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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