The Most Under-Drafted Player of the Last Five Years

July 8, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 32 Comments

Last week Grey had the great idea to put my ADP treasure trove of data to good use, and ask people which player they thought has been the most under-drafted over the past five years (2010-14). Who put up good numbers year after year and still was not given the benefit of the doubt?

We got lots of guesses, but only one person got the right answer. Who is this person and which player did they guess? Scroll down to go straight to the destination, or you can first relive some of the journey that got me to the answer…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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	ARI \| ATH \| ATL \| BAL \| BOS \| CHW \| CIN \| COL \| HOU \| KC \| LAA \| MIA \| MIN \| NYM \| NYY \| PHI \| SD \| TB \| TEX \| TOR \| WSH \| CHC \| CLE \| DET \| LAD \| MIL \| OAK \| PIT \| SEA \| SF \| STL

Using Yahoo’s API to Access Your League’s Data (Part 2 of 1000)

May 6, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 10 Comments

by: paul

Last article, I introduced pulling your league’s data from Yahoo’s API in a Python script. Today, I’m going to show you a better way to do that very same thing.

In my last article dkempiners’ python-yahooapi code was used to do the heavy lifting, but admittedly I didn’t have a great understanding of how it worked and it was clunky in ways. This week we’re going to use josuebrunel’s myql code base, which at least for me was cleaner to use and easier to understand.

Since it seemed like more than a few people tried to follow along and do it themselves last week, this article will simply show how to use it, but won’t go anywhere near a step-by-step level of detail. Some coding knowledge is expected, in other words. If you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Testing the Effectiveness of Freeze Bids in an Auction

April 8, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 9 Comments

by: paul

Note: We’ve got real baseball games being played and I’m stuck in this theoretical auction world. If you’re not prepared to dive into coding and stat minutiae, maybe save your energies for my article next week. Fair warning…

If you were with us last time, I introduced a program that simulated an auction given a list of the participants, a list of the players to be bid on, and lists of how much each owner valued each player. The reason I built this program was to learn more about auction strategy. The issue with my program was, even though it simulated auctions well enough, it was hard to glean any meaningful information from the results.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

2015 Disgraces and Delights: Closers

April 1, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 147 Comments

by: LT Murray IV

Greetings! The time has come! This is what we’ve all been so patiently waiting for! Yaaaaaaasssss, Bruce Jenner’s sex change is upon us!!! Rejoice! It’s also a cool time of the year because MLB is starting up again. I suppose that means we should get down on some mo fantasy baseball type shizzz. Are you ready? No, I said, ARE YOUR READY!?!? Okay, sweet.

I so desperately wanted to write a preseason piece on Domonic Brown, but I was notified that he received over 500 words in my outfielders post, making it a no go this week. Can you even imagine? That would be like some moron pathetically green lighting a sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Only my Domonic column would probably go on to win awards and Blart 2 would be about as entertaining as watching Rosie O’Donnell’s love box fart for two straight hours…..WHAT?!?!?!?!? THEY’RE MAKING A PAUL BLART SEQUEL!??! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?!?!? My generation got Home Alone and Radio Flyer. The children of today get Paul effing Blart? Kevin James should be ashamed of himself for this. It’s embarrassing enough piggybacking the falling star that is Adam Sandler into 90% of his movie roles, but this is beyond pathetic. Hey, at least his untalented brother will get another meaningless role. Laaaaaawd, make it stop.

Enough about Blart. I’m here to talk about closers. I am Tehol Beddict, and this is Disgrace/Delight! Take Heed!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Introducing the Auction Simulator Ver 1.0

April 1, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 16 Comments

by: paul

Or, the Unexpected Virtue of Active Bidding…

Unlike a certain appendage of mine, I like to keep my intros short, so let’s get down to business. For those of you who were not with us last week, I spewed some thoughts on auction theory and expressed a desire to create a tool to simulate auctions. Seven days later, I have created such a tool. Or at least a basic, yet functional form of one…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Late Round Flyers: Middle Infield Edition

March 28, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 125 Comments

by: J-FOH

The infidels are coming. They are storming the stronghold and sieging the castle. Cover your children’s eyes and lock up your grandmas. As a general rule, I’m not drafting a middle “infidel” early unless it comes at great value or I’m tinkering with the zig strategy. Scarcity has over taken too many owners who pass up great numbers to fill a positional need and have been blinded by the fact that numbers are numbers. As I’m writing this, I’m looking at all the great depth for MI and I wonder why the heck should I even be writing this. It’s pretty obvious that there is great upside late by reading Grey’s coverage of second base. Add to that some of the bounce back golden oldies, and you got generations at the keystone. Speaking of golden oldies, did you all catch the ridiculously redumbasshatily things Brandon Phillips had to say the other day?

