The American League West. Home to the defending World Series Champion Houston Astros. Home to the best player in baseball. Is that Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani? Home to the team that has a need for speed, as the Seattle Mariners acquired Dee Gordon. Can some of that speed and "other stuff" be transferred to the arm of Felix Hernandez? Home to the only team that has had a Bush own the team, pitch for the team, and had, not one, but two POTUS's. Or is it POTI? Home to the team with the second-lowest payroll in all of baseball. The Oakland Athletics are at $50.7 million for the 2018 season, while the Boston Red Sox have a $229.7 million payroll for the upcoming season. Ladies and gentlemen, the American League West.
The 2018 Razzball Commenter Leagues are now open! Free to join with prizes! All the exclamation points!
Yup, I'm going for the stars of schmohawks this year. What fun is it pussyfooting around saying some guys are overrated whom no one is drafting? By the by, there's millennials right now squinting at my use of pussyfooting, thinking, "That's not a very woke word. Can't we make that word more cisgender, non-binary? How about codpiecefooting? Ken Doll's groinfooting? An innie-on-the-no-no-touch-area-footing?" However you want to get to that word is on you. Or is it "howmever?" Never the hoo! Carlos Correa is the latest guy to get clowned and frowned on. To get the sour candy face. To get the head nod, then when I pass them, I fart. All that's left to draft in the first two rounds is Mike Trout and Jose Altuve. Mea culpa, my Latin friends. Ain't how I drew it up originally, but the more I dug into the numbers it was where I ended up and...*bangs phone* Why did Waze take me down a dead end?! So, what can we expect from Carlos Correa for 2018 fantasy baseball and what makes him overrated?
Steven Souza, Michael Conforto, Avisail Garcia, Corey Dickerson, Eddie Rosario, Michael Taylor. What do those players have in common? Guys that were in last year’s top 100 outfielders post that made it out like this is Orange is the New Black and those guys were Taystee. Only then Taystee got reincarcerated and brought with her that badass b*tch Vee, and Vee then started running shizz and that white ho, who the show was originally about that is annoying AF, started getting institutionalized with panty-selling and lez ho’ing and–Well, anyway, you get the point. There’s not a ton of sunshine in this top 100 outfielders, but occasionally you do get glimmers of hope. All the
2018 fantasy baseball rankings are under that link-ma-whosie. As always, my projections and tiers are included. Anyway, here's the top 100 outfielders for 2018 fantasy baseball:
Recently, I had the honor of participating in an industry expert post-winter meeting mock draft hosted by Scott White of CBS Sports. My strategy was simple: try not to embarrass myself and The Razz Brand. Outside of one controversial pick that was pointed out by White over on his site for the most part I’d say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. See if you can spot that pick!
Here are the fantasy baseball luminaries I got to spend my Friday afternoon with:
- Ya boy, Razzball
- Ralph Lifshitz, Razzball
- Scott White, CBS Sports
- Justin Mason, FanGraphs
- Jeff Tobin, CBS Sports
- Lawr Michaels, Creativesports
- Jeff Zimmerman, FanGraphs
- Tim McLeod, Patton & Co
- Lance Brozdowski, BigThreeSports.com
- Chris Towers, CBS Sports
- Sergio Gonzalez, CBS Sports
- Adam Aizer, CBS Sports
With the top 40 outfielders for 2017 fantasy baseball, we’ve finished all the hitter
recaps. We meaning me, but I’ll include you. No, that’s not a cue to try to hold my hand. Why are you now patting my butt? Don’t muss my hair! The pitching recap will begin next. You can hardly wait. No, you! To recap, the end of the season rankings are based on our
Fantasy Baseball Player Rater. I felt the easiest way to keep it objective would to go this route. This way when I say someone finished 30th and I ranked them 23rd in the preseason, it carries more weight like a non-vegan Bill Clinton. Anyway, here’s the top 40 outfielders for 2017 fantasy baseball and how they compare to where I originally ranked them:
Tim Anderson is a guy that I would glance at earlier in the season and then move on with my life and with our beloved Top 100. He is a nice young player and all, but he wasn’t spongeworthy. Now, though, we’re in the last couple weeks of the season, and homeboy is lighting it up. And more than just hitting, TA is running wild. He has six stolen bases in his last seven games after not running much at all this year, so he is providing SAGNOF value, as well.
