Like any stereotypical rock band or movie franchise, I’m going to try to repeat success by sticking with the same formula. I’m referring to last week’s post about The Next Chris Davis, which led to a number of great suggestions for next year’s breakout players. This week, while I still have your attention, I want to focus on the other side: players who you expect to take a step (or two, or three) backwards in 2014. I titled this post after Josh Hamilton’s 2013 performance, but it really could have been named after any number of disappointing performances. So, who do you expect to be a bust next year? And while you’re at it, can you think of any bands with a second album that was better than their debut or a movie franchise that had a better sequel than the original? I’m looking forward to all of your thoughts, which will provide me with some topics to endure the cold, winter months that some call the offseason…
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First off, I just want to say a quick thank you to all of the readers who welcomed me this year. Your comments and questions were always appreciated and they are what make Razzball the best site around for fantasy baseball. As Grey mentioned in the BUY post last Friday, the best strategy at this point is to unload anybody who isn’t helping you win right now, so with that in mind we’ll look at three options who are possibly available to help your team gain some ground in steals over these last few games. Just as a general strategy for those in weekly leagues, since steals are a counting stat it would be a good idea to look at guys who have 7 games as opposed to 6 left on the schedule to try to squeeze every last statistical drop out of them. As far as daily leagues go, playing the matchups like we have all year is a good idea. Teams like the Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Rays, Phillies, Padres, Cubs, White Sox, Astros, Nationals, and Giants have given up the most stolen bases this year and they are all teams to target when deciding who to start against for steals.
Please, blog, may I have some more?The Cardinals are sick of Edward Mujica not playing way over his head like the rest of their entire team. “You see Joe Kelly? He sucks and he’s pitching well. You see Seacrest?” “You mean Siegrist?” “Yeah, him. He’s dynamite! Pitch better than you’ve ever pitched in your life or you’re out.” Mujica couldn’t find the intestinal fortitude (maybe he didn’t eat enough Thai food) and was replaced from the closing role for a few days. The Cards bullpen is solid behind him, which makes it difficult to pinpoint who exactly is his replacement. It could be John Axford, Trevor Rosenthal or Kevin Siegrist. I’d own any of them, but more because of how solid they’ve been. For saves, I’d rank them Rosenthal, Axford then Siegrist. Then there’s Mark Melancon. Like a guy who never flushes his toilet, the crap has caught up to him and the Pirates are now going ‘one day at a time’ for who their closer is, which I believe was Clint Hurdle’s nod to the late-great Bonnie Franklin. Bonnie, we miss you every day and we love your son, Nick, for the man you made him. I’d absolutely own Jason Grilli if I were chasing saves, but I wouldn’t drop Melancon either. Unless you don’t need saves and no one can catch you because you’re more bomb dot com and less bomb dot org. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?As the Fantasy Baseball season comes to end, it’s time for one more visit to the Razzball Fantasy Lounge where we fake baseball scribes are collectively licking our wounds, sticking pins in our Ryan Braun voodoo doll and drowning our sorrows in $1 beers and cheap whiskey shots. On this last lazy Sunday of the Fantasy Baseball season we find Sky in a dark corner slowly rocking back and forth muttering the words, “Colabello, Colabello, Colabello.” Bellying up to the bar is our resident podcaster Nick, disheveled and demanding another Canadian Club, cursing his last place Blue Jays and wondering, “Is there a CFL Fantasy League?” Dropping his last quarter in the jukebox, JayWrong selects The Doors “The End” and simply asks, “Anyone think Mike Trout is the number 1 pick next year?” *bottle smashes above head* Meanwhile, in the parking lot we find Tehol in the backseat of his 1977 Impala locking lips with this sweet “lady” he’ll soon discover has more hair on her back than George “The Animal” Steele –“NOT AGAIN!!” Here at the pool table is your humble-but-nonetheless-handsome Guru contemplating his final list of fantasy ballers that’ll score you the championship, bragging rights and maybe a little cash in your FBB league. *closes eye, takes aim, sinks eight ball off two rails, drops shot glass into pint, downs boilermaker, throws up on Grey’s snakeskin boots* “Sorry, boss.”
