Week 21: We Know Nothing

 

Cory was a caddy in the United States Amateur golf tournament this month. Shown here showing off the calves of a solid Looper, Cory and his player, Patrick Isztwan, made it through thousands of players to qualify for the USGA event. 

• We had some solid late movement in the power ranks this week. Dave popped up, Arthur and Michael crashed, Cory and Max surged

• This chart tells the more full story. 
• Dave and Cory were the champions of the week (EWW of 10.1 and 9.54). For Cory, it's only his third week above 8.00 all year (and the first week above 8.05). For Dave, this confirms his uptrend; after two scary weeks, he bounced back last week and skyrocketed this week. He's peaking at the right time.
• Speaking of peaking, Michael appears to have peaked at the wrong time. Despite wishing that the back half of his season could have been like a Barney Stinson playlist, All Rise, the regression was inevitable. After growing his hold on the 4th playoff spot to 8 games, Michael faceplanted this week with his first week below 7.5 EWW since week 9. Thankfully for him, he was not alone among playoff contenders in struggling.
• Paul, Arthur, Dean, and Kevin also all underperformed this week (all with negative Week EWW minus Avg EWW). Luckily for Dean (with his 2.5 WOE), he played an even more struggling opponent and was able to trim the gap in the standings.
• Kevin has not been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together since all the injuries a few weeks ago and now has the lowest 4-week running EWW (21.8) in the league. Fortunate for him is that one, it's hard to stay that bad for that long so a bounce back is likely, and two, he plays two teams the final two weeks he is now in a battle with for a playoff spot. He will control his own destiny.
• Kevin, Arthur, Michael, Dean, and Paul are all now within 11 standings games with two weeks to go. Three playoff spots for these five teams. Paul, in 6th, is only 5 games out of 4th.

Let's do some matchup recaps because there was some weird stuff going on:

• Kevin wishes Cory hadn't picked this week to have his week of the year, but alas he did. Kevin's 2.75 ERA, 5QS and +2NW saved what could have been a disaster of a week. His pitching volume is a little light compared to the other playoff teams. Cory's 15 HR, .293 AVG, and .503 SLG are truly enormous numbers, as were his 9 SVH.
• Dave ran up the score on his college buddy here with even higher offensive outputs: 15 HR, .305 AVG, .551 SLG...who needs Nick Kurtz. Arthur's offensive volume has picked back up here with the return of O'Neil Cruz and some roster reconstruction, and it was very good this week, it just wasn't enough to keep up with one of the best offensive weeks of the year that Dave had.
• Max showed this week the team that was very competitive for most of the year until he did the thing where he mostly stopped paying attention for two months. This was Max's 8th week with an Expected Week Wins over 7.5, more than most of the league. It was all clicking this week and was punctuated with 8 weekend Home Runs to kill any hopes from Michael of making a comeback. No need to spill anymore ink about Michael's .222 AVG and 4.60 ERA week. Ew indeed
• Keith resurrected his Spoiler Era to win lunch against Paul. Paul was cycling through the Appalachian Mountains but it wasn't a lack of focus or volume that cost him this one. Paul has mostly survived his sale of assets. He has been better by subtraction of Kyle Tucker, though Pete Alonso has reclaimed his Polar Bear ways. Win some, lose some, I suppose. While Paul's 10th Power Rank is lower than we're used to seeing for a contender, it's the consistency of his team that has kept him afloat, rarely going above 7.5 EWW for many weeks this year but even more rarely going below 5.5, this has allowed him to take advantage of underperforming opponents and managing his way to be ready to pull some upsets.
• Dean held off Robert for the fortunate victory of the week. Dean's 3.35 ERA and +4NW look similar to Kevin's numbers this week, but it came with only 2 QS. Dean is also going with a low pitching volume strategy. Robert, well, Robert got his lineup set and keeps adding players trying to find some gems. Your commissioner thanks you for your service.

Two weeks left, It's a Race.