Welcome to the 2015 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, Slurpee’s, lube, a guide for beginner electricians, and even a cactus! Oh, wait, yeah, like half of those things are actually what I have in front of me… But hey, what’s the point of lube and cacti if you can’t share? Truer words have never been written. We also have a very special guest… Michael Axisa from Riveraveblues, to provide his take on what the team has in store this season. So without further ado (and plenty of lube and cacti), let’s check out the 2015 New York Yankees!
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Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2014 (14) | 2013 (19) | 2012 (23) | 2011 (12) | 2010 (21)
2014 Affiliate Records
MLB: [94-68] NL West
AAA: [62-80] Pacific Coast League – Albuquerque (2015: Oklahoma City)
AA: [61-77] Southern League – Chattanooga (2015: Tulsa)
A+: [65-75] California League – Rancho Cucamonga
A: [66-73] Midwest League – Great Lakes
Graduated Prospects
None
The Gist
This system is stacked at the top with arguably three of the best prospects in baseball and it only got stronger in the draft when the Dodgers selected one of the best prep arms available with their first-round pick. Already loaded with young stars like Yasiel Puig and Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers will see their top three prospects reach the majors in the next year or two. I know it sounds like I have my hyperbole machine turned on, but it really is a nice top-heavy system for fantasy prospects. The Dodgers were part of this year’s affiliation shuffle in the upper levels of the minors and now call Oklahoma City and Tulsa their homes in Triple-A and Double-A respectively.
You know what would be really cool? If you could join a fantasy baseball league that was against, like, 1000 other fantasy baseball teams. But not a 1000-person league, where people are trying to figure out who the back-up third baseman is on the Single-A Astros affiliate, the Corpus Christi Amscrayers. No, this is a 12-person league designed so you compete against eleven other people in your league, then 90 other leagues of twelve. That would be cool. Oh, wait, we’ve done that. It’s called the Razzball Commenter Leagues, and they’re back, and you don’t even have to be a commenter to join it! For a limited time only, get your loved one a fantasy baseball league! That’s right, your hearts go pitter-patter or you’re dead on the inside (my condolences). Since back in June when you abandoned your fantasy baseball team because it was totally sucking and you returned to your cubbyhole of leftover Chinese food and Teddy Grahams, you’ve longed for this day. As Bob Marley sang, this is your redemption song, mon. Or womon, for our four girl readers. It’s time again to join some fantasy baseball leagues. Before you close all of your extraneous porn windows and rush to sign up, let’s explain how these fantasy baseball leagues are going to work. We’re going to have a bunch of leagues and crown a winner from each, then we’re going to crown ONE winner from all of the winners. We will be crowning the winner by taking each team’s points and multiplying it against a ‘league competitiveness factor.’ If you want to see how it worked last year, go here. So we’re going to fill up as many fantasy leagues as we can for the next seven weeks. Each fantasy baseball league will be a mixed league, 12 team, snake draft, roto, 5×5, 5 OFs, one Middle Infielder, one Corner Infielder, one Utility, 9 pitchers, 20 game eligibility, 180 Games Started max, 1000 IP minimum. Like last year, we will again be going with TWO DL SLOTS. The only things you need to change from the default settings is the 180 Games Started and the TWO DL SLOTS. Please be vigilant about having the exact same league rules and setup as everyone else. The lineup is also known as: C/1B/2B/SS/3B/CI/MI/5 OF/UTIL/9 P/3 BENCH/2 DL with 180 Games Started and 1000 IP minimum. The fantasy leagues will be played in ESPN and they will be free to join.
We’re going to start with twenty-five leagues of 12 and see how we do from there. To join a league… Sorry, again for the people in the back of the room:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Here it is, the 2015 Fantasy Baseball War Room. This was original author and innovator Lou Poulas’ introduction, “While Grey and Rudy do a great job of breaking down everything you need to know for 2015 Fantasy Baseball, drafts still trip me up. I’ve been lamenting my inadequacies from the past 3+ years which resulted in an inordinate amount of time number crunching in Excel. My quest – a draft day “war room” that allowed me to keep my finger on the pulse of the league while minimizing my effort. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to keep track of more things as opposed to fewer.”
