Razzlings, I am willing to bet at least a few of you that have watched and, perhaps, even enjoyed the 1996 film The Craft, starring the inimitable Fairuza Balk. Imagine a group of four Catholic high school girls begin to dabble in the dark arts. It begins innocently enough with spells for levitation, hair color […]
Please, blog, may I have some more?Kevin Pillar
Please see our player page for Kevin Pillar to see projections for today, the next 7 days and rest of season as well as stats and gamelogs designed with the fantasy baseball player in mind.
Welcome to the first weekend in June, Razzenfants! The months of May and June are always interesting to baseball. The significance and rate of injuries seem to slow or plateau. The players finally seem stretched out and warmed up. You let your guard down, and then BOOM! Two guys on your team need Tommy John […]
Please, blog, may I have some more?Raimel Tapia was traded to the Jays. Yay! Tapia gets out from under Bud Black! You will never thwart us again, Bud Black! Shakes fist towards the Colorado Rockies, the geographical location, not the team in Arizona. Though, the difference between Arizona and Colorado is hard to tell with the shake of a fist. Your tyranny of platoons will never stop me and Tapia again! Eat a dee, Bud Black! *opens Jays’ lineup* Uh…Hmm. Raimel Tapia is now buried in a stacked lineup and might platoon from the nine hole. Yo, Tapia, have you ever considered eating a live chicken to rid yourself of the curse of “not playing every day?” He was lowered in the top 100 outfielders. Going the other way, and the real winner here: Randal Grichuk. I know Grichuk is morally opposed to bat flips, but he might want to bat flip this trade. He’s suddenly in position to have a career year, and play everyday DH. Grichuk is exactly the type of player Bud Black will give 600 ABs, if he can. Old and boring. The ultimate Prospblockie. C.J. Cron and Grichuk walking around that lineup like Nicky Fairbanks walking the streets in Alaska. Grichuk was upped by a lot in the top 100 outfielders, and is now a 5th outfielder target in shallower leagues. Incredibly, on our auction values Randal Grichuk has moved to the 39th best outfielder, and right by Jesse Winker. This offseason, their collective fortunes have 180’d toward each other, and Winker appropriately was 1st one to blink. The ol’ Blink-180. What’s my age again? Also, the top 500 for 2022 fantasy baseball was updated. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this preseason for 2022 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Welcome, you die-hard baseball DFS degen. With the NFL now on the forefront of many sports fans’ minds, we here at Razzball push onward and look to keep whatever momentum we have going or starting a new heater as we wind down the season. With this being one of my last articles for this season, I hope it provided some useful insight or at least gave you some players to think about each week and hoped it helped you at least a smidge in your slates this season. The pitcher I’m focusing on today to play is Sandy Alcantara ($10,600). Sandy has had a very productive season for the Marlins this year and will be making his 30th start for the Marlins so he has been very reliable in taking the hill each time it was his turn in the rotation. Alcantara deserves better than his 8-13 record indicates as his surface numbers of 3.24 ERA and 1.10 WHIP don’t completely do justice to the great year he has had. Alcantara commands all 4 of his main pitches with outstanding accuracy and throws a 98 MPH heater as well. Alcantara has one of the best chase rates in all of baseball and will be facing the Washington Nationals today who are very prone to striking out with Bell, Robles, and Soto all nearing the 100 K mark. Alcantara faced the Nationals back on June 27th and pitched ok but did get the loss however the Nationals had a vastly different lineup then and Alcantara will not have to face the same lefties especially he did that day. I think Alcantara has a great game today and wouldn’t be surprised with a 9 inning shutout here.
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Please, blog, may I have some more?(NOTE: THIS POST WAS RELEASED EARLY THIS WEEK ON OUR PATREON. IT’S $10/MONTH OR $13/MONTH WITH AN EXTRA WEEKLY PODCAST.)
