In hindsight, I either should have started or ended with this post, since arguably the two biggest battles come from Boston and New York.

In Boston, John Farrell just wants to ruin everyone’s day.  That’s really the only explanation I can see when he announced that Shane Victorino would be the starting right fielder for the Red Sox to open the season. That’s a huge blow to prospects Mookie Betts and Rusney Castillo, both of whom were in the group of young outfielders poised to breakout this year.  Now, what the hell do we do?

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

Everything black was white and white was black. Everything up was down and down was up. I was a Girl Scout and the only cookies I could sell were Rah-Rah Raisins and I couldn’t give away the Samoas. I was an Asian in NASCAR. I was a five-foot, six-and-a-half-inch white boy that could hoop. (Actually, that last one is true.) I zagged when I usually zigged! And it felt okay. I didn’t wake in a puddle of sweat like I was a puppet in the Land of Confusion video, wondering what I had done. I didn’t burn all my old draft manifestos like I was trying to escape Olivia Pope from finding me out. I just went at it a little different. This league is a 15-teamer, OBP league, so I used Rudy’s rankings. I still knew which players I liked and didn’t like, but I decided to lean on Rudy, which makes for an interesting draft when Rudy was using the same rankings. For unstints, when Matt Holliday sat at the top of my board for two rounds, I knew Rudy was going to draft him. When Ian Kennedy sat at the top of my board, I knew Rudy was going to Marilyn Monroe that Kennedy. Though, I also knew if I wanted a guy sitting at the top of my board, I needed to act before Rudy. Okay, you’re primed, let’s start coating your mind with knowledge. (BTW, Our Razzball leagues are signing up still. Go there and sign up now!) Anyway, here’s the 2015 Tout Wars draft and my thoughts:

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Not everything has to be a series from me. Do I have to sell a gimmick to get you to latch on to what I’m reading? Sure, I brought you the Under The Greydar series and yeah, I brought you Deep League Thoughts. And yeah, I started a bit of a series called Draft Day Arbitrage which we’re still working on but sometimes a particular topic just grabs me and I gotta get it out there to the masses without precedences. You see, as I started looking into the draft season that is now upon us I started liking Carlos Santana more and more despite him losing catcher eligibility in most leagues outside of Yahoo. Obviously the public isn’t lukewarm on him as he’s still a top 75 player overall on most draft boards but in light of recent findings on him, I am beginning to wonder if, much like Alison Brie, he is underrated for his assets because they haven’t been fully exposed on the world. Well, lets loosen up that bra strap and ummm…yeah, there’s no analogy here. Roll the credits! Here’s Carlos and how his move to first actually has some goodness tied to it for 2015 Fantasy Baseball…

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You’re right, I’ve probably been talking about it too much. The fact that you have a lovely mother. Also, I’m been going on ad nauseam with the fact that we need more commissioners. Because we need stuff commissioned folks. But there’s a reason for this, and that’s because I love our RCLs. I’ve waxed poetic about this before, but I love Razzball. I love Grey. I love Sky. Tehol? Not so much. But you get the point. I believe in the Razzball product, and by default, that means I love you, the community. And, of course, your mothers. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but obviously we always try to provide an entertaining vehicle for fantasy analysis. But more importantly, and here it comes again (that’s what she never says), we also prioritize community moreso than any other fantasy sports site out there. We want to engage with you, the readers on everything. And that goes to the RCLs…it gives everyone a chance to play with everyone else. Contributors, readers, hobo’s, you name it. And that’s why I love our RCLs, and that’s why you should love being a commissioner. Note to self: Sales and marketing may be a worthy pursuit. However, we just didn’t come here to talk about creating a commission full of commissioners to commish commishenable (totally a word) leagues. (Instructions on how to create a league are below the jump.) No, we also came here to take a look at the new set of RCL drafts that have taken place, where profuse praise will be given. Haha, not really. There’s bound to be a Tehol team there…

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Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (7) | 2013 (1) | 2012 (12) | 2011 (24) | 2010 (29)

2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [90-72] NL Central
AAA: [79-64] Pacific Coast League – Memphis
AA: [68-72] Texas League – Springfield
A+: [76-63] Florida State League – Palm Beach
A: [72-67] Midwest League – Peoria
A(ss): [48-28] New York-Penn League – State College

Graduated Prospects
Kolten Wong, 2B | Carlos Martinez, RHP | Oscar Taveras, OF

The Gist
Heading into 2015, the Cardinals have another strong farm system featuring interesting fantasy plays for the current season as well as down the road. As always one of the strengths of this system is its pitching, but there are also a handful of attractive outfielders. There’s plenty of young talent emerging on the major league squad as well. Kolten Wong is a sexy pick this year at second base and fellow sophomore Carlos Martinez could break camp in the rotation. It’s hard not to mention Oscar Taveras, who we lost before we really had the chance to see what he could do.

