Week 11: A League-Reorganizing Trade and an Epic First Place Battle

 

Dave and his son Tyler are enjoying Dave’s run up the Power Ranks, but the blog could do without the U shirt…

2021 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	2.57	1	Michael	2.63	1	Michael	2.50		Michael	G and RE
2	Dean	4.14	2	Dean	3.63	2	Paul	3.00		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
3	Paul	4.71	3	Dave	5.00	3	Dave	4.50		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
4	Dave	4.79	4	BJ	5.13	4	BJ	4.67		Dean	Who's your daddy?
5	BJ	4.93	5	Carl	5.63	5	Dean	4.83		Arthur	[ALL CAPS TEAM]
6	Keith	5.57	6	Keith	6.00	6	Keith	5.00		Carl	Boston Running Sox
7	Carl	6.36	7	Paul	6.00	7	Arthur	6.33		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
8	Arthur	6.64	8	Max	6.50	8	Cory	6.33		Max	Pancake Nips
9	Cory	6.64	9	Arthur	6.88	9	Carl	7.33		Paul	2nd Act
10	Max	7.71	10	Cory	6.88	10	Max	9.33		BJ	Smoak That Ish

 

Michael’s run this year is now beyond the effect of his keepers, one of which (Shane Bieber) might be done until September. Michael had a huge week when he needed it up against the 2^nd place team, Dean, who also had a good week that we’ll get into shortly. Readers of the blog should know that Michael doesn’t like self-pats on the back, but he does like talking about league history and Michael is on the brink of it. Dave’s 2016 week 8, league record, power rank of 2.43 is right there for the taking if Michael can have another good week. Dave had another huge week, in present day, to continue to run up the ranks, he is now up to 4^th place. Paul took a step back though he is holding is place in the 2^nd tier.

The big news from the week was the Acuna trade. So, let’s get into it. After the discussion in email last week about the keeper trading deadline, Dave, always one to be of assistance, thought he would demonstrate to Carl and the league what a keeper trade looked like, so he offered what he deemed to be a good potential keeper in journeyman Carlos Correa having a good year for one of the best players in the league, Ronald Acuna (hm, kinda has the ring of the OG keeper trade of Berkman for Pujols)….the problem was he and Max didn’t realize who the best keeper in the trade was. Not realizing that Acuna still had a year of keeper value left, making him a top end keeper, the valuations in the Correa/Acuna trade were all off, making it the perfect opportunity for a bidding war. Bids came in from all over the league and Max did a good job vetting offers for Acuna, ending with a haul that included a prospect that might be in the middle of a breakout as a potential keeper and an injured superstar that might be great help during the Bourbon Street Championship, it’s really a perfect return. Good on BJ for putting a good trade package together: they added help that they needed NOW instead of waiting for Trout to come back and offset some value to next year to stabilize their keeper base.

The other big news on the week was the matchup between Michael and Dean. Dean came into the week with way more of a game plan then Michael realized until Dean was already midway into his plan’s execution. Dean started by adding streamed pitchers the Sunday before the matchup started, allowing him to get a jump on the best pitchers available while Michael wasn’t noticing. Then Dean dropped all but one of his relief pitchers to ‘punt’ Save-Holds on the week. The plan ended with Dean aligning for over 17 starts on the week, forcing Michael to follow suit if he wanted to keep up. Michael cut all his bench hitters and even a relief pitcher and was able to keep up in starts. Both Dean and Michael streamed very well with both teams having more than 100 strikeouts and ERAs under 2.70 and Dean’s one RP got 3 SVH, pacing Michael’s 2+ RPs that he held all week. Michael’s offense was explosive though, with 17 Home Runs by the end of Saturday leading Michael to bench his hitters on Sunday trying to get Dean to lose hitting Ks. Michael left the week with a big win.

Going to keep the other matchup recaps short for the sake of everyone’s attention span:

Dave beat Keith with a good pitching week and enough hitting volume to outpace Keith. Keith still has a team performing well in the power ranks but it isn’t coming together in the standings. He needs to string some big wins together to make a run to the playoffs.

Paul took Arthur down hitting a whopping .326 on the week, my goodness. Along with a sub-3.00 ERA and 1.01 WHIP, it was a great overall team performance by Paul.

Carl just snuck by Max in a week that both teams combined for 32 Home Runs to lead the league. Both teams also had ERA below 2.60. So this was a very high powered matchup. One third of Carl’s hits were Home Runs, so he is keeping with the MLB trend.

BJ took down Cory who just wasn’t able to put much together this week and is probably starting to eye the trade deadline, himself, to see what keepers that Rendon/Tucker/Cruz can fetch. BJ didn’t have a big week by any stretch but did enough to outpace Cory.