Week 7: The Middle Earth of the Power Ranks

Brian took a trip to the Bahamas to go fishing recently. He caught these fantastic looking Dolphin. Brian is finishing up his next trip, halfway around the world so hopefully we’ll have some more good photos heading our way to make up for the poor on-field performance team BJ has put forward this year.

Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Dean	3.57	1	Dean	2.38	1	Arthur	3.50
2	Dave	4.07	2	Dave	3.00	2	Michael	3.67
3	Matt	4.21	3	Matt	3.75	3	Brian/Josh	4.67
4	Arthur	4.86	4	Max	5.13	4	Matt	4.83
5	Max	5.00	5	Arthur	5.88	5	Max	4.83
6	Michael	5.64	6	Paul	6.13	6	Dean	5.17
7	Paul	6.43	7	Keith	6.25	7	Dave	5.50
8	Brian/Josh	6.50	8	Cory	6.63	8	Cory	6.67
9	Cory	6.64	9	Michael	7.13	9	Paul	6.83
10	Keith	7.07	10	Brian/Josh	7.88	10	Keith	8.17

I’m going to stop posting the team name/manager name chart in the blog, I just don’t think it’s all that useful anymore. If your Yahoo-displayed name doesn’t match up with your real name (I’m looking at the lone remaining holdout, Arthur), please update it. This appears to be the best way for people to know who they’re playing each week or proposing a trade to. 

Dean maintained his lead on the league this week as the top tier stratified a bit. Max is on a 2-week decline while Arthur made a strong bounceback after a 2-week decline of his own. Keith dropped down to last after a strong week when it looked like he might move into the metaphorical Middle Earth of the Power Ranks.

Blogs have become tougher to put together as the kid’s Monday morning routine really ruins what used to be blog-writing time; plus, the ideas to write about have been few and far between. We’ll just stick with the weekly recaps this week.

The heavyweight matchup of the week saw Matt take down Dave in one of the more surprising results of the week. Matt’s team had taken a turn since his early season dominance while Dave was coming off one of the more impressive week’s we’d ever seen. Matt put together 17 HRs, 92 Runs+RBIS, a .550 SLG with a sub-2.00 ERA and 6 Wins to truly have a monstrous win over the first-place-in-the-Yahoo-Standings team, Dave. In a demonstration of the oddities of minor power rankings moves, Dave actually gained ground in a week he hit .270 with 12 HRs and had a 4.6 ERA but last week when he had 19 HRs, 96 R+RBIs, and a sub-3.00 ERA he lost ground [shrug shoulder emoji].

The other battle of two non-bottom tier teams saw Arthur really putting a big week together against Michael, eventually leading to a tie. Both teams pitched very well but Michael streamed just a little bit better while Arthur seemed to focus on offensive additions leading him to save face in a week that Arthur easily could have blown him out. Arthur had 17 HRs and slugged .550 and had a 3.28 ERA, all very good numbers leading to a big power ranks jump for him. After a good multi-week run, Michael hit the skids here. He’ll need to turn it around heading into a big matchup against Dean this week.

Speaking of Dean, he put a hurting on team BJ. Solid numbers across the board led him to blowout the wounded gazelle that was team BJ with Brian out of town. BJ has just not been able to put it together this season, this week even led to an uptick in their power rank as teams like Cory and Keith fell backwards but it was not enough to keep up with Dean. They’ll look to break out of the bottom tier this week when they play Paul.

Speaking of Paul (my segue’s are on point today), he came up with a big win over Max. Paul hit .300 with a sub-3.00 ERA to challenge Max who was not up to the task this week. Hopefully a blip on his season long radar, Max has fallen back to 5^th in the Power Ranks. He had a 1.91 ERA this week, but it was on very low volume so it didn’t have much of an effect on his season long rank. There were a number of close categories here that Paul held onto to give him an inspiring win over a good team.

Keith and Cory tied, and it was about as ugly as you might expect to see from two teams that were already in the bottom tier of the power ranks and then lost ground again this week. I’ll leave it at that but commend the managers for fighting. Keith has been very active on the trade market trying to improve and Cory has been fighting to keep his head above water with all the injuries. With Trea Turner returned, the healing process can begin.

Monster of the Week: Matt. A huge week and a huge win over perennial contender, Dave. Matt stepped up this week to show us it is NOT over for him yet. Another well deserved Monster for Matt.