Smokey

Bullpen Report – Net Saves and Holds Projections

March 6, 2014 | Closers, Middle Relievers | 42 Comments

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The name says it all, it’s what everyone keeps asking for,  NSVH.  It sounds like a spin-off of CSI, or Law and Order.  Except with really geeky dudes who shouldn’t really have an actual head-shot of themselves for use as their avatar.  We know who they are, and pointing fingers isn’t polite unless it’s the one that I normally get from people at the retirement home I frequent for volunteer duties.  Much love Shady Acres.  So this week we delve into the numbers game, the ones that mimic me and steal my Nutella sandwich.  These projections are highly irregular and tougher than most other stats in the pretend game.  The fluctuation of personnel by teams is mind boggling and makes me look goofy.  So in the chart below I am giving you the top-60 NSVH chaps with some pertinent stats that help all.  During the year, I’ll get into more of the sustaining stats, but since we aren’t there yet, I can’t just make them up.  Those tendency stats that I am referring to (Inherited Runners, Inherited Runners Scored, and Appearances with Lead) are my way of determining both closer and set-up guy efficiency.  How they are used and when they are used.  So those that are looking forward to that, hooray for you.   So without further adieu, here are some projections for the top NSVH guys for this year.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Mon 8/4
ARI | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | ATH | CHW | OAK | SEA | WSH
Sky

I Don’t Care If You Paint Or Not, Here’s Your Draftkings Primer

March 6, 2014 | DraftKings | 35 Comments

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I know what some of you are thinking. I can’t believe it’s not butter. And you people…you’re absolutely right. It’s part plastic and melted horse hooves combined with yellow dye #88 which causes diarrhea, loss of sight and limb loss in some consumers. It’s in the fine print, yo! But then there are others of you. Those ones are thinking something else. What is this ‘daily fantasy’ business? Fantasy baseball is already ‘daily’. How is this any different? You’re astute, people who speak in italics. It’s true, in many ways Daily Fantasy is nothing new with respect to the game you’re used to playing, per se. Just like Coors tries to trick you into thinking they have more than one crappy product by selling you the same swill in different cans and bottles – oooh, it turns blue when it’s cold? It’ll still taste like deer piss, people – daily fantasy isn’t that huge of a step away from the game you know, love and play. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. For now, I’m simply happy to announce we’re teaming back up with Draftkings this year for 2014 Fantasy Baseball for your daily fantasy pleasure. That link you just saw? That’s a portal to all the fun and it helps us out because its our referral. We’re not begging you to use it but if you plan on playing this year and this is the first time you’ve ever signed up, why not play and help a brotha out, ya know? Two birds, one stone, which is kind of a morbid analogy when you think about it so lets not. Bee Tee Dubs, this post is gonna cover some important news later on that we’re excited about so don’t y’all leave before the buzzer sounds. In other words, hold onto your potatoes Docta Jones cuz we’re gonna tell you all that we can about Draftkings and what it means for Razzball for 2014 Fantasy Baseball…

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Grey

Houston, We Have A Planet

March 6, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 324 Comments

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Japhet Amador is a giant man, standing at 6-foot-4, weighing in at 315 pounds. In the Mexican League, where he’s played for the last four years, they called him El Gran Burrito. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto once remarked that Amador is welcome at the Presidential Palace anytime, as long as Amador brings his own snacks. When Jose Altuve heard the Astros signed Amador, Altuve was thrilled. No more walking around for Altuve; Amador will just carry him around in a baby bjorn. I watched video of Amador and I’ve never seen such a slow bat through the zone. He looks like a Mexican Meat Loaf in a celebrity softball game. I swear, Amador stopped to eat one of those spicy dried mango candies halfway through his swing. His power is huge, but I’m not sure he’d gonna be able to catch up to anything. Last year in the Mexican League, he hit 36 homers and he’s 27 years old. The Mexican League is supposedly comparable to Triple-A, only instead of buses for transportation, the teams pile into a Toyota Tercel. Right now, he looks pegged for Triple-A, but since the Astros have Robbie Grossman, Marc Krauss, Jesus Guzman and J.D. Martinez vying for everyday ABs, anything could happen. I’d take a flyer on Amador in AL-Only leagues, and wait and see in mixed leagues. Best case scenario, he gets the DH job and hits 25+ homers and .220. The worst case scenario, you draft Altuve and Amador accidentally sits on him. Anyway, here’s what else I saw recently in spring training for 2014 fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Pete Nice

Bouncing Back: Ryan Howard

March 5, 2014 | Uncategorized | 34 Comments

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There’s a reason why people get hung up on a guy like Ryan Howard.

