Ever get an invitation to a party you shouldn’t have been invited to? You know, like that IQ party you got invited to junior year of college, because you dated way outside your social circle, and spent 6 months with the hot girl from the rockets and brain surgery school. You had no idea how you got there, but there you were, with the future rocket scientists and Ben Carsons of America. Hopefully you wore your largest belt buckle to protect you from the brain surgeon’s steely knives, and also steered clear of any conversations involving jet propulsion, or other “rocketry”. So why am I asking you to dig through the painful cobwebbed recesses of your brain? Because I found myself in a similar position just a few short weeks ago, and was hoping to draw upon your ability to feel empathy. I know, look at me treating you like a fully developed well rounded adult. What can I say? I think highly of you. But why this long diatribe, begging for empathy? Because I somehow weaseled my way into the Couch Managers Expert Mock with some rather reputable names. People like Adam Ronis, Mike Gianella, and you know yada, yada, yada, I’m in the draft. Me!….Ralph, the Prospector, or whatever I am, so here’s my team..
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With another week of Spring Training behind us, teams are starting to ramp up efforts to decide who wins positional battles, spots in the starting rotation, seats on the bench, and roles in the bullpen. There were no huge injuries this week, but as always, a few nicks and cuts here and there which could end up costing a guy a starting job or a key spot on a team.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yo, yo, yo, it’s Money Makin’ Manhattan back again, or as the ladies call me Mmm… I just made the milkshake of Googling “mmm meaning.” I made that milkshake even though I know what it means. I also will be using milkshake instead of mistake as a subtle protest to Apple’s autocorrect. Siri, you made the milkshake of messing with me! I thought mmm just meant a sound when you’re enjoying something. Only Google told me, “MMM means Expression of pleasure or contentment, My Main Men, Marjories and Maureens Meanderings, Manual Mind Melt, Mad Minute Monday.” That then sent me on a two-hour journey around the internet trying to figure out what everything after ‘contentment’ means in that definition. Are Marjories and Maureens Meanderings nomadic feminist thoughts like, “I could use directions, but Waze’s development team was 100% men and I’m not using it?” I have a theory that at some point in the future, likely when we’re all dead and gone, people will no longer speak in words, but will only talk in acronyms. Yes, essentially, everyone will be like the little girl in Sleepless in Seattle that grew up to not shave her armpits on Transparent and Girls. Potatoes to chips, I’m gonna keep this Head-to-Head fantasy baseball draft strategy so succinct that it could be written on the back of a CVS receipt and still have room for a grocery list for a family of five. Assuming the family of five has shopped in the previous two months. If said family was in Breckenridge for a skication, and are just getting home before Rascal, Tommy and Clarafeen have to go back to school, then their shopping list might be too long to fit. Now if they’re just getting back from Breckenridge and are bringing food with them in coolers that they accumulated over the skication, then there might still be enough room. More or less contingent on accumulated food and their level of hunger. Fangraphs has a formula to figure this out. It converts a CSV table into a CVS receipt. Quite revolutionary. I’m surprised Carson Cistulli didn’t mention it in his 250,000 word Wikipedia entry. Whose Wikipedia page is longer Cistulli or Rosa Parks? I mean, all she did was refuse to switch seats, Carson hosts a podcast! Head-to-Head, or H2H, doesn’t change a lot for our 2016 fantasy baseball rankings. There are 300 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy. There are 100s of billions of galaxies in the universe. There are at least 256,000 planets exactly like Earth. Yet, there’s only one Mike Trout. (Though Trike Mout on Planet Spoonerism is pretty good too. Not a first rounder though.) H2H doesn’t change that. The strategy for playing in the middle of the season in H2H leagues changes. You aren’t hoping Eric Hosmer hits 20 homers by October, but whether or not he’ll hit a homer on Sunday or if you should sit him for Jarrod Dyson to try to win steals. It’s all about the matchups, y’all! So you want to build a team that can match up well with any other team. (FYI, I’ve gone over this stuff before, but some of you might need a pine tree refresher hung from your rear view.) Anyway, here’s my head-to-head draft strategy:
Please, blog, may I have some more?On Tuesday March 8th, I had the honor of taking part in the Tout Wars Mixed League Snake Draft for the second straight year. Last year, I finished in 2nd place after a brutal September (one spot above 3rd place Grey who will be taking part in Tout Wars NL-only this year!).
