by: Mike
The Braves, like the Padres, are incredibly stacked in the minor leagues. This is scary, considering they’re also in the mix to repeat as NL East champions and sport young stars like Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna on their MLB roster. tl;dr – Good team that’s probably gonna be good for a while.
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I was never particularly motivated to use VLOOKUP (or any other function in Excel) for “professional” working purposes. I learned it a few years ago strictly to become better at fantasy baseball. By taking all of the public information that is available at your disposal, and combining fantasy valuations and projections from various industry resources (using mostly VLOOKUPs – seriously, it’s the only thing that I know how to do), you can formulate composite projections which paint an accurate picture of the fantasy landscape, and eliminate limit your individual bias when you inevitably use those projections and re-rank players by position. One resource that I find particularly helpful, and which you might not already incorporate into your own process, are the player propositions and betting over/under totals provided by sportsbooks. The betting market sets extremely reasonable expectations with regards to player floors and league leaders in statistical categories and can provide guidance as to where your projections stand relative to public perception both on an individual player basis, and against the league as a whole. The fact that a player is listed in a category, in and of itself, can be extremely telling as to their raw skills and expectations for the upcoming season.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Well the first for-sure, definite, 100% confirmed, future Yankee free agent signing has signed with the Padres. And this kid is now every Yankee fan:
That was definitely me back in the early 90’s when my favorite player was Don Mattingly (because he lead the league in having a walrus mustache just like my Dad. Runner up: Dennis Eckersley.) Like all Yankee fans and the bandwagon Yankee fans, I then went through the arrogant highs of the late-90’s dynasty. Followed by the dark, lonely era of the Aughts which turned me into the bitter, jaded fan who grew sick and tired of the high-spending, future-sacrificing ways of the overpaid Yankees that I am today. My writer photo above is a sarcastic response to the Yankee fans who never grew out of the dynasty era and still yell “COUNT DA RINGS BRO! DEREK JETAHHH BABBYY!!!” Despite the Yankees only winning one championship in the last 19 years. But there is now a light at the end of that tunnel! Five of the players in the Yankees starting lineup are home grown players! Our ace came up through our own developmental system and wasn’t just plucked from some poor, small market, podunk team like the Reds! Our bullpen is TERRIFYING!
The eyes of Yankee Nation are set on only one thing: adding another championship ring to the trophy case. The team, fans and front office will accept nothing less. Right now, many experts have the Bombers tabbed as the World Series favorite — we’ll see how that all shakes out in October. I talked to Callen Elslager from the Fantasy Life Blog who just had his 2019 Yankees Team Preview published. Here are his thoughts on a few key questions the 2019 Bronx Bombers are facing:
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Son
We’ve been mental masturbating over Jurickson Profar since way back when many considered him the number one prospect in all of baseball. Great makeup, potential face of a franchise, elite hitter, and hard worker were all phrases thrown about. And a switch hitter to boot. Unfortunately, injuries derailed his career early on and knocked most of the shine off.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Rudy Gamble
On March 5th, I took part in my 5th Tout Wars Mixed Draft – a 15-team snake draft that is unique amongst expert leagues in that it is a 5×5 OBP league. Otherwise, pretty standard. Weekly transactions. 2 catchers. $1000 FAAB.
Quick Perspective On The Difference Between OBP vs AVG
I went over the key things to think about with 15 team vs 12 team mixed league standard 5×5 in my 2019 LABR writeup.
The biggest shift in OBP leagues (besides the obvious one) is that ADP for hitters is much less predictive. This makes drafts a little more unpredictable but it generally advantages the more prepared drafters in the room. I look at ADP but also put my projected $OBP – $AVG right next to it to indicate guys whose value is much higher/lower in OBP.
There are other minor shifts (1Bs look better b/c they typically have highest BB rates, hitters with high AVGs but mediocre BB rates become less valuable, etc.) but this ends up baked into the projections. I have to run 15-team 5×5 OBP custom but you can access my 12-team 5×5 OBP projections and those are updated daily for Season to Date and Rest of Season as well. All free.
Please, blog, may I have some more?You smell that? No, this is the rare occasion where it is not “what The Rock is cooking.” I’m talking about the smell of fantasy baseball in the air. Mock drafts, tiered rankings, real drafts, sleepers, busts, you name it. With just a few weeks left until Opening Day, this is grind time for fantasy baseball owners. We have Spring Training games to overreact to, and small samples to over analyze. Players values are moving up and down, starting to settle into where they will be going in upcoming drafts.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: B_Don
B_Don and Donkey dig their hands and hoofs in the the starting pitcher sausage this week on the Ditka Pod.
