As we always do about this time!  *beat drops, Grey does the worm, Grey’s iPhone alarm goes off, time to put more money in the meter*  Damn, how long was I worming for?  September 1st hits and teams expand their rosters to the Four-Oh.  Now pour some extra bullpen guys out for all the dead moments between pitcher changes.  So, what does this mean for all of us, fantasy baseballers (<–my mom’s term!)?  It means call-ups and rookie nookie is aplenty.  Aplenty, I tell ya!  By the by, for big boned people, rather than an X-Large t-shirt, they should call them aplen-Tees.  Yeah, I just made the English language better.  High-five yourself for even knowing to read me.  *Grey worms, alarm goes off*  Damn, I need to get more coins.  At this point in the year, you need guys that are getting everyday playing time, so I’m pumped up the jam on Javier Baez (0-for-4) being called up — Javier Na Gila! — but if he’s not playing every day, he’s not helping me in redraft leagues.  I’m intrigued by Brandon Drury (0-for-4), but I’m also hesitant if he doesn’t play every day.  Hector Olivera (0-for-4) was called up, and I’ve already gave you my Hector Olivera fantasy and I do think he plays every day.  It’s a most exciting time to be alive and be fantasy balling, but don’t lose sight of the real goal here.  To get quality at-bats from guys that are playing, not to pick up a guy that will be great in 2016.  (Unless you’re in a keeper league; then, by all means, knock yourself out!  Not literally!  Ouch.)  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

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

Stephen Piscotty (+31.8%) was the most added player in fantasy baseball over the past week. Another homegrown talent looks to be panning out for the NL-leading St. Louis Cardinals, joining other key MLB players such as Matt Carpenter, Yadier Molina, Michael Wacha, Carlos Martinez, Kolten Wong, Trevor Rosenthal, and Jaime Garcia who were drafted and developed by that organization. As far as Piscotty goes, his name is like a glorious reminder of the incredible homemade biscotti and pizzelles that my Italian aunts used to make for me as a kid. Piscotty’s production this season since being called up roughly six weeks ago has been just as delicious for fantasy owners (well, almost). Entering yesterday’s play, his August numbers – 15 R, 4 HR, 19 RBI, 1 SB, .340/.374/.600 in 107 PA – have been stunning, with top-20 results in several key categories (BA, SLG, OPS) among qualified players over that span. However, his mediocre 0.22 BB/K ratio (MLB average: 0.37) over the past month as well as an unsustainably high .405 BABIP (MLB average: .299) indicate that he’ll probably be more like a Stella D’oro Breakfast Treat moving forward. Pretty good in it’s own right, but can’t hold a candle to Aunt Theresa’s homemade goodies.

Here are a couple of other significant adds and drops in fantasy baseball over the past week:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

For those of you here, I applaud you for not giving into that dirty-dirty fantasy football. And if you did give in, then you should sign up for an RCL or RazzDP (our FFB IDP leagues). No judgements here, I play too. I made Sky the lede today because he possess a particular set of skills to rescue you from falling flat on your face in September. You see, playing DFS and the RCL’s are more akin to each other than comparing RCL’s to the soul crushing turd: the Yahoo format. Every day our DFS writers are giving you good one day calls that may contain players available in your league to stream or batty call. I know, I know, we have Rudy’s tools here, and as much as I love the Bots, sometimes I have to dig deeper to find what I’m looking for. If you have no time to dig, then you should be jumping into the DFS posts and peppering them with questions. Last year, when I wrote DFS, I was constantly looking for the low budget plays which is essentially what a batty call is. Same goes for the arms too. To be honest, last year, I was a better batty caller and streaming fool when I was constantly looking at match-ups from every angle imaginable. Please, I implore you, hit up Sky (he’s the master of this domain) and the rest of the DFS crew on the daily for some batty call options. I feel obligated to tell you to visit Sky in his comments. He literally makes you smarter by just being in his space. Unless its with him drunk on the streets of Phoenix, but that’s a story for another time. Now onto you…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Tonight we get to play everybody’s favorite game, “Guess the lineup for Game 2 of the Coors Double Header”. Just rolls off the tongue really. I love me some Coors field, but I dread days like this when there’s a double header with start times spaced 5 hours apart. What stinks about this is when the first game gets finished up around 6:30 EST or so, there’s 30 minutes until most games kick off and zero percent chance that Walt Weiss can muster up a lineup in that small amount of time. This leads us to either fade Coors, yikes, or take a guess at what we think the lineup will look like and leaving our lineup flexible enough to make changes late. This might mean we fade the early games entirely and it creates some interesting opportunities depending on how much you want to gamble. Here’s what I mean: if you think a lot of people will be off the Coors game due to lack of lineups and not wanting to sit around and wait for them, stack away and hope for a big leg up on the field. On the other side, if you think a lot of people will be waiting for those lineups to post and thus ignoring the 7:00 EST start times, load up on earlies, find a nice stacking option and hope you can shoot the moon. If you are going to wait around for the Coors lineups, I’d suggest having a lineup ready and being prepared for as many scenarios as you can. This means going through the options if each player is out of the game 2 lineup. There’s a handy feature DraftKings has that I’m not sure a lot of people know about or use. If you click on “My Lineups” up at the top there’s a button that reads, “Create New Lineup”. Here you can play around with all the lineups you want to create, you can make one for every scenario you can dream up and save them all to your lineups page without entering a contest. Having these lineups ready to go will not only give you a better handle on your options when, say, AJ Pollock is suddenly out of the game 2 lineup, but will also make for a little less sweating as you can simply import your “No Pollock” lineup and be ready to roll while others are floundering. I love fish puns, let’s get to some more picks, just for the halibut.