Anderson has been so hot that he is your PR15 king this week, with a 17.18 rating. That stretch of games only includes two home runs, which should give you an idea of just how hot he has been at the plate in order to be able to record a 17+ PR15 with only two long dongs. Our boy is hitting everything in sight and swiping bags now.
If you are battling down the stretch in roto leagues, Anderson can help you while providing some SAGNOF. If you are battling it out in weekly H2H league playoffs, though, he doesn’t have the same kind of appeal. IF (read: big IF) he stays hot, he will help across the board except for power and possibly RBI, while helping with AVG, R, and potentially SB. Compared to the standard stiff on the waiver wires, he looks like a stud. But in terms of cross-category production and overall value, he does have a pretty low ceiling. Grab him for the hot streak, but don’t drop anyone of value for him if you can help it.
Can you name the top five in the AL for batting average? I'm talking those qualified. The person who said Erik Kratz for being 1-for-1 on the year is unqualified to answer. By the way, if you've taken too many quaaludes to answer, does that mean you're unquaaludified? I pose this question to you while sprawled on a tiger-skin carpet like Burt Reynolds in a centerfold for Cosmopolitan. "Loni, feed me grapes, would you doll face?" Totally making current references right now. The top 5: Altuve, Avisail Garcia, Hosmer, Reddick and Jose Ramirez. Yo, batting average leaders nowadays are weird. There's only ten guys in the league over .300, and two of them are Joe Mauer and Lorenzo Cain. Yesterday, Avisail went 5-for-5, 2 runs, 7 RBIs and his 17th homer, as he hits .333. Let me be the first to tell you, he has not really broken out like your teenaged face. He's hitting 52% ground balls, a .397 BABIP (!), not even top 70 for Hard Contact percentage, a high HR/FB% for him and still only has 17 homers. There's very little to point to that he's breaking out, and not just getting crazy lucky. Now watch him win the batting title and go full Terry Pendleton. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Greetings and welcome back to everyone except salty commenter Fogimon. Just kidding. Love you, Fogimon. If you didn’t read Saturday’s post, I moved up north from South Florida just in time to avoid Hurricane Irma, avoiding the chaos of evacuating or staying and hunkering down for the storm. Can’t have much better luck than that, I guess.
Hopefully, you survived without me for a week as we head into the home stretch and fantasy playoffs. If you didn’t, then you are probably not reading this, I guess. So, welcome, survivors. Let’s all bring these leagues home.
We only have so much time left, so we have to continue to focus on the players who are contributing now. If that means dropping Miguel Cabrera (in non-keeper and non-dynasty formats) in order to pick up Matt Olson or a Nick Williams, so be it. Now is not the time for name value consideration. I usually preach patience in this space, but we only have a few weeks left here to close this out. Go, go, gadget Jose Reyes!
Expanded rosters make these last few weeks even more difficult, especially if you have players on teams like the Dodgers or Nationals who can afford to rest players like Daniel Murphy and Corey Seager. You want to make sure you have some additional positional flexibility where possible, which makes waiver wire additions such as Eduardo Escobar and Matt Olson that much more valuable. Not only are they producing right now, but they play a couple positions and give you some added flexibility.
I touch on Olson a bit in a blurb below, but Escobar is a guy who taking a look at because of his eligibility at both shortstop and third base. He won’t have too much value once Miguel Sano returns, but it sounds like Sano is progressing pretty slowly. With only a few weeks left in the season, we probably still have at least another week of Escobar playing time, if not more. There is no guarantee that he continues to play every day once Sano comes back, but it is equally possible that, if he keeps hitting, the Twins find a place for him in a lineup that could certainly use the help. For a guy with a 9.92 PR15 who is owned in less than 20% of ESPN leagues, I would definitely be willing to take a chance.
