Yeah, this post is dedicated to all the people that told me Ohtani would never amount to nothing, to all the people who called me crazy for my enthusiasm, when I was just trying to inform my readers, and all the prospectors in the struggle. You know what I’m saying? And it’s all good Grey-be, Grey-be. It was all a Dream, I watched NPB games on the TV screen, upper-90’s velo, nasty split, mechanics clean. Worried about hanging breaking balls. Every spring training start he got mauled. I let the hype pop, until the hype dropped. Smoking weed in the draft room, laughing as lesser Perts talk. Way back when the humidor was supposed to cutback. Enough of that…

Okay, so obviously I’m excited about Ohtani, I’ve been writing about him for two years, and yesterday he made his debut. It’s was glorious, actually glorious is a little strong, it was more good. But I’ll take good. Here’s what I saw on Sunday.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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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

On a night where most of the teams are on the back end of their rotations and have nothing to offer but Rump Roast, we have to look at Charlie Morton as a top option. He is the center cut filet of the night, 34 years dry-aged: Morton has been a revelation the last couple years, pumping up the velocity and missing bats at a career-high rate. The World Series game 7 hero now gets the sleepiest bats in the league: the Baltimore Orioles have been horrendous to start the year. They have managed only a handful of hits in three games and have offered solid strikeout opportunities. I can see Morton racking up the strikeouts, as well as having a great chance to get the W as Chris Tillman is his counterpart.

Now let’s look at the rest of the menu….

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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There’s nothing better than an April Fools’ prank that is so sly it’s barely perceptible as a prank.  You don’t even know if it’s a gag.  One year, I had a sound engineer friend make a recording that said, “This call is being recorded.  A copy of that recording is available automatically to the police and the prosecutors.”  Then used that to call my mom and tell her I was in jail for accidentally running down a family of four.  “But mom the light was yellow!”  Apparently, I overestimated how funny she’d find that phone call, and twelve years later, she still calls me the night before April Fools’ to remind me not to pull any pranks on her.  This year the best prank I saw was one done by Major League Baseball.  It was so slight, if you blinked you’d miss it.  For their prank, they scheduled a half day on a Sunday.  Since 1908, MLB has played a full schedule of games on Sunday.  What a great joke!  Well done, MLB.  But, seriously, this is a joke, right?  Any hoo!  Know what’s not a joke, the love Trevor Williams has for Razzball, apparently:

Yesterday, Williams wasted no time to prove to me that his love for us is as strong as my love for him.  He went 6 IP, 0 ER with zero hits, but he failed to locate as well, and walked five guys, while racking up only one strikeout.  I believe his love for Razzball is only growing so this is just the beginning of great things to come.  Notice spelling of ‘come,’ you sickos.  On the reals, I like Williams for this year, and wrote a Trevor Williams sleeper for him this preseason.  Anyway, here’s what I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

FINALLY baseball has come back to our televisions! This year on top of my weekly injury article I’ll be bringing you the top 100 hitters for each week. I’ll be honest — this first week is just going to be a boring baseline. Nothing too outlandish on this list. I’m not one to overreact too much to spring stats or three days of games. However, from here on out you never know who is going to be showing up, moving up or sliding down this list.

  • These rankings are based on a 12 team roto league because if you’re reading this — you’re most likely in one of our fun, free and fantastic Fantrax RCL’s. I’m in RCL #80 — the fighting 80th! And I’m coming for that $100,00 grand prize!
  • Short-term injured players will still make the list, but long-term injured guys will probably fall off.
  • Use this rankings as a way to base your trade offers — these are the rankings from this point going forward. If you’ve got a league-specific trade question — leave it in the comments!
  • Looking for your favorite player? Hit CTRL+F or COMMAND+F (on a Mac) to search for him.
  • If you take umbrage with my rankings — leave a comment at the bottom! And while you’re there — tell me what umbrage means?
  • Please, blog, may I have some more?

