Championship Bracket Preview and End of Year Power Rankings

Dave’s Caption for this one: “At the Beach”

2021 End of Year Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Dave	3.21	1	Michael	3.13	1	Dave	2.83		Michael	G and RE
2	Michael	3.64	2	Dave	3.50	2	Paul	3.50		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
3	Paul	4.79	3	BJ	5.00	3	Michael	4.33		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
4	Dean	5.21	4	Dean	5.38	4	Dean	5.00		Dean	Losing Hope
5	BJ	5.57	5	Cory	5.63	5	Keith	5.50		Arthur	[ALL CAPS TEAM]
6	Cory	5.71	6	Paul	5.75	6	Cory	5.83		Carl	Boston Running Sox
7	Keith	5.79	7	Keith	6.00	7	Carl	6.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
8	Carl	6.07	8	Carl	6.13	8	BJ	6.33		Max	Pancake Nips
9	Arthur	6.57	9	Arthur	6.38	9	Arthur	6.83		Paul	2nd Act
10	Max	8.00	10	Max	7.75	10	Max	8.33		BJ	Smoak That Ish

While not the most loquacious or verbose member of the league, Dave finished off his 2nd half surge to claim the power ranks title for 2021. It was a tale of two halves as Michael had the most dominant first 14 weeks in league history before Dave turned it on and raged to win the year long battle. In other news, Arthur locked in the record for lowest power ranked team to ever make the playoffs and Max ended the year on the graph…everybody wins.

The matchups this week saw Michael hold off Dave for the number one Yahoo Standings finish and Arthur held off Dean and Carl for the final playoff spot. There was a glimmer of hope around Thursday night that Dean would sneak into the playoffs, but it did not pan out.

As is tradition, let’s walk through the year recaps for each of the playoff teams this week, and then next week the Bourbon Street Championship teams will get their due.

Michael is the 5th team since Power Ranking data is available (2011) to lead the Yahoo Standings heading into the playoffs and not be the Power Ranking Champion. The story of Michael’s year has been fairly well documented here in the blog, so we’ll keep the rest short: trading a Juan Soto away for a first round pick netted Michael Jacob Degrom while his other keepers Fernando Tatis Jr, Yu Darvish, and Shane Bieber all broke out in the first half. They then got hurt and/or regressed in the second half and Michael was left fighting for his season. Deft adds such as Wander Franco, Jake Cronenworth and trade deadline acquisition Corbin Burnes helped Michael right the ship heading into the playoffs. Now Michael will face Juan Soto on Arthur’s team in the first round of the playoffs.

Dave enters the playoffs as the betting man’s favorite to win the championship. His team scuffled at the beginning of the year with a number of early round draft busts with his 4th through 9th round picks busting so poorly that he dropped 5 of them in the first few months. The one he held onto, Paul Goldschmidt, had a resurgence while a few others that he dropped had success on other teams…but in general those picks didn’t pan out. Dave has been carried on the hitting side by late round picks Carlos Correa, who Dave traded away for Will Smith, and Marcus Semien, who will be a top 5 AL MVP vote getter. On the pitching side it’s been all free agent adds for Dave. With the league’s 8th ranked pitching staff on May 1st, Dave started accumulating streamed pitchers that kept putting good outings together. Names like Adam Wainright, Chris Bassitt, and Robbie Ray had been streamed by most members of the league before Dave held them appropriately. He deserves credit for sticking with players in the middle of a breakout that we all didn’t see. If Dave hits and pitches the way he has been for the last 2 months, beating him will require a monster week from his opponent and likely out-managing him…a tough ask for anyone.

Paul ended the year as a clear third member of the top tier of teams. Never falling lower than 4th in the power ranks after week 3, but never higher than 3rd after week 11, Paul has been a steady presence in the top of the league. Paul’s first round pick, Trevor Bauer, was excellent on the field and a dirtbag off the field leading him to not pitch a game after July 1st. Paul had a solid top end of his draft: grabbing breakouts like Salvador Perez and Teoscar Hernandez while only busting one of his top ten round picks in 7th round Keston Hiura. This steady output allowed Paul to succeed most of the year. Paul has the managerial talent to keep up with Dave in the playoffs, but can Paul’s team back him up to pull the upset?

Arthur enters the playoffs as the enigma of the year. He is the lowest Power Ranked team to ever make the playoffs, ending the year in 9th, but he has sat in a playoff position most of the second half of the year. An active trader this year, Arthur completed 4 deals ranging from what was most likely the most lopsided trade in league history: NL Cy Young to be Max Scherzer for injured, underperforming, and with no timeline to return at the time, Alex Bregman; to high-end and even-scaled deals like Aaron Judge for the same Max Scherzer. Arthur also had an early round draft that didn’t include many busts, but he didn’t find any breakouts which led him to fall lower in the Power Ranks than other teams. One breakout he did find was Sandy Alcantara…who he then dropped mid year. Arthur is the wild card of the playoffs, both from team performance and managerial expectation. Arthur’s team has weeks where it is the best team in the year…and then week’s where it’s the worst team. If he can put things together these next two weeks and pull the upset it will go down as one of the great wins in league history.