Here’s one more for the road, it’s time to jam it or cram it.
Please, blog, may I have some more?So, some of you may be asking, where’s the Photoshop yo? With or without the ‘yo’ maybe. I don’t judge. But yes, that would be a great a question, seeing as how there is no picture located north of this paragraph. A better question would be, how did you get so spoiled? It’s not my fault Photoshop went buggy on me. So instead of crowing one of my pieces of artwork upon these Daily Fantasy Notes, I will try to create a solid, if not spectacular lede for all your fine lady and gentlemen.
Yes, Grey likes to mention we have at least three or four female readers, but I think my estimate of a non-pluralized ‘lady’, which, according to my math, equals one, or perhaps even less than one is closer to the real number. How can I be so sure? Well, it’s probably because I’m not counting our mothers.
So, can you tell I have no idea what to lede about? Seriously. I have nothing, nadda. Zilch. Could it be because another baseball season is almost in the books? Or is it because I want to nap? Why not both? But yes, as the title establishes, we have very little time left. And that I also like The Doors. There is one more week of baseball left, and on an even sadder note, there is only one more Saturday left for us to gather and speak of Friday night baseball. Always remember that I will look upon these times with awe. Especially this specific instance, where I actually was able to write a lede based on nothing. So yay me! (All complaints are to be forwarded to Photoshop.) Here’s what I noticed yesterday…
Please, blog, may I have some more?Let me begin by saying that each of my H2H teams has been officially eliminated, and being so, I’ve decided to submit the most spiteful two-start post of all time. Ok, fine, I didn’t go that far. But I sure as shizz wanted to. Anyway. It’s the last week of the season, and anyone still reading this post is surely making a championship push, so good for you, and good luck this week. I want to thank everyone for reading along this season. I hope these weekly posts did more good than harm throughout the year. I’ll be digging into MiLB previews before long, and those posts will continue throughout the offseason. But this wraps up our two-start coverage until next spring. Now, go win some championships.
As always, probable pitchers are subject to change. For a look at all fantasy baseball streamers, click that link.
Please, blog, may I have some more?I wonder if Marge Schott’s family sits around and talks about what Marge would’ve thought of Billy Hamilton‘s thievery. I wonder too if they’d do it on our podcast, because I bet it would be totally off-color, so to speak. “First of all, Marge had a great respect for people and would’ve loved a chance to apologize for the comments she made about African-Americans, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Tongans, Georgians, the people from the country above Armenia and the people of the great state of Georgia, Quizno’s, the fast food restaurant, I don’t think there’s people who register Quizno as a nationality or religion and Pomeranians — she only kicked one because she thought it was a ferret…Guess that means she would’ve apologized to ferrets too. So, your question is, what would she have thought of Billy Hamilton? She would’ve loved him to fetch her Nazi flatware.” That’s a Marge Schott family member on the podcast. You don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to know what Hamilton gives you for fantasy. Even if he only starts one game the rest of the year, he could get you a point in steals and for that it’s worth owning him, even if you have to put him on your bench on his days off. If you don’t think he can steal four bags again in a game, you don’t know two of his steals on Wednesday were on pitch outs. That means not only did everyone know he was stealing, but the pitcher and catcher did all they could to stop him. They still couldn’t. Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:`
Please, blog, may I have some more?Fantasy Razzball is the game where the goal is to manage the worst fantasy baseball team possible. You hope to find terrible players who don’t get sent to the minors.
As in the RCL, a team’s points are multiplied by the League Competitive Index. The LCI is based on the total points of the top 8 teams per league. The overall standings can be found below. Points are credited as follows:
Hitters (AB = +2, H = -3, R = -4, HR = -6, RBI = -4, K = +2)
Pitchers (IP = -1, HR = +4, L = +8, K = -1, ER = +1.5, H+BB = +1).
