Week 1: Monsters and Maxes of the Offseason

Brian and Josh while reading the Draft Recap last weekend

There was a lot of potential blog topics today, I could choose from anything between first week injury drama (Trea Turner, Gary Sanchez, Adrian Beltre, Rich Hill, Roberto Osuna, Jackie Bradley, etc), the dichotomy of first week performances (the best teams were far better than the worst teams last week), and the Monsters and Maxes of the Offseason. As you can see by the title, we’re diving into the Monsters and Maxes, so let’s get it going.

First off, a refresher at what the Monsters and Maxes are for the weekly blog

Monster: a managerial move, player breakout, or overall team performance that was fantastic. For example, a well-executed streamed pitcher on Sunday or a decision to bench a pitcher on a weekend when the categories are close, a player hitting a ton of HRs in a week, or a team just putting up overall great numbers.

Max: a Max is a move that just makes you shake your head. Made famous for our dearest friend Max that has just had a few lapses in fantasy judgement over the years. Examples include, forgetting about setting your lineup for days and weeks on end, leaving DL eligible players active on your lineup, dropping good players, adding bad players (yes some of these are open to interpretation). Things that are NOT a Max: judgement calls that don’t work out like streaming or benching a player, speculating on a pick up that doesn’t work out that had sound reasoning behind it, a team playing poorly.

For the purposes of this discussion the time frame for these will be anything between the last day of the regular season 2016 to opening day 2017, including the draft 2 weeks ago.

2017 Preseason Monsters:

Keith: Keith came into the offseason a little deficient in the keeper area. He had two viable, but less than ideal keepers, but like everyone else, he had a full draft worth of picks to trade. Keith took advantage of his picks available and capitalized on them by picking up high end keeper Anthony Rizzo. Rizzo went slightly below what has been established as ‘market value’ for the expiring keeper with first round value. He also avoided a potential disaster when fielding counter offers for his draft picks. One such offer was for Ian Desmond who then hurt himself a few days later.

Arthur: Arthur had a surplus of keepers and was able to move a mid level keeper in Kyle Schwarber for mid level draft pick. After this weekend’s Gary Sanchez injury Arthur may be regretting selling-off his Catcher, but it doesn’t change the analysis that this was a good trade.

Paul and Keith: these two have been harping on me since the beginning of the league for all sorts of rule changes at one time or another. Well this March, they got a big one, increasing the innings pitched minimum from 20 to 30 Innings. The downstream effects of this rule change are still being determined, but the change itself has clearly had a major effect in league interest and planning. It seemed like everyone cared deeply about it one way or another and was trying to strategize on draft day around it. I love seeing things like this happen.

2017 Preseason Maxes

Keith: after his awesome Rizzo trade, Keith then didn’t even submit Rizzo as a keeper leading into the keeper submittal deadline. Well Played

Dean: Dean was also what I would have called keeper deficient. He had Toronto closer Roberto Osuna as a lower level keeper available, but I mean cmon, who ACTUALLY wants to keep a mid-level closer? OK, Osuna maybe be a back-half-of-the-top-10 closer, but still. Dean wasn’t able to make a trade happen to get a keeper when there were some teams out there with keepers to sell.

Cory: speaking of teams with keepers to sell. Cory didn’t make a deal happen either. I get it, trading is hard and annoying, but is it THAT hard? A quick look behind the curtain and I’ll tell you Keith and I got our Rizzo trade done in a single email…no big deal. Cory had a ton of valuable keepers worth trading, but was left holding them at the deadline with no extra picks.

Max and team BJ: shout out to the self recognition here, and of course Dave for calling Max out. Leaving guys on the bench on Opening Day when there was no one playing. Tsk tsk tsk. Even AFTER I had reminded everyone to get their guys in. Dudes.

And we’re off. Week 1 is in the books and we have a new name atop the Power Rankings. The blog is getting kind of long so we’ll save a full explanation of this for another time:

	TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING			Manager	Team
1	Max	3.643	1	Max	2.625	1	Matt	2.333		Max	My Story Begins
2	Matt	4.357	2	Keith	3.875	2	Michael	3.333		Dean	Closing the Door
3	Michael	4.500	3	Dean	4.375	3	Cory	3.500		Arthur	DOMINATION
4	Keith	4.714	4	Arthur	4.500	4	Max	5.000		Paul	Soutth Florida Gators
5	Arthur	5.000	5	Michael	5.375	5	Dave	5.500		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
6	Cory	5.214	6	Dave	5.750	6	Arthur	5.667		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Dean	5.429	7	Matt	5.875	7	Keith	5.833		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
8	Dave	5.643	8	Brian/Josh	6.000	8	Brian/Josh	6.500		Brian/Josh	Alternative Stats
9	Brian/Josh	6.214	9	Cory	6.500	9	Dean	6.833		Matt	615 for the win
10	Paul	7.857	10	Paul	7.875	10	Paul	7.833		Michael	Pic'em Pelhma'ed

Week 1 recaps (I’ll keep these short and to the point)

Max defeated Cory in the headline matchup of the week: Max is number one in the power rankings. Watch out. I aaaaactually kinda like his team (crosses himself like he was walking into Catholic Mass). Cory was part of the week 1 flops hitting .221 for the week

Michael and Keith tied. Womp Womp. Keith’s offense was on point but his pitching faltered over the weekend…yet still had 7 wins. Michael’s relief pitching strategy has worked through one week, but his offense also was pretty bad, .231 AVG.

Arthur beat Brian and Josh, though I would by no means call it a domination. You hit .263 and had a 3.60 ERA, Arthur. Settle down. Team BJ just wasn’t very good here. Chalk it up and try again next week.

Dean barely beat Matt, but Matt was the overall better performer relative to the league as a whole, coming in at 2 in the week 1 Power Rankings. Matt’s team pitched very well. Dean’s pitching strategy has not worked out through one week, after a few bad pitching starts Dean was left to chase Wins and pitching Strikeouts. It didn’t end up well for his other pitching numbers. Matt can learn from this matchup by noticing Dean streaming pitchers and try to compete with him in Strikeouts.

Dave stomped Paul pretty hard, but it didn’t look too pretty getting there. Dave comes in a number 8 in the week 1 Power Rankings, but he picked a good week to play Paul who came in at 10. Not much to say here, these teams weren’t very good. Paul ended up hitting below .200 on the week, not sure I’ve ever seen that. Well…played?

Monster of the Week: with a hat tip to JT Realmuto who played a huge role in Keith’s offensive breakout and what I thought was a smart drop by team BJ to cut bait quickly on Byron Buxton, the Monster has to be My Story Begins (Max). This team put up gaudy numbers nearly across the board most notably with 42 R/19 HR/45 RBI. Max is off to a huge start and Trevor Story and Alex Bregman didn’t even do anything.

Max of the Week: I won’t roast Matt for not playing the pitching matchup with Dean quite right, live and learn. I want to call out Dave for picking up Joey Gallo because…cmon…we know what he is now, but I won’t. So I’ll just call it a nothing for now, No Max this week in honor of his dominance of the rest of us minions.