There’s no place to go except up, down, or finish in the same spot.
Before I break into the recap, here are two unique differences between this Tout Wars draft and the LABR mixed draft I recapped earlier this preseason:
- This is 5×5 OBP not standard 5×5 (w/ AVG). Otherwise it’s generally the same (NFBC roster format of C/C/1B/2B/SS/3B/OF/OF/OF/OF/OF/CI/MI/UTIL/9 P/6 bench)
- There was a requirement that we needed to draft a ‘starting 23’ before reserve rounds – e.g., you couldn’t wait until the last couple rounds to draft your 2nd catcher.
Here are the results of the 2016 Tout Wars Mixed League Draft. (If you hate reading, here’s a podcast with my pal Alan Harrison at The Fantasy Fix where I talk about Tout Wars and other things) I suggest opening it another tab while reading this post. Apologies it isn’t all pretty and color-coded but OnRoto.com doesn’t support that yet.
My team:
Please, blog, may I have some more?
For those of you that missed out on round one, you can find out how this game works by clicking here. For those that need a refresher you should click the link too. For everyone else, let’s get this party started. Grab yourself a bag of Doritos, a beer and put on your guessing cap because it’s time to put some baseball facts on the table…
Bringin’ in da star powah! Today on the Razzball Baseball Pod we discuss sleeper hitters who could vault into the second round by 2017, which Grey of course uses as yet another platform to talk about Delino DeShields. We get it already! This has become madness… (Speaking of madness, come and join the Razzball Basketball Tourney Pool!) We then interview Top Chef Season 1 Winner Harold Dieterle and get a behind-the-scenes look at the show and a more in-depth explanation of why you can’t make “faux gras” in 3 hours. Grey is so multi-lingual with his French! Then we wrap up with some news and notes since our last show, including some early standouts through the first few weeks of Spring Training. Here’s our latest edition of the Razzball Baseball Podcast:
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Please, blog, may I have some more?Like the 2nd basemen to target, this is necessary. You want to take flyers on late middle infielders. I like a few top shortstops this year: Lindor, Seager and Correa, but if you don’t get them, don’t sweat it and definitely don’t ‘panic reach’ for another shortstop just because you feel like you need one. This is a (legal-in-all-countries-except-Lichtenstein) supplement to the top 20 shortstops for 2016 fantasy baseball. The players listed have a draft rank after 200 on other sites. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2016 projections. Anyway, here’s some shortstops to target for 2016 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Something dawned on me the other day while partaking in the annual CBS Expert Auction League run by Scott White (which I’ll be recapping later in the week), and it’s this: Evan Longoria is readily available for the taking this year. This was also confirmed by the fact that I’ve netted him in several RCLs (you can still join a league here!) pretty late as well, and really, the only reason that I ran into him at all is because I was looking for Chase Headley for my eventual bottom-feeding phase of the draft. How Longoria has ruined everything that I know and love! I should admit, Fantasy Baseball has probably moved behind Fantasy Football when it comes to my priorities, and seeing as there is only so much real estate in my head, it could also be fair to say that I haven’t kept myself up to speed with a lot of the everyday minutiae of Major League Baseball. So in the drafts where I was able to net Longoria pretty late, each time I would glance at his stat page and try to figure out what was so wrong with him before selecting him. And, spoiler-alert! I couldn’t really find anything glaring. No injury, no erosion of skills, etc. Obviously, there isn’t much that can glare back at you in a window of a minute-and-a-half (in this case, with several drafts, multiple minute-and-a-halves, which, coincidentally, is how I also describe my love-making) from a player page, so I wanted to take this journey of discovery and figure out exactly why Evan Longoria has fallen out of favor, and quite possibly find some kind of redeeming quality that confirms my value-pick will actually bring some sort of “value”. Or I’ll just find out that I totally effed all of my teams by drafting a dud. What an adventure! (In other words, my Alka Seltzer is on standby…)
Please, blog, may I have some more?Be sure to read Part 1 here and Part 2 here!
