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:
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The Razzball Podcast is back and so is Grey’s Grandpa Joe. We open the show with another Grandpa Joe classic before diving into the last week in Fantasy Baseball. We touch on Corbin Martin’s debut, why Grey is feeling Harold Ramirez, and the Tyler Glasnow and Jose Altuve injuries. Before moving on to Hyun-Jin Ryu’s acedom, if we should trust Hunter Pence, and why we both love Mitch Garver. Exactly the show you expected in late March. Exactly.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Because of his incredible ability as a pitcher, it seems like some people forget about how good Shohei Ohtani is as a fantasy hitter. Last year Ohtani had an elite 182 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, as well as 22 home runs and 10 steals in just 367 plate appearances. That prorates to a 35 homer, 16 steal season as a rookie! While it would be irresponsible to expect that kind of production, Ohtani is still very underrated on FanDuel with just a $3,300 salary. Ohtani went deep last night, and is in a valuable spot batting third for the Angels, right behind some dude named Mike Trout. Even in a matchup against a cruising Kyle Gibson, I just can’t avoid Ohtani at this price.
New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!
Please, blog, may I have some more?[brid autoplay=”true” video=”413335″ player=”10951″ title=”Fantasy Baseball 2019 Mailbag Week 8″]
Yesterday, the Indians called up Oscar Mercado, after a hilarious bit where they phoned their Triple-A team and asked to speak to Oscar and they were met with, “The Oscar Mercado called and said they’re out of you!” The Indians have now cornered the mercado on Oscars like Meryl Streep. Mercado has speed to burn. He is so fast he just ran into your room, mussed your hair and ran back out before you even had a chance to flinch, which is great because you’re secretly being filmed for the new Netflix game show, Flinch. Mercado had one season in the minors with 50 steals. I just became aroused like Lorenzo Lamas after he sees himself in the mirror. Prospect Mike said of him, “Mercado came to Cleveland from St. Louis at last year’s trade deadline in a move that probably slipped under everybody’s radar. He had a crazy good season in Triple-A though, hitting .278 with eight homers and 37 steals. Caveat: Grey is dumb.” What? That’s not a caveat. I grabbed Mercado in a few leagues, because I could use steals, and, brucely, who doesn’t need steals? Not to answer, but bat your eyelashes and look pretty. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?The parade of prospects getting call ups early this season has been eventful, to say the least. Some are already back down. Don’t let that discourage you from hunting for the next FAAB target a week early. Speed can be an easier skill to translate at the big-league level if you can find ways to get on base. I’m not a prospect expert, check out Mike’s work for that. Still, it’s never a bad time to gamble on a young guy with potential.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Monday’s small MLB slate offers a chance for DFS players to get a Ray of sunshine in their life. Arizona’s Robbie Ray that is. The Diamondbacks’ southpaw is coming off a 50 FanDuel point performance in his last start, and will look to build on that today. He will face a Pirates’ lineup that has struggled with left-handed pitching all season, as the Pittsburgh offense has a .229 batting average versus them. Robby Ray’s 29.7 K-rate is the second highest on the slate, and should only improve in this one. The Pirates have struck out at a 28.5% clip against lefties, while showing almost no power against them. Pittsburgh owns a .092 ISO against left-handed pitching in 2019. With an $8,800 price tag, expect Ray to be very popular on Monday.
New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!
Please, blog, may I have some more?[brid autoplay=”true” video=”412367″ player=”10951″ title=”FantasyBaseball2019BuySellHold7″]
Hope our five girl readers had a beautiful Mother’s Day yesterday. I sent my mother a trade offer sending her Tyler Flowers and Goodrum. She appreciated the thought. Also, I wore pink the entire day for you mothers, because that is a very girly color that baseball keeps perpetuating every year. Why can’t mothers be into purple or lavender or mauve or rose or fuchsia or flamingo or other shades of a color similar to purple or pink? How about next year all players wear lavender pants suits for Mother’s Day? Ooh, I have an idea. Since all pink bats are relegated to the trash bin after Mother’s Day, how about players use them again to raise awareness to spay or neuter your pets? Like an in-heat bitch (medical term in vet school), George Springer was hot with that pink bat (more vet med terms), going 5-for-5, 5 runs, 4 RBIs with his 14th and 15th homer, hitting .321. The good news is he’s finally living up to his top 10 potential. The bad news is his owners from last year are on suicide watch. But, hey, it’s not us, right?! (Actually, it is me. Damn.) Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yea, yea, yea. I accidentally left two Stephen Piscotty’s in my Top 100 two weeks in a row. What had happened was: The first week was just a good ol’ fashioned screw-up. On my rankings spreadsheet my process for moving a player is to copy their row, delete their row and insert their row in their new ranking location. Grey and Jay were gracious enough to fix it after week 5 by replacing Piscotty on the website — but ya boy didn’t delete him in his own rankings spreadsheet. To make a long story short (“TOO LATE!”) there will be four Stephen Piscotties scattered through this Top 100. You pick which one fits best for your world view.
