Week 4: Who is your MLB Team Doppleganger?

Dean (pictured with a tiny head in the middle of the photo and sunglasses) took his pregnant wife up to a cabin in the middle of the woods this weekend with college friends. What could have gone wrong?

Michael’s cat, Diesel, is a stud muffin and loves to show you why.

Year to Date Power Ranks through this week
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	3.00	1	Michael	2.38	1	Brian/Josh	2.17		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
2	Paul	4.50	2	Dean	3.00	2	Paul	3.00		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
3	Brian/Josh	5.14	3	Matt	4.25	3	Cory	3.67		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
4	Cory	5.21	4	Arthur	5.00	4	Dave	3.67		Brian/Josh	Smoak That Ish
5	Arthur	5.29	5	Keith	5.50	5	Michael	3.83		Paul	CWS champion Gators
6	Dave	5.57	6	Paul	5.63	6	Arthur	5.67		Dean	Future father
7	Dean	5.79	7	Cory	6.38	7	Keith	7.17		Matt	615 for the win
8	Matt	5.79	8	Dave	7.00	8	Max	7.50		Max	this is stressful
9	Keith	6.21	9	Brian/Josh	7.38	9	Matt	7.83		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
10	Max	7.57	10	Max	7.63	10	Dean	9.50		Michael	The Flooded Farm

Michael made another move up the ranks this week jumping to a lead of 1.5 Power Ranks Points. The last two teams to have a Power Ranks lead of 1.5 haven’t fared so well the rest of the year. Dean had a lead of 1.5 in 2017 week 8, but then  didn’t even hold Power Ranks lead by end of the year and missed the playoffs.  Dave held a 1.5 point lead in 2016 throughout most of the year and as late as week 17, but after a slow slide for most of the summer he was bounced in first round of playoffs. Needless to say, Michael is not resting on his laurels, one month in.

Contrastingly there is still plenty of hope for the lower ranked teams. Every year there is someone from those ranked 6 to 8 that make a jump into the top tier by the end of the year. As far back as 2013, Paul and Dave, who were ranked 9^th and 10^th four weeks in, both finished the year in the top five as well. Don’t give up, Max!

This week I’m going to do something a little differently. I’m going to dive into some MLB-at-large items. This was at the request of two of our special blog readers, so thanks to you two for your input.

Baseball season is 20% over already, can you believe it? Teams that were projected to be at the middle to bottom of the pack are near the front of it (see, Phillies, Braves, Pirates), while some teams that were projected well have floundered a bit (Nationals, Dodgers, Twins). The same can be said for our fantasy league. Coming out of the draft, I ran the Depth Chart Projections for everyone’s projected starting lineups to see who had the best team coming out of the draft. These numbers are a bit different than what Yahoo was showing in the draft room because 1) Yahoo uses what in my opinion is a garbage projection system (more on that in a future blog) and 2) Yahoo uses all your drafted players to compile the numbers shown in the draft room instead of available starting roster positions (just because you have 4 bench hitters and you were showing a big lead in Home Runs they can’t all play at the same time and hit all those Home Runs for you). Let’s compare how some notable teams are doing compared to similar MLB teams.

Here were the projected END OF SEASON power rankings coming out of the draft:

	POWER RANK VALUE – post draft	POWER RANK – post draft		POWER RANK VALUE – 4 weeks in	POWER RANK – 4 weeks in
Dean	4.07	1		5.79	7
Michael	4.07	1		3.00	1
Dave	4.21	3		5.57	6
Cory	4.50	4		5.21	4
Max	5.92	5		7.57	10
Paul	6.21	6		4.5	2
Arthur	6.28	7		5.29	5
Matt	6.35	8		5.79	8
BJ	6.57	9		5.14	3
Keith	6.64	10		6.21	9

The hot starters:

Michael is off to a blistering start, mostly thanks to a number of hitters that are far outperforming expectations. Michael is the Braves (imagine that). The Braves have gotten unpredicted production from Ryan Flaherty, Preston Tucker, Ozzie Albies, and Mike Foltyneiwicz. Similar to Michael, they will not continue at their current paces, but being ahead of the pack one month is still something to enjoy.