The Cleveland Indians may never lose again! Friday night the Tribe won their 16th straight game, the longest streak in baseball this season, and the longest winning streak since the Oakland A's won 20 in a row back in 2002 (and that team had Jermaine Dye and Chris Pratt!) Kind of gives you that good old fashioned hometown community pow-wow feeling. Relax Isaiah Thomas, you're a Clevelander now. Regardless! [player]Mike Clevinger[/player] has been a big part of the winning streak and he continues to pitch well winning his third straight start Friday night going six innings, giving up just three hits and three walks while striking out seven for his ninth win of the year. In his past three starts, Mike has gone 18 innings, allowing just 10 hits and no runs, with a 22/7 K/BB ratio lowering his ERA from 3.97 to 3.30 in that stretch. Clevinger Assemble! Mike is available in little over half of fantasy leagues, and he's getting hot at just the right time for playoff stetch. He gets a nice home start versus the Detroit Tigers next week and after limiting them to three hits last week I will definitely be starting him there, especially if they're going for some kind of silly 21 game win streak record by that point! Or did I just jinx by writing all this? Whatever! Pick up all the Indians! And put all your fantasy faith on Believeland right now, folks, you need to ride this magical streak while you can because the Indians keep winning! Let's give them the chop!
Here's what else I saw in fantasy baseball Friday night:
Lance McCullers (back) is back in action on Wednesday, making his first start since July as he comes off the disabled list. Starting a pitcher in their first outing back is always risky, but if McCullers is back on his game, he will be incredibly effective at a price of $7,600. It seems like he should be able to throw a full start, as he went five innings and 60 pitches in his last rehab outing. For a pitcher with a 10.05 K/9 and 2.94 FIP, a price this low feels insane. McCullers is a no-brainer in GPP formats.
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The truth is, I don't give a shit whether you like tapes or CDs. You like what you like and that's what you like. Besides, you probably prefer vinyl, which has seen a resurgence in the past several years. However, according to some sources, cassette tapes are also making a small comeback. In 2016 cassette sales increased by 74 percent, bringing total sales to 129,000 units. If you're thinking "who cares", I'm with you. If I'm being honest, I just needed a few sentences about tapes and CDs to tie the title to the post, and eventually throw
[player]Didi Gregorius[/player] a mention. No time like the present to get that out of the way...
Take me on in the Razzball Commenter Leagues for a chance at prizes! Free to join, leagues still open!
On the ones and twos, it's not DJ Khaled, with a cigar in his baby's mouth, dropping another one in a major key. It's yo' boy, DJ LeMahieu (4-for-5, 4 runs, 1 RBI), the French-sounding EDM mixmaster, spinning his wheels around the bases. Yo, DJ LeMahieu, what you got to say about that? "Pouvez-vous chicken francaise?" Yo, you sound like me pretending to be French! Next up throwing down, it's Mark Reynolds (3-for-5, 2 runs, 4 RBIs and his 25th homer), the man, the myth, the Mini Donkey. All brays to you! Then how about Trevor Story (3-for-4, 6 RBIs and his 17th and 18th homers) finding his way into back-to-back home run games, like succinylcholine finds its way into back-to-back Forensic Files. Then there's Carlos Gonzalez...Actually, you still suck! So, the Rockies, scored (fill-in-number, too high to count) last night, and Jon Gray did all he had to do -- 6 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 6 Ks, which in Coors is all you can ask. His peripherals are gorgeous -- 8.6 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 3.59 xFIP, but something I failed to remember this past preseason, it's still a struggle to start him in Coors. I mean, shizz gets ugly fast like a reality TV person at a reunion show. Anyway, here's what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
