RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 9, 2019

The calendar has flipped to June and the Razzball Commenter Leagues are in full swing.  This is also the time of year where I like to take a look at which RCL teams are killing us in win-rate and which teams have just had some crap luck in the win column.  Now, Rudy will tell you that Wins are actually predictable as shown by his Ombotsman.  While the data and the bots may tell you this, as a human, it still seems like they are luck-based, do they not?  Today we’re going to take a look at “win luck”. There’s no doubt it takes some luck to win a fantasy baseball league.  Injury luck is probably the biggest factor in winning a league. As good a manager as we think we are, if your number one pick goes down for the year, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.  That’s just common sense. “Win luck” is another area that is seemingly out of our control. Let’s face it, wins are brutal. I’m a big proponent of the mantra, “Make your own luck” and I certainly think that can be applied to “win luck”.  “Win luck” is a term often tossed around to describe a team that is raking in the wins and/or a team that can’t seem to buy a win. Can you make your own luck in regards to wins? Of course you can. You can stream those valuable middle relievers, especially the ones that frequently work multiple innings in the middle of games (Josh Hader perhaps).  When a lead change occurs, these relievers are typically the benefactors. It’s no guarantee of course, but it can’t hurt your luck any. There are other ways to increase your win luck too. Let’s take a look at another big one as well as who is getting lucky and who got lucky this week in the week that was, week 9:

Another nice way to increase your win luck is to borrow a tip from the DFS side of the fantasy baseball landscape and utilize the Vegas odds.  I know not everyone dabbles in DFS waters, but Vegas is a good companion there and in your season long leagues. Here’s how to use it. First, find yourself a website that lists all the Vegas consensus odds for the day.  There are several out there, but I typically run with THIS ONE.  Go ahead and bookmark that for future reference.  If you aren’t familiar with Vegas terminology, you want to look at the “Money Line” which is the number greater than 100 with either a “+” or a “-” in front of it.  This shows you how much you would have to bet on a team to win $100 (in the case of the negative amount) or how much you would win if you bet $100 on a team (in the case of the positive amount).  The negative value indicates the favorite. So, if a team is a -140 favorite, you would need to bet $140 on them to win $100. If a team is +140, if you bet $100 on them, you would win $140. You can start to see where this might come in handy.  Anything over about -140 is pretty good. Take a look at those odds, check to make sure the over/under (run total) for the game isn’t too huge, use some common sense, or at least some risk/reward management, and stream away. If you’re a really savvy roto player, you’ve purchased access to the Streamonator where you can filter by day and sort by wins.  There you would see that Eduardo Rodriguez is the player with the best shot at a win today that is available 22% of RCLs, if you need to dig deeper, Chase Anderson is available in 89% of leagues.  Chasing wins may seem to some like a fool’s errand, but you can take a couple steps to make your own luck.

Here are the best (“luckiest”) and worst (“unluckiest”) teams in the RCL universe in terms of win % (Wins/IP * 100):

The Chicago Nubs are leading the charge in win luck with 42 Wins in 469 IP, good for an 8.95 win %.  Summer Thunder appears to have drafted two very similar teams and/or have done some very similar streaming.  Nice work so far! Team mcafeeeee is the only team in the top 20 overall to appear in this list.

On the unlucky side, Team LarsonLarsen has the fewest wins per innings pitched of any team in the RCLs.  15 Wins in 390 IP is very unlucky. 390 IP is well behind the pace needed to hit 1400 IP and with any luck if and when LarsonLarsen starts streaming heavily they can use some of my tips above to pick up an extra couple of wins here and there.

‘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.

Things have been very close in the middle of the ’Perts League for several weeks which can lead to some big jumps in the standings.  If you combine that with a really great week, you have what malamoney put together this past week. After hitting a season low of 11th place just two weeks ago, malamoney this week gained 19 points, and jumped from ninth to second.  Malamoney led the league in Runs, steals, batting average, ERA and WHIP. Not bad, not bad at all.

Grey still leads us all, but malamoney is now 9.5 points behind Grey and it would be quite a feat to go from eleventh to first in three weeks time.

As good as malamoney this week, Roto-Wan was bad.  Roto-Wan dropped 15 points this week and fell 5 spots in the standings from second to seventh.  The 7+ ERA didn’t help matters much as it was another rough week for most managers in pitching.

TOP 10

For those too lazy to check the MASTER STANDINGS, I present to you, the current top 10

The top four remained the same this week but things did get a little tighter at the top with only 0.7 RCL Points separating the FFB’s from Licketty Splits.  My DFSers team fell a bit and for now, it’s a two team race for first.

Backdoor Cutters moved from sixth to fifth to now give the Backdoors two teams in the top five, pretty amazing.

Team pozzo moves up from eighth to sixth and AR3 jumps into the top ten from eleventh last week to seventh this week.

UpNorth also moves up two spots this week from tenth to eighth.

Team bub1992 made a big jump this week from 30th to ninth as they gained 4.5 league points this week.

Finally, my ECFBL team drops one place this week to tenth to round things out.

TRADES

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

We had our busiest week of trades yet this week with eleven deals getting done.

Capital Offense got busy this week making two deals in ECFBL.

I feel like Goldy for Lucas Giolito will be a steal for Team jbmcgavock.  I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with Giolito, but maybe it won’t.

Ken Giles changed teams twice this week including our overall RCL leader shipping him and Michael Chavis off for Jose Altuve.  With 51 Saves and a .266 batting average, I can see it. FFB only needs 2 steals to move up two spots there as well.

WEEKLY LEADERS

The best of the best from the week that was.

R – 65 – kumamoto expungers (RCL 2019 (#45)) & Rotund Drill Sargeants (RCL 2019 (#22))

HR –24 – Team jbmcgavock (RCL 2019 (#36))

RBIs – 70 – Harpo (RCL 2019 (#27))

SB – 12 – Team wonderfulpantsuit (RCL 2019 (#59))

AVG – .342 – DonSlaughtOnslaught (Night of the Living Zombinos)

K – 104 – @Roto_Chris (RCL 2019 (#19))

W – 9 – Lowell Spinners (RCL 2019 (#26))

SV –  12 – Klubes Noobs (RCL 2019 (#28)) & Team TheFantasyGOAT (RCL 2019 (#2))

ERA (Min. 40 IP) – 0.82 – Team TheFantasyGOAT (RCL 2019 (#2)) (in 44 IP)

WHIP (Min. 40 IP) – 0.673 – HaveGunsWillTravel (RCL 2019 (#15)) (in 52 IP)

No records fell this week, but congrats to TheFantasyGOAT for making this leaderboard twice.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

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

Team: SUMMER THUNDER 2

League: RCL 2019 (#59)

Stats:   AVG: .294, R: 58, HR: 22, RBI: 57, SB: 2

IP: 71.1, ERA: 2.65, WHIP: 0.813, K: 81, W: 6, SV: 8

Summary: Summer Thunder makes their second appearance in this article thanks to also having some nice win luck thus far.  No luck needed here this week though. Summer Thunder was right there, near the top of the leaderboard in just about every category.  Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Austin Meadows and Jorge Soler were big factors on offense while Gerrit Cole, Lucas Giolito and Hyun-Jin Ryu contributed to some sweet pitching stats.  Summer Thunder gained 7.5 points this week and moved from fourth to second in RCL #59.

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