You can find links to the six Fantasy Razzball leagues (along with the 64 RCLs) here.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Gerrit Cole has filthy stuff. He can hit 100 MPH with his fastball and make all four of our girl readers go, “Ooh…” Which reminds me of my Walk on the Wild Side remixed chorus, “And the four girl readers go doo do doo do doo do do doo.” There was a whole lot of nonsense, or whole lotta if we stick with the rock theme, when he was first called up that Cole didn’t want to strike people out. Does Alf not want to get back to Melmac?! Does macaroni not mean awesome when Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni!? Does everyone with glasses not look goofy on a 1980’s baseball card?! Ron Kittle? I rest my case! Of course, Cole wants to strike out guys. You can’t stop that! Yesterday, he struck out 12 of them. In 111 1/3 IP this year, he has a 7.60 K-rate and if you throw out June, when he was saying that nonsense about throwing to contact, his K-rate would be near 9. Oh, bee tee dubya, everything else is purdy, too. His FIP is 2.98, his walk rate is barely over 2, he gets ground balls. For 2014 fantasy baseball, Cole could easily be a top 20 starter for all of baseball and will be someone I’ll get plenty googly about this offseason. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?So the end is Bill Nye the science guy. The last hurrah for the year of 2013 in regards to bullpens. Don’t be upset, you won’t even know that I left, I’ll even make it less awkward and do the Irish goodbye and just sneak off to the bathroom and never come back. So, it has been a fun year from start to finish, it wasn’t as exciting as last year but we still had 19 guys over 30 saves as compared to guess what from last year. The suspense isn’t that awesome because it’s also 19. Crazy how things change but never ever really change, stats are a finicky bunch all muddled with consistency. Damn you numbers and your ever chronologically ordered entanglement. So it saddens me as a Yankee fan to have to write the final time the name of Mariano Rivera. There is nothing else to say about Mo that hasn’t been said by numerous other more famous sites. The stats are crazy and to me he is my Tawny Kitaen crawling across the hood of that car looking all 80’s, but an awesome 80’s. Unfortunately that makes Joe Torre David Coverdale and that just ruins it all. So happy trails GOAT, it’s been real and we appreciate your fantasy aptitude for as long as you have supplied it. So have at the final rankings of the year for the closers and the dudes who wait for injury or next year.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yesterday, Andrew McCutchen nailed down his 3rd straight 20/20 season. He’s once again a top ten on our Player Rater. So, is it The Dread Pirate or Paul Goldschmidt (who notched a slam (34) and legs (15) last night — Au Shizz!) as the 3rd player off the board next year? Miggy and Trout are locked into the ones and twos like you in high school when you briefly thought DJ was a career choice. A case could be made for either of them, and I haven’t decided yet. It’s my, and every fantasy baseball ‘pert’s prerogative, to wait. You can’t just say I’m the handsomest, most musatchioed ‘pert and expect me to drop my pants and get into bed with you. That might work for AJ Mass when you want him to rank Carl Crawford third. Rub my shoulders, they’re sore from 6 months of blurb writing. There, that’s nice… Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah! McCutchen is an easy number three because you’re going to get steals, power, average, RBIs and runs….But Au Shizz gets you all of that with less speed, more power and 1st base eligibility…But McCutchen has a longer track record…But Au Shizz has a higher ceiling…But does he? But-but-but! I got more butts than Leyland’s ashtray. It might come down to a game time decision in January when I release the 2014 rankings…Assuming I don’t ride off into the sunset on a horse like I’m Julia Roberts when it’s time for me to get married this offseason. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?As another baseball season winds down, we have a chance to reflect on our own journey in this wonderful game. Perhaps you, the reader, ponder of such things like — What did I do wrong? What did I do right? Why did I listen to Jaywrong? Or, better yet, why didn’t I listen to Jaywrong? Right? RIGHT! Regardless, we’re here to look back on the first year of the Bear or Bull series, and walk that same line of reflection and get an idea of how everything looks as the 2013 pieces fall into place. How did the process work, and did it do a good job? Are there ways to make the analysis better? Was I Jayright? Was I Jaywrong? More importantly, was I Jaysexy? Trick question, I’m always Jaysexy. Maybe we’ll learn something on the way. Or maybe we’ll just go over to the Football side of Razzball. My question is, why not both?
Please, blog, may I have some more?