Don’t worry, our blunders are still pretty entertaining!  Due to some last-second scheduling, our joke about the Oscars at the beginning became painfully true for us as well, as we jacked around the date and put the Pod up today!  Eh, well, it’s still early Spring, we got time before the season!  On today’s show, we recap some news from Spring like Anthony DeSclafani‘s elbow, Danny Salazar‘s great debut, and Max Scherzer‘s knuckle.  Then to the meat n potatoes – we preview Grey’s 1B and 2B rankings, with a light smattering of a C preview as well!  Follow along with the ranks found here, and let us know your additional thoughts in the comments.  Hopefully you can bring in more Brewers discussion, like Grey kept doing!  Here’s the latest edition of the Razzball Baseball Podcast:

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Mon 8/4
ARI | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | ATH | CHW | OAK | SEA | WSH

If this were a Meatloaf song, the title, “Andrew McCutchen, 2017 Fantasy Schmohawk,” would have this “Betting Against The Bounce Back” in parenthesis.  Some overrated posts are preordained by the man above, some posts are preordained by the men below.  This post is for the men below.  Those men are the ones in the comments touting how great Andrew McCutchen still is.  I think people get confused by fantasy in the most general sense.  I don’t dislike guys personally (okay, Daniel Murphy is the exception that proves the rule).  McCutchen seems like a great guy.  I’d buy him a beer if I ever saw him.  Of course, the beer would get returned to me with the note, “McCutchen only drinks Glenfiddich.  He is Scottish, after all.”  In real life, I want him to have a long and productive life.  May his walks on the beach be accompanied by a loved one and some crutches.  For fantasy, I want McCutchen to fail miserably.  I want his bounce back to go about as well as the yodeller’s on The Price is Right when the contestant is more than $25 over the actual retail price.  Anyway, why is Andrew McCutchen overrated for 2017 fantasy baseball?

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Our daily/weekly MLB projection tools (Streamonator, Hittertron, DFSBot, etc.) will be back for 2017. We are in the process of updating the payment software (our previous vendor, CoinTent, went out of business) so just hold tight for now.

But I do have two good pieces of news to share!

First, we partnered with our friends at FantasyPros to bring you a free fantasy baseball draft simulator where you can: 1) set the league preferences, 2) choose between either Grey or Rudy’s cheat sheets (you can see them when you scroll down from your player selection screen) and 3) see how it compares with the consensus (a decent proxy for ADP).

Second, given the demand from dynasty leaguers and redrafters who like rookie nookie for MLB prospect info, we just launched a new tool called Prospectonator (links for hitters and pitchers) that can now be found in the top menu (under Tools) and linked at the top of all the Preseason Projections/Player Raters.

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Last week we covered why you should join and RCL, so this week let’s start covering what to do once you’re in there.  To be honest, most all of this has been covered somewhere on the site over the years, most often by Rudy.  I covered this info last year, Big Odio has covered/ranted in the comments plenty about it as well.  If you haven’t been playing in RCLs though, I could see how some of this has been glossed over, so I’ll try to consolidate some info for the newbies.  Frequent players, feel free to skip ahead.

Should you take all my advice as gospel?  Nah, you do you, I’ll do me and we’ll both be happy.  All I can give you is a voice of experience.  I’ve played in these leagues for quite some time in some very tough leagues.  I’m not the best player around, but I can hold my own.  I’m here to help you do the same.  No one wants to be fighting for 11th place, so here we go!

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We back baby!  Spring Training is already starting up (We desperately need shorter games, but like 2 extra weeks of Spring Training?!?! I know, I know, WBC, but whatever!), we’re about to March, drafts about to be drafting…  Love this time of year.

So note to self – get the rankings done earlier in 2018.  Second note to self – bitch slap Grey when I see him in person next week for making everyone else look so bad, with his ranks done so early!  But hey, not like he’s got other sports to worry about!  Speaking of, if you haven’t played fantasy basketball yet, shameless plug sentence/link for you to come over and check us out on hoops!  Play in some Hoops RCLs next year maybe!

Ok, JB’s ADHD voice, back to bidness!  My yearly baseball magnum opus is finally complete – weeks in the works – and went from 9600 words last year to 9700!  Weird they were so similar… I’m kinda like Tolstoy, they just gonna keep getting longer, hah!  Of course no one is expected to read War & Peace in one sitting, so take your time getting through this bad boy!  I’ll wait!

I’m pumped to get the Pitcher Profiles ramped up again, better quality GIFs, and another year with the Gamescore+, which maybe we can start to automate with more batted ball data out there.  RUDY?!?!?!  WHERE’S RUDY?!?!?!?!  SOMEONE GET ME RUDY!!!  Also, if you missed the wrap up I put together a few weeks ago, you can check out how Grey and I did vs. ESPN with the 2016 SP ranks.

A question that is always debated and weirdly always different for each ranker/rankings sets is: are these your personal rankings?  Adjusted for ADP?  Are they how you would draft, or how you think guys will finish?  I’ve decided I have the be all, end all answer.  I did these ranks initially without looking at ADP or any other rankings sets.  The ranks are my personal ranks for how I would value guys one over the other, and then I’ll use this list to be malleable for every draft/site/league format.  Pigeonholing ranks to adjust for ADP means you’re stuck looking at one list of ADP data.  So there’s my answer for how I approach rankings.

