RCL Update: At League’s End

We’re really winding down on draft season now, with official games starting on Thursday.  This is the last Tuesday without baseball for some time and I’m giddy about it. We’re sitting at 62 Razzball Commenter Leagues right now and 59 of those have drafted.  Only two of our legacy leagues remain undrafted with Cougs R Us drafting late last night and ECFBL drafting this evening. We also have one freshly created RCL drafting Wednesday night for all your procrastinators.  We’re down a little bit from the past few seasons, but with a major change in the mix I’d say it’s not too shabby.  A lot of people were likely nervous of making a switch and adding yet another fantasy site to the daily check-in routine. I get it, I was that way with the four letter website before I took the plunge. Hopefully, the move to FanTrax won’t keep people away for long, especially when they see how much fun we’re all having!  Speaking of fun, I had fun going over the new and improved ADP data by taking a look at the ADPs of all Grey’s Sleepers. Even though the ADP Sheet is Razzball-centric it can still give you some interesting tidbits of information.  So, let’s do some last minute cramming for those final drafts and see what we can see.

Preseason trading has been unusually quiet so far in the RCLs.  Typically, we have 10-15 trades before real baseball even starts.  I’m surprised considering how awful the FanTrax autodrafting can be.  Maybe most people have made the draft and drafted amazing. Maybe most people, myself included, like to let their team marinate a little before making any trades.  Either way, here are the four trades we have had so far:

Nothing too crazy here.  That trade for Carrasco is pretty rough though.  I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on that, but to each their own.  Blue Waffles (don’t Google it!) was subject to FanTrax autodrafting so they had approximately 30 Starting Pitchers.  Even still, that’s a pretty rough return.

DRAFT TRENDS

We now have 59 leagues worth of data to dig through, so no more small sample sizes.  This week I thought it would be fun to take a look at all of Grey’s sleepers from his sleeper posts this preseason.  Maybe you weren’t around in December and haven’t caught up with all his sleepers.  This will not only serve as a handy guide to Grey’s loves, but also let you know where you need to strike to snipe those luscious sleepers.  I’m also tossing in a chart with change in ADP data. This will show risers and fallers in ADP from two weeks ago compared to this past week.  You’ll notice some sheets in the ADP spreadsheet that note ADP by time frame. Now you can grab the most recent week’s worth of ADP data so you can stay current on the latest trends.  Hope you enjoy.

WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ NFBC ADP

We’ve got RCL ADP!  Here’s a list from our 59 league sample of some players whose ADPs I was curious about and some general notes.

I have the sleepers listed in the order that Grey wrote his posts.  By the looks of things, Grey really went deep with his sleepers this year.  Luis Castillo and Masahiro Tanaka are the most popular of the bunch, both of which appear inside the top 100 picks.  Castellanos and Happ are right behind them. Then we have Trevor Williams and Ben Gamel who are barely drafted or never drafted in the RCLs.  Trevor Williams doesn’t really fit the RCL style but I’ve nabbed him plenty in my deeper leagues (15+). If you read the Ben Gamel post Grey specifically says Gamel is the type of sleeper that goes for $2 in an AL-Only draft, so it’s to be expected that no one has touched him in an RCL.

There are also some pretty polarizing picks in this group with most picks having a 75 or more position spread.  Michael Wacha takes the cake though with a split of 175 picks. Wacha has been drafted in every RCL so far but over a huge range of picks.  The highest rank sleepers have the smallest differential, which makes sense, since everyone wants them it seems.

RECENT TRENDS

Here we have a little chart showing some of the changes in ADP from two weeks ago to this past week.  The bigger the DIFF number the higher the player is currently being drafted and vice versa.

Jose Martinez is this week’s big winner.  I’m not sure if this is a result of Grey’s “1st Basemen To Target” or what, but it was a name that surprised me.  Last week it was Scott Kingery’s jump that surprised me which led me to chatting with commenter “Moneyball” about the situation.  That led to me adding Kingery across many leagues last week which led to a very happy MattTruss this weekend! So, consider my interest piqued in Jose as well.

Per usual the bottom of this list features the injured, the suspended, the demoted and the unemployed.

THE FIRST ROUND

Finally, here’s a fun chart that shows all of the data from the first round of RCL drafts:

As of right now Razzballers have six unanimous first round picks in Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Nolan Arenado, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper and Paul Goldschmidt. Mookie Betts and Giancarlo Stanton are right there as well with each missing the first round in one league. In the league where Giancarlo fell he was drafted at 13, so it was just a matter of when the drafter decided to click “DRAFT”. Mookie, however, fell to 16 when he slipped to the second round. What a gift!

In addition to Mookie and Giancarlo there are four other consensus first rounders; Clayton Kershaw, Charlie Blackmon, Kris Bryant and Manny Machado.

Hopefully some of this data helps you out these last couple days of drafting.  Be sure to join our last RCL if you need one last hit of draft crack:

Check back next week when we’ll have four whole days of real baseball stats to over react to!  It will be awesome!

Want to be my Twitter pal?  That’s kinda creepy, but you can follow me here: @MattTruss