Paul is the Cardinals. The Cards were projected middle of the pack but are already 15-10 with a well balanced team and a mishapen bullpen. Paul only drafted one player that was a closer on opening day, but he has one of the best Elite RP bullpens in the league. Josh Hader is the new Andrew Miller, Chris Devenski throws plenty of innings and will get the occasional save, and Archie Bradley does everything. Plenty of staying power with this team.

Brian and Josh are the Mets, led by a pitching staff that had injury questions coming in with Jacob DeGrom, Jose Berrios, and Dylan Bundy. All are clicking and have been draft pick HITS. As long as this group stays healthy there is no reason this can’t be one of the best rotions in the league, although that’s more because they have Max Scherzer than anything.

The as-expecteds:

Cory is the Angels. There was plenty of buzz about this team preseason with the signings of Shoehei Ohtani and the acquisitions of Ian Kinsler and Zach Cozart, but there was some fear in spring training that they may not live up to expectations. The same goes for Cory, someone in this blog was throwing shade at Rhys Hoskins a few weeks ago and was wary of JD Martinez in his DH role, but all has been well for this team so far. The Angels are over 500 and Cory sits in 4^th place.

I really wanted to make Arthur the Yankees, but he was projected 7^th coming out of the draft and has slightly exceeded expectations, so that’s a no go. Arthur is the Giants. The Giants have one of the biggest MLB fanbases and Arthur always has the loudest team name. The Giants were supposed to be middling to bad this year, but both they and Arthur have been pretty good. Mac Williamson, Evan Longoria, and a good pitching staff are propelling the Giants to 500 ball while Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge and Patrick Corbin are leading Arthur. Each of these teams could go either way the rest of the year.

Matt is his Nashville Predators. They just keep doing the damn thing and winning playoff series. Matt’s fantasy team is doing just about exactly what he was supposed to do. So we’re gonna focus on the Predators.

Keith is the Marlins. They weren’t supposed to do much this year but fight like hell and have some fun while doing it. Neither team gets many saves either. Keith actually just had a monstrous offensive week so I’m mostly kidding here about being the Marlins. Keith has one of the breakout players of the year in Didi Gregorious and a stud in Jose Altuve. The Marlins have…well…Marlins Man, always out to seek the truth to the Marlins Organization’s lies.

The underperformers

Dave is the Nationals. Projected well to start the year with some heavy hitting starting pitching, things just haven’t come together yet for these two. The Nationals are dealing with injuries to Adam Eaton and Anthony Rendon and a questionable bullpen (not including their closer Doolittle), while Dave is very healthy but is dealing with a Chris Archer and now-departed Edwin Encanacion problem. There is plenty of talent on both of these teams but the manager will need to make the puzzle pieces fit to make the playoffs. The NL East is much harder than it was supposed to be.

Dean is the Twins. The Twins didn’t want to pay up for pitching in the off season and Dean didn’t want to pay up for starting pitching at the draft, but both are paying for it now. Dean has been very injured to compound some draft day mistakes so this team has some room for improvement when his guys come back. Meanwhile the Twins are relying on Miguel Sano and Logan Morrison so things are a bit more bleak for them.

Max is the Padres. They had some hype in the preseason and came into opening day with some fire under them, but it just hasn’t panned out yet. Free agent acquisition Eric Hosmer has been the only player to put much together offensively just as Free Agent add Asdrubal Cabrera is the only hitter for Max ranked in the top 140. Max got unlucky with a ton of draft busts to this point as well as injuries, so things are likely to turn around as his guys get healthier and return to form.

That’s enough for one week. Most of the matchups were pretty close and there wasn’t any single monstrous producer. Keep playing well next week, everyone!