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Do you remember that one kid in elementary school who always seemed to win every raffle, cake walk or prize when it was nothing more than dumb luck?  Well, welcome to Major League Baseball where that same kid is reimagined as Chris Davis and instead of winning the cake walk, he wins a ridiculous $161M contract.  Both of these guys stink if you are not them and the second one sinks your fantasy season as well.  This week our hitter profiles dig into a few luck metrics to warn or yearn for the rest of the season.  Do not worry, I won’t mention Chris Davis again.

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Tue 4/30
ARI | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | OAK | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH

Hello again my fellow degens. Welcome back to our Sunday installment of MLB DFS. I finally lost count as to which number this is. It could just be my brain trying to erase these articles from my memory due t0 less then stellar performance as of late. This article is going to be a bit of a look back and then of course some plays to make for todays slate. I want people to feel confident that they are getting quality plays when they come here. Even though I had a good week personally 2 of my last 3 Sunday touts have mostly missed the mark. If you have wagered on the teams in our Lines in Vegas section you feel different because I have been close to a stone cold lock with regards to bets. Unfortunately for me, if not so much for you, this is primarily a DFS article. Before we get into the WHO, I want to talk about the HOW.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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“He has the package. If we are able to tap into that, watch out. He could be the next [Randy] Arozarena”   – Luis Ortiz, hitting coach for the Texas Rangers

That’s high praise but is he in the best shape of his life? When are they not? So, who is this player that has the potential to help power a team to the World Series? I’m trying to make you move up to the edge of your seat, sweat in anticipation of the big reveal but who am I kidding? Most will just gloss over these words and gravitate to the bolded letters. Ah, such is the life of a fantasy blogger. Just writing words into the vast void of the internet, never to be consumed by 99% of the masses. Hi, mom! So Adolis Garcia has hit two home runs in 29 plate appearances. He’s been batting cleanup at times for the Rangers. Can he be the next Arozarena? Let’s dig in and find out.

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Eddie Murphy’s Boomerang is an American classic. I don’t care that Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 43% rating on its Tomatometer. Rotten Tomatoes is stupid. I don’t care the audience score is only 59%. 41% of people have no taste. It has a young Halle Berry looking mighty fine, John Witherspoon showing us how to coordinate, and Grace Jones telling us what the essence of sex smells like. Then there’s Eartha Kitt, an old who keeps trying to seduce Marcus Graham, played by Eddie Murphy, by purring, Marcus, Darling, every time she sees him. This brings me to Marcus Semien of the Toronto Blue Jays. The Athletics weren’t fond of him, as they refused to pay that man his money. Offseason drafters haven’t been particularly enamored with him, as he is the 15th shortstop and 134th overall player being selected in NFBC drafts. Many are saying that he’s an old whose best days are behind him. So, will Marcus be a darling or is he someone we should be disregarding?

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Welcome back for another season of Coolwhip in the Outfield. This preview edition is meant to be a review of what has happened. There’s a lot of players, especially outfielders where their past track record has been forgotten in lieu of what happened in just the 60 games during a pandemic. Let’s not be too hasty here… A lot of things happened that spoiled the sample, and a lot of things didn’t happen that would have been beneficial. So as it tends to be my theme, let’s look at the context.

What we will look at today is the top 100 outfielders based on the last 162 games scheduled. There are zero projections in this post. Again, ZERO projections, no preseason rankings (yet), I want us to focus on the track record first and take note. Specifically, here we will look at the value provided based on the last “season” played. My rankings here are ultimately who gave the most value on a per-game basis from mid-2019 through the short season of 2020. To you early drafters, hopefully, this aids your choice of late-round picks mining for potential value (*cough* RazzSlam *cough*).

