FanDuel: I’m a Baz-Leiver

September 26, 2021 | 2021 Fantasy Baseball, Fanduel |

Yes, I’m a Baz-leiver, and I couldn’t leave him if I tried. OK, I’m dating myself with a reference to a Monkey’s song but this guy IS the real deal. SP Shane Baz, $6900, gets the Marlins at home and this is TOO good to pass on. While taking on a fearsome Toronto lineup in his first-ever MLB start, Baz captured the win and struck out five and walked none over five innings, with the only base runners he allowed on the night coming on a pair of solo home runs.

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Points Leagues: Top 100 Hitters for the Stretch Run

August 13, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 2 Comments

by: Butters

The show marches on and we’re getting down to the final stretch of the regular season. That means we should take another look at the projections so you can make the needed moves to put your team over the top and bring home that chip. Below is the scoring format used to calculate the point totals.

Runs Scored (R) 1

Total Bases (TB) 1

Runs Batted In (RBI) 1

Walks (BB) 1

Strikeouts (K) -1

Stolen Bases (SB) 1

This time I included roster percentages so we can see if there’s anyone who might be available. With the top 100 most are long gone but there are a few guys who could be out there. And since every league is different it’s always a good idea to check the wire in case there are any surprise options available.

So what jumps out from these projections? Remember that these are solely based on what guys will do from this point going forward, not what they’ve done so far. The top looks similar to the second half projections but there are always a few surprises.

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Points Leagues: Top 100 Hitters ROS

July 9, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 9 Comments

by: Butters

Well folks it’s that time of the season. With the All Star Game next week it’s time to reassess things for the second half of the season. There’s still quite a bit of baseball left to be played so now is the time to take a look at your team and see where you can improve. So to help you out with those tough decisions, I have re-run the numbers to rank the top 100 hitters for the rest of the season. These numbers are pulled from the Razzball Steamer ROS projections and then I totaled up the points according to this scoring format (ESPN standard):

Run 1 point

Total Bases 1 point

RBI 1 point

Walk 1 point

Stolen Base 1 point

Strikeout minus 1 point

This week we’ll be looking at hitters. Tune in next week for the ROS pitching projections. So, what can we expect as the season moves into it’s second half?

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Top 25 Fantasy Shortstops for 2021 – Week 7

May 16, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Rankings, Shortstops, Top 25 Shortstops | 4 Comments

by: Jakkers

With April in the rear view mirror and June fast approaching, we are starting to see a lot less wild movement in the Top 25 Fantasy Shortstop rankings.

Two weeks ago, five new players entered the rankings – Alex Bregman, Brandon Crawford, Paul DeJong, Freddy Galvis and Kike Hernandez. While all five players produced well to move into the rankings, they were help by the continued freefall of Francisco Lindor and the cold bats of Eugenio Suarez and Donovan Solano and injuries to Jean Segura and Ketel Marte.

Now in Week 7, the top shortstops have, for the most part, moved to the top of the rankings while the middle tier players are settling into their spot in the rankings. Of course, not all the stars are performing as expected and players you probably thought were never going to valuable in fantasy baseball are doing their best to get off the free agent wire.

If you are wondering about Lindor and where he is ranked, don’t waste your time. He is still missing in action this season, hitting .195 with two home runs and seven RBI. I guess if there is a bright spot, both of his home runs and five of his seven RBI have come over the last two weeks. If you can buy low on him, you might as well do it because he has to turn it around at some point, right?

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Top 25 Fantasy Shortstops: Week 5

May 2, 2021 | Top 50 Middle Infielders | 10 Comments

by: Jakkers

The month of April has come and gone. Among the hundreds of players in Major League Baseball, perhaps no one is happier about that than Francisco Lindor.

Acquired in the offseason by the New York Mets to be the face and anchor of the franchise, the perennial All-Star is off to such a bad start, Mets fans are greeting him with boos. That is what happens when you are hitting .189 with a .299 on-base percentage and a woeful .243 slugging percentage.

Is this just a player trying too hard to impress his new team and fanbase? Maybe. Lots of players have struggled to adjust to new settings or the bright lights of New York before figuring things out. Perhaps, however, Lindor’s struggles are not a blip. When you look deeper into his stats, maybe what we are seeing now is the start of a trend.

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FanDuel: Dare to be Different Monday

April 12, 2021 | DFS, Fanduel |

by: JTells

Hey there! Thank you for returning after my inaugural debut here on Razzball and hope this week you got your bankrolls a little more plentiful. I bet if that’s the case you had to decide to start a lesser owned player or two that wasn’t getting the “buzz” before the games that day on Twitter or some of the other DFS sites you frequent and you went your own way. Well good for you! I hope you have learned by now you have to do that to gain that edge on the other players out there that are also waking up at 7:00 in the morning to do their research on the day’s games as well. Finding those diamonds in the roughs and those forgotten guys are must haves in your lineups these days. The days of getting your lineup in 10 minutes before the start of the games are not working out for the most part I’m sure for you. You need to be watching these games yourself and put in the time to do your own research and get familiar with all the terms that are out there in evaluating players these days. This week I’m going to focus on hitting on some of those lesser owned guys that most likely won’t be targeted but you want to have in your lineup. Now this being said, you are going to have to roster players that are going to be heavily owned to get that floor for your team but there are always going to be one or two players that are in the winning lineups that hardly anyone has, that’s the difference between you cashing and not.

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!
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!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Top 25 Shortstop Rankings

April 4, 2021 | Rest of Season Rankings, Top 25 Shortstops | 1 Comment

by: Jakkers

Last year is officially behind us!

Months after the Dodgers defeated the Rays in the World Series to cap the most unique season Major League Baseball has ever seen, followed by countless offseason moves and meaningless exhibition games, the baseball season has thankfully begun.

