Two-Start Pitchers, Week 10: Pray for the NL East
June 4, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Two Start Fantasy Starters | 21 Commentsby: M@
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Throughout my time as a dynasty player, I've learned that there's one thing that's as inevitable in this format as death and taxes..... turnover. Sometimes it's simply because a manager no longer likes the format or league. Sometimes it's a lack of the time element that needs to be applied to properly compete. Other times it's an incident that disenfranchises owners, and leads them to quit. Well over the last month I'm pretty sure all of these apply to outgoing managers within our Razzball in-house dynasty the Razznasty. There's been drama, tears, a gang-related shooting, and an arm wrestling tournament in a truck stop. Actually I think I'm confused, all those things happened during my Memorial Day weekend with my in-laws. You know what they say, "sometimes you join the Hell's Angels, and other times you marry into them". Moving along, let's discuss the standings, trades, and wavier claims for the month of May.
It was only about two weeks ago that the Mets sent Steven Matz to have his elbow examined. Fantasy owners were nervous and tried and true Mets fans were ready to call it a lost season. Overreaction at its finest, but it makes total sense; no one wants to see a promising pitcher go down with a serious injury, especially one that's already undergone Tommy John surgery. Well, have no fear. Matz came back in his next start and fired off seven innings while giving up just two runs. His start against Washington last week was even better as he pitched eight scoreless innings while striking out seven. So, Matz is totally fine, but here comes the best news yet: he gets a floundering White Sox team in friendly Citi Field. Chicago is just 2-8 over their last 10 games and looks like total crap which is sweet, serenading music to your ears. Matz is my top pitching option on Tuesday night.
New to DraftKings? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday June 6th to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
It was almost 20 years ago. Aaaah, middle school. I remember it like yesterday. Or, well, like twenty years ago. Sweater vests, braces, and bleached blonde caesar haircuts. Before the real Slim Shady showed up a different white boy with rhythm busted onto the scene with his troupe of ex-Disney-turned-MTV boy banders. We all thought it was dumb (of course). Why should all the girls that we thought were hot think they were hot? Because they're on TV? Stupid. Because they can sing? Hey, we were in chorus! Every crush I had at 12 would swoon over *NYSNC and their lyrics, thinking it was written for them.
'It's tearin' up my heart when I'm with you/And when we are apart I feel it, too/And no matter what I do I feel the pain with or without you!'
Okay, a few things. Why in the Kanye West did you have an asterisk in front of your name? You're not Roger Maris! GTFO. At least put a hashtag. Be ahead of the times. Instead your name looks like something that could be traded on NASDAQ. Second, besides their style choices asterikNSYNC was clearly a confused calamity of young 20-Somethings. How about ya find a lady that doesn't make you manic? Just a thought. Third, how dare you steal from U2 with those lyrics!?! Fourth, thank heavens for progression. Amiright Justin Timberlake? (In case you're totally lost, but somehow still reading this asinine intro, JT's the aforementioned white boy whom I massively respect now, see: Jessica Biel). Fifth, I didn't have to look those lyrics up. I knew them. In the darkness of my memories. Damn it. 
Tolleson had his cookies tossed for the last time on Tuesday. Or maybe Shawn Tolleson caused his owners' cookies to be tossed? Sounds too passive, said Flesch-Kincaid, but you get the idea. By the by, why is tossing food so gross? Tossing one's cookies should be a glorious thing. Who doesn't want cookies tossed at them? Please toss your cookies into my mouth! Then there's tossing salad? That sounds healthy and like a spring morn. Why is tossing salad so bad? I'd love a salad tossing and a jog around the Maypole! Any hoo! There's no more Tolleson, and Sam Dyson will step in as the Rangers closer. Glad to see Rangers manager, Jeff Banister, finally react. Though, it took a long time since Tolleson's ERA is over nine. Banister's reflexes are so slow Bautista could've snuck in a punch on him. Maybe they should've let Odor punch Tolleson's card. He would've been out on April 4th. "You're done!" "That was one pitch." "I don't care, now I will punch you." Sam Dyson should be owned in all leagues. Will Tolleson regain the role? Maybe, if Dyson gets injured, but it seems highly unlikely otherwise and can be dropped in most leagues. Hey, Tolleson, don't let the door hit you, where Odor split your lip. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
I remember a time not long ago. A time when the #Barves were the Braves. I think said time predates the hashtag phenomenon which makes it, like, sooooo old. Before Fredi got Fired and even more importantly, before Freddy Got Fingered, you could count on three things: death, taxes, and the Braves reaching the playoffs. From 1991 to 1998, three Braves pitchers won six Cy Youngs. and the 90's and early 2000's were filled with Braves bats you'd love to roster in the current DFS world. Fred McGriff, David Justice, Andruw Jones, Chipper Jones, and Ron Gant, just to name a few. The Braves looked like they'd never come down from their perch...and now enter the dystopian future of Atlanta. Nick Markakis is your leadoff hitter. Retreads like Chase d'Arnaud and Gordon Beckham solidify your infield. Your most feared hitter is Freddie Freeman who is good, don't get me wrong, but he bats like Adrian Gonzalez and Gonzo is eight years his senior. It's a team that lacks identity, cohesion, meat in the middle of the lineup, pitching...yeah, we're looking at the bleakest roster in MLB right now. Man, that's depressing, I need something to cheer me up. I know, I'll start a pitcher against their sorry a$$es! Those double dollar signs are me telling you you're gonna rake in the dough starting Francisco Liriano tonight against these #Barves. They are bad and they only get worse when facing a lefty so gear up for a potential banner night for Francisco. But now that we've covered that, we need to move along so let's do this. Here's my nobel prize winning taeks for this Wednesday DK slate...