Welcome to Perception Vs. Reality, PVR for short. Not POV, you’re on the wrong type of website right now if that is what you’re looking for. Wait! Don’t leave! You have fantasy baseball teams, don’t you? The good news is that you won’t need to delete your browsing history after reading this. Now that I have your attention here is a little background. One of our DFS writers, VictoriaB, wrote this last season and Grey liked it. So, Grey emailed me and asked if I could ruin the concept this season. I, of course, obliged.

I’m going to be looking at the player rater and tossing out some names that you might have overlooked. This could help with your waiver wire and trade value decisions. Quick plug for one of our in-house geniuses, Rudy Gamble. Check out his trade analyzer creation. Not anal laser, again, wrong website. I got the chance to play around with it a little bit (the analyzer not the laser) and it is very easy to understand and use. It will be very useful to you if you like to make in season moves with your league mates. Teams have only played 1-3 games a piece so this will just a be a test run this week. Even though it will still be small, by next Sunday, we will have a bigger sample size. Samples! I love samples.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Ah, I remember the hazy days of last Thursday, when it was all aces all the time on the mound. Now we’re deeper into the rotation and life is a little more interesting, pitching wise. If you’re DFS-ing it on Draft.com today (and if you’re reading this, you probably are!), you might want to grab a pitcher relatively early, just to get it out of the way (depending on the size of the draft you’re embarking upon: the smaller the draft, the safer it is to wait with pitchers, obviously). You have 4 solid-ish options and then the ground gives way and you’re in danger of falling off the fantasy baseball pitching cliff. I’d look to nail down Jose Quintana along with some big hitters.

Let’s take a look at who’s out there on the board for today.

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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The Jays approach 2018 as a bit of a wild card. A wild card that could be a Wild Card, if ye catch me drift. They’re unlikely to take down the AL East with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox flexing full powerhouse mode, yet their roster is far from a disaster. All they really lost from 2017 was Jose Bautista, and one could consider that addition by subtraction. They brought in Aledmys Diaz, Danny Espinosa, and Yangervis Solarte to bolster their infield depth behind the injury-prone Devon Travis. They didn’t want to have to rely on youngsters Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Alford in the outfield, so they traded for Randal Gritchuk and signed Curtis Granderson. They even reinforced their pitching staff with cheap options Jaime Garcia and Seung-hwan Oh. It’s been an unheralded offseason for Toronto, but considering what they accomplished without spending a lot of money, it’s been an impressive one. With better seasons from Aaron Sanchez and Marco Estrada, this could be a team that improves quite a bit from their 76 win 2017. I spoke with Tom Dakers from Blue Bird Banter about some of the fantasy situations surrounding the Jays in 2018.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

It’s been a long off-season, but we still have some systems to preview. So today, I get back on the horse and dig into a talented Pittsburgh Pirates farm system. For years now the Pirates have done an excellent job of drafting, scouting, and developing talent. Unfortunately this post comes a few days before I attend some extended spring work down in Bradenton, Florida, the off-season home of the Pirates. Annually I’m down in the Bradenton area for a week or two to see my in-laws, and I always sneak away and catch a couple of Bradenton games, or at least make it to the Pirates facility about 5 miles down the road from LECOM Park. So all this to say, I get a decent amount of looks every year at the Pirates talent in the lower levels. Last year I got first hand looks at top pitching prospect Mitch Keller, underrated speedster Cole Tucker, draft-bust Will Craig, and 2015 first rounder Ke’Bryan Hayes. This year I’m hoping to get some looks at some of the members of the Pirates strong 2017 draft class, as well as J2 standouts like Sherten Apostel. Once I have more info on Apostel, I’ll share it, but info is limited. Today we focus more on the bigger names in the system, and those with shorter ETAs. Regardless of your flavor of prospect, there’s something for everyone in this Pittsburgh system. It’s the Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects for 2018 Fantasy Baseball.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Note: The season has started, but we’ll have a couple more previews to release this weekend for your viewing pleasure!

