Week eleven saw a lot of rough team ERAs in the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  In one of my leagues only one team had a weekly ERA of under 3.00. Grey had himself an epic week of ERA (more on that later) and so did many others.  With all that going on I thought I’d take a look back at season’s past and see where our average team ERA ranked right now. This is the benefit of being the keeper of the RCL data for as long as I have.  In 2016 the average team ERA was 3.71 and in 2017 it was 3.87. 2018 saw the move to FanTrax and the change to 1400 IP instead of 180 GS, this, along with some potentially juiced balls saw our average ERA jump to 4.03.  So far this year, we’re looking at a 3.88 ERA and we haven’t even hit the hot, humid days of summer yet. For reference, during week 11 last season we had a 3.60 ERA only to finish with a 4.03. It’s going to get worse before it gets better folks.  Worse, of course, is a relative term. If you love offense, this is great. You’ll see in this week’s weekly records that we’re demolishing offensive records left and right. So, don’t be down on your 3.75 ERA, just know that you’re actually slightly below average and everyone is struggling.  The struggle is real folks. Now, for the rest of the week that was, week 11:

I hope everyone had a wonderful tenth week of fun in the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  The Yordan Alvarez party has officially started and it started off with a bang. Even people in my leagues that aren’t usually prospect-hounds are excited.  The numbers in Triple-A have been pretty insane, I’ll admit, but for those of us with zero RCL shares, I hope this is a quick cup of coffee. I’m afraid he’s here to stay though and I completely whiffed on stashing him.  Shame on me. In the meantime, I’ve got Kyle Tucker still burning a hole in my bench in a few RCLs. Goodness, gracious these Astros are stacked. If I were you, I’d take a peak around my league at who had Yordan stashed (Donkey Teeth) and plan accordingly if they happen to be behind you in the power department (we are tied in the ‘Perts League in HRs).  We could have another Austin Riley on our hands! I’ll be very curious to see what Yordan draws on the trade market the next few weeks. Now, for the rest of the week that was, week 10 in the RCLs:

The calendar has flipped to June and the Razzball Commenter Leagues are in full swing.  This is also the time of year where I like to take a look at which RCL teams are killing us in win-rate and which teams have just had some crap luck in the win column.  Now, Rudy will tell you that Wins are actually predictable as shown by his Ombotsman.  While the data and the bots may tell you this, as a human, it still seems like they are luck-based, do they not?  Today we’re going to take a look at “win luck”. There’s no doubt it takes some luck to win a fantasy baseball league.  Injury luck is probably the biggest factor in winning a league. As good a manager as we think we are, if your number one pick goes down for the year, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.  That’s just common sense. “Win luck” is another area that is seemingly out of our control. Let’s face it, wins are brutal. I’m a big proponent of the mantra, “Make your own luck” and I certainly think that can be applied to “win luck”.  “Win luck” is a term often tossed around to describe a team that is raking in the wins and/or a team that can’t seem to buy a win. Can you make your own luck in regards to wins? Of course you can. You can stream those valuable middle relievers, especially the ones that frequently work multiple innings in the middle of games (Josh Hader perhaps).  When a lead change occurs, these relievers are typically the benefactors. It’s no guarantee of course, but it can’t hurt your luck any. There are other ways to increase your win luck too. Let’s take a look at another big one as well as who is getting lucky and who got lucky this week in the week that was, week 9:

I hope everyone got to enjoy a long weekend this Memorial Day.  I took in some sunshine at the lake with some burgers and dogs with the unofficial kickoff to summer up here in the north country.  I’ve got the sunburn to prove it. Nothings says summer kickoff like coming home looking like a lobster. I’m all recovered though and ready to bring you the goings on for the week in the Razzball Commenter Leagues.  We had a change at the top spot for the first time in four weeks. A certain ‘Pert is back on top of the ‘Perts League heap and we had a couple of weekly records fall. All this and more in the week that was, week 8 in the RCLs:

There are so many rookies out there right now that I can’t find room to try and roster them all!  After basically punting corner infield in most of my Razzball Commenter League drafts this year I’ve been able to find Daniel Vogelbach, Mitch Moreland, Yandy Diaz and now Michael Chavis and Austin Riley to fill holes.  Amed Rosario has been uninspiring so far on most of my teams, so enter Chavis and his new 2B eligibility and Keston Hiura. I don’t even have room to try and snag Brendan Rodgers. Now it’s trying to find room for Yordan Alvarez, it never ends!  These are good problems to have though and a good reason to leave those last couple roster spots on offense able to be churned. There is no issue with leaving the draft in this format knowing you’ll be hitting the waiver wire for your OF5, UTIL and CI/MI spots.  There are players every year that pop from the waiver wire, just keep those eyes peeled. Right now, point your eyes below for the rest of the week that was, week 7 in the RCLs:

Week 6 is about the point that we can stop saying, “it’s early” and it’s about the time I assess and start cutting bait on underperformers.  I’m not saying this is the right way to do things, it could be way too late on some guys, but it’s what I do. This week I dropped Joey Lucchesi in most of my Razzball Commenter League teams.  He’d been pretty bad and was starting in Coors this week where I wasn’t starting him. Naturally, he went out and pitched a gem. This will most likely be his turnaround and he’ll be a top 20 pitcher from here on out.  Your welcome. Jose Peraza is officially gone as is Yuli Gurriel. I ditched Eric Hosmer right before he hit three homers in five games. Fortunately, he’s gone back to being terrible, but doesn’t that figure? Have you raged dropped anyone yet?  Is there an underperformer you just keep hoping will turn it around (Vlad Jr.)? Let’s commiserate in the comments, misery loves company and with any luck our complaining will jump start some of these guys. Now, for the rest of the week that was, week 6 in the RCLs:

This is the time of year when I like to take a peak at what players are killing your Razzball Commenter Leagues teams and what players are boosting your teams up the standings.  I usually take the RCL ADP and compare that to the Razzball Player Rater. Well, low and behold, Rudy Gamble and went and beat me to the punch this year, releasing THIS little gem of a spreadsheet on Twitter the other day.  By the way, go follow Rudy on Twitter if you’re not. Anyway, if you take a look at that spreadsheet, you’ll see all the players who are owned in each of our 73 leagues.  The next column over will show you the average standings points of each team that owns said player. For example, if you own Christian Yelich, you should have, on average, 80 points in your league.  Having 6.5 in every category is average, so a score of 65. That means Yelich is 15 points above average. Makes sense, right? If you had started your draft back in April with Yelich, Bellinger and Mondesi, you’d be sitting pretty right about now.  On the flip side, if you started with Manny Machado, Francisco Lindor and Corey Kluber, you’re crying in your beer right about now. I’m going to include a quick chart with our consensus first rounders and how they weigh out with Rudy’s spreadsheet after the jump.  All that and the rest of the week that was week 5 in the RCLs:

