Week 2: It’s Injury Season!

 Dean (who, if you squint, you see him in the background jumping to amp himself up, or something), Michael, and Amina were in a race together this weekend, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival Mimosa 5k. Dean got his butt kicked by some ridiculous guy that ran the 5k in 15 minutes while Dean slow-rolled his way to a 20-minute time. Michael and Amina, meanwhile, were stoked to cross the finish line before the Awards Ceremony started. Woo

YTD Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Michael	4.07	1	Michael	3.25	1	Carl	3.00		Michael	Overdue
2	Carl	4.14	2	Cory	4.13	2	Brian/Josh	3.00		Arthur	2022 TRUE YEAR
3	Brian/Josh	4.36	3	Dean	4.25	3	Keith	3.83		Carl	Boston Running Sox
4	Cory	4.64	4	Paul	4.88	4	Michael	5.17		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues
5	Paul	5.14	5	Carl	5.00	5	Arthur	5.17		Brian/Josh	Flicker and Flash
6	Keith	5.50	6	Brian/Josh	5.38	6	Cory	5.33		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
7	Arthur	5.79	7	Dave	6.13	7	Paul	5.50		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
8	Dean	5.79	8	Arthur	6.25	8	Max	7.33		Dean	Middle Injuredfield
9	Dave	6.71	9	Keith	6.75	9	Dave	7.50		Paul	Heat Vice Wave
10	Max	7.71	10	Max	8.00	10	Dean	7.83		Max	Thunderbolt

 

Michael is taking his turn at the top of the very tight power ranks. Max had a good enough week pulling his YTD number back into the realm of competitive. As a reminder, the soft target to be a very good team is to have a YTD ranks in the 3s. No one being there right now could mean a few things, here are my ideas:

·         We’re all trying to find our footing to start the year. We don’t know our teams’ strengths and weaknesses to be able to plug the holes properly

·         Keepers didn’t matter much. Despite Max, Cory, Arthur, and BJ all having a notable edge on the field in terms of rounds of keeper value entering the draft, it hasn’t resulted in early season performance.

·         It’s a testament to the depth of the league right now. With deeper rosters, it takes more breakout players to have one’s team stand out, and finding breakout players is hard.

·         Injuries are leveling the playing field. Everyone is getting bit right now, making stand out talent harder to find.

Some matchup recaps from the week:

·         New #1 team in the Yahoo Standings, Paul, held off a big Sunday by team BJ for a good early season win. BJ’s pitching came back to Earth this week and Paul’s offense was just good enough. BJ has already racked up 14 NWs to start the year, a truly incredible number when most of the league will hover around 0 for the rest of the year

·         Carl had the surge of a week with 14 Home Runs and a 3.03 ERA moving him from the middle of the pack up to number 2 in the power ranks. Cory ran into the buzz saw on this one and had a nearly 5.00 ERA, no bueno. Speaking of ERA, league wide ERA is still way up, as it was 3.88 this week. Hug those elite SPs with all you have.

·         Speaking of elite SPs, Max was thinking he had found one in Jeffrey Springs…womp womp. With Springs out until ~June at best, Max will be hunting for the next best option to plug the holes. Dave didn’t have a great week but was strong enough with a .287 AVG to beat Max here.

·         Arthur beat Dean like Mr. 15 minutes did but this win was more about Dean face planting with only 4 HRs, a .240 AVG, and a 4.35 ERA. Arthur won’t be writing home about this one with his 5.07 ERA…but it was enough to beat Dean back to 8^th place so Arthur will have his head held high.

·         Finally, Michael surged late to beat Keith…but Michael kinda blew it at the very end. In what would have been the Max of the Week a few years ago, Michael had a tiny edge on Keith in batting average with all hitters complete other than Michael’s Kyle Tucker in the Sunday night game, no other hitting categories were in play. Michael forgot to bench Tucker and he went 0/2 with 2 walks and Michael lost AVG in a tie breaker. Cool cool. Don’t be lulled to sleep by Keith’s 9^th place Yahoo Standing. Keith had a 2.87 ERA on the week and strong hitting numbers halfway through this week, Keith is going to be a contender this year. Keith is much more like the 6^th place power ranked team right now, if not better.