The Field is Set!

 

It was chaos to settle this playoff chase: from eyebrow raising trades that were regretted, to contenders being skunked, to...effing Royce Lewis...Dean made it to the 4th spot.

Dean will square up against Michael who ended up with an all-time Floored Season, Yahoo-Standings-wise, setting the record (data back to 2007) with a 0.648 winning percentage. Michael had a very good team, but also ran very clean on a number of weekends, eeking out far more close categories than he lost. Then he bought low on Trea Turner and the rest was history. He enters the playoffs on a bit of a skid, relative to how he's performed the rest of the season.

Contrarily, Dean is on fire. Dean was in 8th place in the power ranks as late as week 17. His team was very injured throughout most of the late spring and early summer, and he handled things very conservatively. By that I mean he held onto a couple of players (like, three, of the seven or eight that got hurt) that likely would have cleared waivers and made it to free agency while they were injured. However...one of those players...is a major reason why Dean made the playoffs. Royce Lewis has been one of the best players in baseball for a month, that month that Dean has scorched up the rankings. Historically, the hot team has mixed results come playoff time, but Dean will be hoping that his momentum can hang around for two more weeks.

Carl's hot start peaked in week 14 when his power rank got all the way up to 2.50, an incredible number. Natural regression came around but Carl leveled things off to close the season well. Carl's season has evolved from being one of the strongest pitching teams, to one of the strongest hitting teams. Carl's team is full of bench hitters and positional flexibility while the rest of the playoff teams have chosen to minimize their bench hitters to maximize baseload innings pitched. Time will tell which strategy will help their team the most to a championship.

Paul had been closing the season with a flourish. His week 20 re-breakout was setting him up to be a championship favorite, but then the wheels fell off. Ohtani injury, Julio Urias admin leave, Mookie got hobbled. It didn't end well. Paul, most most recently, enters the playoffs on a good note, having put up a good week against Dave (ending Dave's season) to give Paul some energy entering Semi-finals week.

It's championship season and we're off on running. Giddy Up.