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Marcus Stroman tore his ACL and is out for the year. Remember me?” says the Fantasy Baseball Overlord. Then the opening to Seven Nation Army kicks in and FBO does a little dance. His dance partner isn’t a person, but rather a pitcher’s limb. It’s very disturbing to watch. Oh, my God, he’s taking a picture with the limb with a seven-foot-long selfie stick. Oh, this is just awful. No one over the age of 14 should ever have a selfie stick. Why do you hate such wonderful, Fantasy Baseball Overlord? Why?! “I wasn’t loved as a child.” So, Stroman is out for the year and now the Blue Jays have moved one step closer to being the 2014 Texas Rangers. All they need is Edwin to gain 200 pounds and have a boo-boo on his neck. I’m guessing that filling in for Stroman will be Marco Estrada, but I have Aaron Sanchez and Daniel Norris projected in my top 400 and think they both will see some starts and have value. It’s still too early to call on Sanchez vs. Norris, but I’d draft Sanchez first since he’ll either see starts or Brett Cecil will be nodus modus operandi. As for Stroman, well, I’ll make sure to write a 2016 sleeper post for you. Anyway, here’s what else I saw in spring training for fantasy baseball:

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This is a post for the fantasy baseball drafters who use Excel, Google Docs, or some other war room software that automatically totals a drafted team’s stats while in the middle of a draft.  Or perhaps for those of you who do mock drafts or simulated drafts.

The below grid represents my projected 75% mark in each stat category across AL-only and NL-only 10 and 12 team leagues. These are based on the standard 2 Catcher/1B/2B/SS/3B/CI/MI/5 OF/UTIL/9 P roster format.

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You know when the Philadelphia Phillies lose to a Division II college that baseball is officially back.  Well, that and you’re fantasy drafts are coming up.  Unless, of course, you already did them, and if you did, why? Anyhow, games are starting in Florida and Arizona, which means managers finally get to take a look at what they actually have on the field.  Looking around each division, there are some interesting position battles to keep an eye on.  Over the next few weeks, we…OKAY, I will take you around the horn on which position battles to keep an eye on for each division. Let’s start with the American League West, shall we?  

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kershawshank

Well, I thought I was extremely clever when I came up with the title for this one, but then a quick Google search proved that there were others that were clever before I thought I was being clever. Darn you Google for knowing so much! And darn you Al Gore for inventing the internet! Thanks to the internet, a guy can’t get away with anything these days. Google, Facebook and Twitter have made it next to impossible for a guy to get a reach around in the back of the bowling alley from the girl that rents the shoes without everyone knowing, and every one of those people finding out about it. But I digress…

As draft dates draw nearer, I decided it was time to put together and share my head-to-head points league rankings. But before I do, I wanted to let you in on my process. Points leagues are all about one thing. Points. It’s the only category that counts for jack squat. I wonder how many dudes out there actually have the name Jack Squat? I guess it’s better than Richard Nose. I don’t care if my player gets 100 points because he had 100 RBIs or because he stole 100 bases. Whatever he needs to do to bring home the bacon is A-O-K with me. In Japanese that would be “Aoki”. I don’t even care if it’s turkey bacon! Points are points. So ranking players within the same position comes down to who will score more points. I’ll touch on comparing players across positions in my next post.

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Psst! This post is gonna list 2nd basemen that you should target in your 2015 fantasy baseball drafts. I’m whispering because you don’t want everyone to see this post. No, I can’t whisper louder, then it WOULDN’T BE WHISPERING! Okay, gig’s up (or maybe that’s jig’s up), the love I’m about to reiterately (Made Up Word of the Day!) confirm are guys I love later in drafts. I’m not going to mention Kolten Wong other than this one mention of him where I say I’m not going to mention him. I love Wong. Tis is true. Come here, let Grey massage your balls…The balls of your feet, silly! Oh, that feels good on my hands. Can I tickle your toes with my mustache? Weird? Okay. I’m not mentioning Wong other than this mention of not mentioning him because these are players that you’re looking at later and all of them have ADPs after 200. Some could be the 2nd baseman on your team, they are more than likely MIs. This is a (legal-in-all-countries-except-Spanish-speaking-ones) supplement to the top 20 2nd basemen for 2015 fantasy baseball. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2015 projections. Anyway, here’s some 2nd basemen to target for 2015 fantasy baseball:

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This is the 2nd post in a series (Post #1 was about position adjustments) in which I am going to combine my thoughts on category valuation and general fantasy baseball auction value quality checks. Determining how to value a player’s contributions across each statistical category is the fundamental challenge of building a system for ranking/valuing fantasy baseball players […]

Please, blog, may I have some more?

It’s been a long, tough winter (especially for those of you who live in the Northeast), but the wait is almost over. Spring training is in full swing and the regular season is just around the corner. That means, of course, that fantasy baseball draft season is here.

Recently, we’ve attempted to identify the next Corey Kluber and looked at some hitters who displayed above average power and plate discipline over the past couple of seasons. Today, we’re going to focus on relief pitchers. If you’re looking for the latest closer rankings as well as the top handcuff and hold options, check out the Bullpen Report, which provides excellent RP analysis each and every week.

This post will attempt to identify relievers with a very specific profile: power arms with high K-rates. Players who throw hard and miss bats. It’s that simple. Well, mostly. Let’s take a look at the search filters that I used for this exercise:

Please, blog, may I have some more?