On June 10, 2020, Texas A&M left-hander Asa Lacy was drafted fourth overall by the Kansas City Royals and Georgia right-hander Emerson Hancock went sixth overall t0 the Seattle Mariners. 12 college starting pitchers went in the first round that year including the competitive balance picks (first-37 selections). If we were to redraft today, most would still take Minnesota right-hander Max Meyer as the first collegiate arm off the board, but there’s a good chance Lacy and Hancock would be drafted after the likes of Reid Detmers and Cade Cavalli — possibly even Garrett Crochet. If you ask me, Tanner Burns is the sleeper name to know from the tail-end of the 2020 first round, and someone I hold in just as high of a regard as Lacy and Hancock. But we’re here today to discuss the second and third college hurlers selected back in 2020, and how their stock has shifted since that memorable day.
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So, wasn’t expecting to write a George Springer overrated post. Didn’t seem like a guy who could possibly be overrated. What’s to overrate? You know him and he just missed half of last season, and he always misses time. Why is he even overrated? I’m having a hard time figuring that out. His Steamer projections from us are 100/32/85/.257/7 in 524 ABs. Don’t think any of those numbers are unattainable. I have him down for 91/27/63/.246/7 in 503 ABs. So, few less homers; same steals; little less average; counting stats are what they are. My problem is. Dot dot dot. Pause for effect. Dramatic sting. Why is that being drafted in the top 50 overall? If I told you I had a 27/7/.250 hitter, you’d say to me, “That’s a pretty cool story, bro, is it Anthony Rizzo?” And I’d say to you, “No, it’s George Springer,” and you’d say, “No, it’s not, but cool way to disguise Anthony Santander, Broseph,” and I’d say, “I’m not your Broseph, I’m being serious. Are you only able to guess Anthony names?” And you’d say, “Easy, Chilly Wills, is it Eduardo Escobar,” and I’d say, “No, CHILLY WILLS! IT’S GEORGE SPRINGER?!” And you’d say, “I think you suddenly went deaf because you started screaming,” and I’d say, “I’m no longer having this conversation,” and you’d say, “Is it Eddie Rosario?” And I’d throw you off the horsey we were sharing on this carousel of thoughts. So, what can we expect from George Springer for 2022 fantasy baseball and what makes him overrated?
Psyche! So, yesterday, I said I was updating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings, but later on I discussed it with Rudy and we’re holding tight for now, because, honestly, one week missed of games isn’t going to change anything. What, I’m gonna remove three runs, three RBIs and four-tenths of a homer and steal? Next week, we’ll reevaluate and potentially take two weeks of stats off the projections, or something else, yet to be considered. Next week, I’ll also do a state of the game roundup and discuss Acuña, Kershaw, and others. Anyway II, why is George Springer is overrated?
Please, blog, may I have some more?In case you missed the opening frames, here’s a link to the Top 25 Relief Pitcher Prospects for Dynasty Fantasy Baseball in 2022.
Of all the positions I’ve ranked, this one feels the strongest from 26-50, relatively speaking, held up against the elite players at that position in the majors. For example, Eric Orze could be pitching late innings in front of Edwin Diaz as early as April this year. Domingo Acevedo is at 26 here, and he could be universally rostered as the closer in Oakland at some point this season. Not, like, a one percent chance, either. We’re talking 25-plus percent, in my opinion. In a saves-only league, I’d have him on speed dial and maybe stashed away in my minors. Heck, they could clean house in the bullpen shortly after Wayne and Garth say “Game On.” Relief is a wonky endeavor. Wyatt Mills was cartoonishly dominant in AAA, with a 38.6 percent K-BB rate. It feels endless. You click in to watch someone then see a different guy come in throwing fire and have to go look him up. Rinse repeat. Lotta nasty stuff in the game today. Tough time to be a hitter.
Please, blog, may I have some more?The last few days have been a wild ride for fantasy baseball fans, there has been dread followed by hopeful optimism and then a gut punch with the cancellation of the first two series of the season. However, in the fantasy baseball community, the show must go on. TGFBI began this week so your Twitter feed will likely be full of player pick threads and others discussing their teams. While we still have no idea if and when we will be getting baseball, draft season is going to ramp up quickly.
