Chop Chop For The Last Time: The PL Wacky Leagues Week 4 Recap

It’s not all just fun and games over here at Pitcher List, sometimes we all like to really hunker down and focus on only the most serious tests of fantasy skill. Hence, the Wacky Leagues. These leagues are made up of a mix of PL staffers and PL+ members, so if you haven’t already, head on over to the PL+ sign up page and get on the Discord so you can start prepping for the 2021 Wacky Season.

Asher Dratel will be bringing you all of the recaps for the Guillotine Leagues and WorstBall Categories, while Myles Nelson keeps us all up to date on WorstBall Points and the Grand Theft leagues.

The Guillotine Leagues

This week marks an important milestone in the Guillotine Leagues this year, as it was the final week of double elimination. Only one team faces the reaper’s blade every week going forward now, although it’s certainly not gonna get any easier. In League 1, we’re already seeing a FAAB stratification, and the richer managers will be able to start picking up big names for cheap just by virtue of being able to outspend their opponents. In League 2, the FAAB remainders are a lot more even, with nobody possessing over 50% of their original budget, so the bidding wars should be interesting.

In League 1, only 30 points separated 4th place from 8th going into the games on Friday. That range had narrowed to a mere 18 points between 3rd and 8th place by Saturday afternoon, with only 3 points separating safety from last place. By the time the dust settled on Sunday night it was Gary Tater that narrowly squeaked past the blade, finishing in 6th place by a mere 3.5 points, managing to overcome a -10 point performance by Jon Lester on Friday night and a whole rash of lost games with the postponement of the Yankees/Mets series over the weekend. It was mthurlow and Alex Drennan fighting it out for the top spot, with mthurlow taking #1, beating out Alex by 12 points.

Christopher Reeves and BoldDevil saw their teams axed this week. Reeves’ offense going off for 6 HRs on Friday wasn’t enough to save him, and BoldDevil was hurt by a very underwhelming two-step from Carlos Carrasco for the week, along with continued woes for Joe Jiménez. With Reeves and BoldDevil being eliminated, let’s see how the rest of the league reacted to all of the fresh waiver chum. High man in League 1 was *drum roll* Mike Trout, who still fetches the big bucks at $217 from Jake Matier. Honestly, I didn’t expect Trout to have changed teams 3 times already given that he’s…Mike Trout. But if there’s anything we’ve learned from these first 4 weeks, it’s that depending on any one man to keep you alive is a fool’s errand. Our other big FAAB mover this week was Christian Yelich, who went to Alex Drennan for $156. The bidding in League 1 was all over the place this week, with Trevor Story also going to Jake for a mere $12(!!!) while mthurlow dropped $104 on Brandon Lowe, which means he paid more for Lowe than he did for Walker Buehler ($103.) League 1 had a whole spate of claims for discounts of the week, even aside from Story. Diminishing FAAB pools meant that Anthony Rendon went to Alex for a mere $10, and the $5 And Under bin included names like Matt Chapman, Starling Marte, Luke Voit, and Mike Yastrzemski! Corbin Burnes and Pablo Lopez went for a combined $0! Carlos Carrasco didn’t even get bid on.

Folks, things are getting crazy and we’re only midway through the season! After week 4, Rich Holman is the only team with $0 FAAB still in the hunt, although Gary Tater isn’t far behind with $7 remaining. Looking down on the rest of the league from their fancy chair made of money is Alex Drennan, with $533 left to spend wildly as everybody else tires to squeeze every possible point out of their remaining dollars.

In League 2, things were much less hectic, as Donny Moskovits cruised to a first-place finish with a margin above 80 points over Benjamin Haller. On his way to that top slot, Donny forced KingHippo to let loose this brief piece of poetry in the Discord:

I feel like Donny at least needs to consider a team name change now. Meanwhile, on the low end, Chris Nichols saw his team going into Friday’s slate with only 54 points total. For the week. The entire week. I asked him if he had anything to say about the performance, and he simply said he was a tale of Careful, Icarus. Learn from Chris’ mistakes! Score points! See your enemies driven before you!

Joining Chris in the bottom slots was Kyle Seiler, which means he can put all of his focus into his WorstBall Categories team. Their loss is the rest of the league’s gain, as it means some very big names on both the hitting and pitching side were up for grabs on Monday night. When it came to bidding, we have a three-way tie for the highest price this week, with Myles Nelson flexing his FAAB muscle and spending $156 each on Bryce Harper, Mookie Betts, and Yu Darvish. Benjamin Haller also opened up the wallet and snagged himself Charlie Blackmon for $101. Meanwhile, triple-digit players from League 1 like Christian Yelich and Walker Buehler both went to Donny Moskovits for $30 each. A whole heapload of guys went for $0 this week, with waiver priority coming into play several times for luminaries such as Patrick Corbin and Alex Bregman (Benjamin), Corey Seager (Myles), Pablo Lopez and Cavan Biggio (KingHippo), and NL RoY candidate Jake Cronenworth (Hunter Denson).