Last year, I wrote in my Leody Taveras sleeper post, “You don’t need me to Mr. Shaibel you through the ins and outs of strategy on how to move your pieces around to win your league, but let me just say the quiet part real loud: SPEED AND POWER MMM YUM. Got it, all you Normies and five Carlas? Leody Taveras is only 22 years old, so his power could be developing into more goodness. He has a 14.3 Launch Angle, which should lead to roughly a 37+% fly ball rate (it was 32.9% last year, but small samples). A 37% fly ball rate should lead to roughly 178 fly balls. Taveras is not built like a brickhouse. He’s built more like a Shed Long. But he has a 50 grade in raw power and who knows? Maybe he runs into 10% HR/FB. That would give him, you guessed it, 18 homers! I’ll be honest, that feels optimistic. Steamer projects him for 13 homers in 133 games, and that feels optimistic too, but pessimistic on his games played. When all things are equal, 13 homers feels like a solid projection, but in more games.” And that’s me quoting me! That just got my pants tent moving north to the Adirondacks for Loedy Taveras in 2022 too. If Siri is reading this to you, we’re not talking about 20222, you didn’t fall asleep for 18,200 years. If you did, your head would be reading this in a jar of formaldehyde. Just had a thought, imagine your head was being preserved in formaldehyde and it was on a shelf behind a bigger head and all you could see was the back of someone else’s head for all of eternity. Writing a note in my Last Will and Testament to not let that happen to me. Any hoo! This is for this year, and Leody has speed and power. He needs to find more contact, but if he can, he could be trouble this year or in 20222. Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Yesterday, Salvador Perez hit his 41st homer. Today, you get a Salvador Appreciation Post, or SAP. You might be asking yourself the same as every Y! Answers when you google SAP, “How do I turn SAP off?” You can’t turn it off. It’s going into your eyeballs and, with each passing word, it becomes harder to turn back. If you remove all pitchers, the top home run hitter in the major leagues is Salvador Perez, a catcher. What a year for fantasy, is what I say right before I wander into traffic wearing nothing but a potato sack. “If you remove all pitchers, the top home run hitter in the major leagues is…” is the funniest thing that’s ever graced this site. That a catcher is the next best home run hitter is just a cherry on top of this season. “Wow, I can’t believe I can draft Cody Bellinger in the 2nd round this year,” that’s what the apparition floating next to me keeps saying, because I’m haunted. Salvador Perez is in one of those situations that I thought would benefit Juan Soto too. There’s no one in that lineup with Perez, so why not pitch to him? The only difference between Soto and Perez is about .440 OBP or 90-ish walks. If you knew someone like, say, Perez would swing at anything, wouldn’t you throw him nothing but junk in the dirt? For Sal Perez to hit 41 homers, he should’ve only saw 41 strikes all year. Alas, no one wants to tangle with Benintendi, apparently. For 2022, I continue to cackle in a jar and seal it quickly like it’s a lightning bug. Only I plan on releasing those cackles in 2022 when someone drafts Salvador Perez in the top 25 overall next year. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?*zooms microscope in on Gerrit Cole‘s spin rates on Statcast, accidentally zooms too close and cracks computer screen* Oopsie. Yesterday, Gerrit Cole (5 IP, 5 ER, ERA at 2.66) had his ass handed to him, and not in a good way, like, “Hey, he’s got extra ass now like Vladimir Guerrero Jr.” The funniest or saddest, depending on whether you’re Gerrit Cole, is him giving up all kind of homers, then having his hat and glove checked by the umps. Wish someone would’ve warned me about Gerrit Cole and spin rates being checked in, say, March. WAIT A MINUTE! Someone did! It was March Grey. Damn, March Grey, you smart son of a bee! My Gerrit Cole schmohawk post from March is basically all about the spin rates, and how they’re in danger of coming back to earth. Dot dot dot. Coming back to earth unlike all the home runs the Red Sox hit off Cole yesterday. Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Sorry if the title is a little NC-17. NC being North Carolina, baby! A little too sour? Blame the vinegary sauce, like a middle-aged man at a tailgate party, you over-dabbed. So, Jacob deGrom is the greatest pitcher of all-time. Yesterday, he went 3 IP, K’d eight and got one more by fly out, lowering his ERA to 0.54. The only problem is the Mets’ training staff is the world’s worst. World’s worst trainers are in, conveniently enough, a train going 170 MPH. The world’s best starter is on a mound going 101 MPH. At some point, they’re going to intersect and bad things will happen. On May 9th, it was right side discomfort. On June 11th, it was right flexor tendinitis. On June 16th, they’re saying right shoulder soreness. Can we just all assume they have no idea? Jacob deGrom will be great, if healthy, but it doesn’t seem like that’s possible right now. About the only thing he has in common with most starters is they’re injured. By August, each team is going to have one starter, two probables and two doubtfuls. By September, it’s going to be one starter and five scarecrows in the team’s jersey, and one scarecrow is going to pull his elbow tendon by mid-month and the team is going to say he’s day-to-day. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?We used to have a glossary term for when one of your hitters hits a home run off one of your pitchers: “f***ing your stepsister.” We removed it I believe because it was too vulgar, but we have a shirt in our Razzball store that reads, “Fantasy Baseball: Something To Do Between Masturbation Sessions,” so too vulgar feels like it left the station a while ago. Any hoo! I don’t have a stepsister, but yesterday we were grinding, baby! After dinner, I was like, “Excuse me, my much older cougar wife,” as I dabbed my face with a wet nap, “I need to check to see how Carlos Martinez is doing. What’s that? He sucks? Sure, Cougs, but someone’s gotta suck in this marriage and it ain’t me or you.” Haha, we laughed, then I added, “How bad could he possibly suck?” That was when my world began to crumble, while also putting the moves on my nonexistent stepsister, because Cody Bellinger (2-for-4, 2 runs, 6 RBIs and his 1st homer) knocked in 6 runs in the 1st inning before I could put my teeth back in my mouth. I knocked them out when I saw Carlos Martinez’s line (2/3 IP, 10 ER, ERA at 5.83). Well, I’m glad Cody Bellinger is back and producing, I only wish it didn’t involve step-siblings. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?They should have a contest where one lucky fan tries to no-hit the Mariners. Yesterday, Spencer Turnbull no-hit the Mariners (9 IP, 0 ER, 2 walks, 9 Ks, ERA at 2.88), because the Mariners are being no-hit every day of the week that ends in Y. Armando Galarraga called and said big whoop. Yo, he sounds bitter. Didn’t they give Armando Galarraga a car after his kinda perfect game? They should give Spencer Turnbull a salmon thrown to him by someone in Seattle wearing rubber boots. How about teams that have a team batting average under .205 get to use the juiced ball? Sure, it’s an arbitrary rule, but so is the dropped third strike rule if you think about it. So, I hope you used the Streamonator that told you to start Turnbull. Beyond that, Turnbull looks like he’s, uh, turned a corner. He’s throwing his offspeed stuff more, and results are good: 8.1 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, 2.75 FIP, so close to neutral luck outside of home runs allowed, but he doesn’t allow homers ever. He’s not an ace, but that’s a usable number three to four, and since the no-hitter happened after I wrote the original opening, you’re getting a special treat today. A double lede! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Fernando Tatis Jr. went down in a heap after a swing, and I fell off my couch, rolled three feet and laid there for twenty minutes until Ted, my dog, placed his butt on my face, the sign we mutually agreed on for “he needs to be walked.” Outside, we spotted two pigeons teaching a third how to fly again with broken wings. I stood by that hopeful scene signing Mr. Mister, “Take these broken wings…and learn to fly again, learn to live so free,” and I was briefly uplifted. Then, the branch they were perched on fell, and deposited all three in front of traffic. Feathers blew up in my face, triggering my allergies and I told Ted, “Let’s go home and sob under some blankets.” It’s impossible to know fully, until the Padres say one way or the other, but you’d have to think that Tatis only injures himself on a swing if he was playing hurt already. As of this writing, the Padres are saying a partial dislocation, which would mean weeks vs. months, and would be relatively good news. Also, if you can even think about next steps, I grabbed Jurickson Profar, and Jake Cronenworth and Ha-Seong Kim should see an increase in playing time. I await further news while securely under these blankets. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?We’ve done it! We’ve reached the end of the fantasy baseball hitter rankings for 2021 fantasy baseball rankings. Give yourself a big round of applause. I’d clap for you, but I have carpal tunnel from actually ranking all the hitters and writing all their blurbs and calculating all of their projections and– What exactly did you do? Oh, yeah, you read them. No wonder why your hands can still clap. Wait a second, I’m doing a utility-only hitter ranking this year. This isn’t the end of the hitter rankings. Feeling woozy, need to sit down. Okay, let’s get to it because this post is like 5,000 words long and I wrote it with my toes. C’mon, pinkie toe, push down the shift key! So, here’s Steamer’s 2021 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2021 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers. All projections included here are mine, and where I see tiers starting and stopping are included. Anyway, here’s the top 100 outfielders for 2021 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?