Welcome back to our year-end awards show! If there’s any issues with the award ballots, don’t look at me. These were all tabulated at the accounting firm of Fried, Tellez and Bregman. Stop giving them the evil eye, German Marquez! You might be wondering why I’m hosting. Well, at the last minute our other host had to back out. Sadly, Joe Buck couldn’t be hair. I mean here. HAHA…Wait a second! Why is Will Smith, the catcher, coming on stage? *smack* Ow! It was a joke about Joe Buck’s hair. Damn! Now, before we get to our first award, I just want to thank everyone. I appreciate all of you, except Jonathan India. Okay, now onto the awards, without which you’d have no idea who was the best and worst hitters and pitchers this year, and you’d be left giving out your own awards and no one cares if your “Low sodium tomato soup in a sourdough bowl” won your “Whitest Lunch Of All-Time” award. Stop making up fake awards! Leave that to me. Anyway, here’s the year-end awards for the best and worst of 2022 fantasy baseball:
Fantasy AL Most Valuable Player – This was one of the hardest awards to give out. It was either Aaron Judge or twisting myself into contortions to try to give this award to Shohei Ohtani. For real baseball, I think Ohtani has a real case, because of the two top players in one guy thing. Ya know, the whole “WHAT ON EARTH IS HE DOING? HE’S A GREAT PITCHER AND HITTER? HOLY CRAP,” stuff. That actually plays against him for fantasy, or at least in 99% of leagues where you have to decide between Ohtani, the pitcher, and Ohtani, the hitter, and that gets even worse in weekly leagues. If you started Ohtani every time he pitched, you lost some hitting stats. How many stats? I don’t know, I didn’t feel like doing the math. Any hoo! This should be about the greatest fantasy season we’ve ever seen. Aaron Judge hit $62! That’s not homers — though, he hit 62 of those — that’s dollars on the Player Rater! We have a Historical Player Rater that measures every fantasy season since 1903, and Judge is the top fantasy season of all-time. That’s right, you drafted Trevor Story instead of the top player season of all-time. Pretty fair to say this was the top season in history for fantasy value, too. The difference between Judge and the next highest AL player was like the difference between Judge and me in height. There was over a $26 difference between Judge and Jo-Ram. That’s the same as Jo-Ram and the unrosterable like, say, Nelson Cruz. So, Aaron Judge gets the AL Fantasy MVP. He wasn’t able to be here to accept the award, because my mother’s basement ceiling is so FREAKIN LOW! Ma!
Fantasy NL Most Valuable Player – The NL Fantasy MVP, like the AL one, doesn’t take into account team wins and “intangibles.” Nope, here at Razzball HQ, we look at tangibles! And those aren’t fungible! This is commonsensible. Uh-oh, I’m stick in an ‘ible loop, what can I do? Listen to the Bible on Audible? What’s this in my pocket? A rookie card of Oddibe McDowell? Okay, I’m done. The winner is… Paul Goldschmidt. I’ll go over each position recap starting on Monday, but a pretty cool takeaway this year: You could’ve screwed La Pooch with your 1st round pick and baced into some crazy valuable guys later on. Not crazy late, but Au Shizz, Lindor, Albombso and others were available to everyone after the 1st round. Those were also some of the names vying for this NL Fantasy MVP award. Freeman, Treat Urner and Betts were the other names vying, and I’m not just listing the Dodgers’ lineup card. That Au Shizz still edged out others to finish as the top NL guy on the Player Rater, and 2nd overall behind Judge really shows how great he was for the first five months, because his September was downright Voit-y and almost voided-y his April thru August.
Fantasy AL Cy Young – For those of you who drafted a starter in the top 10, not one pitcher made the top 10 this year. Justin Verlander, fantasy’s best pitcher this year, and the Fantasy AL Cy Young winner, just missed the top 10 overall, so if you drafted him in the top 10 overall, that wasn’t that bad. What’s that? You didn’t draft Verlander in the top 10 overall? You didn’t draft him even in the top 10 starters? Not even in the top 30 pitchers off the board, according to NFBC’s ADP? Oh, geez. Very surprising. I thought I had to draft pitchers early. Very confused and-DAH! You’re making me overwork my sarcasm muscle! Now I need a nap to get the energy for an eye roll. So, I’m not going to claim I had any idea Verlander would return this great. He was a pitching Zombino. You can huff and puff that he’s old as shizz, but don’t call him a modern-day Charlie Hough.
Fantasy NL Cy Young – Talked about this on the podcast last week, and mentioned it a few times here, but Sandy Alcantara is the best example of it. Strikeouts were down for pitchers, and lots of top pitchers were driven by ratios vs. strikeouts. I don’t know why. The dead ball had hitters trying to make contact vs. swing for fences and strikeout? Possible, but averages were down, too. No tacky stuff all year? Seems more likely, but I don’t know. I’m doing, as they say on game shows, guessing. Either way, Sandy Alcantara won the Fantasy NL Cy Young without a flashy strikeout rate, and a team who gave less runs support than an adult diaper.
Fantasy AL Least Valuable Player – For the fifth year in a row, this goes to Anthony Rendon–Hold on, the accountants are signaling me. I can’t hear you from seven feet away! Walk across my mom’s basement and the beautiful shag carpet, and whisper it to me! It’s not Rendon? Okay, Spencer Torkelson–Not him either? I can’t read that name. Shake the envelope in front of my face as many times as you want but I can’t say his name as the AL Least Valuable. Fine! I’ll say it! Wander Franco won this award and we all lost! Are you happy? I hate this. Can I please give it to Yasmani Grandal? How about Jarred Kelenic? Please! I’m begging you! Not Wander!