The spending spree drops Myles from the top FAAB spot in League 2, but it’s KingHippo and Benjamin Haller who find themselves at the bottom of the list, with $0 remaining. Donny Mostkovits conservative bidding means he’s top of the heap with $360 left and hopes to spend it in the coming weeks.

Whew, what a week.

WorstBall Categories

Kyle Seiler ended this week in a 4-4 tie with Doc Brown, but I want to point out Kyle’s truly putrid ratios on offense, with a .226 OBP and impressively anemic .211 SLG. His pitching put up a respectable 6.75 ERA but a more pedestrian 1.50 WHIP. Honestly, I figure you deserve better than a tie with that kind of (lack of) production, but sometimes you just run into an equally bad team and end up still in last place in the league. We got another 2 BSVs this week, helping myself and Mary to win their matchups in that category, a rare situation as the weeks always seem to end 0-0. We’re now roughly halfway through figuring out which of the 10 of us is truly *in extreme jean-ralphio voice* the woooooooorst.

Hitter Of The Week: Yoshi Tsutsugo. Yoshi only struck out 4 times, which is rather pedestrian by WorstBall standards. But, he put up a perfect .000 OBP and SLG, going 0-for-14 for the week. Now that’s some impressive WorstBalling.

Pitcher Of The Week: Trevor Gott. He pitched 0.1 innings this week, but boy was it a doozy. 1 L, a 54.00 ERA, a 6.00 WHIP, but most importantly, 1 BSV. Blown saves have been very hard to come by, and Mary made the right move this week to snag one.

WorstBall Points

We had another set of dominating performances this week, as Joshua Botelho and David Fenko battled it out to see whose team would lead the league in points scored. Botelho is our reigning champ, and to see him doing so well is no surprise. He got incredible performances from Jordan Lyles (2 starts, 8 IP, 15.75 ERA, totaling 82 points), Kris Bubic (2 starts, 7.2 IP, 7.04 ERA, 48.67 points), and Jo Adell (.174 batting average, 9 strikeouts, 38 points). Fenko was a surprise though, as he started the year 0-3 with not much to show for it before breaking out in a big way this week. While he didn’t have anyone perform up to Lyles’ ability, he got a lot of solid performances from guys like Adam Plutko (18.90 ERA, 43.33 points), JaCoby Jones (.185 batting average, 11 strikeouts, 36 points), and Shed Long Jr. (.052 batting average, 8 strikeouts, 25.5 points). These two teams led the way all week, and showed us all how WorstBall is really done.

Hitter of the Week: Jo Adell. This kid absolutely has a bright future, but it’s clear that he just doesn’t quite have what it takes to be a regular starter at the major league level yet. Fortunately for us, the Angels are committed to his development and seem to not be worried about him just yet.

Pitcher of the Week: Jordan Lyles. No wonder Botelho had the high score, he had both the hitter and the pitcher of the week! Lyles will look to keep his streak going against the tough Oakland Athletics this week.

Grand Theft Baseball

After four weeks, the unthinkable has finally happened. I finally get to steal a player! Of course, my team doesn’t make it easy on me, and we went back and forth a few times on Sunday, but getting a save from Taylor Williams ended up being exactly what I needed to take the lead. And not with a second to spare either, as I did not want to have to lose another player this week, with protection lists being shortened all the way down to just 6 players. I was not looking forward to potentially losing someone like Yoan Moncada, Alex Bregman, or Patrick Corbin. So as I was looking over my opponent’s roster and protection list, I noticed a few standout hitters that were left available. Guys like Francisco Lindor, Paul Goldschmidt, and Tyler Glasnow were ripe for the taking. But I need someone that’s performing right now. I can’t afford to lose any more weeks, so I needed bats that I could rely on. And so far, Lindor and Goldschmidt have not been that. Goldie’s OBP has been stellar, but he hasn’t been producing runs or hitting for power. Lindor has been more productive, but with an OBP on the season of just .318, it was hard for me to try and stomach that. So I went with one of the hottest hitters in baseball, who’s been hot for seemingly over a year now, who brings all the swagger to the table that I need, and that was Tim Anderson. He’s definitely been the best hitter that was available so far this year, so hopefully he continues to rake.

With teams having to leave more than two-thirds of their team unprotected, there was plenty of talent to be had by the victors of each matchup. Some of the better players taken included Dinelson Lamet, Xander Bogaerts, Eloy Jimenez, Eddie Rosario, Mike Clevinger, and Aaron Judge. This week, we only get to protect four players, so expect to see bigger and bigger names appear on this list moving forward. It’s going to be a bloodbath.

-Myles Nelson