Welcome to Razzball’s 2018 team previews. As we’ve been doing the last few months, we’ll be previewing all of the teams and talking to writers who represent those teams around the web. We want to provide the best and most in-depth fantasy projections to go along with the asking the most useful questions to those who know their teams best. We want to talk about the players in the first half of your draft and also the deep sleepers that make you log into google and start watching Midwest Single-A ball for hours. Just kidding, don’t do that, hopefully we don’t go that far…

Did you know that the Arizona Diamondbacks are putting baseballs in a humidor?…. The humidor has been the talk of the fantasy baseball community this off season. How will heavier baseballs affect Paul Goldschmidt and Jake Lamb’s power numbers? Should we roster a plethora of Diamondback pitchers? The Diamondbacks made the playoffs last year! Arizona was a great story in a stacked division. The Diamondbacks are bringing back all of the same talent and should also feature some pretty decent bullpen arms especially if Archie Bradley works out in the closer role. The top half of this lineup is just as dangerous as any in the National League and the rotation features 5 pitchers who are capable of sub-4 ERAs. I chatted up Scott Bogman of In This League to talk about his favorite team. You can also check out the player debate book he wrote with The Welsh.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Note: The season has started, but we’ll have a couple more previews to release this weekend for your viewing pleasure!

Welcome to Razzball’s 2018 team previews. As we’ve been doing the last few months, we’ll be previewing all of the teams and talking to writers who represent those teams around the web. We want to provide the best and most in-depth fantasy projections to go along with the asking the most useful questions to those who know their teams best. We want to talk about the players in the first half of your draft and also the deep sleepers that make you log into google and start watching Midwest Single-A ball for hours. Just kidding, don’t do that, hopefully we don’t go that far…

It’s been an interesting offseason for the Orioles, who (at least for the time being) have decided to hold on to superstar Manny Machado rather than dealing him prior to his walk year. They are moving him to shortstop though, perhaps to showcase his talents there and raise his value. In any case, we love the value boost he gets in fantasy. The O’s have brought in the likes of Andrew Cashner and Alex Cobb to “bolster” their rotation, in addition to re-signing Chris Tillman. When those are the highlights of your offseason, you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up too high. That said, Baltimore consistently beats their projected win total, so who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise us. They’ve still got a ton of offense, although Mark Trumbo is slated to begin the year on the disabled list, and Chris Davis has been coming along slowly as well. To make sense of the rest, I got in touch with Christopher Church from Fansided’s The Baltimore Wire.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’ve got a bone to pick with MLB.  Opening Day was awesome, but starting in the middle of the day on a Thursday when most people are working is kinda “meh”.  Why not wait one day and open your season in prime time on Friday night? With the early Thursday afternoon start at least we should expect a full slate of Friday night games, right?  Nope. Half the teams take a…much needed break? Well, Saturday is here to satiate us with a full day of baseball goodness on a day when most people have the day nonetheless. The day includes a seven game evening (Main) slate for us DFS junkies.  Pitching on that slate will be my main pitching building block, Kenta Maeda ($18,700).  Maeda has a nice price and after him the pitching really drops off.  Maeda gets a home date with San Francisco Giants. The same Giants who are blowing the dust off the mummified corpse of Derek Holland’s pitching career.  The Dodgers and Maeda are the second biggest favorites on the day (-215) and Kenta should cruise to the Win.

New to FantasyDraft? 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?

In the grand tradition of beating things into the ground; we here on the Razzball Prospect Podcast indulged in yet another Scott Kingery talk. Then again, this is the Philadelphia Phillies Top Prospect episode, so it’s only right. I have strong opinions on Kingery, like your meme-sharing Uncle on Facebook. Only my opinion is about Scott Kingery, and nothing else. Lance and myself dig deep, touching the big names in the top ten, like Sixto Sanchez, J.P. Crawford, Jhailyn Ortiz, Adonis Medina, and many more. Finally, please make sure to support our sponsor by heading over to RotoWear.com and entering promo code “SAGNOF” for 20% off the highest quality t-shirts in the fantasy sports game. It’s the latest edition of the Razzball Fantasy Baseball Prospect Podcast:

Please, blog, may I have some more?