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday May 23rd to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.
Rubby Bein’ A Giant Surprise …And The Top 100 Starting Pitchers, Week 7
May 16, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Pitcher Profiles | 202 Commentsby: JB Gilpin
Nothing is a better, giant surprise than a Rubby in the morning!
Rubby De La Rosa has always been a guy with a power fastball and plus slider, but it's never been enough. Ks haven't been there, he couldn't get lefties out, and he's looked more and more like Nathan Eovaldi rather than "the next big thing". But after yesterday's outing, Rubby has somehow limited lefties to a .162 average and only allowed 1 homer in 87 LH batters faced. Compare that to last year, when lefties murdered him for .315 and 20 homers in 410 batters faced.
After a pretty brutal start - including 3 relief appearances due to the D'backs bullpen being overtaxed - I really didn't think too much about Rubby and his upside. Kinda thought "he is who we thought he is!" Wait, that's a different Arizona sports team... His last 5 starts have been really good with solid Ks, but I thought for sure the Giants with their bevy of lefties would crash the party. Alas, we got a Giant surprise! Here's how Rubby looked yesterday afternoon in Zona against those Gigantes:
SAGNOF Report: Smoke Show Stealing The, Well… Show
May 16, 2016 | Closers, Steals | 19 Commentsby: Smokey
You see that old rocking chair in the corner? That's me, mister reliable. Made of wood and literally been around these parts since the dawn of time. I may not be the smartest fella, or the fartest smeller either, but I dig baseball. I get the stats and the hub-bub surrounding the intricacies of deeper stats. Relaying them in a manner that makes sense on paper and conveying them to you in a way that makes us all put away our Casio calculator watches is my style. This report covers similarities from what I touch on the regular in my bullpen post, so for the normalcy of life, I will add some of my usual middle relief spice into the streaming world of stolen bases. Sound good, grand glad we could agree. Rostering established stolen base guys is all well and good, but is a better feeling when you stream an option and he gets one that wasn't normally accounted for. Kinda feels like stealing, in the actually stealing sense and not just in the statistical sense. The world of streaming swipes is becoming harder and harder as stolen bases are a stat best left for the dudes hitting dingers. The more a pitcher lets players get on base with SB opportunities, the increase for SB's grows... sometimes. This is my first attempt at this post, so I am starting it my own way. So let's look at this weeks options to stream stolen bases and the trends for which to follow for streaming ideas. Cheers!
Owning Max Scherzer last night was like watching the Showtime classic, Emmanuelle, the erotic thriller starring Emmanuel Lewis as Webster Schlong and Alex Karras as George Papadopepuss. Through 6 IP, Scherzer had 13 Ks and was only 77 pitches. On the Tigers broadcast, Jimmy Leyland said, "(Scherzer) looks spent." Who's a better judge of that than his ex-manager? If only the Nationals had Jose Valverde to come in. But then Scherzer went out in the 7th and had a 1-2-3 inning with two Ks and it was if Shannon Tweed had appeared next to Emmanuel Lewis and this erotic thriller became more elaborate, convoluted and spectacular! Then Scherzer came out in the 8th and struck out three more guys to put his total at 18 Ks. Then, came the ninth. Now, no guy has a shorter hook than Emmanuel Lewis, but no manager has a longer hook than Dusty. Scherzer could've been on pitch 175 and he would've been out there to finish it, and finish the Tigers he did. Final line: 9 IP, 2 ER, 5 baserunners, 20 Ks. He is still giving up homers though.... Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 5
May 10, 2016 | Our Leagues, Razzball Commenters League | 57 Commentsby: MattTruss
Welcome to the recap of week five. Week five already, that doesn’t seem possible. Five, as in the number of feet tall Jose Altuve is. The numbers this little man is putting up don’t seem possible either. After the 5th week of the season Altuve has 30 Runs (tied for first), 9 HRs (tied for 9th), 19 RBIs (still pretty amazing for a leadoff hitter), 13 stolen bases (most in the league), and a .325 batting average. In week 5 alone his drafters got 2 HRs and 4 SBs. I mentioned how Bryce Harper was a roto wet dream a few weeks back, but Altuve is making his 10 HRs/5 SBs look like pocket change. The best part for his drafters is they didn’t need a top 3 pick to nab him. Altuve had an RCL ADP of 10.79. He was taken as high as 4th overall by the *ahem* “Goat F*ckers” of Albright’s ECougarHarmony.com (great league name, questionable team name) and fell to as low as 18 where “cardinals # !” nabbed him in Razzballero2. Grabbing Altuve around pick 11 likely meant you could pair him with a power hitter such as Miggy, Abreu, Bautista, Chris Davis, or is you were lucky, Kris Bryant. That sure seems like a pretty nice start right about now. It got me to thinking, I wonder what impact drafting Altuve has had on the standings position. So, employing the help of the ever helpful VinWins we set about figuring out the average standings position of those teams that drafted Jose Altuve. The result? Glad you asked! Those teams that drafted Jose Altuve are currently on average in 5.88th place, we’ll call it 6th. They are also averaging about 68.5 standings points. Not too shabby, you certainly could be doing worse. By comparison, Mike Trout drafters are averaging 6.34th place and 65.84 points. As luck would have it our brand spanking new #1 team in all the RCL land was a drafter of Jose Altuve themselves, at #13 overall. They paired him with...Clayton Kershaw of course! Want to find out more about our new #1 team? Then come on down and check out the rest of the week that was, week 5.
