Week 11: The People’s Blog

Monday mornings are quite the trip in the Smyth household, it has really crushed my blog writing time, but the people deserve a blog. So I’m here to provide one.

Paul and Denise just took a trip to the national parks in the Northwest. This photo is from Mount Rushmore.

Michael attended a Nuclear Energy conference in Washington DC. As a part of the conference he had meetings with his House of Representatives and Senate Congressmen. It was an incredible week.

Erin and George celebrated the beginning of summer with a little pool date.

Josh celebrated Father’s Day by practicing his poopy-diaper-check pose with Lilah

OK that at least catches us up on a few photos. As always, send any cool activity photos to me and I’ll get ‘em in here.

Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Dean	3.64	1	Dean	2.38	1	Arthur	4.17
2	Dave	4.14	2	Dave	3.00	2	Michael	4.17
3	Max	4.64	3	Max	4.00	3	Brian/Josh	4.67
4	Michael	5.14	4	Matt	5.38	4	Paul	4.67
5	Paul	5.21	5	Paul	5.63	5	Dean	5.33
6	Arthur	5.64	6	Keith	5.63	6	Max	5.50
7	Matt	5.64	7	Michael	5.88	7	Dave	5.67
8	Brian/Josh	6.57	8	Arthur	6.75	8	Cory	6.00
9	Keith	6.57	9	Cory	7.50	9	Matt	6.00
10	Cory	6.86	10	Brian/Josh	8.00	10	Keith	7.83

A lot has happened in the power ranks since the last blog, Dean was keeping his distance from the rest of us, then he started to show some decline, then he jumped right back up to being better than us again. Dave has followed a similar track the last few weeks and sits in a tier of his own in second place. Max has been all over the place, but last week he made a big jump up the ranks and sits in third place. Next we have a 4 team tier of Michael, Paul, Arthur, and Matt. Each has taken a far different path to get here: Paul is on an incredible run from last place in week 5 up to 5^th now; Matt was leading the power ranks after week 2 and has been sliding backwards even since week 7; Michael has been on a steady up trend since week 3, but there have been some bumps in the road along the way; and Arthur has had a similarly bumpy road, he just started the year higher on the spectrum. This 7 team grouping matches the Yahoo ranks with respect to teams that are easily within reach of a playoff spot. The final three teams of BJ, Keith, and Cory haven’t had great years to this point, though each has had a few bright spots to keep hope alive.

How has baseball changed over the last 12 months? Well, for one, the Twins have the best offense in baseball, let that sink in for a minute. Offense is up all across baseball and that has worked its way into the fantasy league. At this point last year, there had been 1188 HRs in Floored. This year, that number is up 1416 HRs, a 19% jump. Remember, some of this can be attributed to the change in our rules, guys like Jay Bruce and Trey Mancini would have been nearly worthless last year, but this year they are necessary commodities. Owning power is a must in our league this year, if you don’t have it, you need to go get it, because when the whole league is hitting more HRs, it means you need more HRs to compete. Correlated with this increase in HRs is that pitching ERAs are up a little bit in our league. Last year the average ERA at this point was 3.52, this year it is 3.82. While some of this can also be attributed to our new emphasis on starting pitchers and de-emphasis on low-ERA closers, pitching has been chaotic this year. Ten of the preseason top twenty-five starting pitchers are ranked worse than 150 right now in Yahoo. It’s been a mess.

We are exactly halfway through the year, go make your move now!