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It’s still only early February and meaningful baseball feels light years away, but as far as I’m concerned it’s never too early to think about your next fantasy draft.  Last week we thought a bit about the outfield, but this week I’m in the mood to switch gears entirely.  So, let’s ponder some starting pitchers who are going late in drafts that could conceivably outperform their ADP.  We’ll keep things outside the top 250 players selected based on current NFBC ADP, including a few guys outside the top 400 that likely won’t see little yellow stickers with their names on them on draft boards outside of NL-only, AL-only, and similar formats of interest only to those of us in the deep-league world.

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For a couple nights this week, I drafted prospects with prospectors. Or against prospectors? Both, I suppose. Appreciated the invite from Scott White at CBS, who allowed me to come back and defend my crown from last year’s prospect mocks. That’s a joke. Not a funny one, sorry to say. Nobody wins a mock draft, let alone a prospect mock. 

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The top 20 3rd basemen for 2021 fantasy baseball burn hot and flame out super fast, then find themselves a little flicker to help them read while wearing their stocking cap, then that extinguishes with a cold wind blowing through that smells of garbage. This will hopefully make some sense after you read the next 4,000 words. I should put Easter eggs in these rankings posts to see who is actually reading the whole thing. There will be a quiz at the end, and a sample question is, “Who uses a Lady Bic razor?” Don’t you dare do a “Find.” Here’s Steamer’s 2021 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2021 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers.  All projections included here are mine, and where I see tiers starting and stopping are included. Anyway, here’s the top 20 3rd basemen for 2021 fantasy baseball:

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Thank god for the Padres huh? Just when we thought the baseball off-season couldn’t get worse A.J. Preller shows up on a new scooter ready to get us to Aspen. Is it the Shaggin’ Wagon? No, but it’ll do. So Grey and I return to talk Blake Snell, Yu Darvish, Lance Lynn, Ha-Seong Kim, and all the other baseball players good enough to squeeze blood from a stone. The Razzball podcast is back!

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Inspired by JKJ’s recent lament on the St. Louis Cardinals, combined with my First Year Player Drafts informed by The Prospect Itch and Hobbs, as well as noted scout John Sickels’ “Shadow Twins” series of articles, I wanted to reveal my own mourning process for my beloved tolerated local sports team, the Minnesota Twins. More than just an elegy to the Midwest Monsters that could have been, the Minnesota Twins stand as an example of a team that dynasty fantasy managers might want to avoid, and the reason is rooted in the “real world” dynamics of the Twins’ ownership and management over the past century.

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My system overview would be incomplete if it failed to cite JKJ’s recent article from the pages of Razzball, Randy Arozarena & the Ex-Cardinals’ All-Star Team.

I’m not one for pouring salt into open wounds, but I think any sports fan can totally relate to the catharsis endemic to deconstructing the various rosters your team didn’t build, even as that team is relatively successful on the field. 

The redbirds’ minor league build is fine. It’ll probably land mid pack or better for the people who rank whole systems. That evaluation will be a bit inflated by Dylan Carlson’s last gasp of prospect eligibility and Norman Gorman’s residual shine from his early returns, but there’s also plenty of topside waiting in the lower minors and an outstanding 2020 draft class on the way. 

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I love most things about playing fantasy baseball leagues, but I especially love the push/pull of short versus long-term outcomes. I play a lot of dynasty, keeper and redraft leagues of various shapes and sizes, so the range of values I might place on a prospect in a given league is wide.

Not here, though, where I’ll be going full cut-throat, win-the-money redraft style.

I don’t know why anyone will be cutting throats. I love that phrase, but yikes, what a thing to say in casual conversation, huh?

This list won’t turn out to be 100 percent accurate, but it will reflect many hours of trade talks, gameplay, research, roller coasters and centrifuges of thought, educated guesswork, and dash of the psychology motivating humans working within a nihilistic capitalist structure. 

  • Note: I wasn’t sure how to handle innings caps. Every pitcher got dinged a little for the purposes of this list because some/most organizations will be very conservative pushing pitchers from 30-something (or zero) innings up above 100 (or more).
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