“Get in a line, and limp.” That’s the master of ceremonies at the latest calfalcade. Chase Headley has a Grade 1 strain of his calf. Grade 2 or higher would be a cow. Semantics, perhaps. He’s supposed to be out for two to (stutterer!) three weeks. I’ve dropped him a couple of spots in my top 20 3rd basemen for 2014 fantasy baseball and my top 400 for 2014 fantasy baseball. Probably if he was in Coors for his home games, coming off a 30-homer season and/or whispered in my ear sweet nothings about Giancarlo, I wouldn’t have moved him in my rankings at all. However, he’s in Petco, coming off a 13 homer season and any reason to not mess with a Padre is good enough for me. You say confirmation bias, I say keep your Psych 101 terms and Headley. To give you a present day example of another player with a calf strain who I’m not currently moving in my rankings: Josh Hamilton. If this were the 2nd week of March, I’d re-rank him, but he’s got time to heal or get injured worse. I’ll be monitoring Hamilton like a cyclops with a monocle. Anyway, here’s what else has been going down in Spring Training for fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Sun 8/3
ARI | ATH | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | ATL | CIN | OAK

In recent posts, I used the results of our 2013 Razzball Commenter Leagues (based on 64 12-team mixed leagues with daily roster changes and unlimited pickups) to show:

So this leaves 30% of Hitting Standings Points that could be attributed to a manager’s in-season moves.

Inspired by one of our commenters (initials SF), I thought of a way to reduce the size of that 30% black box.  While estimating the quality of a manager’s in-season moves is very complicated, estimate the quantity of a manager’s moves is EZPZ.  That would be interesting…..but what kind of guidance would that provide?  Making roster moves just for the sake of it is a waste of time and if you, our loyal readers, are going to waste your time, we prefer you do it on our site vs. your league site.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Fellow RCL’ers, it’s your narrator for the 2014 season, back to bring you into the fold for everything RCL. And also type RCL as many times possible. Needs more RCL if you ask me. Anyhow, mark this day in your calender folks. It is a day which will (probably not) live in infamy. It is a day where we will chase history for the good of all mankind. Are we curing cancer? No. Solving world hunger? I just ate a Kit-Kat, so we might have some more work to do on that front. Are we creating a foundation to rescue stray animals? Ef no! We’re doing something much-much more important (not really). Today, I am making it our personal goal to create at least 75 RCL leagues for the 2014 Fantasy Baseball Season. Are we close? Darn straight we are. Right now, we are at 63 RCL leagues, and I know we can do this. Together. As one. HOLD ME.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

In past years, I’ve said the following analogy. There’s years of looking up to your father, whether you agree all the time or not. Then, one day, he takes a poop on your couch. You take him to the hospital; he’s in need of some sort of psychology examination. If the tests come back conclusive that he pooped the couch simply out of laziness, then that’s ESPN. If tests come back that he’s gone crazy, well, over at Yahoo The Noise ranked Matt Carpenter 37th overall. A recipe for success at Yahoo involves Kosher salt because you need to take Yahoo’s rankings with a bigger grain of salt. Now, with that said, I think this year Yahoo’s flipped the script on ESPN. Yahoo’s rankings are better this year, i.e., they’re closer to mine than ESPN. At least that’s the vibe I get from looking at them, I didn’t actually stop and weigh the differences and divide that weight by pi to the seventh integer and multiply by X. I simply looked at what they had vs. me and think Yahoo did a better job this year. They have also changed their rankings dramatically in the last week. See, I originally had The Noise down as ranking Carpenter 30th overall. Just about every guy in the chart at the end of this post has moved closer to my rankings in the last week. I’m not saying they’re copying (or they’re not copying fast enough), because, well, they’re still off and now it’s time to spit fire:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

As spring training takes off, we, the wonderful people of Razzball, thought it would be a good idea to look into some intra-team rivalries.  What positions are a lock?  What positions are being fought over?  What positions will they hire me to fill-in for (second base Blue Jays, I’m looking at you)? Find out as the start of this series will focus on NL East…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Jason Kipnis? More like bacon with Kaddish! Am I right, twelve-hundred and eleven Jew readers? What? Google tracks this shizz, don’t look at me. For all of y’all that be up in my grill day in and day out about Jean Segura’s crizzappy 2nd half, let’s go off topic to bring it back to topic, shall we? Thanks, expository question! Segura had a ridunkiculous 2nd half, if you’re dunking turds in a bucket. Tis true, homies and four homettes. I agree. He’s also 23 years old and was in his first major league season. Never before had he played that much, so he was probably tired. Well, he did play a lot the year he played winter ball in the 8th grade because his dad told him, “You either play ball for 12 months or work at my pizza place, Papa Jean’s. Oh, and if anyone asks you about the lawsuit, Papa John’s and Papa Jean’s are not the same thing.” Segura was also hurt at the end of last year. But no excuses, he wasn’t good in the 2nd half with one homer and 17 steals. So, Kipnis, who the world and thy Lord in Fantasy Heaven, likes, did what exactly last year in the 2nd half? 4 homers and 9 steals. YAY!!! Seriously, I’m going to jump off the Bridge Of Who Cares after reading those numbers. Kipnis is also 26 years old and did the exact same tail off the previous year in the 2nd half, so this is a pattern you don’t need to be a knit maker to spot. So why is Jason Kipnis overrated for 2014 fantasy baseball?

