Ambulance Chasers Preseason – Going Back to Camp Round One

Camp is starting up and it’s weird out there folks. Split squad positionless scrimmages, Covid tests, opt outs….baseball is back!?! This whole thing feels like the Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout from Saved By the Bell…”I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so…..scared”.

First round of Covid testing is coming back and there’s plenty of interesting names that have tested positive: Jesus Luzardo, Eduardo Rodriguez, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Hector Neris, DJ Lemahieu, Tommy Pham, Scott Kingery, Mitch Keller, Ryan O’Hearn, Salvador Perez, and Kole Calhoun are notable confirmed positives.

Of these, most fall into the “asymptomatic” category and should return to the team soon (hopefully). Hector Neris was already around Phillies camp this week, and Joey Gallo already has one negative test under his belt. He should be good to go soon.

The most serious case looks to be Freddie Freemen. The Braves are being candid about exactly what Freeman is going through, but they’re not expecting him back to camp any time soon.

There’s several other guys who are missing from camp still with no given reason why. Some teams are releasing positive tests, some teams aren’t stating what’s keeping players away but letting us read between the lines. This list includes: Aaron Nola (who was seen around Phillies camp earlier this week similar to Neris), Yonny Chirinos, Juan Soto, Kenley Jansen, Gavin Lux, AJ Pollock, Tony Gonsolin, Yordan Alvarez, Jose Urquidy, and Josh James. The Astros, as well as some other teams, have had issues with their testing in terms of getting results quickly, so that may be holding up the ‘Stros players, but these are all guys to keep an eye on.

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Fantasy Baseball Podcast: Digging Into Player Opt-Outs And The 2020 Roster Shuffle

July 7, 2020 | All Podcasts, Razzball Podcast |

by: Geoff

These unprecedented times call for unprecedented preparation for upcoming fantasy drafts. Never before have we had the worry of a player opting out of the season after or even during our drafts. So now we plan, we update, we read the news (baseball news), and we pray our teams stay in tact. Is this a silly pastime? Absolutely! Are there many much more important issues? Of course! But level with me, we all need some release and I like many of you hope this sixty game sprint can provide the escape we all need. In this vein Grey and I breakdown the opt outs, the positive tests, and the opportunities created. It’s the latest episode of the Razzball podcast in it’s most apocalyptic form.

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Heads Up! H2H Categories Strategy – Late Round Hitting Targets

March 12, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Head-to-Head Leagues |

by: Richardo

Over these next two weeks, we’ll be focusing on late-round category targets. This week we’ll touch on hitting categories and follow it up next week with pitching categories. While these will be geared towards the standard 5×5 categories, feel free to leave a comment if you have a more specialized category.

For this exercise, I limited my player pool to hitters projected to get at least 350 plate appearances (with a handful of exceptions). I tried to stick with players being drafted beyond pick 175, but in my mind, the later a player’s going, the better. With that in mind, let’s get to it.

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2019 Spring Training Position Battles: The AL West

March 15, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Team Previews | 9 Comments

by: Whack Daniels

NL West | NL Central | NL East || AL West | AL Central | AL East

I don’t pay much attention to Spring Training Statistics. You never know who the statistics are coming against. Baseball-Reference did, however, have an amazing tool last year that attempted to quantify the quality of opposing pitchers or batters faced during spring training games on a scale from 1-10 with 10 being MLB talent and 1-3 being high A to low A level. This tool is great, but it averages all the Plate Appearances or batters faced. You would still need a deeper dive to see if your stud prospect smacked a donger off of Chris Sale or off of your kid’s future pony league baseball coach. So what should we watch for in March when we’re starved for the crack of the bat? Ignore “best shape of their life” stories and Spring Training statistical leaderboards. Pay attention to injuries and lineup construction and position battles!

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FanDuel: May 25th, 2018

May 25, 2018 | DFS, Fanduel |

by: HouseofShlain

Another happy FanDuel Friday you filthy animals! We have a lot of good pitchers out there tonight as this is a full 15-game slate and the weather isn’t going to be much of a concern. Rejoice! Picks and more to follow.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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One Man’s Trash: Nick Pi-Vetta

May 24, 2018 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball | 21 Comments

by: Son

The value of Pi is unknowable, which makes it an “irrational number.” 3.1415926535897…..Computer scientists have calculated billions of digits of Pi without discerning a recognizable pattern. To infinity and beyond! This concept of irrationality has made many of men mad. On the flip side, Vetta is a Sanskrit term that means “knower” in Hindu philosophy, as in someone who has a deeper or higher spiritual knowledge. The dichotomy and duality of life. It is presented to us everyday. So, it would only make sense that Nick Pivetta (54.8% owned – increase of 24.3%) would be the literal poster boy. Against righties, 30.3% K-BB rate and 2.39 xFIP. Against lefties, 14.3% K-BB rate and 4.29 xFIP. At home, 2.80 xFIP and 26.4% K-BB rate. On the road, 4.33 xFIP and 14.9% K-BB rate. The overall snapshot, though, looks amazing. 10.19 strikeout rate with a 2.04 walk rate. 3.29 xFIP and 0.85 HR/9. The hard contact rate is only 27.1% and the swinging strike rate is 11.3%. Granted, the sample size is small and last season Pivetta was worse against righties. I like Pivetta, as he throws mid-90s, has good control, and can miss bats. Just be aware that there is more under the hood than what the overall numbers are showing. With that said: TREASURE

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FanDuel: Picks for April 27th, 2018

April 27, 2018 | DFS, Fanduel | 2 Comments

by: HouseofShlain

FanDuel Friday, are we ready to party? And by party I mean drink exactly one beer and watch round two of the NFL Draft. Any takers? No? Fine, I guess I’ll do it myself, just like I did this DFS research. Let’s get into it.

