RCL Update: Week 1, The Home(r)less Need Not Apply

Wow, what an amazing opening day. I thought I fell asleep in my DeLorean and went back to the juiced up era. And by juiced up I mean the players and/or ball. Am I the only one (I know I’m not) who thinks that blaming the players bad habits was just a smokescreen for the other culprits in the heist of our game? It was also the owners and their puppet Mr. Selig, the GM’s and the players association. Now don’t get me wrong, the players were dirty and deserve everything, they are getting but why not the rest of the guilty? Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox, I got laundry to do. If you didn’t get a dong on opening day this year, then your team is terrible and you will lose. I kidd, I kidd. This feels like when I was growing up and if you were the last one to get garbage pail kids cards or acid washed jeans, then you were lame. This week there are no master standings since the season is only two days old, so just assume you are tied for first and sleep well til next week.

VIN WINS! RCL DATA – when it’s available I will be sharing the great work done by our resident RCL numbers man: The Vindog. Below is an update of what Jay posted back on March 24th.

This is a breakdown of how many starting pitchers were being drafted in each round on average. I can be fairly certain that Clayton Kershaw is the one pitcher going in the first round. I can assume that Felix Hernandez is the 0.3, except in JayWrong’s league where I’m thinking he took James Shields. As Vin pointed out in his Champions League post, that group only selected 55 starting pitchers. The next lowest was the ECFBL at 61 starters, and third at 67 was Night of the Living Zombinos hosted by the Beastman. My league, the FCL, had two auto drafters and we ended up at 73 (BOOOOOOO!!!) as I’m sure we would of been in the mid 60’s otherwise. I’m pointing this out because I’m fairly confident all these leagues will have a high index by the end of the year. If you want to have RCL success, you need to stream SP’s, RP’s, and lots of batty calls. All these leagues are drafting themselves right into this successful strategy. Good luck to all of you in your FBB insanity.

Below is a follow up tracking the ADP of select starting pitchers. The biggest jump is Matt Harvey who went up from 73 to 66.1. And who says spring doesn’t matter.

And for the hitters update, it stayed pretty much the same except the slight rise for Mookie Betts and the total nose dive for Yasmany Tomas, which I heard translates to Toomany Tacos.

RCL ‘Perts

The ‘Perts league is Grey and Rudy’s annual Friends and Family league. Or as I like to call it “the people that don’t mind Grey’s cackle and his in your face criticism of their work” league. I’ll be honest, I had to look up what a pert was, because at first I thought it was a perp league, which makes me a perfect candidate for it since I had a felony arrest and a handful of questionable life decisions before I ended up here. After correcting my error, I looked up Pert and found a lot of definitions. It can mean attractively lively or cheeky, jaunty or if I went with the  British definition it can mean saucy, impudent, or forward. Cheeky? Saucy? Jaunty? There’s got to be a portmanteau in there. Either way it sounds like us. Along with Grey and Rudy, the league consists of Sky, Jay, JB, Mike, Tehol, Dalton Del Don from Yahoo, Tim McLeod from RotoRob, Mike Gianella from Baseball Prospectus, Ryan Carey from Mastersball and your RCL host, myself, Mr. J-FOH.

The Friends

Mike Gianella – I liked his selection of Charlie Blackmon at 80 because he sniped me, and the massive value he got when he took Steven Souza at 233 and Daniel Murphy at 272. His picks of Jered Weaver at 248 and Doug Fister at 176 feels very unrazzish.

Dalton Del Don – Freddie Freeman at 42 feels about as right as handing the ball to Kyle Lohse on opening day. Taking Dustin Pedroia at 90, Jimmy Rollins at 138, Melky Cabrera at 175, and Jake Odorizzi at 258 all get my thumbs up. I hope but not really because I’m playing against him that his reach for Mookie Betts at 55 works out for him but not really.

Tim McLeod – Opening the draft with Anthony Rizzo, Yasiel Puig and David Price is all kinds of sexy. Don’t quite get the Devin Mesoraco pick after having Buster Posey, my best guess is he got bounced out of the room and auto drafted. I don’t like Martin Prado at 3rd but like the rest of his team a lot.

Ryan Carey – Besides taking Rusney Castillo at 135 and his last three picks, Justin Verlander, Javier Baez and Rafael Soriano I really like his team a lot. Hopefully Boston just makes up its mind and calls Rusney back up, or should I say pulls its head out if its a** and calls him up. Well done Ryan.

The Family

Grey – What, you thought I as going to criticize the boss? Okay maybe a little. I hate Chris Archer at 123 after he had taken two good SP’s in Gerrit Cole and Carlos Carrasco. He sniped me on Wil Myers at 147, Tyler Clippard at 190, and James Paxton at 195. Bobby Parnell at 267 and Devon Travis at 262 really gets me all green with envy. Still not sure who his closers are. SAGNOF!

Rudy – I love Rudy’s team. He has a nice balanced core and two aces. This is a team primed to be a batty call/ streamers paradise. His holes are all at prime batty call positions (all three MI’s and catcher) and with Cobb on DL can run all the MR’s he wants out there.

Sky – Snipey McSniper Skysquatch Supreme! I don’t even want to list all the snipes he did to me because I still have scabs on my knuckles from punching walls while drafting next to him. I hate you Sky. You drafted Tyson Ross, who I hate this year, and I’m glad Jon Lester got rocked on Opening Night. Moving on…

Jay – The other bookend around me. Not sure how I feel about Joey Votto at 53 then I see he takes Mark Trumbo with his next pick and it strangely makes me feel better about it. He took lots of players I didn’t want and R.A. Dickey at 220 who I think no one wanted. Ha ha Jay loves the Dickey! Actually I do really like value he got with Adam LaRoche at 141 and Rougned Odor at 172.

Tehol – He has some players I like, just not at the price he paid for them. Kris Bryant at 49 and Manny Machado at 72 come to mind. His Yordano Ventura at 144 hurts my brain. On the other hand, he got Christian Yelich at 73, Mike Napoli at 241, and Mike Trout at 1. All likes.

JB – He took three middle infielders, three starting pitchers, a catcher and Matt Holiday in his first 8 picks. I’m still scratching my head over the Zig of all Zigs. Love ya’ JB!

Mike – Another one of the draft day snipers for me. Jorge Soler at 50, J.D. Martinez at 98 and Ken Giles at 191. *shakes fist* A real well balanced team Mike with strong pitching and a nice pen. Damn I find it hard to ever say a bad thing about you.

Me – I went all reachy with George Springer at 20 and paid no mind to Corey Dickerson on the board as I doubled myself up with Ryan Braun at 29 (I own him in another competitive league as I prefer to spread my risk with the top guys around all my leagues). Post draft I was pretty meh on my team. It was the toughest room I have ever been in. The first half of my draft was pretty terrible but I think I bounced back from it with Garrett Richards at 125, Brett Gardner at 140, Michael Pineda at 173, Hyun-Jin Ryu at 188, Steve Pearce at 212, Alex Rios at 221, and Jhonny Peralta at 245. The pick I am still pissed at myself for was when I panicked picked Gregory Polanco. I had got triple sniped when Wacha, J.D., and deGrom all got taken right before my spot and the blaring horns in my face got me all flustered. Three straight haymakers will do that to you. I should of taken Brandon Moss! Either way I was just honored (thank you Grey) to be here and look forward to placing ahead of any of these competitors, most importantly Grey and Rudy.

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