A good roster on Draft is a lot like a good vinyl album A side. Your best work shines with 4 or 5 hits. Santana (the band) put out some great records in their time. Carlos Santana (the hitter) is currently producing hits at much the same rate.

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Sat 8/2
ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | OAK

Yesterday’s Cubs/Braves matinee was Jose Quintana (4 2/3 IP, 6 ER, ERA at 5.23) vs. Julio Teheran (6 IP, 4 ER, 7 baserunners, 1 K, ERA at 3.49).  This start was billed as, “Was The Wind Blowing Out Or Do These Guys Suck?”  A very quizzical billing.  I don’t own Quintana, but I hear your calls to place a flag on a sound stage in Hollywood and say it’s the moon and continue to own Quintana or if it’s cheese.  Guys (and five girls), things aren’t good — Ks are way down; walks are way up; velocity is down; this is the worst he’s looked in the majors.  Now, the good news, it’s relatively good, at least.  He had a 5.60 ERA last through the end of May last year, and a 3.41 ERA in the last 124 IP last year.  He also upped his Ks last June thru September and, until we see different, I think he could take the same route to success this year.  Or not (nice hedge, dopey!), but I’d hold to see.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

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Reflecting on past thoughts, musings, and predictions are vital to development. Taking old thoughts, breaking down their logic, and finding flaws, helps us understand, even in the slightest way, why something we thought was wrong. Even when we’re substantially correct, human nature and inherent randomness leaves room for steps in logic to be restructured. I don’t think reflection is conducted often enough in the space of fantasy baseball, particularly because it’s hard to take time away from future predictions, which present value to readers, in favor of self-criticism, which largely presents value to yourself.

This column serves not only as a reflection on pitchers I’ve thought and written about extensively, but also gives further thought to where they will end up as we progress forward in 2018 and why circumstances might have changed.

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The theory of SAGNOF is capitalizing on the chances in front of your face.  The “polish sausage” king of steals has returned from the minors and re-established his presence in the stead of others.  Travis Jankowski started the year out of favor, not just based on ability, just on talent.  With Manuel Margot struggling and injured and Hunter Renfroe basically doing the same exact thing (but getting Pipped by Franchy), Travis has jumped from AAA and shown his best SAGNOF face.  Hitting .368, with 2 steals and OBP of .455 over 12 games since his return.  We all know of his one sided ability in the SAGNOF game because that is what makes him the prince of this and basically the west coast Rajai.  His availability in leagues is less than 5% owned across most formats and should steadily climb until the outfield situation is a muck.  An OF of Margot, Franchy, and Travis is of the extremely light-hitting variety.  It is using Travis now before the likes of Wil Myers, whose return is the question.  With Myers eventual return a few weeks off to possibly 10 days, using Jankowski now for the steals affect isn’t a bad idea as his stats say that he can hit, get on base and effectively get on base. The 30-steal year just two years ago shows that he has a penchant for the swipe, just has to avoid attrition, replacement and the inevitable return of better talent.  He has the gig for the next week to 10 days so now is the time to see if you can steal, pun intended, a few bases to pad your stats and move along.  That is what SAGNOF is, hit and move.  Don’t fall in love.  get what you want out of it and than throw it to the waiver wire dogs.  It is a sad world we live in and there is no cuddling in the quest for steals world.  I don’t care how great the big spoon feels.  More saves and steals ain’t got no face goodies after the bump.

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There’s some pretty good pitcher depth for your Draft team today, even if you’re in a 6- to 10-person draft. You can afford to wait a little to draft a pitcher, but if you’d prefer to take a pitcher early for the middle slate tonight, nab Carlos Carrasco. In previous match-ups, he’s held the active Detroit Tigers to a team OPS of .561 against him, with the biggest possible threat against him being Jose Iglesias: Joey Church has gone 9 for 28 versus Carrasco (OPS of .906), and after that the Tigers fall off a cliff. The weather is a little bit of a worry in Detroit, though, so keep an eye on that.

New to Draft? 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 you do. It’s how we know you care!

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Hope everyone had a nice Mother’s Day!  Or, as it’s known in my house, Bill Hall Day.  *it’s 2074, Grey Albright’s frozen head is on a shelf next to Ted Williams’ frozen head*  “Hey, Ted Williams, Happy Bill Hall Day.”  “You’ve been calling it that for 65 years.”  “It’ll catch on by next year.  By the way, you have a booger-icicle hanging from your nose.”  For Mother’s Day for Cougs, I took a picture of our dog Ted’s penis, then Photoshopped it into Bill Hall’s hands, so it looked like a pink bat.  Of course, I inscribed it, “You’re always a home run to me.”  I’m so romantic!  Any hoo!  Sean Newcomb silenced the Marlins pink bats and pink jerseys and pink hats — were they also advertising Anna Faris’ new movie, because they went Overboard! — 6 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners (1 hit), 6 Ks, ERA at 2.51.  Of course, this matchup wasn’t the hardest, but his peripherals (10.4 K/9, 4.2 BB/9, 3.65 xFIP) look close to that of a number two to three fantasy starter.  Not bad since he was drafted as number five.  He’s one bad mother!  Or May the Bill Hall Be With You.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

