Week 15: A Peek into the Standings and Playoff Race


We don’t like to focus on the Yahoo league standings much here in Floored Fantasy Baseball League Blog-land. Standings are fluky...for some part. You are only in as good of a position in the Yahoo standings as your opponents have been hot. Just ask team BJ (yes, this week they are BJ). BJ has been locked into the middle tier of the Power Rankings for the entire year, yet they have slowly slipped in the Yahoo Standings. Why is this? Well, this year I dove into creating a Strength of Schedule chart and we’ve been able to see how hard of a schedule they’ve played.

‘Why bring this up?’ you say. ‘That was the blog a month ago.’ Yes, indeed it was. Well I bring it up because BJ fell out of it this week. They fell flat on their face in the bright spotlight of facing the number one team, Dave. BJ got shut out 13-0. Dave had a fine week, nothing earth shattering but perhaps a slight improvement over his recent stretch. BJ had a bad week after a recent push they had made to be the number 2 team in the Power Rankings. This is nothing new to BJ. If you look at their week-by-week ranks you’ll see more volatility than in any other team. Even late into the year it has been normal for them to jump or fall by as much as a full 1.000 in the Power Rankings. Well that kind of fall happened last week and now they sit 23.5 games out of first place and with 5 teams in the way they would need to vastly outplay to reach the playoffs, it is likely over. Bad Luck and Volatility caught up with them.

Elsewhere in the rankings Cory and Dean are the latest teams to make a break out of the middle class. They also sit somewhat comfortably in the standings. Barring a collapse, these teams are likely playoff bound.

The real battle appears to be coming down to that 4th spot between Paul and Michael.  Paul stopped his downward trend last week on the heels of hot-performing pickups Justin Turner, Max Kepler, as well as team studs Nelson Cruz and DJ Lemahieu. Paul’s bullpen is also elite and is a matchup dilemma with low innings pitched and equally low ERAs week in and week out. Michael meanwhile stubbed his toe last week ending his upward momentum that had been building for a number of weeks. Michael has now turned to two hot prospects to try to turn the tide, you can bet Max is lurking waiting to pick them up off of waivers. Paul has an 11 game edge and a markedly easier schedule down the stretch. Michael is hoping he can keep the race tight enough going into the last week when the two face off to have a sudden death matchup for the playoff spot.

There are 7 weeks left in the regular season. Put up or Shut up.

All but one of the matchups was basically a wash, and I already dug into that one, so we’ll pass on the recaps this week. Numbers across the league were kinda eh. Arthur and Cory stole a bunch of bases, Keith won a ridiculous amount of games, Paul’s ERA was solid, Dave and BJ both couldn’t buy but one win, Max and Marcley were both pretty bad and it appears that Marcley didn’t meet the minimum pitching requirements again. I may have to lock his team for competitive balance sake, by the end of the year it will have been close to an even 9 weeks of him being a dead team, in that case all is fair.

Monster of the Week: props to all the ballsy drops this week: Huston Street, Carlos Gomez, Felix Hernandez, Yasiel Puig, AJ Reed and Lucas Giolito (for various reasons). Sometimes cutting a player that has previously been of enormous value to you is the hardest thing to do in fantasy. The good fantasy players know when it is time….no it is NOT time on Chris Archer or Jason Heyward thank you very much

Max of the Week: Arthur misplayed the pitching trying to catch me in wins and lost ER, ERA, and WHIP in the process but I wouldn’t put it to the level of a Max. He went for it, I just disagree with the strategy and it didn’t work. The real Max is BJ, they picked up a pitcher to try to get a win on Sunday…and then didn’t put him in the game…and then he won. Well played sirs. They are already the heavy favorite for the number one pick, though.

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