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2013 (9) | 2012 (17) | 2011 (26) | 2010 (30) | 2009 (30)

2013 Affiliate Records
MLB: [51-111] AL West
AAA: [82-62] Pacific Coast League – Oklahoma City
AA: [83-57] Texas League — Corpus Christi
A+: [82-58] California League – Lancaster
A: [81-57] Midwest League – Quad Cities
A(ss): [44-32] New York-Penn League — Tri-City

Graduated Prospects
Jonathan Villar (SS); Robbie Grossman (OF); Brandon Barnes (OF); L.J. Hoes (OF); Marc Krauss (OF); Jake Elmore (MI/OF); Brad Peacock (RHP); Paul Clemens (RHP); Brett Oberholtzer (LHP); Jarred Cosart (RHP); Jose Cisnero (RHP)

The Run Down
Jeff Luhnow, General Manager of the Houston Astros, is the best executive in the game with regard to player procurement and development.   He’s the man responsible for the seemingly never-ending stream of talent flowing up from the St. Louis farm system, and you can sure as shizz expect to see similar output from this Houston org over the next several seasons.  The fantasy-relevant arrivals actually began last summer, with prospects like Jonathan Villar (be sure to read Sky’s outlook on him) and Jarred Cosart.  Look for the impact to only increase in 2014 as George Springer, Mark Appel, and Jonathan Signleton are set for big league debut.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

We at Razzball realize that exporting our views across the country has damaging consequences on the blogosphere. To help make amends, we are reaching out to leading team blogs and featuring their locally blogged answers to pressing 2014 fantasy baseball questions regarding their team. We feel this approach will be fresher, more sustainable, and require less energy consumption (for us anyway). The 2014 Nationals Fantasy Baseball Preview comes courtesy of Patrick Reddington from Federal Baseball.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

When I told Grey and JayWrong that I was going to do a deep league sleeper post on Dustin Ackley, the first thing they said was ‘Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!’. It’s true, Dustin is a bit of a sloppy seconds here on the site for me as Jay already waxed both poetically and his taint when he wrote his own Dustin Ackley Sleeper post back in 2013. And what did we learn from this post? Well, one don’t get overly excited about Ackley and two, don’t wax your taint. It’s painful and no one goes down there enough to care what it looks like. Yeah, make all the excuses you want. You’re reading a fantasy baseball site, you ain’t getting busy any time soon, nerd. But where was I? Yeah, Ackley…ooph, this is gonna be a hard sell. It’s not a sexy call but then again, we’re talking about getting to Second Base. Trust me when I say, there’s very little heavy-petting available there in 2014. To put it kindly, 2B is a rancid cesspool of disease-riddled zombie maggot death. In fact, if the question is 2B or not 2B, I’ll take the latter. But to put this 2B angle of my fantasy dangle in perspective, we’re gonna need a new paragraph. So let’s find out why I think Ackley is a good get at second base for deep leagues for the 2014 Fantasy Baseball season…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

We at Razzball realize that exporting our views across the country has damaging consequences on the blogosphere. To help make amends, we are reaching out to leading team blogs and featuring their locally blogged answers to pressing 2014 fantasy baseball questions regarding their team. We feel this approach will be fresher, more sustainable, and require less energy consumption (for us anyway). The 2014 Angels Fantasy Baseball Preview comes courtesy of Garrett Wilson from Monkey With A Halo.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’m looking at my 2014 fantasy baseball rankings compared to ESPN’s fantasy baseball rankings and my iTunes is hitting White Walls by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (featuring Schoolboy Q, Hollis and me).

I wanna be free, I wanna just live… Inside my rankings… This is my shizz…
Now throw it up (ESPN’s rankings make me wanna throw up),
That’s what it is (that’s what it is),
In my R-A-N-K-I-N-G-S, Mitch (Moreland),
Can’t see through their love for Kipnis (nah ah),
I’m drafting real slow (slow motion),
In my hot wet dripping love for Giancarlo, he’s 24 (handsome fella),
ESPN don’t got love for the 24’s (nah ah),
But they’re on those oft-injured Jacoby’s,
That’s in those New York short walls,
R-r-round them hundred year old folks (Jeter),
Old school like Old English in that brown paper bag,
Yovani’s rolling in with the same WHIP that my granddad had,
Hello, haters, damn y’all mad,
$30 on a starter, now how backpack rap is that?

Please, blog, may I have some more?