By now, most of you have drafted your fantasy baseball teams, and while there may be a few stragglers, the majority of you will be turning to Razzball for in-season info, not draft info. You can no longer wait till the wee rounds of your home league to grab that super sleeper you have been pining for since the Winter Meetings. Adding clutch players will either have to be done via trade or the waiver wire. In my weekly “Deep Impact” series, I’ll be focusing on the players that you can acquire from the latter from of those transactional options — the waiver wire pick up.
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J-FOH is a man of many talents, one of which is brainstorming good ideas. Well, not all of them are good. But when the hateful one approached me with the idea for a new in-house dynasty league here at Razzball I was pumped. It’s a 16-team league that consists of Razzball writers and frequent commenters. This was the inaugural 40-round snake draft and included both MLB players and prospects. I’ll be the league’s commish. All that means is that I put on my Burger King crown to send the league emails. The draft took place in late February – spanning 10 days, two continents, and featuring ONE OF THE MOST EPIC DRAFT ROOM CHATS OF ALL TIME.
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Two-Start Pitchers, Week One: 1’s and 2’s for ALL!
April 4, 2015 | Two Start Fantasy Starters | 79 Commentsby: Geoff
Can you smell that? Can you? It’s the smell of a brand spanking new baseball season about to begin and with it, the smell of popcorn, fully chewed Redman, hot dog-flavored water, and gun powder. Why gun powder? MURICA! That’s why! What are you a bunch of red commies that hate freedom? No?!?! Good! Now that we’ve established your patriotism, let’s move on to our first two-start pitcher post of the young season. As I did at the end of 2014, when I took over this ship, I’ll break down all of the starters into a few tiers based on quality of the pitcher and then of course their matchups. To back up just why I’m placing each pitcher into a particular tier, I’ll provide stats on the pitcher and the lineups they’re facing. Considering the only data I have at this point in the season to go on will be last year’s numbers…and what good are those? I’m going to skip this step and just do my rankings and usual blurbs per tier. After all, it is Week 1, and much like a toilet in a unisex bathroom, we’re dealing with everyone’s 1’s and 2’s. Plus, we have plenty of tools to help you figure this stuff out… So sit back, relax, catch ya contact, sip ya cog-ni-ac, and feel free to share your perspective in the comments. I didn’t think the last part about laundering money applied.
Shameless Plug Alert!!!! When you’re done here, head on over to Razzball Soccer and catch all the goodies that Smokey and I are providing for Fantasy Premier League!! Do it!
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Welcome to the 2015 edition of the RCL Razzball Champion’s League. No matter how the season plays out and what the stats say, I will be claiming this is the best and toughest RCL. The 12 owners had 8 of the top-20 teams in 2014, and 17 of the top-50. The draft (April 1) was interesting as only 55 SPs were selected, compared to the RCL average of 81.6. 68 RPs were grabbed as well.
Here is the Team-By-Team breakdown, including the Vegas odds on winning the Champion’s League title…
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Welcome to the first official “This Week In Razz”, because we all know how good it is to be in Razz. Technically, last week was the first official post of this series, but that was more of a “welcome to the site, here’s what you can expect” type of thing. So I guess we had two beginnings, which means twice the fanfare, twice the laughter, and twice the, uh, yeah, I ran out of stuff that we got double of. Whiplash may work here. Regardless, I’m here to go over the week that was, in case you missed anything here on Razzball, and to go over what to expect next week…and what a special week it’ll be. Baseball finally starts, with Sunday being sorta-kinda-you-just-get-one-game Opening Day, and then Monday brings baseball to 100% operating levels. Unless you’re a fan of the Phillies. Then you’re really just working with 18 or so percent. But that’s okay! You have Philly Cheesesteaks, Chip Kelly innovating, I don’t know, stuff I guess, and yeah. Batteries to throw at people I guess? It could be worse! I mean, you could be living in Cleveland! (I’m kidding. Maybe.) So follow me after the jump to take a look back AND a look forward on all things Razzball. (Including helpful tips using Razzball’s Streamonator, Hitter-Tron, and DFSBot!)