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Cubs traded a player to be named later for Austin Jackson.  Assuming the player to be named later isn’t anyone on their current roster, this was a solid trade for them from a real baseball perspective.  Real baseball has more spitting than fantasy baseball, but about the same amount of scratching.  The areas that are scratched are similar too.  Like just below the FUPA.  Austin Jackson clouds up the Cubs’ current roster in all the worst ways.  Can one team have too much of a good thing?  The short answer is yes.  The long answer is yeeeeeeeees.  Now, Coghlan (1-for-4), Fowler (2-for-5 and his 15th homer), Schwarber (1-for-4, 1 run, 1 RBI) and maybe Baez, when he’s called up, are squeezed for playing time.  If anyone can make this work, it’s Maddon.  Sadly, only Maddon will understand how, why, what and every journalistic question as to when Jackson or anyone will play.  Oh, and Soler will return shortly too.  And by “shortly,” I don’t mean the manner in which Altuve does something.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’m back baby!

It’s been sad these past two weeks off from the Pitcher Profiles, but fortunately I could drown my sorrows in all-inclusive, all-day drinking on the honeymoon. YES I DID GET A STRAWBERRY DAIQUIRI, GREY! Although it didn’t stain my mustache, especially since a month long of growth would just be shameful peach fuzz…

We’re now through the bulk of the season and heading into the stretch run, which means Sky has only September left to get to 1,000 moves in our quote-expert-unquote RCL league. If expert meant constantly dropping 6-7 duds every morning, than I’m an expert in my thrown room if ya catch my drift… And on the pitching side, once you get to about 50ish in my ROS ranks, they all can be given the evacuation. But I’ve been really bullish on ranking Luis Severino since his promotion, who I think is a must-own even through these final streaming weeks.