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Draft Day Arbitrage: Getting A Fister From A Stranger

March 23, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Fantasy Baseball Overrated | 52 Comments

by: Sky

So yes, this is an overrated post but since I’m not Grey and Grey ain’t me, you don’t see the word ‘Schmohawk’ in the title. If I had, it would’ve been seen as a weak and watered down version of a Schmohawk piece. Mayhap you would’ve gone so far as to say it was a ‘Faux hawk’ which is really the worst thing ever. A faux hawk says to me you want to look like an edgy bad boy but you also listen to Nick Jonas which is just another way of saying ‘My parents are well off and I spend a lot of time at the mall complaining about them’. First off, not getting the car for the weekend because you got a ‘C’ in Math isn’t ‘abusive’ and secondly, that kid who dumped his orange julius on you after walking out of Hot Topic? Yeah, that would’ve been me from 20 years ago. Go full hawk or no hawk, you poser! But enough about my goth teen years, we’re here to talk about Doug Fister and so we shall. Let’s see what kind of players put up similar 2014 lines who are going cheaper than Doug for 2015 Fantasy Baseball Drafts…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Rudy’s 2015 Tout Wars Team

March 17, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Our Leagues | 99 Comments

by: Rudy Gamble

Thanks to the fantasy baseball sabbatical of our longtime pal Nick Minnix, the Tout Wars Mixed League (15-team, snake draft) had an extra spot for good ol’ Rudy. Grey is also in the league (his draft review here) which gives Razzball two chances to win and me three chances to beat Grey in a 2015 league (RCL and Yahoo Friends & Family the other two). It is also the 3rd straight expert draft (LABR Mixed, CBS AL) that fellow Austinite Paul Sporer was in the same draft as me. So I have the opportunity for two hat tricks this year (or to be hat tricked….grr, pessimistic parentheticals).

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Grey vs. Rudy

March 15, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 169 Comments

by: J-FOH

What was I thinking when I thought this would be a fun post? I came into this wanting to be Grey’s opposite for S’s and G’s, but that ship sailed south really fast. If you are disappointed that I bailed on that idea, then go to his comments any day and you can view my contrarian ways as I try to keep him honest and keep myself being…well, me being good ole me. When Rudy told me he would make me a table doing a side-by-side with dollar values, I was a little worried about how that would be accepted by the Grey-heads. Then I thought to myself, who doesn’t like money? Well maybe Monty Brewster, who hated money for 30 days, but I would too with what he had to do in that classic 80’s baseball flick. On a hunch, I went into the archives to find that Rudy wrote this post last year and realized I got duped into doing it for 2015. Well played señor Rudolfo…well played indeed.

Want to take me on in a Razzball Commenter League? Join my league here!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Carlos Santana: They Say First Is The Best

March 11, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 111 Comments

by: Sky

Not everything has to be a series from me. Do I have to sell a gimmick to get you to latch on to what I’m reading? Sure, I brought you the Under The Greydar series and yeah, I brought you Deep League Thoughts. And yeah, I started a bit of a series called Draft Day Arbitrage which we’re still working on but sometimes a particular topic just grabs me and I gotta get it out there to the masses without precedences. You see, as I started looking into the draft season that is now upon us I started liking Carlos Santana more and more despite him losing catcher eligibility in most leagues outside of Yahoo. Obviously the public isn’t lukewarm on him as he’s still a top 75 player overall on most draft boards but in light of recent findings on him, I am beginning to wonder if, much like Alison Brie, he is underrated for his assets because they haven’t been fully exposed on the world. Well, lets loosen up that bra strap and ummm…yeah, there’s no analogy here. Roll the credits! Here’s Carlos and how his move to first actually has some goodness tied to it for 2015 Fantasy Baseball…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

2015 Draft Goals by Category for 5×5 AL/NL-only Leagues

March 10, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 29 Comments

by: Rudy Gamble

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 AL-only and NL-only 10 and 12 team leagues. These are based on the standard 2 Catcher/1B/2B/SS/3B/CI/MI/5 OF/UTIL/9 P roster format.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Two Start Pitcher Strategy: What To Look For…Besides The Best Guys

March 4, 2015 | 2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 15 Comments

by: Geoff

When Grey and Jay first approached me about doing some preseason posts about Two Start Pitchers “Strategy” I thought “uhhhh, play the best guy”. Problem is that doesn’t really make for intriguing content, now does it? So instead, I’m going to do 1500 words about soccer! Naw, I’m joking…if you wanted to be inundated with my footie ramblings, you’d be reading our soccer site…(shameless plug alert). So instead I’ll focus my post on the very things I look for when ranking my two-start pitchers from week-to-week. An overview of what to look for when scouring the wire for that pick up to tip the scales of your counting stats in your weekly head-to-head match-up. So we’ll break everything into sections; home vs. road splits, opposing lineup righty vs. lefty splits, K/BB ratio, and HR/9. To illustrate this we’ll use an example player to discuss each when appropriate. Sound good? Just say yes, I don’t care what you think! Muhahahaha!

Please, blog, may I have some more?