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Razzball’s daily fantasy baseball tools – Streamonator, Hittertron, and DFSBot – are available by subscription in 2015. If you play in roto leagues with daily roster changes or Daily Fantasy Sports like DraftKings, these tools will rock your world. Please see our Subscriptions page for details – including how to get a free subscription by opening up a new Daily Fantasy Sports account.
Fantasy baseballers are becoming increasingly analytical. Estimating a player’s future batting average now reflexively leads to checking their BABIP, their batted ball profile (GB/LD/FB) and a hitter’s K%. Any discussion of a pitcher’s ERA will likely reference their FIP/xFIP/SIERA/etc. Aside from the whole bastardization of baseball outcomes for the illusion of empowerment and erosion of professional productivity, the average fantasy baseballer is much closer in perspective to a sabermetrician than the average fan watching from his/her couch (or the remaining indoctrinated baseball journalists that still roam the land).
One area where I admit I have a tough time reconciling my analytic side with my fantasy baseball instincts is the value of a hitter’s recent performance.*
* I know many fantasy baseball players look at hitter/pitcher matchup data. I think the chapter on this in The Book clearly drives home the point that these results are not predictive because of small sample sizes. I always ignore matchup data and think it is a total waste of time…well, except for Goldschmidt vs Lincecum
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Points Leagues: Bryant Park Closed For The Spring
April 3, 2015 | Points Leagues | 112 Commentsby: malamoney
Those of you that live in the New York City area or have visited the world’s greatest metropolis have likely walked past Bryant Park. Perhaps you even stopped to take a leak or even sat down on a nice sunny day to do some fantasy baseball research and adjust your lineup. Located between between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and between 40th and 42nd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, Bryant Park is actually built on top of an underground building containing the archives for the New York Public Library. I know… who gives a shift. Besides, I’m more of a Washington Square Park kinda guy anyway.
For those of you that thought Bryant Park was the name of the Chicago Cubs spring training stadium, guess again. That would be Sloan Park in Mesa, Arizona, which happens to be the largest spring training stadium (by capacity) with room for 15,000 people. [Jay’s Note: Had amazing sight lines, rugged, yet modern feel. 8/10, would go again.] I think that translates into 25,000 little people, but my math could be wrong. Despite his herculean efforts this spring, not only did they not rename the stadium after him, but Kris Bryant was denied the opportunity of being on the Opening Day roster. Instead, Theo Epstein gave us all some bullshart excuse that he needs more time in the minors. Listen Theo, say what you want, but there isn’t a baseball fan north of the border that doesn’t believe this isn’t a service time maneuver. I’m not a Boras fan, but I love how he called him out on this. Even Cubs manager Joe Maddon has said that he’d love to have him in the lineup. I guess I’ll see you in a few weeks Kris.
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Jay has set the table or whatever he was talking about last week with spoons, knives and whatnot. I think he needs to eat before he writes these. Well if I’m reading him right, that is my queue to grab the tablecloth and pull it out while leaving all the table settings perfectly in place. *Grabs cloth, pulls hard* CRASH! No, not Davis…well, the place setting is ruined, literally broke everything with one fell swoop. Okay, I actually jacked all the silverware and pawned it to pay for my anti-depressants. This is a sign my friends and detractors that opening day is almost here. Draft time is cute like a puppy where we are full of hope and optimism, unless you drafted Stroman, Salazar, Wheeler, and Darvish. Now the season begins and it turns into a dog that pisses on your pillow, craps in your shoes, and turns your socks into swiss cheese. Why all the cynicism J-FOH? It’s who I am, and the chances of you having a perfect draft is as likely as Grey getting that restraining order Giancarlo slapped on him lifted. Give it up Grey, it’s not happening. Seriously, it’s time for reality to start as we see how our educated guesses/luck/gut instincts/stat crunching/strategies start to pan out. Here is to not having an unlucky year *toasts 40ozer to computer*.