Presenting the free 2015 Fantasy Baseball War Room.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Alright, let’s just get something under control before it takes this post over. His first name is Rubby. You get the laughs out of the way? Good, now realize it’s pronounced ‘ROO-BEE’ and get over it. This isn’t a sex ed class, you’re not 11 and I’m not saying penis repeatedly while laser-pointing at anatomical drawings in a slideshow. Alright, now let’s…why are you still laughing? Because I said ‘penis’? Or because you now could google ‘Rubby penis’ and find this article? Honestly, I’m officially proud of that. Welcome to Razzball, those of you who like handy vids of an adult nature! If you read through and request in the comments, for the right amount of cash, maybe both parties could come away happy…but since you’re not the core audience, let’s talk to those who are for now. Here’s my take on Rubby De La Rosa and his potential in deeper leagues for the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…
Please, blog, may I have some more?In the year of thirteen after twenty in the land bestowed to us by Disney and Guiliani called the City of York, Jay-Z removed his Brooklyn Nets leather cap, raspberried his lips and scratched his head. He buzzed his assistant’s intercom and said, “Solange,when you get a second, the spreadsheets you brought me are wrong. I want WAR.” Solange thought he wanted to war with her, and that led to the infamous encounter where she thrashed him in an elevator on the way home from an EPA fundraiser. What Jay-Z wanted to do was research Robinson Cano‘s value for his upcoming contract negotiations. Little did Hova know, but that research was unnecessary. Seattle was looking to double their city’s Dominican-American population and sign Cano. Coming off the $240 million signing, Cano could do no right last year, but was it expectations set by that contract, or was it simply he could do no right? Like a dwarf getting down cereal from a cabinet, I’m gonna go with the latter. Cano eventually hit his usual .310+, but with only fourteen homers, ten steals and yawnstipating runs and RBIs. Some of that can be blamed on the M’s. Shoot, we can blame the whole lot on the M’s if we want, they did sign him for an astronomical sum, after all. The reason why I go back to the contract is because I think that affects people’s perception of Cano. They expect Cano will be better in 2015. They don’t think a guy who is making gazillions (I’m rounding) could be bad. They, of course, would be wrong. Cano’s admirers suffer from a psychological disease I’ve touched on before. It’s called Poseyitis. Poseyitis is when a player’s real-life hype creeps its way into the discussion about a player’s fantasy value. You need to separate the two. So, why is Robinson Cano overrated for 2015 fantasy baseball?
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yeah, you know me. Who’s down with PPD? Every last homie. You down with PPD? Yeah you know me. Who’s down with PPD? All the homies. Are you a homie? If your response is “homey don’t play that“, then maybe instead of fantasizing about the fly girls, you should be zipping up your fly and getting down with PPD. You like how I transitioned from homie to homey? If I’m really good, I can make my way to jabroni.
So what in the Fire Marshall Bill is PPD? And how does it work? Well… Lemme show you something!!! PPD stands for points per dollar. More precisely, it’s fantasy points per dollar spent on a player at your auction. If your league doesn’t do an auction and it’s not a head-to-head points league then you can go watch an episode of In Living Color on YouTube or do whatever it is you do when you’re not reading Razzball. But for the rest of you, it’s time you learned how to put your money where your points is. Yes, I realize the grammar on that last sentence is as poor as a church mouse. Whatever that means.
