It’s time for the hot takes! Are we recognizable enough to get smoked by Old Takes Exposed? I’m not sure about that one, but that is when you know you have made it. I love this post, we have been doing our best to give accurate and reasonable fantasy baseball information, but for this post we can load up and close our eyes and try to send one to the moon just like Aaron Judge.

It doesn’t matter if you strike out on a bold prediction. I could say Addison Russell is going to hit 30 home runs with 100 RBIs and you could call me an idiot, but I’d just say, “Hey, internet buddy, that was a BOLD prediction. I didn’t mean it. I just arranged some words and numbers together and threw them at the wall to see if they’d stick.” I have actually seen accounts on twitter that try and ride a bold predictions that they’ve tweeted to fame and it’s hilarious. That would NEVER happen in the fantasy community!

In the spirit of being reasonable, my bold prediction is that Kyle Schwarber hits 40 home runs and bats over .260 in at least 500 at bats. Schwarber looks different at the plate to go along with his body changes. He had a great spring and it wouldn’t be surprising if it carries over to the regular season. You might think that this isn’t a bold prediction and it might not be but the fact remains that his ADP sits at #157 and he is being drafted outside of the top 100 hitters. He will most likely out perform his ADP, but I think that he does it by more than people think. Without further ado, here are your bold predictions from the rest of your favorite Razzball writers…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Sun 8/3
ARI | ATH | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | ATL | CIN | OAK

If you read the title and expected this post to be an anit-MadBum rant, you’ll find your initial impression to be inaccurate. I’ve been a huge Bumgarner fan since he came into the Majors. In fact, I picked him to be this season’s National League Cy Young Award winner in the Razzball experts picks. I had to change that prediction to Stephen Strasburg after the injury for obvious reasons. Last year’s accident was one hundred percent avoidable. As much as I love him, I really hope he did not get paid for his missed time. Shame on him for riding a dirt bike. What’s next, sky diving? This year, however, was just another of the many injuries to a pitcher as a result of an unpredictable comebacker. I’m going to go out on a short limb and say that there was very little, if anything, he could have done to avoid the injury. The incident actually looked quite harmless compared to other comebackers I’ve seen over the years. My favorite was back in 2008 when Papa Grande took a line drive right off the dome piece. I can’t seem to find a good quality video, but he went down like he had been shot. The craziest part is that he ended up staying in the game and getting the save. The messed up part is that when he went down, all I could think about was the ten points I wasn’t going to get for the save. I was pissed. When he ended up staying in the game he became an instant hero.

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The rankings are over and it feels so good. That’s right, Castle “Grey-Shitz” is back with nothing to talk about but everything. I.E. Everything = Scott Kingery. We begin the show talking the Perts league RCL draft with the “reigning” NL-Only Tout Wars Champion Mr. Grey Albright. We then jump into our interview with Celebrity Chef Harold Dieterle, where of course “boba” comes up. Why does boba come up again? Because Grey has a problem, and it’s starting to bleed into his everyday life. Feel free to send words of encouragement below. We then talk Zack Godley, Miguel Sano, Colin Moran, Jonathan Villar, Greg Bird, and Lewis Brinson. We also send our regards to the man known as Salami Tom aka Yasmany Tomas. 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 Podcast:

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The other day I was joined by the best and the brightest Razzball has to offer and Tehol for our annual RCL draft (12 team, mixed league, yadda blabbity bloo).  Our fantasy hockey writer, Viz, who is a professional poker player (hope it’s okay to say that.  If not — oops!), went high/low split (totally talking out of my ass right now) and doubled down on the river, cleaning my chute of a full house of sexy picks.  He has Cody Bellinger, Trevor Story, Ronald Acuna, Bryce Harper, Trey Mancini, Eddie Rosario and Michael Wacha!  That is totally G-rated!  And the G there is for Grey.  On the other hand, I drafted a team that feels like it’s straight out of central casting.  Only problem is the role which is being cast is for a “bounce back candidate who can hit for power and steal a few bases, must also be proficient in Mandarin.”  Orange you glad I didn’t say navel!  What?  Okay, the season’s almost here and I’m straight batty with myself.  Can Ohtani slug better than Alcides and pitch better than Miles Mikolas?  I gotz to know!  (My guess is no and no.  Spring training panic!)  Anyway, here’s my RCL draft:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

The big draft weekend is over. We made it.

Completing multiple NFBCs has left me broken and tattered; my spirit longing for the season to start and early panic to set in signaling my investment in certain players was clearly too high or low (stupid!).

I was planning on doing a deep sleepers post for my own site, but in an effort to consolidate, I’ve decided to move that to the pantheon that is Razzball.

First, however, I’d like to leave two general thoughts and impressions regarding draft season. I’m particularly interested in whether I’m alone in these observations, whether anybody disagrees, or whether you noticed anything worth mentioning. Comment below, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

We’re really winding down on draft season now, with official games starting on Thursday.  This is the last Tuesday without baseball for some time and I’m giddy about it. We’re sitting at 61 Razzball Commenter Leagues right now and 59 of those have drafted.  Only two of our legacy leagues remain undrafted with Cougs R Us drafting late last night and ECFBL drafting this evening. We’re down a little bit from the past few seasons, but with a major change in the mix I’d say it’s not too shabby.  A lot of people were likely nervous of making a switch and adding yet another fantasy site to the daily check-in routine. I get it, I was that way with the four letter website before I took the plunge. Hopefully, the move to FanTrax won’t keep people away for long, especially when they see how much fun we’re all having!  Speaking of fun, I had fun going over the new and improved ADP data by taking a look at the ADPs of all Grey’s Sleepers. Even though the ADP Sheet is Razzball-centric it can still give you some interesting tidbits of information.  So, let’s do some last minute cramming for those final drafts and see what we can see.