Rudy is back and that means we have numbers to crunch once again.  Before we take a deep dive into the leaders from the past two weeks though I wanted to chat real quick about K/9.  Back in the old days of the Razzball Commenter Leagues I preached about the importance of keeping an eye on your strikeouts per Game Started or K/GS.  With the move to FanTrax and the change from GS to Innings Pitched (IP) the K/GS stat went out the window. However, we have a different stat you should be keeping an eye on now, and that is your K/9.  Since every team is limited to only 1400 innings strikeouts essentially turn into a ratio stat. Once your innings are up, you are stuck with the number of strikeouts you have. This makes those high K/9 relievers such as Josh Hader and Matt Barnes (despite not getting many save chances) very valuable pieces.  Quick shout out to Great Knoche for tipping me off to another K/9 specialist in Nick Anderson who’s rocking an 18.24 K/9, just below Barnes and Hader. Something I like to do is sort players by K/9. You can do this by hitting “Extra” on the player page when viewing pitchers. Then just sort by K/9 and make sure you’re looking for players with a substantial amount of IP.  Reyes Moronta has been another favorite of mine this year. So, if you find yourself without a save vulture target for the day and your offense is full, consider grabbing a high K/9 reliever to help boost those stats. It only takes a few 7 IP, 2 K performances to put you behind the pace. It’s important to monitor and keep a balance. Fortunately for you, and especially those that are bad at math, we’re tracking your K/9 for you on the Master Standings page.  There, you can see that among teams with at least 40 IP/week we have Metal Face Doom with an impressive 12.1 K/9.  Bringing up the rear is Fake News Bears with 7.9 K/9 in 245 IP. There’s still time to correct though, so fear not!  It’s also going to be important to monitor your innings usage. You can click “MIN/MAX” on your team page to see your innings used and your pace.  I like to keep my pace pretty close to right on the money, but your mileage may very. Just don’t leave innings on the table if you can help it. Let’s take a look at the rest of the week that was, week 4 in the RCLs:

Rudy and his robots are on vacation this week, which means we won’t have the usual weekly Razzball Commenter Leagues data to go over this week.  Do androids dream of electric beach? I can (and will!) still recap the ‘Perts League and we’ll go over the trades from the week. Next week, we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming.  In the meantime I thought I’d toss out a friendly reminder about pacing yourself. No, this is not advice for becoming a competitive eater so put away the Sam’s Club industrial jug of mayonnaise.  This is about pacing your innings pitched. Some simple math tells us there are 25 weeks in the season and we need to get to 1400 IP. That means you should be looking at about 56 innings pitched per week in order to stay on track.  In other words, you should be sitting at about 170 IP as of this writing. FanTrax does offer you a glimpse of your current pace if you click the Min/Max button on your team screen. I’m not sure I trust their math though. I followed that calculation last year and with about a month and a half to go had to stream my arse off in just about every league to catch up.  I’m not sure where the breakdown was, but I’m doing my own tracking this season. With any luck, you’re reading this early enough this season that you won’t fall into the same trap.

The starterpocalypse is still in full effect this week as ERAs across the board are less than stellar.  Grey led the ‘Perts League in ERA with a 2.35 this week, but no one else is under a 3.23 with seven teams over a 4.50 ERA.  That is, how we say in the business…not good. Meanwhile, power is through the roof. Since I’ve tracked the Razzball Commenter Leagues for the past, *carry the one*, long time, I’ve got the weekly stats that I track all saved to look back on.  Last year the weekly record for HRs in a week was 26. That was in all of the weeks last season. We’ve already matched that in week 2 this year. The same goes for Runs scored. All of this is a fancy way of saying, offense is up this year and it’s still cold outside baby.  Just wait until those hot summer months combined with whatever may or may not be going on with the ball this year. We could be in for some real offensive records. Oh, you drafted a top pitcher in the first three rounds, well, best of luck to you, this could be a long year. More weekly stats and the rest of the happenings in the week that was week 2 in the RCLs:

First of all, a big thank you to Rudy for getting his Razzball Commenter Leagues robots crunching numbers even faster than last year.  We have real, live standings in what is really the first full week of games! It’s awesome to have a starting point for the Master Standings in week 1.  I hope your first full week is going better than my team that owned Trea Turner, Giancarlo Stanton and had snagged Ryan McMahon to replace Matt Olson. Yikes.  I also don’t own nearly enough shares of Cody Bellinger this year. I am excited for Ronald Acuna to visit Coors this week though. There are simply not enough eggplant emojis in the world.

It’s the silly season for our leagues at this point, where we can have huge swings in the standings based on 2-3 good days of stats.  So fear not if you’re off to a slow start. Who’s the number one team after the first week (OK, week and a half) of the season? You’ll have to click below to see that.  Let’s take a look at the standings, the top teams in each stat category and some trades in the week that was, week one plus in the RCLs: