Player Page Matches

Noah’s Ks Come Like His Bagels — By The Dozen

April 13, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 665 Comments

by: Grey

Noah Syndergaard steps into a giant metal milk can and submerges himself. At first, bubbles come up, then nothing. Only Houdini has ever been able to escape this, and even then Tony Curtis struggled to keep his life in order afterwards. The beautiful-despite-her-pantyhose girl locks him in. Everyone watches, and Noah just sits there, locked in. The audience shifts, then realizes this is what they want. They want Noah to stay this locked in. This locked in leads to Cy Young awards. This locked in carries teams to championships. One man stands in the audience and screams, "Grow gills and stayed locked in!" The crowd erupts. Harvey's looked just okay, that other Mets pitcher put out the welcome Matz to opposing hitters and deGrom is battling an injury. Syndergaard? Oh, he's so locked in. Yesterday, he went 7 IP, 1 ER, 8 baserunners, 12 Ks and looked like he could've beat the 1927 Blue Jays in Coors Field. If you own him, 'gaard your grill and knuckle up if anyone tries to trade you for him. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Tyler White Power Don’t Discriminate

April 9, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Daily Notes | 53 Comments

by: Dan Pants

The [player]Tyler White[/player] hot fire stayed lit last night with his third multi-hit game in a row, going 3-for-4 with 2-run home run. His second jack this year and brings his average to .692 with 7 RBI. Who is Tyler White, you ask? And why should you care, you say? Why am I talking about an Astros rookie first baseman not named [player]A.J. Reed[/player]? Geez, bruh, what's with the attitude, this is my first week back and I'm just trying to help. The 33rd round pick slashed a real nice .325/.442/.496 with 25 doubles, 14 homers and 99 RBI between AA and AAA in 2015. Ty also slashed .366/.460/.585 with 2 homers this spring. So none of this is completely out of no where. And it's not like we're talking about [player]Trevor Story[/player] here. Now that I think of it, I probably should have written this blurb about him. What a Story! Oh man, perfect headline, too. Think of the all the delicious clicks I'd get. Oh well, Tyler White Hawt will surely cool down but until that time let's have some fun with early season stats. Doode is slugging 1.308, with a .875 BABIP and a 2.022 OPS! Uh, that will help your fantasy team! Inflated saber metrics aside, White's available in about 80% of ESPN leagues, Grey told you to BUY and he's certainly worth a look while he's hitting all the baseballs. Here's what else I saw in fantasy baseball Friday night:

Points Leagues: Malamoneyball, The Auction

April 2, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 60 Comments

by: malamoney

Baseball is coming. So is winter. By the time you actually read this the start of the Major League season will be less than a day away. And for those of you lazy readers that catch up on Razzball on Monday mornings when you get to your desk, the season will already be three games deep. By the way, if you are one of those Monday morning people, I'd like to point out your first mistake. Fantasy baseball slows down for no one. If you're not keeping up with baseball's current events, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage because I can assure you that at least one person (likely most) in your league is (are). And if you just prefer to get your information from another site, I guess it's better than nothing, but all biases aside, where else are you going to read a post that was written while sitting on the toilet. Just me, my laptop and my squatty potty. Wait a minute, let me rephrase that a bit. Where else are you going to be able to read a post where the author actually admits to penning it from the throne?

12 Team, Mixed League, Slow Draft Recap — This Thing Has More Rounds Than The Unsanctioned Midget UFC Fight That I Keep Daydreaming About

April 1, 2016 | Our Leagues | 485 Comments

by: Grey

Scout and Razzball teamed up to bring you 12-team mixed league slow drafts, and, when I say slow, I mean that I've seen paint dry faster and with more upside. It's exactly like our 12-team, mixed Razzball Commenter League drafts (there still might be a few spots), but in this league there's two catchers, no waivers and 44 rounds. So, I guess, it's really not that similar to the RCLs. No waivers changes everything. I would never draft two top starters in a regular mixed league, let alone one in a 12 team league, but when you can't pick up a starter off waivers or stream, it changes the dynamic. You can't worry about upside as much as you need to make sure you have innings when a rash of injuries hits. Same with hitters. Upside is nice, but at-bats are even nicer when you lose five outfielders to injuries in July. This kind of leagues makes John Jaso Jingleheimer Schmidt and Tyler Flowers appealing. Dot dot dot. Okay, nothing makes Tyler Flowers appealing. Anyway, here's my 12-team, mixed league draft recap:

Rudy’s 2016 Yahoo Friends & Family Draft (12 Team Snake)

April 1, 2016 | Our Leagues | 36 Comments

by: Rudy Gamble

This is the third year I've drafted solo in the Yahoo Friends & Family MLB league. Here are links to the draft results and a Q&A with all the owners. This league allows daily pickups where all adds/drops take effect the next day. The biggest challenge is that this is the news sharkiest expert league ever created so there is NO WAY I'm ever landing a player based on breaking news (there are three from Rotoworld, two from Rotowire, and Yahoo's Scott Pianowski. If they get by those 6, then there's Grey. I had some success in 2014 grinding to a 6th place finish with a mediocre draft leveraging the Streamonator and Hittertron (and even out-sharking people on two closers) but that advantage was nixed when a move cap of 125 was added in 2015. In addition, several members have no problem drafting in an unorthodox way (the hit/pitch splits this year ranged from 48/52 to 80/20!). This has put me in some uncomfortable spots in past drafts. All that said, I felt good going into the draft for three reasons:

There are only 12 teams for 2016 where historically it has been 14 teams. Grey and I are used to streaming in RCL and - while the 125 transaction + 1,400 IP cap makes it slightly different than RCL - I felt more comfortable waiting on SPs after acquiring two top pitchers.
I had a good feel how the draft would go based on my ADP research and previous drafts. Even if Jeff Erickson, Chris Liss, and Dalton Del Don followed through on their SP-heavy 2015 strategy and Scott Pianowski did some gambit, I felt comfortable enough that I wouldn't be caught off-guard.
I got the 3rd pick.

Here is my team:

The Official 2016 Razzball Picks

March 31, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 125 Comments

by: Jay

Ah yes, so we meet again... wait, did we actually formally meet? I mean, technically, we're meeting again, this is the third year we've done this... but did we really meet? Of course I'm an existential crisis waiting to happen, but that's only because clinical depression requires so much work. I mean, I'd rather jog than emo, ya know? But back to where we started, this is your (and our I suppose) official 2016 Razzball picks. Or selections. Or whatever nomenclature you prefer. I guess whatever it takes for me not to force you to read word "nomenclature" over and over again. We do this because, frankly, we just can't write about everyone and everything that we love or hate. I mean, we're talking about 853 players here (source). And so this is the quick and easy "viewer-friendly" version that allows you to quickly see our likes/dislikes/predictions for all of you to promptly point and giggle at. And for added humor, here are last season's picks, with the bonus value of us again being able to pick on Rudy for choosing Kris Bryant as his sleeper. I'm assuming he thought Bryant was just sleepy and needed a nap, but you might want to ask him about it. Regardless, here are your (and our!) Official 2016 Razzball Picks! Ever wanted to have a Razzball Podcast devoted to Game of Thrones? No? Oh. Never mind then. But for those of you with an open mind, we have just that for you. Check out our very first episode here!

RCL Update: Now Streaming

March 23, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Our Leagues | 68 Comments

by: MattTruss

RCL draft season is well under way now. We’ve got about three drafts per day going off and the data is just flowing in. Hopefully, you are all putting the ADP Spreadsheet to good use. I see plenty of anonymous animals peeping it between seven and ten at night, so I think you are. This week I wanted to briefly go over some notes on pitching in the RCLs. I say briefly because this subject has been covered many times before, quite brucely, much more succinctly than I could cover it. I’ll tell you young Razzballers a story, about where it all got started, way back in a time known as twelve after twenty, with Simply Fred. Fred was on to something that only a few of the top RCLers at the time were on to and it started a revolution. Rudy felt he could improve the process and the Stream-O-Nator was born! The world hasn’t been the same since. Finally, Rudy covered the importance of maximizing IP and how to value our streamers here. That should be enough clickbait and reading to get you off to sleep tonight where visions of ERA, WHIP and K/9 will dance in your head. If you’re feeling lazy though, I’ll give you the cliffsnotes version with a couple of my own notes.

Points Leagues: Overall Rankings, Pick Nick Under the Stars

March 19, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 109 Comments

by: malamoney

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for is just a few sarcastic and synergistic sentences away. With draft season about to explode on us like animals in heat, I thought it was time for me to publish my position-adjusted overall rankings before some of you found out where I lived and started beating on my door. I actually got an email from someone asking me if my rankings would be ready in time for his draft and if I expected them to be good. I replied "unsubscribe". Well without further ado allow me to reveal the name of the top ranked player. That player is [player]Ryan Braun[/player]! Wait, what??!! Can't be! Sorry about that I stepped away to grab a beer and Steve Harvey swooped in a typed that. That will teach me to leave my MacBook unlocked. The actual number one player, for two years in a row, is [player]Clayton Kershaw[/player]. Okay, so for those of you wondering how I came to such a conclusion I will explain my methods of madness.

3rd Basemen to Target, 2016 Fantasy Baseball

March 18, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Sleepers | 518 Comments

by: Grey

I don’t do 1st baseman sleepers because there are none. Okay, I love A.J. Reed like he's Neve Campbell and Denise Richards and I'm Matt Dillion, but Reed's a flyer at this point. If you’re drafting a 1st baseman sleeper, you’re losing your league. Who are you putting at 1st? Yonder Alonso? That’s cool. Don’t pay your league fees until the end of the year and then duck out of the country. You feel me? Okay, stop feeling me, that shizz wasn't meant literally. 3rd basemen are more or less in the same boat, and that boat is the Titanic and if you draft a sleeper 3rd baseman that doesn’t pan out, you’re gonna sink while holding until to a lady named Rose who gets real old looking, but some of youse have corner men in your league, so we may as well look at a few 3rd basemen for s’s and g’s. Good? Good. These are all 3rd basemen that being drafted after 200 overall. Keep in mind, nephew (and five niece readers), your Uncle Grey likes to have a corner man drafted by the time these guys appear, so you're looking at potential utility men more than anything. Now, this is a (legal-in-all-countries-except-Indonesia) supplement to the top 20 3rd basemen for 2016 fantasy baseball. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2016 projections. Anyway, here’s some 3rd basemen to target for 2016 fantasy baseball:

Rudy’s 2016 CBSSports AL-only Team

March 10, 2016 | Our Leagues | 20 Comments

by: Rudy Gamble

For the fifth straight year, Razzball is competing in CBSSports.com's AL-only league (we also compete in NL-only). It has been a struggle the past three years after Grey and I won it in 2012. Beginning last year, we divided up AL and NL-only duty with the other one as co-manager as a backup. One look at last year's squad and you will see that it effectively served as my "Everything bad happen to this one so my other teams are spared" team. I enjoy the CBSSports leagues for two reasons: 1) We are in the mixed league versions of LABR and Tout Wars so this league lets us compete in an expert AL-only league and 2) There are daily pick-ups in this league with a $0 FAAB option - this hugely favors maniacal daily players like me. Below is the team I drafted on Wednesday, February 24th. Here is the complete CBSSports AL-only draft as well as the LABR auction prices for those players from March 5th. Notes below...

Points Leagues: Projections, The Gold Standard

March 5, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 88 Comments

by: malamoney

If they made fantasy baseball's version of Monopoly Money they'd have to put [player]Paul Goldschmidt[/player]'s face on one of the higher denomination bills. Who is he? He's the guy that put the "go" in Goldschmidt. He's also that guy that has finally taken the top spot in projections from perennial favorite, [player]Mike Trout[/player]. Even though he has never finished the regular season with the most fantasy points, everyone's favorite Angel Fish has been projected to do so since 2013. And until this season, after [player]Clayton Kershaw[/player], he would have been my first pick had I the opportunity. In 2016 my previous statement is no longer true. Truth be told, when you factor in position-based value above replacement, I would probably select five or six players before I opted for Mike Trout. As for who those players would be, after Kershaw and Goldschmidt, I'll save the rest for an upcoming post in which I use position adjusted replacement to collectively rank all hitters and pitchers in one long list.

Sonny Gray, 2016 Fantasy Schmohawk

March 1, 2016 | Fantasy Baseball Overrated | 240 Comments

by: Grey

This happened during the holiday season in my house: Me, "Do you know what not winning the Cy Young did to your mother? I don't care, personally, if you throw your life away being an ace while never bringing home the postseason hardware, but your mother, she told all of her friends at her Wally Lamb book club for three straight months that you were going to win the Cy Young. She even made me go to Costco, on a Sunday during their busiest time, and buy burgers and buns for a Sonny Gray Cy Young party. Then you only receive one 2nd place vote and no first place votes. I'm disappointed, and you giving your mother and I Billy Butler BBQ sauce for Christmas doesn't really make up for it." Sonny, "Sorry, Pops." "Did you even buy this or did you get it free?" I then threw Billy Butler's BBQ into the fireplace and screamed, "Did you?!" It was an ugly scene. He's my boy, Sonny Gray, and I love him very much, but it's time we look at him through a non-familial gaze. Last year, he had a 2.73 ERA and 1.08 WHIP in 208 IP while breaking out as a number one fantasy starter. Or did he?! Ah, Reversal Question, you are quick...Or are you?! I am!...Or am I?! Anyway, what can we expect from Sonny Gray for 2016 fantasy baseball and what makes him overrated?