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In a week where I’ve had 4 roto drafts (so far! I may yet get roped into more!), I don’t want to stop. I have momentum. I have spreadsheets of such intricate detail it would make a mandala-making monk cry. If only there were a way to keep drafting every single damn day. Even after the season has started. And to win money doing it.

…But wait! There is! It’s called DRAFT.com and I’m going to tell you about it!

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This draft is a crock pot vs. a microwave.  A love sesh vs. a ‘hold the moan.’  A nature hike vs. “I’m gonna sit in the car as we drive past some mountains.”  Guys and five girl readers, it’s a slow draft.  This slow draft took about fifteen days, 18 hours, four minutes and–okay, only a lunatic counts seconds.  Not almost 15 days of straight drafting, mind you.  I don’t need to ice my clicky finger.  It’s five minutes of drafting, twelve hours of waiting.  It does allow you to second-guess your picks.  Actually, more like triple-guess.  (Who are we kidding, you quadruple-guess, fiveruple-guess, sextruple-guess, ochocinco-guess your picks.) For those not in the know, it’s a weekly, 15-team, two-catcher league that lasts for 50 rounds and there’s no waivers.  Anyway, here’s my NFBC draft recap:

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Welcome to another season of Razz-matazz Fantasy Baseball. For those of you wondering, that actually was Grey’s second choice for naming this site, but as you can see, Razzball won out, much to the chagrin of jazz fingers around the world. And just one ball. No multiple balls I guess. Kinda like the opposite of how Hilton didn’t want just one tree. Double that sh*t! But here we are with another year of staff picks. So what’s the goal with this? Hashtag content, baby. (That’s the technical term.) There’s another goal though, one less self-fulfilling, unlike your mother. Despite the modern advancement of technology and science, we still have no way to have every writer provide their extended (or in Tehol’s case, I always hope abbreviated) take on every single player in the MLB. We try though! And so we have this quick-and-easy (I regret burning my “yo momma” joke now…) presentation that provides you, the Razzmatazzball community a viewer-friendly and succinct breakdown of how we feel about the upcoming season.

So without further ado, here are our Official 2018 Razzball Picks!

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The Spring has sprung and real baseball is here!  That fake stuff and all its glorious research has come to a head and later this week, that team that you built will go to battle.  Don’t go into battle with a little extra ammo in your tool belt though.  We all know who the steals candidates are and where to draft them by now.  The names are familiar, and if you drafted them, you are hoping the results that they have promised with our expectations.  My post this week is instead taking a look at the reflexive of the actual base stealers, and since the end of this week we’ll actually have counting stats, why not look at the pitchers and catchers that have the propensity to give up the most frequent of thievery?  It is often a very overlooked facet of the game.  We always see the counting stats of the perennial stolen base leaders, but never hear a peep about the pitchers who give up the most, or the catchers that are god awful at throwing them out.  I get that other forces of baseball nature encompass both of those factors of caught stealing and pitchers tendencies for base thefts, but if numbers don’t lie, let’s take a look at them and see who has the “better”chance for giving up the stat.  So here is this week’s SAGNOF report, basically picking on guys who do nothing but aid us in the stolen base category.  Cheers!

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I only wish Madison Bumgarner fractured his hand after every single person drafted, because I knew I was never drafting him.  Terrible thing to say?  Perhaps, but I’m not the poor schnook who was still drafting him after I said for the last three months to not draft him.  I even put him in a tier originally in the top 20 starters that said, DO NOT DRAFT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  Okay, not in that tall of a font, but the sentiment was all over that tier.  I said specifically, “This is just like the above tier, and I will be avoiding it, but rather than the above guys who I actually like, just won’t draft, I do not like the guys in this tier, and would never draft them at their price.  So, while I wouldn’t draft the above guys, I really wouldn’t draft these guys.  Got it?  Cool.”  And that’s me quoting me!  Of course, I can’t claim prescience that I knew he’d be hit by a comebacker, but will I anyway?  Hmm…  Why not?!  Prescience ain’t just a word on my Word of the Day calendar that I got in a Secret Santa!  So, I’ve dropped Bumgarner in the rankings, and adjusted his projections accordingly.  My Fantasy Baseball War Room gets updated on the reg, as well.

Anyway, here’s what else I saw in spring training for 2018 fantasy baseball:

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Twelve fantasy writers in one league and you thought we weren’t going to take this opportunity to hear ourselves talk (type)?  Well, then you thought wrong! We’re all loaded with hot fiyah taeks! This isn’t the ‘Perts League that Grey hosts, this is just anyone that writes for Razzball and wanted to join an RCL.  Way back on Saturday, March 3rd at 9:30pm EST, we all (well, most) settled in for an early season draft. You can check out all the draft results HERE to follow along.  This season’s participants in RCL draft order are:

Dokken – Writer of Team Previews and FanTrax Tips

Jimothy – Writing all about the sleepers you need to know

Yost – The H2H guru

Kerry Klug – The local ambulance chaser

MattTruss – DFS and RCLs are my game

Victoria B – DFS Writer/Editor extraordinaire

MB – Two sport star covering NFL and MLB like a boss

Viz Our resident Hockey enthusiast

SON – Another two sport star, running the basketball side of Razzball and writing Team Previews for MLB

Laura Holt – Deep and Only leagues are her jam

SmokeyOur soccer wizard and baseball SAGNOF expert

Phil B. – OPS is his bag

Now you know who is in the league, next we’ll hear what they had to say about it.  I interviewed each writer with some questions; some personal and some generic and here’s what they had to say:

Please, blog, may I have some more?