Fantasy NL Least Valuable Player – Could’ve gave this award to Ozzie Albies, but he got injured, and you could’ve replaced him. Though, I guess you could’ve done that some for the actual winner of this award, but Jonathan India was on the field more than Albies, and produced about the same. India put the bomb in Bombay. India’s season had me calling for my Mom-bai. India wasn’t Hindu, he was Him-don’t. If not for Reds manager Dumb Bell’s dumbness, India might’ve been moved down in the order, because, while the Reds aren’t good, India was very bad. Not Hyderabad, but Hyperbolically Bad. I will be sending India his award, but first I’m using it in my bathroom where I’m acting out a cosplay of Slumdog Millionaire.
Most Valuable Player Based On Draft Price – As I’ve mentioned a few times above, there was a lot of value to be had this year. You could’ve drafted the first four guys on the Player Rater in some leagues, and, if you did, congrats on having the best season ever, it’s all downhill from here. What’s that, you have your whole life ahead of you to marry and have kids? Sure, like that’s better than having a great fantasy season. Speaking of best seasons ever, I don’t know how you can’t give MVP based on draft price to anyone except Aaron Judge. He was worth almost twice as much as Trea Turner, who was drafted number one overall in a lot of leagues, and Judge was drafted 32nd overall. Honorable mention goes out to Adolis Garcia, who I wrote a sleeper post on late, because I saw he was going around 150th overall, and I thought, “That’s so silly; he’s a top 50 player,” and, even I was wrong, he was a top 15 player.
Fantasy POS – We have a tie! Jose Berrios and Lucas Giolito. This was a photo finish between the two, and they weren’t worth trying to figure out who was worst. Watching Lucas Giolito and Jose Berrios was like watching The Ring. Only instead of you dying within seven days of watching The Ring, your fantasy team died every fifth day.
Fantasy Hitter You Most Likely Dropped and Picked Up A Dozen Times – “You really think this year’s breakout is gonna be Rowdy Tellez? Meh, that April was kinda boring, I think I’m dropping him…Wait a second! This May is great! I have to pick him up, right? Wow! What a ride! This guy is almost as good as he is bad at hide and seek! Welp, the honeymoon’s over, I guess. Good bye, Rowdy, your batting average is bottoming out…Hold on! Grey, not sure if you noticed but Rowdy is hitting again. …Hey, Grey, Rowdy’s stopped hitting…Hey, Grey, is Rowdy hitting or not hitting? …Hey, Grey, Rowdy!!! GREY!!! ROWDY!!! GREY!!! ROWDY!!!” *smoke rises from your ears*
Player You Had Forever and Most Likely Should’ve Dropped – This year Nick Castellanos became Nick Can’tstandyouranus.
Player On The Top Of Your Waivers That You Just Couldn’t Bring Yourself to Pick Up – “Christian Walker? Are you seriously considering picking him up? Isn’t he just the nonsecular Hunter Dozier?”
Pitcher You Streamed So Much You Ended Up Owning Him – “Okay, I’ll grab Tyler Anderson for his start vs. the Colorado Suckies, but I’m dropping him right afterwards.” *five months later* “Hoping Tyler Anderson starts the final week, he’s my most reliable starter.”
Player You Were Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop From, But Thankfully It Never Did – “Spencer Strider has the mustache of Grey and the fastball of Nolan Ryan. I want to make love to him, metaphorically. But he can’t really be this good, can he?” He can and he was.
Player You Were Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop From and It Ended Up Kicking You in the Groin – “You keep talking about selling Josh Hader, but he hasn’t given up an earned run through the first two months! Are you dumb? Real question.” Oopsie. Lots of honorable mentions, Taylor Ward comes to mind; Anthony Rizzo, who went from decent to meh to terrible; Trevor Story who went from pretty awful to extraordinarily awful and C.J. Cron, who looked like he was going to hit fifty in the 1st half to being 50 Cent trying to throw out a first pitch.
Player You Were Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop From and When It Did You Were Okay With It – It was almost like once we stopped expecting power, Steven Kwan blossomed into a true fantasy asset in everyone’s eyes. Also didn’t hurt that he was near the top of the best fantasy values in September/October.
Player You Traded Away That You Most Regretted – “Adolis Garcia is already 10/10, I’m playing with house money! I’m gonna trade him for Josh Hader. This is such a slam dunk I’m gonna win this year’s Dunk Contest!”
Player You Traded For That You Most Regretted – “Grey, I know you say don’t trade in the preseason, but I just got Javier Baez for Spencer Strider and Andres Gimenez. Just had to do that! I’m to winning what winning is to losing!”
Top SAGNOF – Jon Berti/Daniel Bard – Remember, the essence of SAGNOF is cheap saves and steals. No one came close to cheapness on saves than Bard. A rose by any other name would be Rojas, and he doesn’t close games. As for Berti, he was the most pure, distilled version of SAGNOF for steals. He was the everclear of SAGNOF.
Remember That Feeling You Had When You Walked In On Your Parents Having Sex, This Pitcher Gave You That Feeling Every Fifth Day – “Hey, mom, do you know where the remote control is–OH MY GOD JOSE BERRIOS WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY TEAM STOP!! GET OFF OF HER!!! THAT’S MY MOMMY!!!”