Dominate your draft! Conquer your league! Humiliate your friends! It’s the time of year when some non-Razzball sites try to lure you into paying $19.95 by promising you success not just in fantasy baseball but in military takeover. Destroy! Obliterate! Decimate! I don’t know about you, but I’m turned off by fantasy baseball ads that sound more like commands from a war general than ways to improve how you look at some numbers.
There are three keys to fantasy success, and those kind of sites aren’t selling any of them.
The first is Time Invested.
The second is Skill.
Before I tell you the third, is anyone else addicted to this stupid Safeway Monopoly game? I know I’m not going to win, but I keep hearing this voice inside my head saying “maybe no one else is trying as hard as you are… maybe you’ve got one of the rare pieces that they only make one of…” If you ever thought fantasy baseball was a waste of time, lady and gentlemen, I present Safeway Monopoly. I swear I spend over an hour each week going through those annoying little stickers, all of which I already own. Success in Safeway Monopoly is different than success in fantasy baseball. There’s no skill – anyone can lick stamps and put them on a board. There’s no benefit to the time you invest – I have some friends who haven’t won squat despite shopping exclusively at Safeway and scouring the internet to find rare pieces. Yet, another friend of mine won $200 on it with no effort. You know why? Luck. Those who win at Safeway Monopoly have one thing: luck. And so do some fantasy baseball players. The third component to fantasy baseball success is luck.
Please, blog, may I have some more?True Story Alert! Socrates Brito used to pause the Diff’rent Strokes credits for Dana Plato’s title card and would argue with the screen, calling himself a Socratic method actor. This drove his family crazy. For many years I’ve spouted off like Tom Selleck’s sprinkler the need to ignore spring training stats. You should only concern yourself with injuries and position battles. With that in mind, Brito is winning a position battle with Yasmany, leaving Yasmany baffled, “Do you people just want an outfielder with a long-flowing beard? Is that what this is about? What’s the argument for Socrates? Am I making an argument for Socrates by annoying you with questions? Is this table still blue to a blind person?” In the top 80 outfielders, I added in Socrates into the Brendan Dassey tier. Appropriate that he’s in the Brendan Dassey tier because if there’s any justice, there will be Socrates. In Double-A, Socrates had nine homers and 20 steals, and Yasmany looks to be headed into the same Cuban abyss as Rusney Castillo and that guy that played Tony Montana’s buddy, Manny. For 2016, I gave Socrates the projections of 56/7/47/.264/18 in 410 ABs, and if your league counts arguments with Plato, he has added value. Anyway, here’s what else I saw in spring training for fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Welcome back campers to the second season of Razzball’s homegrown dynasty baseball league, “The Razznasty”, filled with readers, writers, commenters, and J-FOH. It’s with great pleasure that I ring in the second year of updates. Since we last left you a few teams have changed hands, a commissioner switch took place, a whole lot of trades before the winter trade deadline, and our inaugural 10 round draft comprised of the unkept, free agents, 2015 draftees and internationals. A couple of teams with ownership changes included, J-FOH pulling a Jay-z and retiring for like 5 seconds after winning last year, and then handing the M-I-C to commenter and hip-hop aficionado Nick the Dick. This was then followed by the “Hatest that ever did it” coming out of retirement to manage the first vacancy available. We also welcomed Smokey into the fold, as he stepped in to take over an up and coming squad. Finally this club will have the quality ownership to match it’s competitive roster. In addition to those three changes, we were gifted a real wheeler and dealer by the name of Raskals. An owner, that from his first day in the league, has aggressively built what seems to be a formidable contender.
In our latest installment we’ll discuss a couple of the trades from the deadline, and hear from some of the members of the Razznasty on their takeaways form the draft. Yes there were takeaways, just like the Oscars, but more like the swag from an insurance conference. Yeah another stressball!!! Well here it is Razzball’s 2016 dynasty baseball league.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Welcome to the 2016 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 mean everything, folks. We’ve got line-ups, charts, Slurpees, lube, a guide for beginner electricians, and even a cactus! Well, that’s a lie. That’s what Jay had last year sitting in front of him. This year? Um…a little less lube? Take that as you will. But hey, we’ve got teams to preview and questions to ask, so let’s hop to it. We a very special guest for this post…Bryan Kilpatrick, to provide his take on what the team has in store this season. Now enough rambling, let’s see what 2016 holds for the Colorado Rockies!
Please, blog, may I have some more?