Once again I will be using this space to discuss the steals market and how we as fantasy owners can attack the category. One thing we often hear when discussing players is the power/speed combo. Using the Razzball Player Rater dating back to 2017 (I removed 2020 from this analysis), 219 players have hit 10 homers and swiped 10 bags. Among those 219 players, only 20 players had a negative dollar value and all but 82 of them earned at least $10. While many of these players can be drags in other categories usually AVG, the small amount of power paired with the 10 stolen bases goes a long way. Let’s discuss a few names going outside of pick 300 who Steamer projects to eclipse both benchmarks. Overall, there are 69 players projected for 10/10 with 14 of those guys going outside of the top 300 on NFBC.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Attention Razzballers! The Not Not News Podcast is now available 100% free of charge! Subscribe to the Not Not New Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It’s your favorite hour of the week! The Not Not News is back with all the Billy Hurley jokes and Grey Albright cackles you […]
Please, blog, may I have some more?I’m a big fan of the everyman. I consider myself the everyman. I’m every man’s everyman. A pioneer of normcore. Track pants and a blinking light on my car’s dashboard that either means my seatbelt isn’t on or I need oil. That is me. What better way to elevate the Everyman Culture, then to take part in a tourney where no one is smarter than anyone else. Enter the RazzSlam, a Best Ball tourney. Every everyman likely knows what a Best Ball league is, but, if you don’t, it’s when you draft a team and the computer manages it for you by choosing who are your best players, and you get those stats. It’s basically one fantasy league removed from the robots taking over and killing us all. Well, the last laugh is on you robots, cholesterol is beating you to the punch! Kinda love that Razzball is putting on a tourney (hosted by NFBC — thank you!) that no one really has any clue how to strategize. A true everyman experience. Oh, I’m sure there’s a few people who think they know the correct strategy for Best Ball, and a few of them might be right, but there’s an under 1% chance they know why they’re right, and it isn’t just luck. In some ways, Best Ball leagues are a lot like Best Ball strategies. Throw a ton of them out there and a few good ones will rise to the top through sheer force of players’ performances and nothing you’re actually doing. That’s the fun. Anyway, here’s my RazzSlam, a 42-round, Best Ball 12 team draft recap:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Though it hasn’t been on my mind all the time, Yoshi Tsutsugo has entered it recently (shout out to Tindor). And I think he’s growing on me for the upcoming season. Now I can’t say that many Pirates get me motivated enough to write about; I can say, that there’s prime opportunity to pull some value when one of them does anything of note. The reason being no one cares about the Pirates. I mean, come on look at them. Well, in this upcoming season, the Bucs stop here. At least the middle of their lineup does.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Razzball Commenter League drafts are off and running! It’s officially DRAFT SZN. Don’t let the chance to play with your favorite writers and commenters in free leagues for an overall top prize pass you by! Our first draft of the year went off yesterday and we have spots left to fill in one tonight and every night this week. If these don’t fill, I’ll have to move them later in the draft season, so tell your friends! I know some people are probably holding out for good CBA news and I hope the draft season doesn’t get extended too much here. Next week I’ll have the RCL ADP spreadsheet ready to go and we’ll really dive into the data and over-analyze to our heart’s content. As for now though, go sign up for a league drafting in the next couple of weeks and contribute to our data pool. It’s so easy to sign-up, it’s really just one click! Use it as a mock draft that is actually useful! Today, we’ll be going over how to approach your pitching in the RCL format, hopefully, to get you prepped for the first draft of the year.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Grey and B_Don are back to go over the outfielders for 2022. We start the show with an outfielder that we both missed on last year, but proved us wrong and now we’re believers. After mocking Geoff (formerly Ralph) about Tyler O’Neill last year, B_Don is happy to be on the train this year though. […]
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So, if you’re keeping a mental note of all the pitchers I don’t like, you might realize from the Anime Grey videos, Julio Urias is one of them. Now, I’m throwing in Walker Buehler. Trevor Bauer’s a big ol’ piece of garbage, and the only person ranking Max Muncy lower than me is Madison Bumgarner. Chris Taylor’s never done nothing for me no matter his position eligibility! I’m going to become the biggest hate spewer in SoCal! I’m going to put on my Vin Scully jersey and tell everyone it’s for Scully from The X Files. Just to insult them! I’m going to go to Dodgers games — fifteen minutes early — just to show them up! I’m going to tell everyone that will listen that Nathan’s hot dogs are better than Dodger dogs! I’m going to tell everyone that Dodgers’ superfan Mary Hart’s legs weren’t that spectacular! I’m going to tell everyone that Dodgers’ superfan Larry King is still alive…on Epstein’s island! I’m gonna tell them Clayton Kershaw isn’t a Hall of Famer and that I once saw Sandy Koufax eat pork! I’m the biggest hater in Los Angeles! But, now, about Walker Buehler. Sigh. I’m not going to run through why I would never draft a top starter. I wouldn’t, but this post isn’t about that. Wrote about that across 15,000 words in the top 20 starters for 2022 fantasy baseball. I won’t be drafting a top starter or Walker Buehler, but I can dislike Walker Buehler on his own. Brave! So, what can we expect from Walker Buehler for 2022 fantasy baseball and what makes him overrated?
