Week 12: The Internet Troll

The Urban Dictionary defines an internet troll as ‘a person who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.’

I will point everyone to a reply-all sent by a certain league member last week after the blog post about Strength of Schedule: “The chart is dumb. Dave is #1 and dominating mike again. ;)” Oh how the winkie face is used to save everything.

We had to initiate a league wide ‘probation’ a few years back about league communications and ya know what, the same person was involved. Granted, there was a tad bit more accusatory of a tone back then. I distinctly remember (OK I had to look it up) the words ‘class’ and ‘integrity’ being thrown out as not being present in a certain league waiver claim…really.  If you want to be an internet troll, go get a twitter page and tweet at celebrities. At least they can go read the tweets on Jimmy Kimmel. I don’t have the energy for your winkie faced veiled comments. If you want to yell at me about league policies being awful, text or email me directly; and believe me you all do. That’s the job, I can handle it. The blog is fun, if you don’t like it or think the charts are dumb, it sounds like you should go ask Dave how to be #1 and just hit the delete button when the next blog comes across….;)

With that out of the way let’s review last week:

Week 12 Year to Date Ranks:

	t			h			p			Manager	Team
1	Dave	2.571	1	Dave	2.125	1	Cory	2.333		Arthur	I give up
2	Cory	4.643	2	Michael	3.625	2	Dave	3.167		Max
3	BJ	4.786	3	BJ	4.250	3	Dean	4.167		Marcley
4	Michael	4.786	4	Marcley	4.750	4	Paul	4.667		BJ
5	Paul	5.071	5	Keith	5.000	5	Max	5.333		Keith
6	Dean	5.286	6	Paul	5.375	6	BJ	5.500		Paul
7	Marcley	5.571	7	Dean	6.125	7	Michael	6.333		Dean
8	Keith	6.571	8	Cory	6.375	8	Marcley	6.667		Cory
9	Max	7.500	9	Arthur	7.875	9	Arthur	7.167		Dave
10	Arthur	7.571	10	Max	9.125	10	Keith	8.667		Michael

The high end matchup of the week featured the second and third place teams in the standings, but as we saw in the Strength of Schedule Cory and Dean have been getting pretty lucky. Cory put up good hit/avg totals and of course good pitching numbers, and Dean just wasn’t able to keep up. Dean has slowed down lately and has fallen from a strong second place to a middling 6^th in the ranks.

Paul had a solid offensive week en route to a blowout of Marcley. Marcley didn’t do much right last week and even got a little unlucky not to get a few pitching Ws. Chalk it up, try again next week. Both of these teams are in the middle class of league talent right now, needing to find some good performances to keep up with the Joneses. This was not the week for either, but Paul escapes with the win.

Max edged out Keith, but really this was Keith beating himself. Max threw a bunch of starters as Keith had a bad ERA which led to Max racking up the Ks and getting enough good performances to win 5 of the 6 pitching categories. He also won Ks which hasn’t happen very much this year. That’s a good sign for his team. Keith’s rank actually got better this week after a good offensive week, but his pitching needs help if he wants to make a move in the second half of the year.

Brian and Josh edged Arthur in what was a broadly swinging matchup late into Sunday. I saw BJ up big, then I saw this matchup tied, and it looks like BJ won enough of the close categories to edge out a much needed win. They sit third in the rankings yet they are 9^th in the Standings. Plenty of team talent here but they will need to get some better results to move up into the playoff race. In the week of Arthur’s race to 2017, he actually dropped a Cubs prospect that wasn’t playing. Many of his pickups over the last 8 weeks are being called up now. Time will tell if they are any good.

Dave squeaked by Michael in another back and forth Sunday matchup. Both of these teams put up Monster numbers that would have earned blowouts against most of the league this week. Michael had his highest ever output of HRs with 19 and 97 Runs and RBIs combined, crazy. Dave had elite performances from his starters and relievers en route to an 8 save, 1.13 ERA wee; high end production from an elite team when he needed it.

Monster of the Week: Dave’s team, numbers that haven’t been said yet, 86 Runs and RBIs combined as well as 81 Hits and .305 AVG. Monster week.

Max of the Week: I’ve done enough player hating for one day