Week 18: What Have We Learned

Brian wento the Bahamas with Papa Cleaver and caught some impressive Mahi

Josh and his wife, Amber, finished off a week long vacation with a Taylor Swift concert in Atlanta. Michael and Amina got to puppy sit for their dog, Polo, while Josh and Amber were in town for the night and had a blast. (side note: the selfie game is strong here, well done).

Power Ranks Year to Date through this Week
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	3.21	1	Michael	3.50	1	Brian/Josh	2.50		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
2	Cory	4.14	2	Cory	3.75	2	Dave	2.83		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
3	Paul	4.29	3	Dean	3.75	3	Michael	2.83		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
4	Brian/Josh	4.86	4	Paul	3.88	4	Cory	4.67		Brian/Josh	Smoak That Ish
5	Dave	5.00	5	Matt	4.13	5	Paul	4.83		Paul	AT Tax Man
6	Dean	5.57	6	Arthur	5.75	6	Arthur	5.83		Dean	First Future father
7	Matt	5.71	7	Dave	6.63	7	Max	7.00		Matt	615 for the win
8	Arthur	5.79	8	Brian/Josh	6.63	8	Matt	7.83		Max	Expand the Graph
9	Max	7.86	9	Keith	7.88	9	Dean	8.00		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
10	Keith	7.93	10	Max	8.50	10	Keith	8.00		Michael	The Flooded Farm

Power Ranks Recap: Max is out of the basement! The graph is back to its original from and Max is back on it. Keith is trending the wrong way and needs to step it up to prevent falling off of it. Michael took a big step forward this week. The middle tier maintained its jumbled mess. The other big overservation I had was that Matt’s 8 straight upward trend weeks came to an end, he finally took a step back in the power ranks.

Standings Recap: There are 4 teams within 9 games of 4^th place with 4 weeks left. Paul has a bit of a lead on the tier of BJ, Arthur, and Dean. They are all still alive, though. It’s a bit early to analyze schedules remaining but each week will be an opportunity for these 4 teams to stake their claim to the last playoff spot.

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At the end of the trade bidding war season how each of us handled the run-up to the fantasy year told us a lot about who we were all high and low on. Here were the conclusions that were reachable by the end of the pre-season and how those opinions have fared. Remember, most keeper decisions are no brainers (for example, of course BJ was going to keep Jose Ramirez).

Manager	Player	Opinion	Right/Wrong/Other
Michael	Noah Syndergaard Tommy Pham	Going to be healthy He’s good	Half to mostly right Half
Dave	Matt Olson Yu Darvish	He’s good He’s bad/injured	Wrong Right
Arthur	Jonathan Schoop Justin Verlander	Too good of keeper value not to keep, but not awesome He’s done/not good	Right Wrong (one of the worst keeper decisions in hind sight, also shame on the rest of us for not going after him, too)
Paul	Lorenzo Cain Brian Dozier	He’s a good keeper value He’s a good keeper value	Right Half
Dean	Elvis Andrus Ender Inciarte JD Martinez Anthony Rendon	He’s a good keeper value He’s a good keeper value Not a good keeper value Not a good keeper value	Injured, so N/A Wrong Wrong Wrong …it hasn’t been a good year for Dean
Matt	Yu Darvish	He’s good	Wrong
Keith	Dallas Keuchel JT Realmuto	He’s good He’s good	Half Right
Max	Robbie Ray Daniel Murphy	He’s kinda good, but I wouldn’t mind trading him away He’ll bounce back to pre-injury form	Half Very Wrong
Cory	Noah Syndergaard Rafael Devers Lorenzo Cain Jose Quintana Rhys Hoskins	He’s going to get injured Poised for a breakout Not a good keeper value Not a good keeper value Was a good keeper with a high ceiling	Half to mostly wrong Mostly wrong Wrong Right Right
Brian/Josh	Corey Seager Marcell Ozuna Andrew Benintendi	Will be fine through injury The breakout was legit He is not as good of a keeper as Ozuna	Wrong Wrong Very Wrong (probably the second worst keeper decision but trades were offered for him, BJ played the decision of who would be their final keeper very close to the vest, Ozuna was floated in trade offers more)

In conclusion, we were all very wrong very often. Most of the errors were understandable, I wouldn’t have hated on too many of the conclusions that were reached. The one exception was Andrew Benintendi. He broke out last year and was proving to be a Floored All Star. BJ chose to keep the higher power ceiling guy in Marcell Ozuna and instead Michael drafted Benintendi who has been a top 10 ranked player most of the year. 

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Max won the name game this week as he and Arthur exchanged jabs via their team names throughout the week: Max started with Harper over Rated, Arthur resorted to cursing, then saying Salute Me, followed by Max nailing the retort with Salute Your Shorts, a nod to a childhood favorite television of the milenials in the league. The fantasy matchup that meant way more to Arthur to Max, but Max took the W there too. Arthur is indeed dealing with some major injuries right now, but so is a third of the league.

Dean came through in the clutch to beat the team he’s trying to catch, Paul, but the margin of victory ended up far closer than it could have been. Dean hit 300 on the week and had 47 Runs but didn’t do much else well. Paul streamed well over the weekend to secure a number of the pitching categories.

Michael beat BJ in a  blow to their playoff odds. BJ had been making a charge of late and started the week hot, but Michael’s offense was overpowering to lead him to victory. After BJ had a number of early week good pitching starts, Michael started a streaming game and BJ didn’t do it as well as he did. Michael ran away with the matchup by the weekend. BJ is still poised to compete for that 4^th playoff spot, but will need to right the ship quickly to keep the run going. Michael lost his 3^rd SP, Lance McCullers early in the week and was unable to acquire a good enough SP via trade, so this streaming life is going to be his M.O. the rest of the season. Using the information gained from the replacement level SP blog post from a few months ago, this is clearly the best path forward.

Cory beat Keith. Keith is still trying, he made a savvy claim of Max Muncy this morning trying to find get something to stick. Cory’s team isn’t quite hitting on all cylinders but he was still able to put up 12 HRs with 4 wins and a 3.6 ERA. His biggest move of the week was choosing not to sell a SP for Michael leading up to the trade deadline.

Dave overcame a cooled off Matt team that hit 300 but only had 7 HRs and 62 Runs plus RBIs. Matt was ruined by 5 ERs from fill-in Washington Nationals closer, Ryan Madson, for the week. Dave had a good week with 16 HRs and 88 Runs plus RBIs. His pitching was less than stellar but he streamed well enough to get a big win. Matt can likely now focus towards ruining others’ season and the Bourbon Street Championship.

Monster and Max: didn’t see much. Feel free to chime in your own.