Playing long ball in fantasy, of course, is a losing game. Power guys are often slobs who whiff, make errors, and fail to get on base. But you knew that already.

This is kind of who Ryan Howard has always been, but when he was going good, Howard would hit for decent average and do extremely well in the slugging and OPS categories. When he started going bad, which was about four years ago, these stats began to shrivel up like Tommy Lasorda’s sack and Ryan Howard became a not-very-productive, and not-very-popular, fantasy baseball player. Gettin’ nerdy with it, the stat page says he’s chased more pitches outside the strike zone in the past two seasons than at any point in his career.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Scott Evans

2014 Minor League Preview: Boston Red Sox

March 5, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 16 Comments

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Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2013 (6) | 2012 (10) | 2011 (17) | 2010 (5) | 2009 (13)

2013 Affiliate Records
MLB: [97-65] AL East
AAA: [80-63] International League – Pawtucket
AA: [68-73] Eastern League – Portland
A+: [76-64] Carolina League – Salem
A: [51-87] South Atlantic League – Greenville
A(ss):  [40-33] New York-Penn League — Lowell

Graduated Prospects
None

The Run Down
This Boston farm is exceptionally strong from a fantasy perspective, but it’s a different brand of strength from the top-of-the-league systems that we’ve recently discussed.  Orgs like the Cubs, Twins, Astros, and Pirates all feature a grouping of extreme high-impact prospects at the top of their ranks, whereas Boston’s main attraction is in its fantasy-relevant depth.  Excluding Xander Bogaerts from the conversation, there aren’t any sure-fire top 50 prospects in this group (although Garin Cecchini is certainly in the T50 conversation), but even so, it’d be difficult to find another farm as strong as Boston is from prospects #5 through #10.  Everyone here can be owned comfortably in dynasty formats, and that’s a rarity among these preseason top 10’s.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Grey

2nd Basemen To Target, 2014 Fantasy Baseball

March 5, 2014 | Uncategorized | 334 Comments

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Psst! This post is gonna list 2nd basemen that you should target in your 2014 fantasy baseball drafts. I’m whispering because you don’t want everyone to see this post. No, I can’t whisper louder. Then it WOULDN’T BE WHISPERING! Okay, gig’s up (or maybe that’s jig’s up), the love I’m about to reiterately (Made Up Word of the Day!) confirm are guys I love later in drafts. Am I drafting any of these guys in the first 12 rounds? Probably not (except for Brad Miller — hello, beautiful! Come here, let Grey massage your balls…The balls of your feet, silly! Oh, that feels good on my hands. Can I tickle your toes with my mustache? Weird?). These are players that you’re looking at later and all of them have ADPs after 200. Some could be the 2nd baseman on your team, they are more than likely MIs. This is a (legal-in-all-countries-except-Spanish-speaking-ones) supplement to the top 20 2nd basemen for 2014 fantasy baseball. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2014 projections. Anyway, here’s some 2nd basemen to target for 2014 fantasy baseball:

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

Fantasy Baseball Streaming – Valuing Starting Pitchers

March 4, 2014 | Uncategorized | 90 Comments

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This is part of a four-part series using Rudy and Grey’s Razzball Commenter League experience as well as some modeling (the dorky kind) to quantify the effectiveness of streaming and how it should inform one’s draft strategy in shallow mixed leagues (10-12 teams).  The first three posts will focus on quantifying the value of streaming starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and hitters.  The fourth will synthesize the learnings from the three and how they impact draft strategy.  The streaming decisions made by Grey and I were HIGHLY influenced by our free, daily updated tools for streaming starting pitchers (Stream-o-nator) and hitters (Hitter-tron).

