Week 2: Power Rankings, Injuries, and Trash Talk

Cory was in Atlanta last weekend and I passed the trophy on to him. It was the prize of the bar.

Keep sending me photos of you doing fun things out and about, I’d like to keep a new fun photo in here every week but eventually I’ll run out and this will be a blog with photos of my dog. 

Two weeks are in the books, and whattya know, Max is still atop the power rankings; but the league overall is much more tightly bunched together. For a refresher, lets talk about what these Power Rankings mean. Yahoo tracks the year-to-date stats (updated at the end of every matchup week) on the home League page under the Standings tab (drop down menu that shows Current Standings/Head-to-Head stats). I have an excel sheet set up that I can copy these standings into, and then calculate the typical ‘Rotisserie’ fantasy standings. There are 14 categories, 10 teams in the league. Each team is ranked in each of the categories between 1 and 10. Ties are allowed and calculated. The best team gets a score of 1, the worst team a score of 10 in each of these 14 categories. The overall power ranking is the average of a team’s score across the 14 categories. In the below table, I also show the hitting and pitching power rankings. These are the average between the 8 hitting categories and the 6 pitching categories.

Week 2 Power Rankings

	TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING			Manager	Team
1	Max	3.643	1	Max	3.500	1	Matt	3.667		Max	My Story Begins
2	Michael	4.214	2	Keith	3.875	2	Max	3.833		Dean	Closing the Door
3	Keith	5.071	3	Michael	3.875	3	Cory	4.167		Arthur	DOMINATION
4	Arthur	5.286	4	Dean	5.500	4	Michael	4.667		Paul	South Florida Gators
5	Dean	5.357	5	Brian/Josh	5.500	5	Arthur	4.833		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
6	Brian/Josh	5.571	6	Arthur	5.625	6	Dean	5.167		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Dave	5.643	7	Paul	5.625	7	Dave	5.667		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
8	Cory	5.643	8	Dave	5.625	8	Brian/Josh	5.667		Brian/Josh	Alternative Stats
9	Matt	5.643	9	Cory	6.750	9	Keith	6.667		Matt	615 for the win
10	Paul	6.929	10	Matt	7.125	10	Paul	8.667		Michael	Pic'em Pelham'ed

Through 2 weeks, Max is still atop the rankings led by his hitting. Paul was the big gainer on the week though going from nearly 8.000 up to 6.929.  Matt fell from 4.357 to 5.643. No huge takeaways here, one week of fantasy is an incredibly small sample, so two weeks isn’t much better. My big takeaway remains to be all the injuries across the fantasy landscape. Buster Posey headlined the list this week but the point is that all of us will be faced with tough decisions this year with the 10 day Disabled List rule in MLB. Do you cut a guy if your DL slots are full? Each decision will be different.

Moving on to the week recaps…

Max was once again a part of the headline matchup, losing to Dave in a matchup that came down to the last MLB game of the week.  Neither of these offenses were very good but Max’s pitching won out in the end after Dave’s streaming pitcher Adam Wainwright floundered on Sunday night.  The way that Dave and Max played the pitching was highly suspect on Sunday, this may get a shout out later.

Michael tied Brian and Josh after the Beej mounted a huge comeback over the weekend. Team Alternative Stats’ offense was on fire over the weekend bringing their average from around .230 on Friday morning up to .298 by the end of the week. Michael’s pitching also faltered over the weekend with an ERA of 0.70 through his first 20 innings pitched up to 3.44 by the end of the week. Josh Waring was letting Michael have it over a spirited text thread that was tough for Michael to handle as his 11-3 lead fizzled to a 7-7 tie from Friday to Sunday.

Matt came up just short against Arthur in a matchup that had some pretty poor hitting but great pitching. Both teams hit in the .220s for the week but had ERAs under 3.00. Notably in this matchup Yoenis Cespedes hit 5 HRs last week, but seeing as Matt didn’t win, it takes him out of Monster of the Week contention. For Arthur, Bryce Harper continues to look like MVP Bryce Harper.

Cory beat Dean in a matchup between two teams that were fairly evenly matched. Nearly every category was up for grabs on Sunday but Cory just edged Dean out in enough to get the W. Again, it was unexciting offense and good pitching for both of these teams. Dean was able to stream much more effectively this week to keep his pitching numbers competitive. He did lose another closer to the DL though with Zach Britton…good thing he has 6 closers plus Andrew Miller….what? why?

Paul beat Keith in a huge bounceback win after last week. Paul will arise from his Tax Season slumber to find himself in the top half of the league standings and a red hot Marcel Ozuna and Ender Inciarte on his team. These two teams have great offenses right now but their pitching leaves something to be desired. Both these teams hit .300 on the week but had ERAs above 5.

Monster of the Week: Michael’s Eric Thames and Matt’s Cespedes had 5 HRs last week, which was cool, but they didn’t even win their matchups. Dean made some pretty great streaming moves to keep his ERA in check. After going through the matchups, there were no pull-away winners nor any one move or player that led someone to victory. No monster.

Max of the Week: is it too soon to call people out for owning prospects with no clear path to the majors any time soon? I’ll be cool and not call this manager out yet, but c’mon man. Don’t be a Max and own minor leaguers.