Please, blog, may I have some more?The current world record to beat the original Nintendo Entertainment System classic video game Super Mario Bros –from a fresh start to evading Bowser to save the princess — is 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 881 milliseconds. The second-fastest time is 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 914 milliseconds. A human thumb can’t twitch fast enough to accurately clock the difference between first place and second place (although I bet you’re trying to prove me wrong right now). That one-thousandth of a percent faster time by the elite speed-runner Niftski has placed him at the top of the Super Mario Bros speed-running pantheon. Many speed-running fans believe we have reached the human limit of optimizing the Super Mario Bros speed run, meaning that everything about the game has been studied, examined, optimized, and played out. In other words, if you decided to go pick up Super Mario Bros and try to speed run it today, you would have the work of hundreds of thousands — nay, millions — of other runs that have shown you the optimal path to complete the game in the best possible time. To arrive at the top of the speed-running leaderboards at this point, one would need a confluence of skill and luck: they would need to be skilled enough to pull off the necessary moves AND successful at lining up each and every one of the low-chance maneuvers in order to succeed.
Of course, this whole speed-running spiel is a metaphor for fantasy sports: we fantasy sports-ers have draft optimizers, lineup optimizers, draft analyzers, projections, and people competing to be the best in the world. Only, the difference is, is that people can make a lot of money or social capital in fantasy sports. Speed-running Super Mario Bros isn’t something that Niftski can do to make a million dollars in one night or even one year. But for a fantasy sports fan, you could win any number of contests through multiple providers — whether they be season-long or daily fantasy sports — and walk away much richer or much more respected. OK, maybe not either of those, at least for most of us. But when providers like NFC, DraftKings, FanDuel, and so on are paying out millions of dollars to players every year, there’s a natural human urge to, at the very least, wonder how to climb that metaphorical fantasy mountain and stand atop it for a short while. The same sentiment applies to even the most mundane fantasy player who wants to win their friends and family league just to show up Uncle Ken, the guy who both introduced you to the un-edited cuts of Star Wars and the flavor of tequila on your 16th birthday.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Finding draft day bargains is the best way to break out of the starting gates. Well, I guess the best way is to have a solid core of keepers, but in a redraft league, everything starts with the draft. Or does it start with the draft prep? So like Jesus Jones sang, does it start right here, right now? I think it might. Maybe not with this exact post, but somewhere here on Razzball. With every draft day bargain, you gain on your league mates. If you need a refresher on what a draft day bargain is, I will tell you. A draft day bargain is when you draft a player later than his actual value. For simplicity’s sake, drafting Juan Soto in the second round would be a prime example. Soto is an easy top five pick, so drafting him with the 12th pick means you’ve gotten Soto with a draft pick in which he shouldn’t have been available.
Determining a player’s actual value in points league can be tricky as player rankings will vary based on the league’s scoring system. You all know how much I’ve stressed the importance of knowing a league’s scoring system when trying to compare players. The other confusing data point is average draft position (ADP). ADP can be misleading because it most certainly does not represent a player’s true value, just his current market value as it represents where a player is being drafted by the masses. The problem is that ADP is contagious. What this means is that when someone is trying to determine who to draft with their next pick, they often refer to the remaining players’ ADP to see who they should be picking before someone else selects the player. So if Aaron Judge has an ADP of 23, he’s not going to be available when you pick at 40. This is true even if Judge’s actual value is the 45th best player in your league. Unfortunately, there is always going to be at least one person in your league that will draft based on ADP.
Let’s look at some players that have an ADP greater than their actual value.
Please, blog, may I have some more?