Week 21: Showdown

It was a busy Labor Day Weekend for all of those around Floored. Here are some of the photos that came my way

 Michael and Paul took an item off their bucket list by playing golf at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, CA. It is an ultra-private golf course on the Pacific Ocean that is ranked anywhere between #1 and #3 in the world. It was incredible.

Michael and Amina spent the rest of the weekend in San Francisco taking in a Giants game on Friday

Max and Dave did a double feature on Saturday, going to a Miami Hurricanes followed by a Marlins Game

Josh and Amber took a trip back to their old stomping grounds in southern California for a fantasy football draft…yes you read that right. Josh was the champ last year

There were so many ways I wanted to go with this blog, the final one of the year before the playoffs, I just couldn’t decide heading into the weekend (yes, I think about blog topics all week). But after the league chaos was set up for this week, I couldn’t divert the leagues attention away from the awesome-ness. So we’ll put off topics like trade analysis in review and how good projections really were this year into the Archive pile for the offseason when I have more time to dive in. For now, let’s reset what is going on.

TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	3.86	1	Dean	2.75	1	Michael	2.67		Max	Poorly* Managed
2	Brian/Josh	4.00	2	Arthur	3.38	2	Dave	3.33		Dean	Bitter Ender
3	Dean	4.43	3	Brian/Josh	3.38	3	Brian/Josh	4.83		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
4	Arthur	4.57	4	Michael	4.75	4	Matt	4.83		Paul	South Florida Gators
5	Dave	5.64	5	Max	5.50	5	Cory	5.17		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
6	Max	5.71	6	Keith	6.00	6	Max	6.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Cory	6.21	7	Cory	7.00	7	Arthur	6.17		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
8	Matt	6.36	8	Paul	7.13	8	Dean	6.67		Brian/Josh	Smoak Ish
9	Keith	6.50	9	Dave	7.38	9	Paul	7.17		Matt	615 for the win
10	Paul	7.14	10	Matt	7.50	10	Keith	7.17		Michael	Pic'em Pelham'ed

Michael has moved into first place in the Power Rankings. Dean and Arthur also bumped up a little bit. BJ’s slide continues here, they haven’t been able to find their way since late July. Dave passed Max again…hooray. Cory continues to try to put his best foot forward and made a jump from 9^th into 7^th off the bat of Rhys Hoskins, if you haven’t heard of him yet, check him out.

Most years, it’s pretty clear who is going to make the playoffs as we go down the stretch…not this year. It is a 5 team race as we enter THE LAST WEEK. No one has clinched a playoff birth, the top 5 teams are separated by 9.5 games. 21 weeks, 14 categories: 294 games, the top teams separated by 3%. That’s basically nothing. Brian and Josh are in first, Arthur sits 3 games back, Dave and Michael are tied 6.5 games back and Dean is 9.5 games back.

This week, two of these teams play each other, Arthur and Dave. A blowout win by one will likely knock the other out of the playoffs. BJ, Michael, and Dean are all varying levels of favorites this week against teams that are not in the playoffs, but Paul, Cory, and Max can all play the envious role of spoiler.

So what if people end up tied? Let’s break down what Yahoo has set up for tiebreakers. In a change from previous years, the tiebreaker is now the winning percentage of the final game-week of the year, so, this coming game-week. For example, if Michael and Dean end up tied, whoever had a higher winning percentage the last game of the year will get the playoff seed. If Michael loses 6-7, and Dean wins 10-3, they will be tied…but Dean will win the tiebreaker because he had a higher winning percentage the last week of the year. If Michael loses 8-5, and Arthur loses 2-11, they will be tied, but Michael would go on because he would have a higher winning percentage in the last week. And so on.

Given all the other sports activities that kicked up last weekend and now the NFL coming back this weekend, it was already an exciting time of year, but this finish is going to be awesome.

Looking back at the week that was, stats are down across the league. Hitters are tired, pitchers are injured, it’s just a brutal time of year to put a fantasy lineup together, which makes the playoff push all that much tougher. Knowing which regular contributor that has worn down (say, Andrew McCutchen) to bench in favor of up and comer (say, Dansby Swanson or the number one player the last 2 weeks, Jorge Polanco) is an incredibly hard thing to do. Pulling the right strings will win you a fantasy title.

The headline match of the week left Dave ‘REALLY Hat[ing] Fantasy.’ Dean put the long overdue smack down on Dave and felt a bit vindicated in the process. Dean hit .340 with 95 R+RBIs with the standard excellent strikeout performance. Dean streamed his pitchers well to a 3.6 ERA and sub 1.00 WHIP en route to the smack down. Dean also went through about 5 Sonny Gray-pun team names. Some of them were awesome, some were duds; we’ll call it a wash. Dave didn’t put up much offensively, but he tried hard on the pitching side, it just wasn’t enough. Dave did however gain enough ground back over the weekend to save his playoff spot for now. He will need to rebound quickly.

In the other beat down of the week Michael knocked off Matt. Michael had a good, if not stellar, week, but Matt just couldn’t quite put it together. Matt did hit 30 IP though and actually streamed the hell out of the week and used all 8 pickups. The win bumped Michael into 3^rd place in the Yahoo Standings and number 1 in the Power Rankings.

Arthur beat Cory but it was by a closer margin than it was looking like earlier in the week. Cory eeked out enough Categories to keep Arthur on edge heading into this last week. It was a good performance by Arthur: 78 R+RBI was a good number last week and a 2.75 ERA will go a long ways in the playoffs. Arthur will be a slight favorite this week in his matchup against Dave.

Brian and Josh edged out Keith, who somehow had a .335 average but only 6 HRs and 20 RBIs. Team BJ didn’t have a bad week, 10 HRs and 72 R+RBIs are good numbers right now, but 13 SBs is a great number to go along with a .286 average…maybe they have figured something out. Their pitching leaves much to be desired still though and they will be streaming starting pitchers heavily in the playoffs, just like their strategy all year long.

Paul beat Max while leading the league in HRs for the week. This past week closed out the August stats and Paul actually had the best pitching last month. He has some talent to put together a fight this week and a run at the Bourbon Street Championship. It will be a great competition.

One more week. Have some fun.