What will they find as they sift through this years pitching mystery meat? Could Joe Musgrove be in for a breakout season?
Is Trevor Williams’s beard top 5 in the NL? Will Chris Paddack be the best rookie SP in 2019?
Are Donkey Teeth’s Top 100 Starting Pitchers pure nonsense? Are cucumbers better pickled?
What kind of a lazy intro just lists 6 questions in a row?
If you don’t have time to listen to the podcast, the answers to those questions are: 1) You don’t want to know
2) Yes 3) Debatable 4) Maybe 5) Definitely 6) No 7) Good Question.
On second thought, you should probably just listen to the podcast. Oh, and also check out our starting pitcher rankings below…
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Grey
Psst! This post is gonna list 2nd basemen that you should target in your 2019 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 is on these guys I love later in drafts. I’m not going to mention Jonathan Villar other than this one mention of him where I say I’m not going to mention him. At least that’s my apophasis and I’m sticking to it! These are players that you’re looking at later and all of them have ADPs after 200 (unlike Villar; okay, two non-mentions). Some could be the 2nd baseman on your team, they are more than likely MIs. This is a (legal-in-all-countries-except-Croatia) supplement to the top 20 2nd basemen for 2019 fantasy baseball. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2019 projections. Anyway, here’s some 2nd basemen to target for 2019 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?NL West | NL West | NL Central | NL East || AL West | AL Central | AL East
I don’t pay much attention to Spring Training Statistics. You never know who the statistics are coming against. Baseball-Reference did, however, have an amazing tool last year that attempted to quantify the quality of opposing pitchers or batters faced during spring training games on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being MLB talent and 1-3 being high A to low A level. This tool is great, but it averages all the Plate Appearances or batters faced. You would still need a deeper dive to see if your stud prospect smacked a donger off of Chris Sale or off of your kid’s future pony league baseball coach. So what should we watch for in March when we’re starved for the crack of the bat? Ignore “best shape of their life” stories and Spring Training statistical leaderboards. Pay attention to injuries and lineup construction and position battles!
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Geoff
Alright you chuckleheads, I mean that in the nicest way possible, we’re back to finish what we started. No not the fire in your loins, oh no, we’re here to take you through the rest of the top 100 outfielders. From 51-178 we bring you all the sleepers, guys with two legs, and the occasional player who should have retired 7 years ago but he has 12 kids. So he has to work! Everybody has to work! This is what we love, deep dives on the sleepers that will take you to the ship! Or we just talk to hear the sounds of our own voices. Bee-T-Dubs, don’t forget to checkout the new Razzball shirts over on Rotowear.com!
Please, blog, may I have some more?I believe Razzball is the friends and not the family, but I’ve been drafting with Scott Pianowski and Dalton Del Don so long they feel like family. Like my two cousins who call me when they’re in Los Angeles and say, “Hey, you wanna meet up for sushi? It’s your treat.” Then, when I go to meet up with them, they’re not there and 45 minutes after I show up at our meeting point, I get a text, “Sorry, have to cancel, so hung over.” It’s one word, father’s side of the family! Hungover is one word! As you might’ve noticed I didn’t say Brandy Ehrens was a part of the league, because he’s bailed on me/us/they; you choose the pronoun. I even hired a skywriter to put in the clouds above his house, “Kyle Schwarber wants you to draft him.” Guess someone else would have to draft some Cubs. (If you want to compete against me, Rudy and hundreds of others, join the Razzball Commenter League. More the merrier!) Anyway, here’s my Yahoo Friends & Family team, it’s a 15-team, mixed league:
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Kerry Klug
This won’t be a formal full update of my Top 100 Rankings list. I’m just going to highlight a few players who have helped their cause after the first week of Spring Training. I’m not going to focus on anyone who is falling in my rankings just yet. It’s hard enough to provide a weekly top 100 hitters list during the regular season when the games matter — but I’m not going to overreact to a few spring training games. Dominic Smith is currently leading the league in batting average for Pete Alonso’s sake! Hey…that sounds like a good place to start!
Please, blog, may I have some more?