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Grey Steps Into The RCL Arena, Only He Stands In His Way
April 3, 2015 | Our Leagues | 677 Commentsby: Grey
I’ve drafted my Razzball Commenter League team (over hundred leagues this year; crazy!), and now I’m ready for the season. All those other drafts — like Tout, Friends & Family, NFBC, yadda-whodoodie — are in the past. They were prep for this draft. This draft is the one that matters, because I’m going against, like, 1200 of youse. And youse are the ones that matter. Well, a few of youse matter more than a few of the other youse. Just assume you are part of the favorable youse. In this league was Tim McLeod from RotoRob, Mike Gianella from Baseball Prospectus, Dalton Del Don from Yahoo, Ryan Carey from Mastersball and from Razzball: Rudy, JayWrong, Sky, JFoH, Tehol, Prospect Mike, JB and yours truly. All of these people make me very thankful (that it wasn’t an in-person draft). I was drafting out of the three-hole (no relation to Tehol; that I know of), and I knew after all those preliminary drafts that I was finally going to take guys that I really, really wanted from my 2015 fantasy baseball rankings (clickbait, snitches!). Well, until around the 4th round. Okay, enough hubbub on the tomfoolery, let’s get to it! Anyway, here’s my RCL draft (5×5, roto, mixed league, 12 team, 5 OFs, etc.):
Please, blog, may I have some more?The time has once again arrived to get wild and crazy with my procrastination! Wait, is that the right word? No. No it’s not. That’s actually my life strategy. Prescientinism is probably the word I’m looking for. It’s a totally made up word, but whatever. So here I am, back to bring you 11 BOLD (bolded for effect) predictions that may or may not come true. (Probably not.) If you missed it, last year, Eno Sarris of FanGraphs and I had a gentlemen’s battle to the death (because that’s what gentlemen do) over our predictions. Much to my sadness, I lost by only getting three right to Sarris’ five. To be fair, I got really close on a lot of the spewed boldness, so if you like pleading and excuse-making, well then technically it was a tie. But a new season brings new hope and something-something wax poetic, so let’s get bold AND beautiful (just like your mom)…
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Bear or Bull: A Kris To Build a Dream On
April 2, 2015 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball | 96 Commentsby: Big Magoo
Give me a Kris to build a dream on,
And my imagination will thrive upon that Kris,
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this,
A Kris to build a dream on
Nothing like kickin’ it off old school with a little Satchmo (with, uh, alternate lyrics). Hello all, and welcome to the return of the Bear or Bull series. In honor of Easter season, the powers that be have decided to resurrect yet another tried-and-true Razzball favorite and have placed it’s fate into the hands of yours truly. Big mistake. I mean, good call! The concept is simple. Each week, I’ll be highlighting a certain player and creating a framework of where he is trending in fantasy terms. Think of it as the Offseason Stock Report series but in-season and with animals. After some background analysis, number crunching, and perhaps a player comp or two, I’ll reveal whether I’m Bearish (pessimistic) or Bullish (optimistic) on the player in question. Cause everyone loves Rocky Mountain oysters, right? Right? Moving on…
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Closer Report, Week 1: Everyone Has A Closer… Sort Of
April 2, 2015 | Closers | 78 Commentsby: Smokey
The pieces are all set, and it’s like the beginning of checkers… Before you secretly cheat while your cousin isn’t looking, you should know that 28-of-the-30 teams have labeled a guy to be their respective closer. Now, for some, that’s like being labeled the “Hand of the King” and with bad pitching performances, their heads will soon be on a pike out side of Comerica. Yeah, that was a shot at you Joe Nathan, we are all whistling happy trails under our breath as you slowly ride of into the sunset Shane style.
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