Week 21: Final Week Preview

One week to go, that’s it. The playoff teams are fairly well locked in, but the seeds they will hold is far from known.  In current (official) order, the Championship bracket is projected to be Dave, Dean, Paul, and Cory. Remember Dave has that 3 game buffer that Yahoo won’t let me fix after the China Basin Innings Pitched incident a few weeks ago. The consolation bracket is shaping up to be Michael, Brian and Josh, Keith, and Max.

What is interesting is the matchups for this week: each team is playing their main competitor for a playoff spot or seed.

Dave plays Dean in a matchup for the number one seed witjh two teams heading completely different directions. Dean has made a run from 5^th in the power rankings up to 2^nd in 4 weeks. Meanwhile Dave’s stay better than 3.000 in the ranks is over, a sign of his team’s second half slide. I made a few observations related to what happened here that I will dive into in next week’s playoff matchup previews.

Keith plays ‘China Basin Bombers’ in a week that CBB is projected to reach the 20 IP minimum. Keith must manage wisely to maintain is 4.5 game lead on China (after the 3 game reduction) and 6 game lead on Arthur.

Arthur plays Max in another big battle for the consolation bracket standing. Arthur’s team is playing much better than a last place team right now but dug himself in a fairly deep hole at the beginning of the year.

In the two Matchups that had some luster a month ago, but has now devolved into only meaningful for 2 of the 4 teams’ seeding, Paul faces Michael and Cory opposes BJ. Cory and Paull will both be trying to maneuver to avoid playing Dean in the first round. With Dean the favorite this week, that means the 3 seed is the place to be. Cory and Paul will both be trying to win their matchups.

In the weeks to come we’ll have some playoff previews and some early off-season keeper trading outlooks, because that’s all some of us have to play for. I also have some ideas for some more strategy articles, if you have any nuggets you want me to dive into, let me know.

Last week’s high level observations:

Michael is absolutely killing it right now. Last week he hit .330 with 107 R+RBI, 17 HRs and 9 SB. Michael overpowered Dave and was threatening to shut him out 14-0 heading into Sunday. Dave held on to enough categories to squash any Moon Shot that Michael had in mind for the week to make the playoffs.

Dean is also very hot, his SP have remained steady and elite while everyone else’s SP have kinda sucked. Cory is not playing very well right now and is lucky that he doesn’t have much to play for this week. He has one week to get hot for the playoffs.

Paul came back to Earth this week but had some elite pitching to beat up on China Basin.

Keith came up in the clutch to beat down an overwhelmed Max team. With numbers like he put up last week Keith could be a contender for the #1 pick in the consolation bracket.

Arthur kept the train rolling last week, but played a very weak BJ team to a draw. Enough close categories went BJ’s way to make the tie happen.

Monster of the Week: Michael. No need to repeat the stats, but it is quite a run that this team is on, offensively at least. Getting production across the board but Brian Dozier, Albert Pujols, Alex Bregman, and even Justin Upton are outright killing it over the last month. Last week the pitching stepped up as well. If only the playoffs were still possible.

Max of the Week: I don’t have time to dive into all the matchups category by category, but I see a lot of close ones that probably could have been swayed by a move or two. You know who you are, consider this a free pass from being called out.

Go get em this last week.