Week 4: Offenses Rebound

Josh and Lilah were taking in sunset at the beach recently.

2021 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	3.21	1	Dean	2.88	1	Michael	3.17		Michael	G and RE
2	BJ	3.29	2	Michael	3.25	2	BJ	3.17		Dave	Small Legs Big Balls
3	Dean	4.21	3	BJ	3.38	3	Keith	3.33		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
4	Paul	5.21	4	Carl	4.88	4	Cory	4.50		Dean	Who's your daddy?
5	Keith	5.36	5	Paul	5.63	5	Paul	4.67		Arthur	[ALL CAPS TEAM]
6	Carl	5.36	6	Arthur	5.88	6	Dean	6.00		Carl	Boston Running Sox
7	Cory	6.43	7	Max	6.63	7	Carl	6.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
8	Arthur	6.71	8	Keith	6.88	8	Dave	7.00		Max	Small Legs Big Stomach
9	Dave	7.00	9	Dave	7.00	9	Max	7.67		Paul	2nd Act
10	Max	7.07	10	Cory	7.88	10	Arthur	7.83		BJ	Smoak That Ish

 

There were two big movers on the week in the Power Ranks: Max made a big jump up, and Dave made a big jump down. For Dave it’s his worst Power Rank since week 2 of 2018, a year in which he meandered to a 5^th place in the power ranks and 3^rd place in the standings finish; so, could be worse. For Max though this has far greater implications, he’s ALIVE! Vlad Guerrero is one of the best breakouts of April, Ronald Acuna is a stud, and now the Twins’ top prospect, Alex Krilliloff hit 4 HRs for Max over the weekend. Carl and BJ also made smaller moves up that shouldn’t be ignored.  Overall, the league bunched up this week with Michael having a down week and Max having the big week, we’re set up for a very competitive this summer and I’m excited to see what happens. Also, home runs jumped back up to pre-2021 levels with the league averaging 10.9 per team this week.

Monday’s don’t appear to be suited for in-depth topics this year, so we’re going to stick with weekly recaps on Monday and I’ll fit in investigative blogs along the way. I haven’t heard any complaints or people saying they miss them….so I know what people actually want to hear about.

We have to start with Max pouncing on Cory. Led by the aforementioned names, Max also threw 67 innings with a sub-2.70 ERA , 5 W, 6 QS, and 7 SVH. Monstrous numbers. He still only put up 229 At Bats which will be a problem when his offense isn’t on this much of a heater, but it got him by just fine this week. Cory meanwhile also has a volume problem.  These two teams lag the league in At Bats by a wide margin, but Cory lags in Innings Pitched by an even greater margin.  Winning ERA and WHIP is great, and Cory has a great base of a pitching staff which will help him get by many weeks, but he is 50% behind the pack in innings pitched and that just won’t compete until he rosters more starting pitching or puts the work into streaming, because he’s first in the league in ERA/WHIP by a large margin. So, he has room to stream and still compete in the ratio categories.

The manager heavyweight matchup of the week turned out to be more of a dud as wobbling Dean throttled a stumbling Dave. Neither team hit about .260 nor had an ERA better than 4.0 and they combined for 18 HRs…but Dean squeaked past Dave in enough categories to make a big jump back up the standings. The most entertaining observation I had of this matchup this week was the irony of it being the week Dean published how streaming isn’t great for one’s team, yet Dean threw 79 IP and was second in the league in that category after streaming a bunch of pitchers.

Carl had a huge offensive week to beat Paul. Posting 16 HR, over 100 R+RBI, and a .300 AVG, Carl had a breakout week. Paul streamed pitching well enough to cover W and QS to keep the matchup close.  I didn’t see much else to talk about.

Brian and Josh also had 16 HRs and a .300 AVG, but only 87 R+RBIs in their win over Keith.  A huge Sunday buoyed their big win by slugging over .880 for the day. Keith’s team is still very good and hit .280 on the week with a sub 3 ERA. A higher At Bat total could have made some of the offensive categories more competitive for Keith and some pitching streaming over the weekend with his huge ERA lead could have tipped some pitching categories his way.

Michael eeked by Arthur in a week that Michael didn’t play very well. Arthur streamed extremely well and proactively streamed, spitting in the face of Dean’s analysis saying not to do it. When asked what the key to his streaming success was, Arthur said instinct and matchups.  So, there you have it. I look forward to tracking Dean’s streaming SP success chart all year and learning what works and what doesn’t. The only cool thing I really saw from this matchup was that Michael had a day with 13 walks, but according to Dean that only ties a league-high this year, unfortunately.