Of course, it is impossible to completely put the past behind us. For the Mets and Nationals, they must think that they are still stuck in 2020 as their season-opening series was wiped out due to the COVID virus affecting a host of Washington players. But for everyone else, every hit, home run and strikeout now count. That means we are all checking how our fantasy teams five or six time a not to see how our players are doing on the field.

Gone are the endless updates of our preseason rankings as we prepared for drafts. Now the fun part starts – tracking the players and their performance as the season unfolds. Will the top players perform as expected, or will one of them pull a Christian Yelich or Jose Altuve on us and stink it up all season. With only a handful of games in the books, the Top 25 Shortstop Rankings are basically the same as they were a month ago, but there has been some player movement.

So without further adieu, lets get to the rankings.

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Top 25 Shortstops for 2021 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training

March 21, 2021 | Top 25 Shortstops | 10 Comments

by: Jakkers

With your NCAA tournament bracket now busted due to the rash of upsets this weekend, you can turn your attention back to baseball. In fact, why was your attention even turned away from baseball? With less than two weeks until the start of the regular season, spring training starts to take on a little bit of importance. OK, who am I kidding? We don’t need spring training to know who the top shortstops are, especially in 12-team mixed leagues.

However, there are plenty of 16-, 18- and 20-team leagues and thus a much larger player pool you need to dip into. Additionally, many deep leagues still require a middle infielder in addition to needing a starting shortstop. Depth is critical in deep leagues, and finding that gem late in the draft can be the difference between winning and losing a league.

With players locked into battles for a starting job, the spring training stats we overlook could help determine if Nico Hoerner earns the starting job with the Chicago Cubs or starts the season in the minor leagues. Or maybe a player you are tracking as a sleeper is having a horrible spring and doesn’t deserve to be on your watch list right now.
However, there are plenty of 16-, 18- and 20-team leagues. The player pool you need to dip into is greatly expanded when you have that many teams. Additionally, many deep leagues like these still require a middle infielder in addition to needing a starting shortstop. Depth is critical in deep leagues, and finding that gem late in the draft can be the difference between winning and losing a league.

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Points Leagues: The Top 100

March 19, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Points Leagues | 4 Comments

by: Butters

I’m sure many of you have spent countless hours pouring over Grey’s 2021 fantasy baseball rankings to see who he’s got way higher than anyone else. Grey’s rankings are great but they’re focused on categories so they don’t tell the whole picture for points leagues. For example, average isn’t important for points. Yes a higher average means more hits but you also get points for walks as well. What we’re really looking for is total bases. I still highly recommend that you check out Grey’s thoughts because he knows what he’s doing, but mostly he’s pretty entertaining.

Now onto points leagues. I crunched some numbers behind the scenes to see who should get shifted in the ranks. Basically made my own simplified version of malamoney’s spreadsheet using the Razzball/Steamer projections and what seems to be the standard scoring system. The result is some cold hard data on who’s going to do what this season.

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FanDuel: All The Cullers Of The Rainbow

July 25, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel | 2 Comments

by: MattTruss

Finally we have what baseball fans have been craving for months, a full slate of games to enjoy. Unfortunately, they are all over the place as far as start times and there’s only two night games. I’m not sure what baseball thinks it’s competing with in the prime time slots, but we have plenty of day games to sort through. The “Main” slate on FanDuel today includes from the one o’clock games all the way to five (ET). In the four o’clock slot we’ve got Lance McCullers ($8,000) and the Astros taking on the Mariners. Even with 16 teams making the playoffs now, the Mariners won’t be making a push. It’s been almost two full years since McCullers last threw a meaningful pitch, so there is certainly some amount of risk involved with this pick. However, that’s baked into the price as well. It may take some serious memory, but McCullers was a 10/11 K/9 pitcher back in his heyday. Could there be some rust? Most definitely. Will he still likely get the win? Vegas says the Astros are a -260 favorite, so I think yes. As Dustin May proved on Thursday, if a pitcher is cheap enough, you can still win some money with them only pitching 4+ innings.

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Top 50 Middle Infielders for 2020 Fantasy Baseball: “Spring” Training Edition

July 8, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Top 50 Middle Infielders | 2 Comments

by: Jeremy Brewer

Wait…Baseball!? If I am being honest, I did not think we would have a season to watch and give us a distraction from the upcoming election season…ohhh and that whole Global Pandemic thingy. But really, it is amazing to think we will have a season and there will be numerous unique adaptations from a fantasy perspective as we no longer have the benefit of patience over a long season. A hot month can lead to an MVP campaign or the Mendoza Line!

We also cannot forget the bigger picture. These players are real people in a highly unique situation. All I can do is hope for their continued safety as they try their best to give us an escape from 2020.

So how am I reacting in the middle infield rankings? Let us look at four key areas of change.

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Top 100 Hitters for 2020 Fantasy Baseball: Preseason Edition

March 1, 2020 | 2020 Fantasy Baseball, Top 100 Hitters | 9 Comments

by: Thomas Howland

Oh man, the crack of the bat and the sound of the ball hitting leather. It’s seamhead heaven, boys of summer katnip, and time to put away the hot stove (well almost). Spring training baseball has just started. Beer is flowing from Florida to Arizona and lazy afternoons at the ballpark are in vogue.

As such, Razzball’s 2020 inaugural Top 100 Hitters is here to inform, entertain, and track your favorite sluggers, five category studs and perhaps underappreciated gems. We have to start somewhere, so here are the rules for this first list: They’re geared towards 5×5 roto leagues. “Last” is tracking where the hitters were in the last Top 100 of September of 2019. “Change” is a change from that last 2019 ranking.

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