Week 17: DEFCON 1

We don’t like to have back to back photo leads from the same league member here at Floored Fantasy Baseball League blog, but when one of your members gets a photo with the GOAT (Paul and Keith, google it), it gets top billing. Arthur was doing something right to get to meet Mike Trout (along with getting to meet basically every other great LA Angel past and present you can think of), so this is pretty epic. Literally, I FIRMLY believe Mike Trout will go down as the best baseball player ever. I hope we can appreciate being able to watch him. OK that’s enough. You can tell how amped I was about this. But that green suit, its so fantastic. Ok now I’m really done.

Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Dave	4.14	1	Dean	2.75	1	Michael	4.00
2	Dean	4.29	2	Dave	3.25	2	Arthur	4.33
3	Max	4.64	3	Max	3.38	3	Paul	4.33
4	Michael	4.86	4	Michael	5.50	4	Brian/Josh	4.83
5	Paul	5.21	5	Paul	5.88	5	Cory	4.83
6	Arthur	5.50	6	Keith	5.88	6	Dave	5.33
7	Cory	6.36	7	Arthur	6.38	7	Dean	6.33
8	Brian/Josh	6.43	8	Matt	6.50	8	Matt	6.33
9	Matt	6.43	9	Cory	7.50	9	Max	6.33
10	Keith	6.71	10	Brian/Josh	7.63	10	Keith	7.83

There was some significant jockeying this week, both in the Yahoo Standings and the Power Ranks. Dave edged into first place in the power ranks, but that was really about Dean continuing to fall on himself. Dean has been resting on his Yahoo Standing lead, stockpiling injured players while his own players continue to hit the DL. After losing what was a tight matchup to Michael that ended up lopsided, Dean is suddenly back in a playoff race and will need to decide quickly whether to stay the course or cut some of his injured players.

About Dave being first in the Power Ranks, us not having a single team ranked in the 3s is fairly embarrassing for all of us. This is the latest in the year we haven’t had someone ranked in the 3s since 2015 when Dean finally edged back into the 3s in week 22, but at least he went on to win the league that year. We all have been very mediocre this year. There is clearly an upper tier of 6 teams and a lower tier of 4 teams, but that’s about the only separation we have. Michael has been fairly lucky with opponents this year to have such a large Yahoo Standings lead while having a middling Power Ranking.  Paul has done a very nice job battling back from a bad start, and Dean drafted a great team that faded and got injured, but the rest of us really haven’t gone on a good, long run. Whichever team does from here on out will probably win the league this year.

The other big movers this week were in the Yahoo Standings. Paul came through with a big win against another playoff competitor in team BJ. Paul moved into 4th while BJ fell back to DEFCON 1, their playoff lives hanging on by a thread with a difficult schedule ahead of them. BJ has kept fighting. Every week they are streaming Starting Pitchers hard trying to pick up Wins, Ks, and Quality Starts. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling for them.

The other feel good story of the week was Matt. Matt took Arthur down, putting a dent in Arthur’s playoff plans. With as talented of a team as Matt has, these weeks are going to happen once in awhile, even as his team has been left to fend for its own devices since week 5 or so; Matt took Michael down similarly back in week 10. So maybe it isn’t a feel good story as much as a wake up call. COME ON MATT. If he had played the pitching harder over the course of the week it probably would have been a 10-3 win instead of 7-5. Still with a BJ-like long shot chance at a playoff spot, Matt will need to go on a run here to catch 4th place.

-

There are 5 weeks left. By the time the next blog rolls around we’ll take a look at stretch run playoff schedules and hopefully check out some cool summer vacation photos. Send me your photos and we’ll put a bunch into a summer recap blog.