Please, blog, may I have some more?Full truthiness: my deep league posts from 2014 weren’t very deep. I mean, yeah, talking about Yan Gomes was a good call and probably deeper than many were willing to talk about at catcher. But I looked myself in the mirror a few times. Khris Davis? Yeah, he wasn’t a top 100 pick anywhere but that doesn’t make him a deep league shot. So I took a vow to leave the ‘Under The Greydar’ calls for just that and to really refocus these Deep League calls, especially in the outfield where much like Busta Rhymes, I make sure everything remains raw. So welcome to an overhaul of my DLT calls. Really, I just want to get as many ‘who?’ questions in the comments section this year as possible. They’re way easier to answer! The answer to the ‘who’ today is Ryan Rua. But of course, that doesn’t tell you much because now you want to know what he can do for you this year so let’s trudge on. Here’s my dig down deep look at Ryan and how he can help you deep leaguers for the 2015 Fantasy Baseball season…
Please, blog, may I have some more?I wanted to start doing our commenter league sign-ups today, but ESPN still hasn’t opened their doors. Who’s got the keys over there? Does Karabell need someone to come shovel his driveway? So, instead of sign-ups beginning today, we’re going over a mi amor in the outfield. I already touched on Steven Souza briefly when he was first traded away from the Nats, saying, “(He) went to the Rays in the three-way Myers trade. Souza is a little cheaper than Myers and helps build up the Rays’ horn section. Souza might be the last remnants of Bowden fluffers in Washington. Get a load of this– Hmm, maybe that’s a bad turn of a phrase when talking about fluffers. Anyway, look at his last few years: 11 HRs, 25 SBs in 2011; 23 HRs, 14 SBs in 2012; 16 HRs, 30 SBs in 2013 and 18 HRs, 26 SBs last year in Triple-A. You, “Please don’t tell me the bad news, I refuse to listen!” Sorry, You. He looks like he might not hit .240 without some favorable BABIP luck. Yes, the Rays have their 2nd Desmond Jennings. Call Souza, Desmond 2 Too. This won’t be the last time you hear about Souza this offseason, and he could be an absolute steal in drafts.” And that’s me quoting me! See, I wasn’t lying. I told you I’d talk about him again. Little did you know that 40% of my talking again about him would be what I already said and 20% more would be talking about how I was saying the same thing again, then 10% is punctuation, 10% is spacing and 20% is new stuff. Razzball: 20% New Stuff Daily! Anyway, what can we expect from Steven Souza for 2015 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Please, blog, may I have some more?This post will attempt to identify thirty prospects with the most value for 2015 only. These are players with less than 130 at bats or 50 innings pitched at the major league level, but who are expected to arrive in the bigs at some point this season. Typically, we’d rank prospects overall on one big list, but I’ve broken the list up into three groups to try to make it easier for fantasy players in 2015 redraft leagues. The prospects are ranked within groups that are based on the projected ETAs (early/mid/late). While they are still just projections, the groups should help sort through who you need to be drafting versus who you need to be picking up off waivers and when. There are a few general comments after each group and, like any list, there are a few names on the cusp that didn’t make it. We can tackle them in the comments if we need to. Here are the top 30 prospects for 2015 redraft leagues…
Please, blog, may I have some more?The late rounds of fantasy baseball drafts are filled with players who have questions surrounding them. It’s usually not too difficult to categorize these players, particularly in terms of starting pitching. There’s the post-hype group (Trevor Bauer, Kevin Gausman, Tony Cingrani), the declining veteran tier (CC Sabathia, Dan Haren, Bartolo Colon), and the unproven prospect tier (Noah Syndergaard, Andrew Heaney, Archie Bradley). Several high floor, low ceiling options (Ervin Santana, Kyle Lohse, Wei-Yin Chen) and volatile injury-prone pitchers (Clay Buchholz, Matt Garza) tend to remain on the board for quite a while as well. In recent years, Brandon McCarthy has generally been perceived by the fantasy community as someone who falls into one of the latter two categories. Is this perception accurate? What can be expected from McCarthy in 2015?
Please, blog, may I have some more?We now get to the ugly step-sister of rankings and the waiver darling position that we all chase. The relief pitcher is by far the most debated position on who to draft, where, and when. For the most part, I agree with you (with whatever you think), but the guys you want…if you get them where they are being drafted, usually beat or exceed value. Injuries suck and do happen, you just can’t prevent them. You just have to be in a position of favor and hope that you land his replacement. Sucktitude, i.e see Joe Nathan last year, is just a roster burden and usually drags you down all season because he isn’t someone you can just drop, but he makes it awfully hard to roster. It’s a catch-22, to stat or not to stat. Last year saw an unforgivable 10 closer changes in the first six weeks. That is not something you can pad your roster with enough save-cuffs for. So let’s get to the first set of rankings of the year. I will get into draft strategies for them, and as always, cover holds in the countdown to the season.
Note: Don’t forget to come visit me on the new Razzball Fantasy Soccer home everyday of the week. If you’re not familiar with the format, NBD, relax, you got us. Ralph and I are giving you the best Fantasy Premier League coverage out there. If you haven’t tried fantasy EPL, you’re missing out…
Please, blog, may I have some more?