If you are reading this article (or this site for that matter), I assume you are familiar with streaming starting pitchers.  This is an essential strategy in all daily league formats whether one plays standard Roto or H2H.  While my beloved Stream-o-nator aims to make sure all our readers make the most informed decisions on which pitchers to stream over the next 7 days (and possibly more in 2014), I have yet to read any analysis that quantifies the value of the average streaming pitcher to inform draft strategy.  So this post is going to focus on quantifying the value of a streaming SP and, once I’ve completed quantifying the value of streaming relievers and hitters, I will figure out how this impacts draft strategy.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Sky

Deep League Thoughts – Drew Smyly

March 4, 2014 | Uncategorized | 66 Comments

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Is it just me or does the pitcher we’re talking about need to work in showbiz? Particularly as some sort of game show host and even more particularly, the Love Connection. Yeah, lets bring that back, put a 2010s spin on it where all the first dates are just two people standing next to each other at a dance club, smiling at their phones as they’re sending private snapchats back and forth. That’s riveting television people! And later on, JFOH sexted me that he wanted his P in my V, F me in the A and then J off on my T’s and I totes said yes! Magical…true modern love in the making there. He even wrote a song about it. Just an FYI, ICYMI that vid is probably NSFW given context…m’kay. But of course you didn’t come here to find out about JFOH’s creative, more gentle musical side, you came to talk about the man, the myth, the emoticon: Drew Smyly. Yeah, I called him emoticon. I think we should call him that together. It’s better than calling him the Smyly Faced Killer. That’s just morbid. In the end, there’s a lot to like about Drew for the 2014 season and I have a few good reasons why…oh, you wanna know what they are I see. Well then follow me on a magical journey to a distant land by clicking on the title of this post if you’re on the homepage and just seeing this paragraph and see why Smyly is a good get in deep leagues for the 2014 Fantasy Baseball season…

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Jay

RCL Update: Draft’s Are A Commeth, Needs More Salt-eth, And, You Know, Uh, Commissioners-eth. Err.

March 4, 2014 | Razzball Commenters League | 81 Comments

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GOTrazzRCLdraftComing

We are almost there folks. Where is there? Draft time. BUT EVERYONE JUST HOLD UP FOR A SECOND. Remember that one time when I set 75 RCL’s as my personal goal, and therefore, by mitosis, or photosynthesis, or osmosis, or dry-humping, it became your personal goal? Yeah. In this regard, we are not almost there. I mean, technically we are, only two more leagues… but drafts are right around the corner. It’s gonna be close. WE’RE TOO CLOSE MAN. Just two more commissioners… look, how about this… if you go commish a league right now (yes, we can totally have more than 75, in fact, I prefer it), I promise to go over some of the leagues that are drafting this week, including the 2014 Razzball Writers League. And guess what? One RCL league has actually drafted (WOOO!) and, as a bonus, we’ll take a look at their first round. Free shipping and handling too! Because boy do I know how to handle it. Whatever that means. Sure, even if you don’t commish a league, you can still continue reading after the jump… I *can’t* stop you per say. But I promise you there will be guilt. I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A CATHOLIC. If you’re already Catholic, well, you have enough guilt to deal with, so yeah. Take that, I guess.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Grey

Catchers To Target, 2014 Fantasy Baseball

March 4, 2014 | Uncategorized | 290 Comments

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Here, friend, are some catchers that I will be targeting at my 2014 fantasy drafts after the top options are gone. I’m not going to get into the strategy of punting catchers. Been there, half-drunkenly wrote that three years ago then had to fight Steve McQueen for writing credit. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2014 projections. This is a (legal-in-most-countries) supplement to the top 20 catchers of 2014 fantasy baseball. Now, guys and four girl readers, I am not saying avoid catchers like Salvador Perez if they fall, but to get on this list, you need to be drafted later than 200 overall. And, to preemptively answer at least seven comments, yes, I will go around the entire infield, outfield and pitchers to target very late. Anyway, here’s some catchers to target for 2014 fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?
Jeremy

2014 AL West Spring Training Preview

March 3, 2014 | Fantasy Baseball Team Previews | 18 Comments

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First off, I would like to say Eric Sogard should be the Face of the MLB; that vote was rigged in David Wright’s favor.  Baseball needs more nerdy-looking, glasses-touting, Bernie-leanin’, jive-walking players.  But without further ado, here is the AL West Spring Training Showdown. (You can check out the AL Central Spring Training Preview here and NL East Spring Training Preview here.)

Please, blog, may I have some more?