It’s a little hard to stay light-hearted and joke-y with what happened in Atlanta on Saturday night, but obviously my condolences to the fan’s family and we’re supposed to have fun in fantasy, so we won’t delve any more into that. Instead, let’s embrace what we love on the field, which is some nasty breaking stuff and hitters getting baffled. Who doesn’t base their fantasy-team live-watching on their SPs on a given night?! So this was a perfect weekend to get back on the Profiles and check out how Severino looked in a full breakdown:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Tomorrow is September 1st which means:  Hooray for September roster expansions and the many interesting players likely to be called up.  My recent focus for Steals Ain’t Got No Face advice has been a weekly reminder to use our SAGNOF stolen base success rates versus starting pitchers tool.  This goes hand in hand with the September call ups because most of these players won’t play anywhere near everyday, but some of them might make great ‘streaming for steals’ options.And guess which type of players are among those getting called up?  Some of the trendy SAGNOF sleeper types from earlier in the year, including one of my favorites, Dalton Pompey (bats Both, plays OF) of the Toronto Blue Jays.  Eric Young Jr. (B, OF, New York Mets) is on the way up as well and I think we all know what he can do.  James Jones (L, OF, Seattle), he of the 27 stolen bases in only 108 big league games last year, could be called upon as well.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Yes, the Razzball Baseball Podcast is back with me back at the helm (Helm to 108!) after the wedding and honeymoon, with hands down our best Pod on the year!  We got to chat with JT Thompson, the Founder and Chairman of The Hip Hop Hall of Fame about the legends of Hip Hop and the soon-to-be-opened New York City Museum.  Grey tried his best to ask the hard questions just to get hired as a tour guide!  We also talk tons of baseball including the power binges of my Brewers (Domingo Santana and Khris Davis), where Jake Arrieta will rank next year, and play another edition of Higher/Lower.  Now with even more of Grey’s game show theme music!  Here’s the latest edition of the Razzball Baseball Podcast:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Greetings to the end of August which is a firm reminder we’re just one month away from the fun ending. Or for some of you, the question might be…did it ever really begin? Well no worries because if that’s the case, you’re not reading. Hrm, borderline philosophical question: if you lead with making fun of people who don’t read what you have written, have you really insulted them? DEEP. Speaking of deep, here’s the dig down on those Cinci Reds. Though they haven’t been the greatest team or offense in the second half overall, they’ve really tanked in August as they hold the third worst wRC+ at 79 while maintaining a healthy 21.8% K rate. And with that, in enters Kyle Hendricks. Kyle is a bit of a home schooler as his ERA goes down a full run when in Chi-town and his K/9 jumps from 7.18 to 8.67. Given the matchup and the K potential, I’m a tad surprised to find Hendricks so reasonably priced at $6,700. I’m probably not leaning towards him in cash games but if you’re a GPP addict like myself, you know exactly what to do with this call. Snort it up your nose, of course! Oops, wrong addiction. But enough about nose candy, let’s go. Here’s my red hot takes for this Monday DK slate…

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Maybe it’s because Whip/Nae Nae is permanently stuck in my head — One word of advice.   If you take no other advice from me, please, I implore you, accept this advice.  If you don’t know what Whip/Nae Nae is, don’t, under any circumstances, Google it.  It make Gangnam Style seem like a walk in the park when it comes to catchy songs. If you don’t know what Gangnam Style is, I love how you’ve decorated under that rock of yours.  — but I can’t help looking at Jake Arrieta‘s no hitter less about the 12 Ks and only allowing one walk — Sure, those are sweet — but more about how his season WHIP is 0.94.  There’s Greinke (.85 WHIP), Kershaw (.90), Scherzer (.93) and deGrom (.94).  An under one WHIP and a 9+ K/9 is a little piece of heaven like sitting in an exit row of an airplane.  On the podcast that’s coming later today, I debate Greinke and Arrieta, Scherzer and Arrieta and deGrom and Arrieta as we try to figure out where they’ll be ranked in 2016.  I say something like Arrieta will be ranked around the 4th to about the 7th SP off the board.  I agree with Early Sunday Afternoon Grey, but I will say that Arrieta has made it difficult for me to think of four SPs that should be drafted before him.  Let alone six.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about U2. I already go over boring hitters below. Seriously, they are one of the most overrated bands ever. They are like the 80’s and 90’s version of the Eagles. The closest they get to my iPOD is this song. This week we are going in a different direction than before, because I killed the Top 100. After receiving Grey’s blessing (thanks bossman!), here’s what’s going to happen: After going through the evolution of ranking players this season, it became clear to me that it wasn’t working. By June 1st, you know what you have and it’s generally a good point to start making trades to address needs. As the season goes forward, those needs get increasingly particular until you get to this point. After some discussions with Mike, Sky and Big Magoo, I got some good input and a really confusing emoji text conversation with Sky. Still not sure if we cool, but I got my Japanese friend coming over later to translate. This week, I have a Top 50 Hitters and a few sub lists for you to check out. Every week, it’s my plan to mix a few different sub lists in to help cover all bases… pun point!  I have included Steamers, ROS, HR/SB, projections, the ROS player rater, dollar values, and my own HR/SB projections. Don’t worry if you don’t see someone here, they are probably going to appear in another list next week or thereafter. Some people may even appear on multiple lists. You never know? Any questions? Good moving on…

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Back in my physical prime — not like that means much — I ran cross country, among other sports. As is the case with almost any distance running, you would pace yourself somewhat until the last 200-300ish meters or so, then you’d sprint for the “kick” this meaning pretty much a dead sprint to the finish line. Similarly, the saying “the baseball season isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon” may be well and true in the April and May, but with five weeks remaining, it’s time for the kick, sometimes meaning you need to kick injured players to the curb.

Please, blog, may I have some more?