DraftKings: Unkie Lester Is Flipping The Script On The Padres

August 22, 2016 | DraftKings |

I was going to lede with Lester the Molester is going to flip the script on the Padres, but I didn’t want the Vatican Policia to flag me. The last thing I need is some little Italian guy going through my trash in the middle of the night. I just had a vision of Grey outside of Giancarlo’s house rummaging through his Salvation Army donation bags looking for his old jock straps. This coming from a guy who tried to get Manny Machado’s birthday bubble gum he tossed at us when Grey proposed a Netflix and chill night. Oh what hijinks we get ourselves into. For the record I wasn’t going to extract the DNA for a Mini Manny Heater, but that’s a hell of an idea, Grey! Now let’s get into the real reason you’re here; Monday Night DK. There’s only 8 games on the docket tonight. I really liked the Dodgers matchups, but unfortunately they had a 9:35 am start time and DK doesn’t even have that game available. A-Gon will probably hit 2 HRs and Kazmir will probably have 15 baserunners and 1 K because I need him to deal in our Scout league. I’m not to thrilled about the offensive matchups tonight as there’s some solid arms taking the bump tonight. The few matchups I do like are through the roof expensive, so I’m going to pay for two top arms and try to jimmy rig the rest, hopefully it comes together. I know we like to pick on the Padres, but after seeing Robby Ray strikeout 13 over 7 innings on Saturday I just can’t pass up on this matchup. Granted, Jon Lester at $12,500 is the most expensive and he’ll probably be highly owned, so it goes without saying he’s not the ideal tourney play. Lester had a couple clunkers going in the All Star break, but he’s been great over his last six starts picking up 4 Ws, 38 Ks to go along with a 2.47 ERA over 36.1 innings. With the Padres offense trailing just Milwaukee for total Ks on the year I’m counting on Lester to hit double digit Ks and he could top 40 points if all goes well tonight.

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 today to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. Wanna know what the best part is about signing up with us? The free subscription for the rest of the season to our DFSBot, that’s what! For details on the how to, please visit our Razzball Subscriptions page.

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Two Start Pitchers, Week 25: Numbers To Help You Navigate

September 19, 2015 | Two Start Fantasy Starters | 100 Comments

by: Geoff

So as the two-start pitching post comes to a close, I thought I’d take a break from our usual theme based format and make this week’s edition as straight-forward as possible. But then I wrote the first draft in Old German and realized that translating it back to English was neither simple or straight-forward. There are some terms in Old German baseball vernacular that just don’t translate. Then again most of it is comparing pitchers mechanics to field work. This all gave me a great idea for a sequel to Million Dollar Arm with John Hamm. The premise is simple, upon his return from India J.B. Bernstein is driving through Lancaster County and witnesses a 16 year old Pennsylvania Dutch lefty by the name of Ezekial Miller striking out teams of grown men from a near by town. Bernstein fresh off his cricket adventure, believes he’s found his next project and wacky hi-jinx ensues. It’s one part Kingpin, One part The Natural, and one part Hoosiers. The last part only fits because there’s a lot of veiled racism that only Disney could produce. So that’s my pitch (pun point). What do you guys think, shall I kick start a Kickstarter campaign? Let’s make this happen, I have a football team of little Lifshitz to feed, or as I call them a bunch of Lil-Shitz. You like?

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Two Start Pitchers, Week 23: Fresh To Death

September 5, 2015 | Two Start Fantasy Starters | 64 Comments

by: Geoff

Hello! How many of Y’all remember the early 90’s? I don’t mean you were 5 and sort of remember it. I mean you know all the words to Color Me Bad, “I Wanna Sex You Up”, or K7’s “Come Baby Come”. How many of you had a fly honey in high waisted shorts and a fresh perm? Can you bust out a Running Man or the Wop? If you caught even 60% of what I just said this one’s for you. You know for all my overall shorts with the one strap rocking CooleyHighHarmony heads. We’re bringing it back New Jack Style with some of the flyest threads of the early 90’s. Ya heard?

One big change before we go forward, the format of the charts got a little remix treatment here in the two-trey. Yours truly, decided to roll out a different set of wOBA ranks, scrapping the righty/lefty splits and instead looking at the entirety of the second half. This should give you some idea of what offenses are A. Hot and B. Putting it together following any acquisitions they made before the trade deadline. Because who really cares what a team looked like in April or June, right? Should we let our judgement be skewed by first half data if a team has been awful for all of July and August? Hell no! So we made that change for your benefit I’m a giver. The other change is we dropped the k% and added the ERA/FIP/xFIP of each potential two start pitcher over their last 5 or so turns. We did have a couple with under 5 starts total for the season, but it was just two (Zach Davies, and Cody Martin). Once again this is taking a look at the current form of each starter, not how they were pitching two months ago. Ya Dig? Good, well let’s get to it.

