Championship Week and BSC Week 1 update

Max completed another Spartan Race last week in Chicago, completing the circuit for the year. What a badass.

Here are the BSC Standings through Week 1 (note that At Bats and Innings Pitched are not scored but are shown here to give you an idea of what the value of volume is)

Manager	AB	r	h	hr	rbi	sb	bb	k	avg
Arthur	238	39	66	14	36	7	30	50	0.277
Paul	228	36	66	11	22	4	31	57	0.289
Dean	229	45	65	10	31	6	25	34	0.284
Matt	253	44	75	8	38	5	22	58	0.296
Keith	168	15	41	2	18	1	20	41	0.244
Max	202	25	46	4	18	1	22	47	0.228

Manager	IP	w	s	er	k	era	whip
Arthur	67.33	6	1	17	72	2.27	1.07
Paul	58.67	5	3	16	69	2.45	0.90
Dean	47.33	3	5	14	47	2.66	1.10
Matt	42.33	2	3	22	38	4.68	1.30
Keith	28.00	3	2	15	23	4.82	1.28
Max	44.34	5	4	24	44	4.87	1.26

BSC Standing
1	Arthur	2.4286
2	Dean	2.5000
3	Paul	2.6429
4	Matt	3.6429
5	Max	4.4286
6	Keith	4.8571

Arthur holds a slim lead on dean after throwing 67 great innings and hitting a ton of home runs. Those numbers would have beaten all of the playoff teams by an average score of 10-3. Arthur may stew on the results of week 22 if he keeps this pace up for another week.

Normally I’d do a deep recap of all the BSC teams, but during week one, the BSC has been called out as POINTLESS by one first place team and one team missed the Innings Pitched Limit while other teams are changing their name to All in for Trout and streaming pitchers all week, sooooo enthusiasm for the tournament is clearly mixed. I’ll keep the review brief, because the week 1 championship matchup endings were legendary.

Arthur – [the all caps team all the time]

Arthur was all in on the Yankees this year. Keeping Aaron Judge worked out fantastically. His pitching strategy didn’t work until this last month or so as he rode the Cole Hamels and David Price hot hands. His most notable moves were trading away Ozzie Albies a week and a half into the season right before his breakout…but Kenley Jansen (his return in the trade) was mostly fine.

Dean – Mailing it in

Dean had the most inconsistent team over the course of the year. He was as high as third in the power ranks at Week 10, but then the wheels fell of for the next 8 weeks before a late season push. Francisco Lindor had another phenomenal year as Dean’s 3^rd year keeper, but Elvis Andrus and Ender Inciarte had years to forget has his other two keepers.

Paul – All in On Trout

Paul was a tale of two halves. Paul was second in the power ranks through week 13 this year, but then his first half performers all got hurt around the same time and he just wasn’t able to right the ship the rest of the way. Paul’s best draft pick was Josh Hader in round 17 that ended up as the number 3 RP.

Matt – 615 For the Win

The Nashville native gained all his ground in the second half as he started to field a full team and found a few starting pitcher second half breakouts like Zach Wheeler. Matt will have Trevor Story and Javier Baez as high end keepers heading in to this offseason…he’s in better shape than most.

Max – Did Football Start?

Max tried really hard this year, almost always having a full active roster all year. Similar to the other BSC teams, he just didn’t find many late round gems in the draft. Max’s additional problem was that the top end of his draft ended up injured or underperforming too. He bought in on Ronald Acuna at a phenomenal time who will be a great keeper base. As far as the rest of his keeper trades…well…we’ll see.

Keith – Bourbon Street Blues

Keith was off to a great start to this year with Didi Gregorious off to his MVP start, things faded as quickly for Didi as it did for his fantasy manager though. Keith missed the IP minimum last week so he will be ineligible for his namesake’s title.

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Week one of the championship bracket had as epic of finales as I’ve ever seen before.

Michael held off a incredibly late surge by BJ in what was a very back and forth week. After Michael got off to a hot start to the week, team BJ started to write themselves off. After a few days hitting over .330 with a bunch of Home Runs, BJ entered play on Sunday in a toss-up with Michael. Michael had a better Sunday afternoon and grew his lead to 9-5 around 6:00 PM with only 12 innings of baseball left to be played…and then everything went sideways. The Texas Rangers bullpen blew the save for Michael’s streamed starting pitcher, leaving the wins category tied for the week. BJ’s hitter in that game got two hits in his last two at bats to re-take the AVG category and make the Hits category close again. By the end of the game, Michael was up by 2 hits, 1 home run, and had a matchup lead of 7-6. Michael had two players (Manny Machado and Yadi Molina) in the Sunday night game and BJ had Marcel Ozuna. Ozuna steps up in his first at bat and hits a home run! The matchup is now tied, but Michael owsn the tie breaker as the higher seed. The rest of the game teeters: Yadi gets a hit to extend Michael’s lead, Ozuna gets another hit to trim the lead…until the bottom of the 8^th inning. Michael is up by a single hit in the tied matchup. It’s Ozuna’s last at bat…and he gets a hit up the middle! It’s over, BJ has won it…except, Yadi Molina bats two batters later. Yadi takes the count to two strikes…and then lines a ball to left field to seal the victory for Michael. It was a very hard fought matchup. BJ will understandably be stewing on this one for awhile…if they had played either of the other two championship opponents they would have won.

Cory and Dave’s matchup didn’t have the week long drama that the other championship matchup did, but it ended in a flurry. Dave’s offensive week left much to be desired, but he was doing enough to stay close to Cory who could get even less going offensively. It was the pitching that was killing Dave. Both managers loaded up with streamed pitchers on Sunday…and Cory was getting the better of it leading into the late slate of games. Cory had a matchup edge and large leads in Wins, pitching Ks, and ERA, and WHIIP. If Cory had benched his late pitcher, it would have likely ended the matchup, Dave wouldn’t have been able to catch up. But Cory didn’t, he threw his late game streamer….who blew up. In the 4^th inning of the Angels game, Cory’s pitcher had a 1.92 WHIP and Dave’s same-game-slate pitcher had a 0.92 WHIP…leading to Dave overtaking the WHIP category and therefore the matchup lead! Unfortunately for Dave, it didn’t end there. Dave’s pitcher promptly gave up a handful of hits and Cory’s settled down. Cory escaped with his win.

One week left in the fantasy season! This is it…