Week 9: The Separation has Begun

 

Brian and Cassie got married earlier this year! The only thing better looking than Brian’s blue suit is knowing that team BJ gets to keep Dylan Cease for two more years.

2022 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Dean	3.64	1	Arthur	3.13	1	Dean	2.67
2	Arthur	3.71	2	Cory	3.25	2	Michael	3.83
3	Carl	4.43	3	Dean	4.38	3	Carl	4.33
4	Michael	5.00	4	Carl	4.50	4	Arthur	4.50
5	Dave	5.14	5	Brian/Josh	5.38	5	Dave	4.67
6	Brian/Josh	5.14	6	Dave	5.50	6	Brian/Josh	4.83
7	Cory	5.21	7	Michael	5.88	7	Paul	5.67
8	Paul	6.86	8	Keith	7.25	8	Keith	6.50
9	Keith	6.93	9	Max	7.25	9	Cory	7.83
10	Max	8.21	10	Paul	7.75	10	Max	9.50

 

Dean, clearly affronted by not being called the team to beat last week, went out and stomped. A 1.36 ERA over 70 innings flew him past Michael up the pitching ranks and maintain his overall power rank lead in a week that Arthur had an even more monstrous week overall: 16 HRs, .287 AVG, 38 BB, 3.00 ERA over 96 innings with 10 QS and 8 NW. This is a two team tier right now: Dean and Arthur, next question.

The next question is an important one though, because we are officially one rotation through the league. Who is ready to be a contender? Looking at the power ranks and you see 7 competitive teams and then what has become a sizeable gap down to the bottom 3. For once, the Yahoo standings mimic the power ranks, big picture. Michael has a winning record but is also in 7^th place, don’t think we’ve ever seen that before (the winning record in 7^th place, not the Michael thing 😉).

No new league observations. The run environment is back to where things were before the sticky stuff boom of early 2021 and the dead ball of early 2022. The injuries have settled down as long as your team isn’t managed by Paul or the player you’re waiting to come back isn’t named Fernando Tatis Jr. or Jacob Degrom. Breakout players have emerged like Taylor Ward, Brandon Drury, Kyle Wright, and Nestor Cortes. Now, the question is, who will stick?

Let’s run through some more matchup breakdowns this week because there was a lot going on.

The final score of the Arthur/Michael matchup doesn’t do justice to the drama of this one. The final score was Arthur over Michael, 7-6, but it could have very easily been 13-1 Arthur if Michael hadn’t had a relatively big week himself. Michael’s pitching chose a great week to regress back to reality while Arthur had his best pitchers lined up for two start weeks. Michael started streaming early, and it actually worked out very well leading to Michael stealing the pitching Strikeouts category by week’s end. As mentioned earlier Arthur’s team is on a tear right now. What is crazy is there’s even room for improvement with some injured players on his team that aren’t really worth holding (Kittridge and Stroman) that could make his team even better. This is the best Arthur’s team has been power ranked since records started being kept in 2011, it will be exciting to see how he maintains this great start he’s set up with.

Dean held the line against Max with that pitcher performance for the record books: 72 IP, 1.36 ERA, 0.77 WHIP, 8 QS, 5 NW, 6 SVH. Insane. Max put up a good effort in this one with 12 HRs, but it just wasn’t enough against Dean this week.

Carl held off Paul in this one where both offenses sputtered putting up 12 HRs combined. Paul at least had good BB and hitting K rates with a good AVG to keep the week alive. Showing the frustrating nature of Net Wins, these two teams had relative close ERAs, but Carl got 5 NW and Paul got 0 NW. I know that the rule changes this year are achieving one of the goals to minimize the value of streaming, but I’m going to be very mad if the NW category decides who wins or loses our fantasy league.

BJ’s big week gets lost in the shuffle of Arthur and Dean showing out, but they deserve a minute to get their shine in their win over Keith. BJ had 16 HRs, a .500 SLG, 7 SB, 2.6 ERA over 60 innings with 6 QS…and…-1 NW WHAT?!?! Keith, well, Keith is looking very good in that Tommy Edman trade right now and grabbed a very topical Tommy Pham that Michael wanted while he was handcuffed streaming against Arthur.

Dave somehow got 13 points in a week with a 5.11 ERA. The rest of the league would like to have a word with him. Cory put in the work in this one, streaming a few pitchers that just didn’t work out and being victimized by the Gerrit Cole 5 home run game. Dave had a good offensive week, nothing to be taken away there, he just edged out Cory in a number of close categories that make this look more lopsided than it should have been. Dave is the leader in the clubhouse for luckiest opponent luck so far, sitting 2^nd in the Yahoo Standings but 5^th in the power ranks. Meanwhile Dean sits in 6^th in the Yahoo Standings but 1^st in the power ranks, oof.