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It’s rough to start a list that brings me as much joy as this with the sad trombone, but this is how we have to begin when we lose Clayton Kershaw. Sad trombone. There’s no current timetable for his return from biceps tendinitis, and the most recent update has him playing catch from 60 feet for five minutes. Yippee. I like to think he’s actually just practicing an eephus and he’s going to start working it into his repertoire. In any case, he’s not close to a return. Sadly, DL trips have become commonplace for Kershaw. At this point you have to bake a DL stint into his projection every year, and to me that puts him squarely behind Mad Max and Sale moving forward.

Kluber is also showing a few chinks in his armor, so that dude has to watch out for pointy objects. While he’s got a cool 2.62 ERA, his FIP is 3.94. His swinging strike rate is down a full 5% from 2017 while his contact rate is up 9%. He’s getting fewer reaches out of the zone and is missing far fewer bats in the zone. I don’t foresee an implosion of any kind per se, but among elite options he’s got my eyebrow raised.

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So I was watching the Oakland A’s play the other day and took note of Mark Cahna’s walk up music, “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. You don’t see many major leaguers going with a classic like that, but if I was picking a Dylan song as my walk up song, it’d be this one. That’s my favorite song by him, a nine-minute story that feels straight out of a Mark Twain novel along with being damn catchy. Anyway, that got me thinking about another Dylan song from that same era, “Joey,” which is a song about Crazy Joe Gallo, a mafia hit man back in the 70s, because Joey Gallo (a perennial OPS Leaguers Unite! guy combo-ing power and a lack of average to make him more valuable in OPS leagues than any other) doesn’t have a nickname, and well, Crazy Joe only works if you’re really crazy, and Joey Gallo doesn’t seem so.

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They call Draft fantasy for the people, and why not? It’s easy as Sunday morning. Sign up at Draft.com, do a quick snake draft of 3, 4, 6 or 10 players, and get a piece of the payouts. Here at Razzball, we recommend using Value-Based Drafting (VBD) to make the most of your roster. Using Rudy’s tools, you can easily sort values and take the projected points for the final player drafted at each position (P, IF, OF) and subtracting from all the players at that position, then re-ranking based on VBD. In other words, Razzball will give you the inside knowledge you need to dominate your DFS opponents.

Another Sunday, another jam-packed stable of starting pitchers.  James Paxton?  Just threw a no-no and is striking out the world.  Luis Severino?  Sharp as a tack with that fastball and playing on the hottest team in the majors.  Corey Kluber and Dallas Keuchel?  Haven’t they recently won Cy Young awards?  And don’t forget Ohtani: no words for his all-around game.  Of all those big guns, the guy with the best numbers against his opponent and killing it right now?  Jacob deGrom of the New York Metropolitans.  He’s well rested and gets to vault off his DL stint to face the Phighting Phillies, who have hit him to a tiny combined OPS of .530.  Furthermore, he’s doing it in Philadelphia, where he’s 2-0 with a .978 WHIP in his young meteoric career.   It’s Jacob deGrom for the win today.  And hey, if you make the great decision to try out Rudy’s tools here at Razzball, you’ll find the Hittertron and Streamonator — the deGromonator fits right in!

New to Draft? 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 you do. It’s how we know you care! 

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To say the Giants have been one of the more uninspired farm systems of late is an understatement on par with saying Kate Upton is busty. We know. It’s a defining characteristic of this organization. It’s been so bad that people were actually excited about Christian Arroyo, a player that’s truly nothing more than system depth. To put it lightly 2017 was a disastrous campaign for the Giants, as they finished with the league’s worst record, despite paying the luxury tax. Sure Madison Bumgarner’s (first) freak injury played into that, but there were bigger issues. First amongst them is a lack of exciting bats in the lineup. The San Francisco organization did a good job this off-season, acquiring both Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria, for underwhelming prospect packages. They also drafted a few exciting talents in top Puerto Rican prospect Heliot Ramos, Jacob Gonzalez son of former Arizona Diamondbacks star Luis Gonzalez, and Seth Corry, an intriguing lefty from the Utah Prep ranks. With the number 2 overall pick in the draft this year, San Francisco has a great opportunity to add onto a strong foundation from last year’s class. It’s the Giants Top Prospects for 2o18.

Please, blog, may I have some more?