Week 20: The Plot Thickens

Arthur was Hob-nobbing with some baseball greats the last few weeks. At the top he is seen with Luis Severino and at the bottom with Jim Palmer.

This time of year, it can be more helpful to look at a running trend of power ranks instead of year to date data. What happened the first month or two isn’t incredibly valuable or predictive right now. Here is how teams have fared the previous 8 weeks:

Power Ranks over the last 8 weeks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Dean	3.64	1	Cory	3.13	1	Brian/Josh	3.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
2	Brian/Josh	4.29	2	Dean	4.00	2	Dean	3.17		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
3	Cory	4.57	3	Matt	4.00	3	Dave	3.83		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
4	Matt	4.86	4	Michael	4.38	4	Max	5.50		Brian/Josh	Smoak That Ish
5	Michael	5.00	5	Brian/Josh	5.25	5	Michael	5.83		Paul	AT Tax Man
6	Dave	5.36	6	Arthur	5.63	6	Matt	6.00		Dean	First Future father
7	Arthur	6.21	7	Dave	6.50	7	Paul	6.17		Matt	615 for the win
8	Max	6.50	8	Paul	7.25	8	Cory	6.50		Max	Expand the Graph
9	Paul	6.79	9	Max	7.25	9	Arthur	7.00		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
10	Keith	7.79	10	Keith	7.63	10	Keith	8.00		Michael	The Flooded Farm

As you can see, no one is really lighting it up. Dean has a slight edge but it hasn’t been enough to help him make any significant move in the standings. I attribute this table to the solid parity we have across the league. We are all active on the free agent wire and play the weekly matchups. It is statistically highly unlikely for any one team to be the best team in the league for a 20 week stretch as each teams’ players ebb and flow in production over the course of the year. If we had dead-teams in the league the other teams would get all the best pickups and perhaps smooth those power rank valleys. Michael’s place in the standings is riding the coat tails of his incredibly hot run the first 12 weeks of the year. Meanwhile Matt has been pretty good since about week 9, but his first two months of season really put him behind the 8-ball to make any run at the playoffs.

With Fantasy Football season ramping up, my creative and educational thoughts for baseball blogs is winding down. Dean owes me some research and number crunching for what should be a good blog finale next week.

Instead, we will take a deeper dive into some high intensity matchups last week that left one team with it’s playoff spot clinched, and a new team at number 4.

Michael locked in his playoff spot with a win over Max, but this one was for bragging rights the whole way. Michael and Max made a team-name bet midweek that whoever pitched more innings would get naming rights to the other team for the following week. After a contentious Sunday, Michael ended up edging Max by 0.1 innings…seriously. In other news, Michael’s team struck out 87 times in the midst of an otherwise pretty good offensive week. That’s the highest offenseive K total since Cory struck out 96 times in week 15 of 2013. Michael is coasting to the playoffs trying to get his team shaped up for a push.

The other big move of the week was Brian and Josh moving into 4^th place. They tied Matt in a polarizing matchup. BJ’s pitching continues to stand out…there has been no ebbing and flowing there sans a stray week or two…but their offense is pretty weak. Meanwhile Matt hit .293 on the week with 76 Runs plus RBIs, very good totals. This one played about right to a draw. Matt could have played the matchup better, he should have streamed pitchers to force BJ to do the same. This would have given him a chance to win the Wins and ER categories. Live and Learn. BJ moves into the 4^th spot as Paul continues to break down.

Arthur came through with a statement win over Dean that really crushes what hope Dean had left for a playoff spot and catapulted Arthur back into the playoff picture. BJ, Paul, and Arthur are now within 1.5 games of each other with two weeks left. Dean is 8.5 games behind BJ. Arthur had a monstrous pitching week where he threw 47 innings of 1.51 ERA ball and 6 wins. Dean also had a huge pitching week to keep him alive putting up 5 wins with a 1.68 ERA, with a stronger K rate Dean was able to take the pitching Ks category. Dean’s offense was the other story though, he just hasn’t been able to put anything together offensively since the first two months of the year. Arthur’s Yankee players are all very hurt right now, his pitching carried him this week but he will need some offensive production to be a viable force moving forward.

Cory beat Paul but neither team will be writing home about the excitement of this one. Cory put up solid, if not spectacular offensive numbers while Paul’s offense put up one of the worst performances of the year: .216 AVG with 46 Runs plus RBIs. Neither team did much on the pitching side but Paul streamed his way to win Ks and tie Wins. Paul continues to struggle from injuries despite him finally getting Mike Trout back. He continues to add free agents to try to get something to stick.

Dave beat Keith. Dave pitched well, hit fairly poorly. Ho hum. No playoff implications here. He and Cory are on a beeline to the first round.

Let’s talk playoff outlook, here is how the 4 remaining teams shape up for the final playoff spot.

Manager	Place	Games back	YTD Power Rank	Previous 8-week’s Power Rank	Week 21 Opponent	Week 22 Opponent
BJ	4th	-	4.24	4.29	Cory	Max
Paul	5th	1.0	5.50	6.79	Arthur	Dave
Arthur	6th	1.5	5.28	6.21	Paul	Cory
Dean	7th	8.5	5.35	3.64	Dave	Michael

BJ has a slight advantage based on the above data for the 4^th spot. A soild YTD power ranks edge and is second among these four teams over the last 8 weeks. They also end the year playing against Max, as much as we all know he’d love to play spoiler. But as we know, anything can change in a single week. My other big takeaway is that Dave and Cory will have a big say in who moves on. Let the games begin!

Monster of the week: Arthur, Arthur made some solid pitching moves on Sunday to maximize his matchup performance, his team also came through in the clutch for him to stay alive in the playoff race. Here’s the rub, he showed he knows how to play a matchup, making his other weekly managing over the years all the more suspect.

Max of the week: nobody, I just wanted to point out that I beat Max in the bet 61.1 IP to 61.0. Ha Ha.