JB Doesn’t Know How To Rank Aaron Nola! …And The Top 100 Starting Pitchers, Week 6
May 9, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Pitcher Profiles | 146 Commentsby: JB Gilpin
Before we point fingers and exclaim how "right or wrong" we are, know that I am writing this intro BEFORE Aaron Nola's start yesterday afternoon. I don't want my intro to sully my thoughts from the top down. The post needs to read like a before-and-after! Kinda like how Grey slammed my Joe Ross rank endlessly on the Pod "before" the season, and even with awesome results "after" 5 starts, he's still going to find ways to troll me on him... Sigh... Also, I need to use a thesaurus on the word "before"...
So why was I so slow to sip any of the Nola Kool-Aid? Well, here's the red flags I saw PRIOR TO yesterday's start: .227 BABIP, he averages 90.0 on his fastball, was never a K guy through the Minors, K rate has jumped from 7.88 in 77.2 IP last year to 9.90 in 40.0 IP this year, and finally, he's looking like a 2-pitch guy right now with 59.5% fastballs and 33.7% curveballs. Now, I admittedly use Fangraphs as my reference, and maybe he mixes a few fastball variants and he's leaning off his change-up since his curve is working so well right now. Unless you're in the MLB Man Cave, you're not watching every single SP every start (plus you're like, a few weeks behind the current action, so that's lame), so I concede I hadn't watched Nola yet this year. But after the Nola-grilling on my ranks in the comments last week, seeing Nola was getting the start on Sunday made him the prime Pitcher to be Profiled. Here's how he looked yesterday afternoon in the Crayola Canyon:
DraftKings: Friar Struck(out)
May 6, 2016 | DraftKings, Fantasy Baseball DFS | 41 Commentsby: MattTruss
Contrary to what I previously believed, the San Diego chicken is not in fact the mascot for the Padres. That dubious honor goes to “The Swinging Friar”. What he’s swinging, we don’t really know, but we do know he’s swinging...and missing...a lot. In fact, there’s only one other team that is striking out more than the Padres. The numbers are darn near video game level. A really easy video game though, not like World Championship Baseball, that shizz was darn near impossible. Vince Velasquez went for 16, Clayton Kershaw went for 14 (and 9), Cueto went for 11, and Jon Gray got 11 Pads. Multiple other pitchers have K’d 9 Padres in a night as well. It’s ugly. So, tonight we’ve got Noah Syndergaard taking the mound, he of the 12.25 K/9 and 2.51 ERA. The scary thing is, he could be even better, his FIP is sitting at a tidy 1.39 and his xFIP is a wonderful 1.79. *Drool* How do I not own this guy in any leagues this year? Brutal. Things shouldn’t get any worse in Petco Park. I don’t need to blab about how amazing Syndergaard is, but I will. A stat I love to look at is SwStr%, or the % of strikes a batter swings at and misses. Noah’s 15.9% currently leads the league. He’s throwing strikes and guys still can’t touch it. Could be that 97.6 MPH average fastball. I also like a pitcher that can get a batter to chase a bad pitch. Even if they get ahold of it, it’s usually weak contact, so making a guy chase a pitch is a nice skill to have. Well, Syndergaard’s 36.6% O-swing %, or percentage of non-strikes swung at, is 2nd in the league behind only Zack Greinke. That would help explain why he has a soft contact % of 26%, good for 11th in the league. All of this is to say, he’s really, really good and the Padres are really, really bad. This is a no brainer top cash game option of the night, despite the lofty price tag ($12,900). Don’t overthink it and just watch those K’s pile up. Let’s see if we can make our bankrolls pile up with the rest of these picks:
New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.