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The Ballad Of Stolen Bases For 2018: I Wanna Go Fast!

February 7, 2018 | 2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft | 13 Comments

by: Ricky Olshansky

It seems fitting for me to debut with a sneak peek of the 10 best base stealers in the majors for 2018, because let’s be honest, I like to go fast (I promise I won’t reference Talladega Nights again). In my opinion, speed is one of the most exciting elements in baseball. It would be easy to look at statistics from 2017 and list the 10 athletes that led the league in steals, but we’re going to take a deeper look at the speedsters I like for the upcoming 2018 season, and we’ll be doing this for all of the major scoring categories throughout the preseason. And sure, you’ll see plenty of the usual suspects, but who knows, maybe I’ll throw in a few surprises as well. Included next to each player are Razzball’s own 2018 fantasy baseball ranking and FantasyPros most recent Average Draft Position (ADP).

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FantasyDraft: I Dream of Biagini

September 12, 2017 | DFS, FantasyDraft |

by: Sky

There’s nothing more random than September baseball. It’s a time where you throw season stats out the window and ride the hot bat or hot hand. The mystery of a new guy can throw the league off for a few games and you can enjoy that all the way to a championship…or a few FantasyDraft bones. Then there’s the recency of it all. It’s always good to look at the 7 day performance of a given hitting team when trying to pick a pitcher during this time of year. All year, it’s been a known thing: don’t start a pitcher vs the Dodgers. Now? Dodgers have been in a free fall and have the worst wRC+ over the last thirty days. All this to say, this ain’t your mom’s time of year…hrm, not what I meant to say…namely cuz I don’t know what it means so instead I’ll just say over the last seven days, the Orioles have been one of the worst hitting teams in the league with a 53 wRC+ and a monstrous 28.2% K rate during that span heading into their matchup with Estrada last night (Marco was sitting at 3 K thru 2 as of this typing). Why does all this matter? Well, Joe Biagini already got to enjoy the mess that is Baltimore. At Camden Yards on September 1st, Biagini went 7, struck out 10 so there’s a good chance this slide continues for these birds. Keep in mind, this Biagini dream could quickly turn into a nightmare so stay away in cash, children. Good? Good. With that out of the way, lets get on to this. Here’s my Barbara Eden taeks for this Tuesday FantasyDraft slate (walks away humming the I Dream of Jeannie theme song)…

New to FantasyDraft? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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FanDuel: Bombs Away in Globe Life Park

May 17, 2017 | DFS, Fanduel |

by: Troy: The Collector

Hello all my loyal followers! I hope everyone is well on this amazing Wednesday. I’ll tell you right now I’m in love with today’s slate. There are two pitchers I love today, but I’ll go into that a little later. The team I love today is the Texas Rangers. As a team, they’re really starting to heat up, having scored five or more runs in five of their last six games. Texas also faces off with a pretty bad pitcher in Elfin from the Phillies. Finally, this game will take place in Globe Life Park which becomes a launching pad once we get into summer. We’re lucky enough to get a nice hot, humid day today and I expect the ball to fly in this park. My lineups will start with Rougned Odor at $2,800; he’s playing a lot better and I expect it to continue. He’s slowly starting to hit and he’s also beginning to steal some bags. He should continue that today. Others I like today are Elvis Andrus at $3,000, Joey Gallo at $3,200, and Delino DeShields at $2,800. All three of these guys bring something a little different to the table. Andrus has five hits in his last two games and has really turned into a solid run producer for a team that really needs it. Gallo is just a beast who can hit a homerun any at bat, and Deshields will probably hit lead off with huge steal upside. He also has a very sneaky batters eye with solid pop.

Now on to the picks…

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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FanDuel: Yu Got To Be Kidding Me

May 10, 2017 | DFS, Fanduel | 1 Comment

by: Troy: The Collector

Greetings and salutations! The Collector here once again welcoming you to a amazing Wednesday slate over on FanDuel. We have quite a few pitchers to use today, but I’m going to focus on my boy Yu Darvish at $11,200. He’s one of my favorite pitchers in the game right now, as I love his stuff and wish/hope he’d stay healthy. Darvish’s K/9 is down a bit this year, but I expect it to start rise back to his career norm and this is the start it begins to do so. Today he gets the really good San Diego Padres… San Diego let AJ Griffin get a complete game shut out yesterday, that’s how good they are. This seems very easy to me and even though it’ll be popular, I think you need to go with Darvish today.

Now on to the picks…

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Top 80 Outfielders for 2017 Fantasy Baseball

January 30, 2017 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings | 160 Comments

by: Grey

As we continue our 2017 fantasy baseball rankings, we head into the homestretch of ranking hitters. For those confused, homestretch isn’t when you shoot up late at night, remembering there’s a Dorito under the couch and go reaching for it. That is the opening to my short film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dorito. The main character has just been Frito-Laid off and is described as Pringley and Ruffled. Last year, this post had Adam Duvall, Jackie Bradley Junz, Jay Brucespringsteen and a bunch of vomit. So, there is some value to still be found in the outfielders, it’s just a matter of finding it, like in the landmark film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dorito. As with the other rankings, my projections are included and where I see tiers starting and stopping. Anyway, here’s the top 80 outfielders for 2017 fantasy baseball:

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