Please, blog, may I have some more?No Doubt
Name | Team | Start 1 | Start 2 |
---|---|---|---|
Jose Berrios | MIN | LAA | @SEA |
Shane Bieber | CLE | @CHW | BAL |
Aaron Nola | PHI | MIL | COL |
Chris Paddack | SD | @LAD | PIT |
Chris Paddack has been a complete monster to start the season, rewarding his owners with a 1.55 ERA, 0.69 ERA, and 46 Ks in only 40.2 IP that comes out to a 30.7% K rate. While the BABIP may be a bit fluky at .176, the batted ball profile vs his arsenal has been impressive. He has only given up 4 barreled balls in 93 batted ball events to go along with the 5th lowest line drive rate allowed. At the Dodgers isn’t ideal, but there’s no way you could sit him down in a 2 start week the way he has performed. Plus, that change up is NASTY!
Please, blog, may I have some more?I’m not one to toot my own horn, but TOOT, TOOT. Our picks have been killing it the last two weeks and we’re going to look to build off that momentum here. The funny thing is, I hate this group of streamers. This is probably my least favorite group all season long and I’m not ashamed to say that our hot streak may come to an end with these questionable selections. Our goal here is to stream though and dammitt, we’re gonna stream. With that in mind, let’s get to some of our two-star pitchers…
Please, blog, may I have some more?Happy Mother’s Day to us all! Whether we are momful or momless, hopefully we have a good Snell and Odor in our FanDuel DFS kitchen today. And hopefully we have awesome food in our after brunch bellies, as well.
If you are momful, and scrambling for a quick way to make a routine brunch extra special for mom, try adding sweet cream and fresh fruit to your french toast or pancakes, rather than relying on syrup and butter.
For the sweet cream, the key is to whisk the heavy cream in an ice cold metal bowl, so put that large metal bowl in the freezer straight away.
Take your coffee grinder and grind two tablespoons of sugar with a healthy pinch of cinnamon and a little nutmeg. Do not overdo the nutmeg and don’t worry too much about residual coffee grounds in your sweet cream, or sugar in your future coffee grounds. This process pulverizes the sugar and incorporates the spices, creating a more flavorful powdered sugar to sweeten the whipped cream.
Take your metal bowl and whisk the pint of heavy cream, adding the pulverized sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract as you start to see the cream stiffen. Continue whisking only until peaks in the cream can be formed and hold the shape. Put this all over brunch; on fruit, pancakes, french toast, in coffee, on faces. It’s all good.
And that’s all there is to it. You’ve made something very simple that adds a certain appeal to the meal you don’t ordinarily get. Special for mom, how nice.
Now that brunch is extra special let’s see if we can’t make this main slate extra special, too, shall we?
New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!
Please, blog, may I have some more?Austin Riley is a thing. New ball aside, he’s currently hitting .308/.378/.677 with 13 homers and 33 runs batted in for Triple-A Gwinnett. I’m a fan and own a share in my main squeeze league. In the preseason Top 100 I ranked him 24th overall and had this to say: “He [Riley] has plus power and hit 19 homers in 2018 between AA and AAA. He also hit .294 on the year, which is super. Only blemish is a 28% strikeout rate, but there will be some more seasoning in AAA this year for him to work on that. Speaking of blemishes, have you seen Grey’s backne? Gross!” That K-rate has come down to 20% so far in 2019. All of this is horseshit though, because what everyone really wants to know is when Riley will be up and playing every day for the Braves. I didn’t include him in the May stash list because I figured a currently healthy Donaldson would trap him in the minors until at least June. But a recent development has me thinking we could see Austin Riley up sooner. I’ll save that nugget for after the jump…
Please, blog, may I have some more?