RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 1, 2026

Isn’t fantasy baseball fun?  Oh, you drafted Paul Skenes, Logan Webb, Nick Pivetta, and Nathan Eovaldi?  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).  Five days isn’t quite enough to call a week, but nonetheless, VinWins has scoured the data, and we have the 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:

• 44 Razzball Commenter Leagues were created this year for a total of 528 teams
• RCLers drafted 469 different players this fantasy baseball season, the same as last year and the year before that!  We are very consistent!
• Hunter Greene (259) had the highest pick differential thanks to his injury.  Gerrit Cole had the honor the two years prior.  Kevin McGonigle was second (243) as he went undrafted in early leagues and went as high as pick 57 later on.  
• Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge had the smallest differential, with neither making it past pick three.
• There were 20 different first round picks.
• There were eight consensus first-rounders (Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Bobby Witt Jr., Juan Soto, Jose Ramirez, Ronald Acuna Jr., Elly De La Cruz, & Julio Rodriguez)
• Tarik Skubal was next closest, being taken in the first round in 35 leagues.  No other player was taken in the first in more than 25 leagues.
• Nick Kurtz was drafted in the first round in two leagues.
• Paul Skenes hit the first round in 24 leagues.
• Fastest Draft: PERTS: 1 hour, 23 minutes, one minute faster than last year.

Finally, Vin went through everyone’s draft to see who scored the best according to Grey’s rankings through the first four rounds:

RCL 9 8th slot – Captain Longballs – Julio Rodriguez 6 Gunnar Henderson 9 Yordan Alvarez 22 Brent Rooker 26 (63)

RCL 16 1st pick – Eggplant – Shohei Ohtani 1 Jackson Chourio 14 Jazz Chisholm Jr. 19 CJ Abrams 29 (63)

(The numbers are Grey’s ranking – looking for the lowest total. If you want to see all teams, there’s a tab on my ADP sheet. tberkman had the worst score thanks to drafting Hunter Greene in the 4th)

Thanks, Vin!

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 defaults just about everything to push notifications.  If you prefer emails about some things, by all means.  In the RCLs, this may cause your inbox to implode, but you do you.  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

Just like the past few seasons, we’ll be doing monthly overall standings updates.  In the meantime, VinWins pulls all the fun data for us to go over each week.  This week, we look at the five teams who have scored over 100 roto points so far:

103.5 – Press Your Luck – No Whammies! (RCL 2026 #4) #8 draft slot – Tarik Skubal

103.0 – Bishop Hillers (RCL 2026 #27)  #6 slot – Kyle Tucker

102.5 – WM&D (CAUGHT LOOKING) #8 slot – Jose Ramirez [Led this list last year]

100.0 – Acevedodavid15 (RCL 2026 #17) 1st PICK – Shohei Ohtani

100.0 – The Bananas (CRAB ARMY) # 7 slot – Jose Ramirez

It’s always nice to get out to a hot start, but don’t victory lap just yet, the season is long.  WM&D also made this list year as the only team over 100 points.  Talk about knowing how to get out in front!

‘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.

MarmosDad and The Itch have jumped out to early leads. Marmos (unsurprisingly) is doing it via excellent pitching.  He avoided all the big blowups, and has a neat, tidy sub 2 ERA.  Itch is a little more balanced so far.  Grey, however, has just two homers and an 8.72 ERA.  It’s a tough start for our fearless leader.

RAZZSLAM STANDINGS UPDATE

Each week we’ll also take a look at the top ten overall standings in our other Razzball sponsored league, the RazzSlam.  This is our NFBC Best Ball league with managers from all across the industry, from content providers to fans and readers just like you.

Congratulations to everyone who started hot.  It feels like Razzslam standings hardly ever change, so if you’re in the top ten now, congrats on making the playoffs!  I kid…or do I?

TRADES

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

Six deals in the early goings.  I assume a lot of these early trades are people who autodrafted trying to address needs, but who knows.  Yordan Alvarez getting moved twice and then having a strong opening week must feel nice.  Especially for the team that traded deGrom for him.

WEEKLY LEADERS

The best of the best from the week that was.

R – 35 – Frequent Schmohawks (FCL)

HR –14 – The Bananas (CRAB ARMY) & Hey you, Hey! Neo Suarez!!! (RCL 34)

RBIs – 37 – Hey you, Hey! Neo Suarez!!! (RCL 34) & Derek – TLB (Perts League)

SB – 9 – Hu’s on first? (RCL 15), Bishop Hillers (RCL 27), & Ducks Eat Free at Subway (The Laura Holt Challenge)

AVG – .355 – Acevedodavid15 (RCL 5)

K – 60 – TheThreeReynolds (RCL 5)

W – 7 – Dougfinkelstein (RCL 35)

SV –  6 – Trussell Shuffle (RCL 5), Oh Thank Heaven (RCL 21), & Dazed And Confused (RCL 10)

ERA (Min. 40 IP) – 0.6 – Billy Butlerian Jihad (RCL 12) (in 30 IP)

WHIP (Min. 40 IP) – 0.94 – Corned Beef & Hashish (Original Recipe) (in 36 IP)

Fourteen Homers is a good seven day week!  Same with nine steals!  An autodrafted team with all the pitchers lands at the top of the strikeouts this week.  I joined RCL 5 for a nice, friendly, early draft, and apparently, it’s a bloodbath, with three teams making the weekly leader list.  Granted, one is an autodraft team.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

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

Team: Hey you, Hey! Neo Suarez!!!

League: RCL 34

Stats:   AVG: .297, R: 34, HR: 14, RBI: 37, SB: 3

IP: 28.2, ERA: 2.20, WHIP: 1.151, K: 32, W: 3, SV: 4

Summary:  Honestly, if you escaped week one with a sub three ERA, congratulations.  If you did that AND your team swatted 14 dingers, well…you’re the team of the week!  Jake Burger, Mike Trout and Wilyer Abreu paced the offense with identical lines – 6 for 13 with two home runs. Munetaka Murakami  (3 for 9, 3 HR) and Luis Robert Jr (5 for 11/1 HR/5 RBI) also made major contributions.  On the pitching side, Jhoan Duran, Jeff Hoffman, Kenley Jansen, and Cole Sands all earned saves, with Hoffman also adding a win. Yoshinobu Yamamoto (Win, 6 K, 0 ER) and Reynaldo Lopez (6 shutout innings/3 K) led the starting staff.  The big first week has Suarez in first place with a nice 98 points.  Great start!

Want to be my internet pal?  That’s kinda creepy, but you can follow me on the bluest of skies: @matttruss.bsky.social