RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 1, 2025

fantasy baseball fun?  Oh, you drafted Bailey Ober?  Well, pack it up, the season’s over.  I kid, I kid, it’s one start, you’ll be fine.  In the meantime, pony up to the stream-o-nator and grab a streamer to balance things out (hopefully).  Four days isn’t really enough to call a week, but nonetheless, VinWins and I have scoured the data and we have top teams for the mini week.  I also have a recap of all the RCL draft data for you to peruse.  Number Nerds…assemble!  Also this week, I’ll be giving you a couple of FanTrax tips I’ve found helpful for setting up your team page, give you a link to the ‘Perts League standings, and cover all of the trades in the RCLs so far.  For those who are new to these updates, this is where I will typically bring you stats, trades, weekly leaders, and a look at the overall standings.  Let’s go ahead and dive into this week with some draft data!

DRAFTS BY THE NUMBERS

Our RCL ADP Sheet is all completed.  Feel free to open that up and peruse the numbers as you read along.  Here are some highlights from Draft SZN:

• 45 Razzball Commenter Leagues were created this year for a total of 540 teams
• RCLers drafted 470 different players this fantasy baseball season, one more than last year!
• Gerrit Cole (259) had the highest pick differential thanks to his injury.  This was also the case last year.  Jared Jones was second, also due to injury.  Spencer Strider saw a late surge that pushed him as high as pick 32 earning him a pick differential of 120.  Striking out everyone in his ST debut really pumped those tires.  
• Shohei Ohtani and Bobby Witt Jr. had the smallest differential with neither making it past pick three.
• There were 21 different first round picks.
• There were seven consensus first-rounders (Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Aaron Judge, Elly De La Cruz, Jose Ramirez, Juan Soto, & Kyle Tucker)
• Gunnar Henderson just missed being a consensus first rounder, with one league letting him slip to round 2 (pick 15), Corbin Carroll missed out in five leagues.
• Jackson Chourio was drafted in the first round in ten leagues.
• Skenes was the highest ADP pitcher going in the first round four times and falling as low as pick 37.  Skubal was right behind him in ADP, and was drafted in the first round five times with a low pick of 35.
• Fastest Draft: PERTS: 1 hour, 24 minutes, same as last year!

FANTRAX TIPS

Next up, I want to give you a rundown of how I set my team settings to be more like other leagues I play in and/or just make life easier by reducing clicks.  You might not find all of these useful, but even just knowing where to go to change these settings is handy in case you stumble upon something else.  Also, if you have found any handy settings that I missed, please share.  Likewise, if you have some FanTrax gripes, I’m happy to pass those on to my contacts at FanTrax.  They are typically pretty responsive to site feedback.

The very first thing I do with my team page is set it up so I’m not looking at YTD stats.  Maybe you’re into that, but I prefer to see today’s stats when I go to my team.  I’ll click on a player to see their overall stats if I need to.  To do this is pretty easy and brings us to a very handy spot on the FanTrax page.  If you go hover over “TEAM” you’ll see a “Settings” section, click on that and you’ll be taken to a page with very few settings.  However, clicking on “General” brings you to a page full of options…maybe too many.  The setting we’re interested in here is under “TEAM ROSTER”.  Find the section for “Default timeframe” and change that to “Period”.  Period is the section of scoring for your league.  If you’re in a weekly league, each period is one week, for the RCLs, each period is one day.

This section contains a lot of things that will make your navigation easier and result in fewer clicks.  For example, clicking the slider bar for “Automatically submit lineups” will make it so you don’t have to hit that little “SUBMIT” button after every lineup change.  I also unclicked the bar for “Show first unlocked lineup period by default”.  This annoyed me that late at night when I wanted to check on my team it would switch to tomorrow’s period and I would have to click back.  Just a personal preference.

If you scroll down to the “Players” section you can change the number of players shown on the players screen to 50, 100, or 200 instead of 20.  This reduces a lot of clicking through pages and I’ve gone with 100 myself.

