Week 16, A New Ballgame

 

Paul had the grandkids in town a few weeks ago and was reminded why Michael has no time for (waves hands) anything anymore; but Paul did get to take them out on the boat, pictured here with Ruth on the intercoastal.



Dave has elevated into the sub-3 YTD Power Ranks territory, this is where the all-time great teams have been. It’s rare to be this far separated from the league this late in the year. Michael was there for one week in 2023 (week 21, same 2.93 ranking) but before then you have to go all the way back to the Dave 2016 year when he had all those extra first round picks to see a sub-3 ranking after week 15. It was a huge year for Dave even before Nick Kurtz went on one of the best 2-month stretches in MLB history. So. Ya know. Dave has had that going for him too. How long will this keep up? History says…not as long as he would want, we’ll see.


For one week at least though, Michael did eclipse Dave for the high water mark EWW for the week. Michael’s trade deadline moves came later than they needed to, with how far back in the standings he was, but they are starting to pay off. Meanwhile Kevin has seen his Wins Over Expected, which had paced the league in the unlucky way (he was a whopping -9.76 YTD WOE just 4 weeks into the season, have worked their way all the way back near zero. More on the Kevin run later.

I added a new column here to show who’s been hot and who’s been not. You can see four clear teams that have pulled away over this last month: Paul, Dave, Michael, Dean. Yes that’s right, it’s Paul that’s been the best-performing team over the last month in Expected Week Wins.

It was a monumental week for the league standings so I felt it only appropriate for the blog to be matchup reviews this week.

The season-changing matchup saw Keith nearly get skunked by Kevin. Keith had his worst week of the year and it couldn’t have come at a worse time with one of the teams chasing him and directly opposing him, Kevin, having a great week and the league’s middle class wanting to put separation between them and Michael to force Michael’s hand to sell at the trade deadline. Keith entered the week in 4th place in the standings and with that battle for the 4th spot seemingly being a 2 or 3 team race with he and Cory neck-and-neck while Kevin lurked, but Keith left the week in 5th place (though in a virtual tie for 4th) with Kevin who handed Keith an 11-1 defeat. Thankfully Keith clawed a few categories back over the weekend to keep Kevin from getting too far away from him. Kevin’s pitching carried the week with a 3.84 ERA over 77 innings… but he had 101 Ks!?! and a 1.06. Clutch, clutch week.

The other pivotal week saw Michael take down Arthur. Arthur had put up a very solid Monday to Friday before faltering over the weekend and allowing Michael to pull away. Surprisingly it was Michael’s pitching that did the bulk of the work this week posting a 2.90 ERA over 83 innings. Michael faces Dave this week in the final full week before the trade deadline, if Dave can push Michael back to where he came from a month ago, Michael will likely be a seller.

The next standings-altering week (yes, there were a lot of them) saw Paul knock Cory down more than a few pegs. Paul had a solid 7.52 EWW week but it was Cory’s lackluster performance that did the damage here. With the big win, Paul has created 18 standings-games worth of separation between him and 5th place, likely freeing him up to turn an eye towards the playoffs. It’s been a tough~6-week stretch for Cory who is now going to be without Aaron Judge for a little bit, making clawing back the team all the harder. Cory likely will need a big acquisition or two over the next ten days to gain momentum for a playoff run.

In what should have been the marquee matchup of the week before all the standings drama, Dave showed Dean who the class of the league is right now. While Dean has largely rested on his draft capital advantage this year, exemplified by only making 21 moves all year and holding a minor league pitcher in an active roster spot, Dave has continued to stay aggressive leading to free agent wire gold such as Nick Kurtz, Chandler Simpson, and…Trevor Rogers? The tide turned this week. Yes, Dean is still in first place in the standings, but his Power Rank has slipped as teams like Kevin, Paul, and Michael have surged, and his EWW fell off the pace (for at least one week). Dean still has a very good team and will make the playoffs, but as we’ve all seen, the top teams during the year often falter towards the end of the year and continual talent acquisition is important.

In the final matchup Robert beat Max. (insert pillow fight gif). Neither team had an EWW over 4. Max had 31 innings pitched. These teams are eyeing next year.

It was a wild week, hope everyone is having fun with this. There are still a number more chess moves to make before the August 7th trade deadline and a new level of urgency for a lot more teams heading into that date. Let’s go.



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