Last week we covered why you should join the Razzball Commenter Leagues, so this week let’s start covering what to do once you’re in there. To be honest, this has all been covered somewhere on the site over the years, most often by Rudy. If you haven’t been playing in RCLs though, I could see how some of this has been glossed over, so I’ll try to consolidate some info for the newbies. Grizzled RCL vets can feel free to skip this and just go sign up for leagues at the end of the post. We’ll just be covering the basics for anyone still timid about jumping in the RCL waters.
Let’s get this right out of the way, the most important component in competing for a top spot in these leagues is TIME. I alluded to this last week, but you should kiss your family members goodbye now. The time you can pour into this endeavor is mind-numbing. If you don’t sleep much, you’ve got a head start. Other things that you might find helpful include having no life, having no job, having no other responsibilities in life, and having an addictive personality. I kid, but only sort of. Thanks to daily moves, the idea is to almost always have a full roster of hitters going on a single day. If your middle infidel isn’t playing today and there’s a rough equivalent out there in the FA pool that is in the lineup, you have to make that swap. That swap means (hopefully) free counting stats. I routinely rotate an infield slot, my UTIL spot, and my final OF spot or two. Basically, it’s all about those counting stats. Even with deploying this strategy I pretty much hit right around 300 moves, so there shouldn’t be too much to worry about with a 500 move limit unless you are a severe chronic-rosterbator. In which case, you may need help.
When we changed to an IP limit instead of Games Started, it made getting an ace a tad more helpful than in years past. The elite strikeout relievers still have big value in boosting your K/9, but there isn’t much point in rostering low strikeout win-vultures. This doesn’t have me drafting starters in the first round or anything, but I might snag a falling ace in the third instead of waiting until the seventh round like back in the GS days.
Adds and drops are handled a little differently on FanTrax than they are on ESPN, which I think is for the better. On ESPN your add/drops for the day lock when the first game starts, no matter how early. With FanTrax, you can still drop a player who didn’t make it into the lineup in a later game right up until that player’s game starts. That means, instead of needing to be near a computer right when games started, now you can still make adjustments throughout the day, which I prefer. You can maybe see now why having no life is helpful. Interestingly, I feel like this is less work than trying to plan all your add/drops for the next day right after the first game time locks. FanTrax has a pretty solid lineup indicator in place, between that and Rudy’s tools, you should be able to keep easy tabs on who is in and who is out of the lineup.
I’m going to break up streaming hitters and streaming pitchers into two different posts just because of the huge amount of information. First, we’ll dig into things to look for and tools to use when streaming a hitter in the RCL format. A lot of this information is strikingly similar to picking out a hitter in any DFS contest, which is probably why I enjoy the RCL format so much. In no particular order here are the things I look for when snagging a batty call.
Lineup Position
Lineup position is a very important factor. Once you’ve seen that a player is in the starting lineup, take note of where they are hitting. A higher lineup position means more chances to provide you with those tasty counting stats you crave. If you can find a batty call hitting in the first four lineup positions, that’s a rare treat and one you should pounce on.
Park Factor
Park factor is a pretty big deal when it comes to streaming hitters and the Coors factor can’t be ignored. My catcher is routinely a “back-up Rockies catcher / visiting team at Coors catcher / any catcher in the starting lineup” franken-catcher. I’m also a big fan of scouting out who will be visiting Coors and grabbing whatever power-heavy sluggers I can a day or so before they arrive.
Platooney Tunes
If there doesn’t happen to be a game at Coors field on a given night (or a Wrigley day game with the wind blowing out), then the next best thing is to look to exploit a platoon split match-up. Take careful notes and you’ll find players who find themselves hitting 2nd during choice platoon match-ups that you can freely scoop up. If you are smart enough to look ahead a little bit you might be able to catch a schedule break where one of these specialists is facing a run of pitchers to feast on. You could also use Razzball’s awesome “Weekly Hitter Planner”. That segues nicely into the next note on streaming hitters.
Tools
You are at a distinct disadvantage if you’re not making full use of Rudy’s toolbox. Maybe I sound like a company shill here, but that’s fine. I find the tools Rudy has put together to be the best advancement in fantasy baseball since live scoring. Sure, you could find all this information on your own and make the exact same calls, but there’s no way you could do it faster than simply pulling up the Hitter-Tron. Time is valuable, especially when the clock is ticking closer and closer to lineup lock. It’s so nice to simply pull up a page sorted by dollar value for that day’s slate of games and go to town. In addition to the Hitter-Tron there’s the weekly planner I mentioned above and the “Team-o-nator”. This is another great tool to use in the case of a tiebreaker or if you’re feeling like stacking a few hitters on a light schedule day. The Team-o-nator shows which team is projected to score the most Runs. Runs scored equal Runs and RBIs for your streamers, so the more, the merrier!
Razzball ‘Perts League
I always used to spy on our resident ‘Perts to see what they were up to and you should too. Grey is chronic with his moves while others are more calculated, everyone there is fun to keep tabs on though. You’ll also find Cram It in the ‘Perts league, our resident RCL guru (multiple season finishing in the top 10 overall) as well yours truly. Take a peak at last year’s Overall Standings and pay attention to those common names. If you can find the leagues these players are in, those are also worth watching. I would bookmark the ‘perts league page and check it once a day. Once the league is active I’ll have a link to it in my RCL updates post weekly.
DFS Tips
I mentioned earlier the similarities between the RCL format and Daily Fantasy Sports. Here are a few quick things you can take from the DFS side that will help in your RCL streaming choices:
- Read Razzball’s DFS Content – A shameless plug perhaps, I got started around these parts as a DFS writer, but these writers are doing their homework. Each night they are checking on cheap match-ups to write up and you may as well take advantage of their efforts.
- Check the Weather – This includes rain, wind, and humidity. There’s not much worse than picking out the best batty call only to have the game washed out
- BvP – Batter vs. Pitcher data is much debated and Rudy has even covered the topic in the past. I’m not saying I use BvP to pick all my hitters in a day, but I certainly don’t ignore it. Mostly it works as a tiebreaker between player choices.
Can you win an RCL without constantly streaming hitters? Sure! Do you put yourself in a much better position to do so by employing this strategy? Absolutely! The amount of streaming done will depend a lot on how good or bad your draft went. In my opinion, this is one of the easiest formats in which to recover from a poor draft. I’ll be going over some RCL draft tips in another post down the line. For now, just know that a bad RCL draft isn’t the end of the world. If you completely pooched it, you’ll just have to put in the extra work to stream and do your due diligence in sniffing out those good match-ups. With any luck, you’ll uncover a gem to hold onto.
Now, go ahead and sign up for a few teams and give these strategies a test, or try your own and let me know if it goes! Drafts are going off all this week, so don’t be left out.
TO JOIN A LEAGUE
Click the LINK in the ‘League Link’ column (see below grid) for the time you want and voila, you’re in. If you’re not signed up at Fantrax, you need to do that too (it’s free). Damn, that’s too easy. Oh, I guess I should also mention make sure you’re joining a league for free or for money, depending on your preference. That’s it! You can join as many leagues as you like. If you accidentally join a league, you can quit a league by going to OTHER –> All Options –> Quit League (located at the bottom). Now go join some leagues!
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