Week 14: Prospects R'Us and the Max of League History

	t			h			p			Manager	Team
1	Dave	2.857	1	Dave	2.500	1	Cory	2.833		Arthur	I give up
2	BJ	4.000	2	BJ	3.000	2	Dean	3.167		Max
3	Cory	4.500	3	Michael	3.250	3	Dave	3.333		Marcley
4	Dean	4.643	4	Marcley	5.500	4	Paul	4.167		BJ
5	Michael	4.643	5	Dean	5.750	5	BJ	5.333		Keith
6	Paul	5.357	6	Cory	5.750	6	Max	6.167		Paul
7	Marcley	6.357	7	Keith	5.875	7	Michael	6.500		Dean
8	Keith	7.000	8	Paul	6.250	8	Arthur	6.833		Cory
9	Max	7.571	9	Arthur	8.250	9	Marcley	7.500		Dave
10	Arthur	7.643	10	Max	8.625	10	Keith	8.500		Michael

It has become that time of year. No, not the All Star Break, the prospect call-up-athon. The Super-2 deadline has passed and now major league clubs are bringing up their shiny new toys left and right. Aren't Arthur and Max thrilled? OK mostly this year it’s Arthur.

Since mid-June, big name prospects including Trea Turner, Joey Gallo, Josh Bell, Jamison Taillon, Tyler Glasnow, Lucas Giolito, Julio Urias, Wilson Contreras, and AJ Reed; at least those are the ones that caught my eye. Each has gotten different levels of opportunity at the big league level to varying levels of minimal success. Dean brought up THE point about prospects in a league like ours in last week's blog: the best keepers are almost never second year players. Carlos Correa is a shining example of a great keeper in March that has settled back to the pack. Players like Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Mookie Betts, and Xander Bogaerts that continue their breakout into the second year are the exception to the rule, not the plan to strategize your team by.  

I don't bring this up to belabor a point, to be honest I'm getting tired of it and am probably not going to talk about it the rest of the year. If you’ve been reading this blog this year you know how I feel. The problem is the competitive separation it makes in our unbalanced schedule where not everyone plays the same teams the same number of times. We have a keeper league in name, but not in practicality. Keeping 3 players out of 21 to start your yearly roster is a bonus, not a reason to give up in week 5. Arthur has been turning it around since Week 11 because his baseline talent of Jose Abreu etc is sound. He is the 7^th best team the last 4 weeks, not the last place team he appears to be in the year to date standings/rankings. If he hadn’t started adding triple A players in week 5 or trading away his best players for prospects he would be contending…THIS year. The Trea Turner and Tyler Glasnow pickups a month before their call-up are flashy, but the chances of hitting on that call just don’t outweigh the burden it puts on your team.

OK I’m done. I’d be happier to let everyone run their teams the way they want if we had a less-luck-driven and opponent-driven league. Unfortunately, who you play and when you play them matters. It kept me out of the playoffs last year and is looking like BJ and myself won’t both be able to overcome rough early season scheduling again.

Since it’s the All-Star break, there will be two blogs this week. Later this week, with the assist of Cory who is doing some research for me, there will be another blog digging into some statistical abnormalities we are seeing so far this year and what conclusions we can draw for the second half.

Since the opening ran long, I’ll finish up this blog post with a quick check of the rankings. Dave’s year to date lead on the league is decreasing by the week, the injuries are piling up but the end is in sight for his DL-full roster.  Maybe one day he can explain why out-indefinitely Hunter Pence has been kept rostered while he has 5 guys hurt, though. BJ has emerged as the number two team, time will tell if they can continue their jump up the rankings, just 4 weeks ago they were in 7^th. Next, the middle tier has evolved into a 3 team grouping of Cory, Dean, and Michael. The hottest team is Michael who has been the best team in the league over the last 4 weeks, it has gained him little ground in the rankings though due to facing some very high-performing opponents. Paul is trending downward slowly and Marcley is suffering his summer swoon. Over the last 4 weeks Marcley has been the worst team in the league. In the bottom tier Keith and Arthur have leveled off, meaning that they have improved from prior performance, leaving Max teetering on the brink of last place status, despite his competitive place in the yahoo standings. With the return of Dee Gordon in a few weeks Max is by no means eliminated from the playoff picture, he sits a mere 21 games out of 4^th place. He will need a good pickup or three though, and continued good luck in scheduling to make this run. It can happen. He is in prime contention for monster move of the year buying high on Wil Myers.

Monster of the Week: Dean received a nomination for his comeback Sunday, but this wasn’t through any Monstrous move he made other than a good pickup of Kenta Maeda a week earlier, not quite a qualifier. Cory deserves a nod for thumping the first place Dave, but as this matchup shows and I discussed earlier, Dave is not a first place team right now. Neither team’s numbers were overly impressive or Monstrous here, but wait, I think Jeurys Familia just got three more saves while I was writing that sentence. Monster of the week goes to team Brian and Josh. 16 HRs, .338 AVG, combined 95 R/RBI, 8 SB. Huge numbers. This team has been extremely streaky and yet dangerous all year. Watch out.

Max of the week. Max of the YEAR. MAX OF THE LEAGUE HISTORY, hands down: this one slipped under my radar until just now. Josh Marcley did not meet the innings pitched requirements and forfeited all pitching categories! It appears Arthur beat him in all of them anyway, but Josh, cmon man.