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Bullpen Report, Week 6: Pitching Awful Makes Me See-Sheck

May 14, 2015 | Closers, Middle Relievers | 54 Comments

by: Smokey

Last week I went into what in the heck was wrong with Cody Allen. That Situation is still a little foggy, like everyone’s memory of your buddy’s bachelor party. This week, it’s time to look at the side-flinging Steve Cishek. Because when it gets down to it, closers are more interesting and they are basically that key piece in Jenga. It starts with them and everything trickles downhill. He has looked god awful and the Marlins are in full BBC, no not that BBC, the one that is bullpen-by-committee. Mike Dunn, A.J. Ramos, and Bryan Morris are all the names being bantered around as in the mix. None of those guys, minus Ramos, has the repertoire to be a closer. I am just calling it like I see it. If you want my honest opinion, I think they should just let them all do a round-robin thumb wrestling tournament. But seriously, who are they going to trust? Mike Dunn has 4 career saves, Morris is a re-tread reclamation project, and Ramos has been touted as the next guy for two years and hasn’t even gotten serious late-inning high pressure looks. So stay right there and hit that little red bar thingy for more holds and closers and bullpens… oh my.

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Razznasty League Update: Hannibal Eats Us Alive

May 6, 2015 | Our Leagues | 62 Comments

by: Mike

Through the first month of the first year of our new dynasty league here at Razzball, team Hannibal Montana (owned by commenter Csifu) has jumped out to an early lead. Thanks in part to a ridiculously good 2.22 team ERA and top 5 performances in all but two of our ten categories, Csifu is sitting on 132.5 points in the early going. Razzball’s own JFOH (119.5) is hot on his tail, with Ra’zbahl Al Ghul (113) rounding out the top three. It’s a 16-team, 40-man roster dynasty league with weekly FAAB pickups and no restrictions on how long players can be kept (we keep 30). I love this format, and the league has been active in both trades and pickups. Considering how many players were owned coming out of our 40-round draft, there has been a lot of activity on the waiver wire. Here’s a peek at our league’s standings, as well as the trades and major free agent acquisitions that have gone down so far…

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Bullpen Report, Week 4: Blue Jays Love Turnstiles

April 30, 2015 | Closers, Middle Relievers | 75 Comments

by: Smokey

Step right up folks, only $5 waiver wire bucks gets you the admission of a lifetime! It brings you wonderment beyond compare, unfulfilled roster spots with the snap of a finger, and most of all, it gives you zero return on your initial investment sometimes. Yes, that’s right gents (and gals too!), it’s the ever growing laundry pile that sits in the corner, but without the physical stench its the bullpen keystone capers. Key the music! The Blue Jays started the year thinking the man with the poor eye sight would be nice a cozy in the head bullpen chair. Unbeknownst to them, he sucked and failed at his job and was demoted to a set-up role. Fast forward two and half whole weeks, and he is somehow back to being the man again. Did he develop a new pitch, started throwing with his feet? Nope, he is still the same ole Brett Cecil. He isn’t throwing any harder and didn’t change his wind-up. He is just the next man up after Miguel Castro went all bay of pigs, making us all buy into him, and then poof went the dynamite. I personally didn’t think it would be a forever type scenario, and as far as I’m concerned, Cecil isn’t the man either as he sits right now. That just opens the door for possiblities… a trade (Papelbon perhaps), a free agent signee off the street (Rafael Soriano), or eventually going back to Castro or letting Roberto Osuna get a shot at the title. My answer is yes to all the above. I think it takes another failure by Cecil for the contending Blue Jays to realize that they need to shore that thing up. So in a month we could see a whole new bullpen there, and no, I am not kidding. So now that the team beyond the wall is taken care of this week, let’s peruse what else is happening around the league in bullpen situations.

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2014 Minor League Preview: Atlanta Braves

November 6, 2013 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 14 Comments

by: Scott Evans

Organizational Talent Rankings via Baseball America
2013 (26) | 2012 (15) | 2011 (2) | 2010 (9) | 2009 (6)

2012 Affiliate Records
MLB: [96-66] NL East
AAA: [60-84] International League – Gwinnett
AA: [76-63] Southern League – Mississippi
A+: [69-70] Carolina League – Lynchburg
A: [73-66] South Atlantic League – Rome

Arizona Fall League Players — Scottsdale Scorpions
John Cornerly (RHP); Juan Jaime (RHP); Aaron Northcraft (RHP); Shae Simmons (RHP); Kyle Kubitza (3B); Tommy La Stella (2B); Elmer Reyes (SS); Robby Hefflinger (OF)

Graduated Prospects
Evan Gattis (C/OF); Julio Teheran (RHP); Alex Wood (LHP); Anthony Varvaro (RHP); Luis Avilan (LHP); Cory Gearrin (RHP);

The Run Down
The high-impact fantasy potential on this list starts and ends with Lucas Sims. Still, I view this Braves farm system as an underrated group, in that, there are a number of intriguing college arms here, and Atlanta, as an organization, has proven itself in recent years to be quite adept at developing college pitchers into MLB assets. (See Mike Minor and Alex Wood.) On the offensive side of things, there’s far less appeal. Hitting prospects like Bethancourt, La Stella, and Salcedo could all be spending time with the big club in 2014, and they each bring a glimmer of fantasy upside, but it’s the variety of upside that barely garners consideration in mixed leagues. With a decent amount of talent pushing through the upper levels, this is a group worth monitoring early on next season, but there’s truly nothing here to get too excited over until Sims makes his way to Turner Field.

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