the contest. If you are in the market for a laptop, though, I do give a Fred McGriffian endorsement to the Dell XPS 13 laptop. Below is my review of the laptop from the original post in case you missed or forgot it.

Thanks to Dell for providing the free laptops (I got one too). I look forward to seeing my avatar and endorsement stamped on Dell laptop boxes going forward!

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Copyright 2007-2024 Razzball LLC. All rights reserved.
Razzball.com and the Razzball logo units are copyright Razzball LLC.