Anyway, here we go!  Find below my top 100 SP for 2017.  And as always, my top-5 sleepers (to varying degrees) are James Paxton, Sean Manaea, Blake Snell, Ivan Nova & Reynaldo Lopez.  Plus bonus #6 – Tyler Skaggs – moved him up after re-looking at his data.  Apparently I love my lefties this year!

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The phrase “I’m excited for Spring Training” is a double edged sword, especially in fantasy baseball. We’re all excited to see the early signs of life on our already drafted fantasy teams, yet there is still a month of emptiness before the actual returns start trickling in. That leaves ample time for overreaction to minor injuries and excessive helium for players who put together a few good at bats.

Although many owners have the discipline to completely neglect the impacts of recency bias during the Spring, some will always fall prey to the hype, and you will feel the resulting impact in the draft room. Sometimes, it may even be good to fall prey to that hype. As we all know, fantasy baseball is often a game of balance. Below I’m going to aggregate my reaction to what has happened in the few games we have seen so far and how, if at all, I have translated these points over to the fantasy section of my baseball mind.

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Let the overreaction to Spring Training numbers begin! Gregory Polanco went 3-for-3 with 2 stolen bases in his debut — 115 SB prediction for Polanco! Jason Castro went 2-for-2 with a HR in his first game — 60 HR for Castro! Shelby Miller allowed 2 runs, 3 hits over 2 innings — that is actually pretty on-brand for Shelby Miller. Do not trust Shelby Miller! Health is really what you’re looking for in Spring Training and these guys are failing that test so far…

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Oh no he dint!  I dit.  No, he dint!  I dit!  Dint!  Dit!  That was my right and left side of my brain debating Carlos Gonzalez as overrated.  You’d be surprised at how often the two sides of my brain get in these verbal sparring matches.  The left side of my brain was in the Debate Club in high school, so you’d think it was an unfair fight, but the right side of my brain conjured up an imaginary Debate Club with six imaginary debaters, an imaginary Debate tourney and an imaginary trip the Debate club went on where I lost my very real virginity.  The left side of my brain is like, “Wut!?”  Since the right side of the brain made up all of that, it’s understandable that the best argument the left side of my brain can come up with is ‘Oh no he dint!’  Of Coors, I don’t like going against Rockies hitters.  This is the first time I’ve labeled a Rockies hitter overrated since I went after Tulo, which came out aces, prolly.  No false modesty here, I’m never wrong on these schmohawk posts.   You short a schmohawk and you’re golden.  Like my Ocean Pacific Bermudas, these are the greatest shorts ever.  Anyway, why is Carlos Gonzalez overrated for 2017 fantasy baseball?

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Welcome to the 2017 Razzball Team Previews! You’ll find everything you need to know about each team to get yourself ready for the upcoming fantasy baseball season. And I do mean everything, everybody. We’ve got line-ups, charts, numbers, projections, questionable questions, smarter answer, potent potables and well, that’s a lie. No potables here, but plenty of potent fantasy names brimming with potential. Now’s the time to be an eternal optimist for the next two months. 

A quick note on the format. Each preview will feature six questions to a team’s blog writer. Are there only six great fantasy questions for each team? Of course not, but THAT’S WHAT THE COMMENTS ARE FOR! So, enjoy the thoughts of another writer, the dialogue on each team, and then continue the conversation in the comments!

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After I finished my Top 100 Prospects post, I had a whole lot of leftovers of players who didn’t quite make the cut. The thing is many of these players were at one point in my Top 100, and therefore had a write up. Today’s post is those leftovers, it’s the turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving, or the album a band releases a year after a successful album of all the songs that didn’t make the cut. It’s me being lazy, but also kind of wanting you to have as much of my info as possible. I get a chance to go into detail on a few last minute subtractions, and get you familiar with some players that will be jumping into my top 100 by mid-season. These are the bubble players, those that are every bit a top 100 level player as those that just limboed under the line, some flameouts looking for redemption in 2017, and everything in between. There’s a little bit of everything! I hope you enjoy, it’s the Leftovers.

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Welcome to the 2017 Razzball Team Previews! You’ll find everything you need to know about each team to get yourself ready for the upcoming fantasy baseball season. And I do mean everything, everybody. We’ve got line-ups, charts, numbers, projections, questionable questions, smarter answer, potent potables and well, that’s a lie. No potables here, but plenty of potent fantasy names brimming with potential. Now’s the time to be an eternal optimist for the next two months. I’ll be joined by Razzball newbie Zack Burgess in completing these this year (Welcome aboard, Zack!). So, we’ve got a team to preview and questions to ask. Let’s get after it!

We have a very special guest for this post, Nick Doran, to provide his take on what the team has in store this season. Now enough rambling, let’s see what 2017 holds for the Cincinnati Reds!

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Welcome to the most wonderful time of the year. It’s Prospector Christmas/Holidays/Festivus/Chanukah it’s Top 100 Prospects list time. Michael Halpern my cunning co-host, and I discuss the differences in our Top Prospect lists. Halp decided to be an overachiever and went a full 200 prospects over on his site Imaginarybrickwall.com. It’s brilliant, check it out. We flip flop Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi in our rankings. We then fight over Benintendi, and make up over Austin Meadows. We have some big swings on Cody Bellinger, Manuel Margot, Francis Martes, and Kyle Tucker. We mix in a little talk about my affinity for hit tool first baseman that no one else likes. Then Halp wonders how Stephen Gonsalves ended up on his Top 100 and not mine. It’s the latest episode of The Razzball Fantasy Baseball Prospect Podcast.

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