Next, we can adjust our notification settings.  Once again, maneuver up to “TEAM” and right under “Settings” you’ll see “Notifications”.  FanTrax seems to default everything to push notifications…except for letting you know about players heading to waivers.  THAT it seems to think you need an email about.  In the RCLs, this may cause your inbox to implode, so you probably want to turn that one off.  If you do want to know about trades, message board posts, or trade block changes in the league, this is where you come to be alerted of those things.  Adjust to suit and everything should auto-save.

TOP TEAMS

Normally, I take this first week and grab all the teams who have scored over 100 points.  This year, however, there was only one to be found (more on WM&D in a bit), so I expanded to 99, which still only left four teams.  Without further ado, your top four teams so far:

WM&D (Caught Looking) – 104.5

NCPhilly (RCL 33) – 99.5

Change of Pace (RCL 1) – 99

One Trick Pony (ECFBL) – 99

It’s always nice to get out to a hot start, but don’t victory lap just yet, the season is long.

‘PERTY ‘PERTS

Each week we’ll peek in at our resident ‘perts to see who is laying claim to best “expert” RCLer in the land.  We’ll take notes, check the standings and generally stalk them.  The heading is also hyperlink, so feel free to follow along as we go.

Cram It has jumped out to the early lead thanks to clobbering 14 dingers, 12 more than Son (Dad).  Crammy doesn’t even have Aaron Judge on the roster!  He did just lose Colton Cowser for a bit, but I think he’ll be OK.  Cram’s ratios are nice and sparkly thanks to Shota Imanaga, Tanner Bibee, and a host of spicy RPs.  Nice work, Cram!

TRADES

All the trades that have gone down in the past week.  Public ridicule is not only allowed, but encouraged.

Ten trades in the early going with Zac Gallen getting moved twice.  Vin and Ctownrebel were each involved in four deals, including Vin trading Cam Smith…*GASP*

WEEKLY LEADERS

The best of the best from the week that was.

R – 39 – Judge, Jury, & Executioner (RCL 32) & LatchKeyKid (RCL 29)

HR –16 – Judge, Jury, & Executioner (RCL 32) & GMoney Squared(FCL)

RBIs – 40 – GMoney Squared(FCL), A Man Named Brady (RCL 24), & Vindicators (RCL 21)

SB – 12 – Smooth (RCL 11), Benchbat (RCL 23), & Promontory Rider (RCL 31)

AVG – .329 – McQuat (RCL 31)

K – 61 – Todd, the Future of Dance (RCL 29)

W – 6 – 4 Teams Tied

SV –  9 – 4 Teams Tied

ERA (Min. 20 IP) – 0.41 – Lars Baar (RCL 17) (in 22 IP)

WHIP (Min. 20 IP) – 0.531 – Vladdy fishing Trout in India (DFSers Anonymous) (in 43.1 IP)

Not bad for a four day week!  Some of these numbers would make for good seven day weeks.  Vladdy managed to hit the IP minimum for a normal week (40) and could hold onto the WHIP spot for a while.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Our weekly shout out to the team that killed it the previous week.

Team: WM&D

League: Caught Looking

Stats:   AVG: .295, R: 26, HR: 10, RBI: 31, SB: 3

IP: 50, ERA: 1.62, WHIP: 0.94, K: 50, W: 4, SV: 5

Summary: Speaking of good seven day weeks, I’d be pretty happy if most weeks looked this good.  Caught Looking is the newest of our legacy leagues. It is a group of friends who love Razzball, and they came to me and asked me to make their own RCL.  Easiest ask ever.  I commish several legacy leagues and one of them is my very own creation, why not spread the love?  As long as no settings change, everyone can play under the RCL umbrella.  Anywho, WM&D had themselves one heck of an opening week.  Great hitting numbers and microscopic ratios all while maintaining a solid K/IP.  Kyle Tucker (.313, 2 HR/6 RBI/1 SB) and Freddie Freeman (2 HR/4 RBI) paced the offense. Brice Turang added a homer and a steal, while Steven Kwan hit .500 (6 for 12) with a home run.  Jose Soriano was a great stream (Win, 5 K, 0 ER) and Shota Imanaga (Win, 4 K, 1 ER) threw 7 strong innings to lead the starting staff. Mitch Keller also recorded a victory. The relief corps featured Josh Hader and Robert Suarez with 2 saves each. Carlos Estevez also earned a save while Jason Adam contributed a win.  Nice work!

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