Earlier I broke out the tiered rankings. For now, I'm going with the simple list. Again, these rankings straddle the divide between standard and PPR leagues (0.50 points per reception). Some people thought I was high on LeSean McCoy when I recently paid $39 for him in a PPR league... just wait until you see how high I have him ranked. PPR monster: LeSean McCoy, $55 RB for a $40 price tag. The lists should be easy to follow, the players are broken into groups of 16.

You know what they call a 90 reception Punt Returner in Paris? They call him Royal with cheese. I just completed my first auction draft of the 2010 football season and there was one main theme ringing throughout the draft: supply and demand. This was no standard league auction draft. This was about as far from standard as you can get. Deviations included PPR (point-per-reception), IDP (individual defensive players), return yards, a revamped point system for team defenses, two Flex positions (one you could use a QB) and we had 16 teams competing for the same players. If you're stuck in a rut, playing 10-12 team leagues with standard scoring and settings, do yourself a favor and mix it up.

You know the drill, it's time for some Link Linkavitch action. What was more believable? Rudy finding a caveman in his backyard or Rudy playing football for Notre Dame? That little hobbit. Let's get into some fantasy football links that were scrounged up from my Twitter football feed. C'mon, just say it with me, you know you want to.... "wheeze the juice!"

Your friendly, unthawed, teenage caveman, Link Linkavitch, is back! You know you love some Pauly Shore action, you can admit it. We are all preparing for fantasy football so I figured it would be a good idea to link up some good reads that can be found by following my Twitter football list. Currenly, this feed is following 162 fantasy football peeps. Anything that may affect my/your player ranks will be posted. With that, it's time to Wheeze the Juice.

I was a little late to the R.A. Dickey party, but it's better to be late than never here. Dickey may be a knuckle baller, but this is not some Tim Wakefield reincarnation. His 6.38 K/9 is slightly below average (7.01 K/9), but Dickey makes up for it with a good walk rate (2.50 BB/9), he doesn't allow batters to make a lot of solid contact and he induces a lot of ground balls. His 1.94 GB/FB ratio is the ninth highest in the league. Dickey's knuckleball is pretty fast for knuckleball standards. It has been climbing in speed as he refined the pitch during the past five seasons. It's up to 76.2 MPH now, which is 10 mph faster than Wakefield's. You can tell he is gaining confidence in the pitch because he has increased it's usage each year. He throws that sucker 82 percent of the time now and it's valued at 4.2 runs above average. Because he uses the knucklball almost exclusively and the pitch is much improved, I believe it is safe to ignore the knuckle baller stigma and join the R.A. Dickey bandwagon. His fastball has improved in value also... so he's got that going for him. Oh yeah, he doesn't have an ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing arm. Apparently he was born without one and the Tommy John operation for someone without one has never been done, so they left it alone. Just throwing that out there.

more MLB notes after the jump...

Here is a bad idea: buy a bottle of Evan Williams sour mash and talk shit. If you were into the cold, calculated nerd talk from the recent string of sabre stat, luck based posts, bad news: it's about to get funky up here. Get me on the sour mash and listening to old ass Eazy E youtube vids and it's on! Meet me after the jump, if you dare.

We discussed the positional players and Starting Pitchers who have experienced some bad luck in baseball's first half. Now let's get into some good luck. There are a lot of variables we can look at when labeling a player unlucky/lucky, but we'll continue down the BABIP/LD% path. We'll take a quick look at a few Sell High targets and others who should just see a little regression in their Batting Average. Enough small talk...

On Thursday night, I participated in a mock draft for FantasyGuru.com. Unfortunately, the full results and review are not available for the public eye. The full results are not important, because I won the mock draft and my team is all the results you need to see. I was drafting from the 9 spot and my first decision was choosing between Ryan Mathews and Rashard Mendenhall. no comments

Running with the BABIP/LD% theme, we'll take a look at Starting Pitchers who have experienced some bad luck in baseball's first half. We're looking for pitchers who have a high BABIP with a low Line Drive percentage. Pitchers who are giving up a lot of hits, but are not allowing batters to make a lot of solid contact. Guys like Wandy Rodríguez, James Shields, Jason Hammel, Aaron Harang and Randy Wells will not be found here. They are the starting rotation for the Aaron Hill All-Stars. Instead we have pitchers who are not creating their own back luck, but are victims to the randomness that is life. Some of them make for good Buy Low targets and some of them have just had some bad luck.