Week 15: The Trade Deadline is the Worst..and the Best?

 

Dean took in an Atlanta United game recently with his oldest daughter, Erin. If you ever get a chance to go to one of these, do it. There is definitely truth to the rumor that Dean was paying more attention to this than his fantasy matchup.

2022 Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING
1	Dean	3.29	1	Arthur	3.00	1	Dean	2.17
2	Arthur	3.57	2	Cory	3.38	2	Michael	3.50
3	Michael	4.79	3	Dean	4.13	3	Brian/Josh	3.67
4	Cory	4.79	4	Carl	5.38	4	Carl	4.17
5	Carl	4.86	5	Dave	5.50	5	Arthur	4.33
6	Dave	5.71	6	Michael	5.75	6	Dave	6.00
7	Brian/Josh	5.71	7	Keith	6.00	7	Paul	6.67
8	Keith	6.50	8	Max	6.50	8	Cory	6.67
9	Paul	7.21	9	Brian/Josh	7.25	9	Keith	7.17
10	Max	7.86	10	Paul	7.63	10	Max	9.67

It’s Arthur and Dean’s party, we’re just invited to it. These two continue to pull away. Yeah, Michael, Cory, and Carl have shown flashes; and yeah, Dave and BJ and Keith are competitive at times, but outside of the top two teams, the rest of us are still just trying to keep up. What this is going to lead to a blitz to the finish. Max and Paul have made their moves to send their best players away for keeper options, so having them left on the schedule the rest of the season is going to lead to an advantage in those weeks. The schedule is going to be somewhat unbalanced down the stretch with Dean, Carl, Keith, and Dave all getting to play BOTH Max and Paul in their diminished states. The 8 teams in the league are within 25 games in the Yahoo standings with 7 weeks to go. The playoff push continues.

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As far as the Trade Deadline goes, keeper trading continues to be an art form and not a science, and most of us aren’t artists. Setting player valuations trying to make things line up with differing intents would be challenging enough, but throw in that teams have punted on this year, making their players worthless to them…well, you get odd looking trades. There’s been a request to allow draft pick trades in season next year (with the same restrictions we have on the number of top 5 and top 10 round picks you can have), so we’ll talk about that then. This could help even the playing ground because everyone has a first round pick but not everyone has Shoehei Ohtani or Corbin Burnes.

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Let’s do some matchup recaps:

The headline matchup of the week had to be Arthur v Dean. The aforementioned top tier of the league faced off and both teams basically were who we thought they were. Arthur hit a ton of home runs and threw a ton of innings while Dean pitched very well, hit for a great AVG, and didn’t have many hitting strikeouts. Dean edged Arthur in the final score keeping the standings close by preventing Arthur from pulling away for another week.

The next most notable matchup was Keith putting Dave on the mat. Dave’s team has gotten re-injured yet again which is going to make a playoff push difficult. Working in his favor is he somehow sits in second place in the Yahoo Standings despite sitting 6^th in the Power Ranks. Keith continues to put up good enough weeks against good teams having beaten Dean, Michael, and Dave now by a total score of 26-11. Keith is right back in the thick of the race, watch out.

Michael missed out on the opportunity of playing one of the lower tier teams, though it was really more about Max having a good week. Max hit for a good AVG and SLG and somehow had 2 Net Wins with a 5.38 ERA leading to a competitive week. Michael’s team is almost good enough right now, but it doesn’t hit for enough AVG and SLG to keep up; that plus the Trout/Tatis/Franco injuries and he’s fighting an uphill battle to make the playoffs.

Carl beat BJ as BJ’s offense just couldn’t put anything together. They still pitched well to keep the scoreboard competitive, but they will need to find some offensive juice to make a run at the playoffs. Carl has been meandering sideways since around week 7, have a few good weeks but never falling too far off the pace. If his Vlad Jr. trade holds up he will be getting a big boost to his team.

Cory held off Paul behind Austin Riley’s MVP campaign. Paul kept it close with high pitching volume but Cory was the better team here. Paul made his moves this month to set himself up for next March while Cory sits in that second tier of teams that is plenty dangerous as long as Austin Riley is doing this (and Paul Goldschmidt and and and on Cory’s team).