Week 1: Broken Pitchers and a New Name at the Top…but Not Max

 


Paul got some face time with Max’s baby, Elena, recently. Michael RUTHlessly (get it?) keeps his children in Atlanta and away from south Florida so Nissee and Poppy need to get baby fixes from local children. Thank you, Max, for filling the void.

It’s a new year and a new blog, so let’s rock.

2024 YTD Power Ranks

TOTAL

HITTING

PITCHING

 

Manager

Team

1

Robert

3.00

1

Robert

2.75

1

Arthur

1.17

Michael

Still Overdue

2

Dean

4.14

2

Max

3.38

2

Robert

3.33

Arthur

2022 TRUE YEAR

3

Arthur

4.43

3

Dean

3.63

3

Keith

4.50

Paul

2nd Act

4

Max

4.43

4

Dave

4.50

4

Dave

4.67

Robert

Matt Olson Supremacy

5

Dave

4.57

5

Paul

5.00

5

Dean

4.83

Keith

Bourbon Street Blues

6

Keith

5.14

6

Keith

5.63

6

Brian/Josh

5.17

Max

did I win yet?

7

Brian/Josh

6.29

7

Michael

6.38

7

Max

5.83

Dean

Crashed My Royce

8

Michael

6.57

8

Arthur

6.88

8

Michael

6.83

Cory

Hebrew Nationals

9

Paul

6.57

9

Brian/Josh

7.13

9

Cory

7.50

Dave

I Still Hade Fantasy

10

Cory

7.86

10

Cory

8.13

10

Paul

8.67

Brian/Josh

This Bud's For You

 

Robert introduced himself to the league with a flurry of Ketel Marte leadoff home runs against the Braves. A solid all-around week launched Robert to the top of the week 1 power ranks. Dean, Arthur, Max and Dave all had a good week to start a cut above the league trailers in Keith, BJ, Michael, and Paul while Cory is going to need to reflect a little bit after a frustrating week 1.

A reminder for the league newcomer and league stalwarts who forget how these ranks are made: think of these like rotisserie standings, but in reverse. Yahoo publishes everyone’s combined stats throughout the year here: https://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/19163/headtoheadstats. I pull them each week and then rank everyone in each category. Being first in a category gets you one point, like Dean having the most home runs with 20, right now. Across 14 categories, you average your number of points and that is your power rank. This means that Robert averaged being the third best team in all the categories, a very good standing. These ranks will fluctuate the most in the first month of the year as we are all relatively tightly packed, and then by May 1 we have a pretty good idea who the top teams are.

The theme for the first matchup week for me was two-fold: starting pitcher injuries and bullpen meltdowns:

Cory lost Shane Bieber for the year, Brian and Josh appear to have lost Spencer Strider, Keith lost Eury Perez and Kevin Gausman’s velocity was 4 mph down over the weekend as we all hold our breath…on top of all the big March injuries (Senga, Bradish, Means, Cole, da dah da dah). These injuries were the talk of the league over the weekend and as fantasy baseball players we’re left riding the roller coaster of what MLB does to address the pitching injury epidemic. Having great pitching is necessary for fantasy success…we just need to avoid the land mines.

Next up is the fantasy bullpens which had quite the week. Here were the top 35 relief pitchers drafted, on average, what their ERA was projected to be for the whole year, and then how they’ve fared, 11 calendar days into the season:

ADP Order

Relief Pitcher

2024 Projected ERA

Current ERA

1.        

Edwin Díaz

2.80

0.00

2.        

Josh Hader

3.14

7.20

3.        

Emmanuel Clase

2.96

0.00

4.        

Camilo Doval

3.36

6.75

5.        

Raisel Iglesias

3.38

0.00

6.        

Alexis Díaz

4.00

9.00

7.        

Andrés Muñoz

2.90

4.91

8.        

Evan Phillips

3.52

1.93

9.        

David Bednar

3.37

4.50

10.    

Pete Fairbanks

2.98

18.00

11.    

Ryan Helsley

3.23

3.60

12.    

Clay Holmes

3.54

0.00

13.    

Craig Kimbrel

3.91

3.00

14.    

Tanner Scott

3.24

2.25

15.    

Adbert Alzolay

3.80

2.25

16.    

Kenley Jansen

4.08

0.00

17.    

Will Smith

4.44

13.50

18.    

José Alvarado

3.16

9.64

19.    

Alex Lange

3.98

3.37

20.    

José Leclerc

4.14

13.50

21.    

Carlos Estévez

4.29

0.00

22.    

Mason Miller

3.23

3.60

23.    

Robert Suarez

4.01

1.80

24.    

Kyle Finnegan

4.31

7.36

25.    

Hunter Harvey

3.79

3.86

26.    

Yuki Matsui

3.16

1.42

27.    

David Robertson

4.05

0.00

28.    

Ryan Pressly

3.39

14.73

29.    

Jason Adam

3.51

4.15

30.    

Aroldis Chapman

3.25

0.00

31.    

Yennier Cano

3.73

1.80

32.    

Joel Payamps

3.92

10.80

33.    

James McArthur

4.24

7.71

34.    

Reynaldo López

4.05

1.50

35.    

Justin Lawrence

4.55

13.50

 

14 of the top 35 Relief Pitchers drafted have started with an ERA at least a run higher than their projection, and 10 of those have an ERA DOUBLE what they were projected to have, add on to this that a few of the hot starting relief pitchers (Ian Hamilton and Ryan Borucki, notably), also blew up late in the week, and it was a bloodbath for the fantasy bullpens. If you were able to avoid these faceplants, consider yourself fortunate and you probably survived with good pitching ratios to exit week 1. Relief Pitcher projections are always more fluky year over year, because they throw the fewest innings and any one of two blow up can really impact their numbers for the whole year. Week 1 put that variability into high visibility and many of these pitchers will now have bloated ERAs through most of the first half of the season. We trudge on, though, looking for SaveHolds without wrecking our ratios.

We’re through the elongated 11 day matchup where most teams only played 8 or 9 games due to all the rainouts. We’ve also re-set the number of moves back to 8 like our normal week. It’s time to settle in and find out what works. Let’s have ourselves a season.


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