Pitcher List Staff League Review: Week 10

Welcome folks to the Pitcher List staff leagues! This year Pitcher List added a huge amount of new staff members which allowed us to expand from three to a whopping six leagues! As a reminder, these leagues are standard 5×5 and are set up relegation style, which means if you finish in the top three, you move up; if you finish bottom three, you move down.

 

Legacy League

 

Best Performance: Gallo’s Cole (Kyle Bishop)/ ManBearPuig (Rick Graham)

The “best performance” of the week is really a matter of interpretation. Rick Graham swept Austin Bristow 10-0, with only a few categories in close contention – average (.262 to .261), WHIP (1.10 to 1.18), and W (4 to 3). Outside that, it was pure domination by Rick. You may by wondering “If Rick swept all 10 categories, why is Kyle’s name up there?” That’s a good question. Kyle won his matchup 8-2 over Max Posner, which also doesn’t sound as dominating, but if Kyle were to face Rick this past week, Kyle actually would’ve won the matchup 5-4-1! He posted phenomenal hitting stats and the areas where he trailed Rick were actually very close. So I’ll leave it up to you. Is it your relative dominance vs your opponent? Or the team that performs the best overall?

Closest Matchup: Miggy Stardust (Jay Dunbar) vs Chapman & The Hosk (Myles Nelson)/ Ian’s Pornogriffey (Ian Post) vs How Manny More Times (Nick Pollack)

Closest Matchup is also one that’s kind of up for interpretation. Is it the closest score or is it the matchup with narrow margins in the most categories? If for you feel it’s the former, then Jay and Myles’ matchup was stellar, with Jay edging it out 5-4-1. What’s interesting in this matchup though is that all the tightly contested categories were won by Myles, so really he barely kept this from being a blowout.

In the alternative, Ian edged out Nick 5-3-2 to maintain his hold on first place. Despite a back and forth matchup, they ended up tied in runs and HRs. It’s tough and it knocks Nick to ninth place, just a half game out of relegation territory.

– Dave Cherman

 

Prodigy League

 

Best Performance: Astudillo Ghibli (Ben Pernick) over Nate’s Nifty team: 8-1-1

It was a rough week for Nate’s squad. He posted a .200 batting average with just four home runs and 20 RBI, along with a 5.72 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP. Terrible weeks from Gleyber Torres, Mookie Betts, Rafael Devers and Joc Pederson were equally matched in futility on the bump by Tyler Skaggs and Andrew Heaney. Ben was able to cruise to a comfortable 8-1 victory, only losing steals (2-1) and tying in saves with one apiece. The big victory helped Ben ‘climb’ into ninth place, still behind Nate who is in eighth.

Closest Matchup: Troy Klauder vs. Hurling Archer: 5-5

There were three 5-5 ties in the Prodigy League during Week 10, although the other two matchups were weirdly far apart in most categories. However, Troy and Stephen had a tight battle, finishing in a tie with only one run, one win, two saves, three strikeouts and .02 in WHIP separating both from victory. Strong showings from Madison Bumgarner, Jose Berrios and Josh Hader helped Stephen edge it out in WHIP and strikeouts, while three home runs from Javier Baez and three steals from Adalberto Mondesi helped Troy avoid the loss.

Statistical Oddity:

Boydz-in-the-hood and Adam’s Okay Team also tied 5-5, but outside of steals (4-2), saves (3-2) and strikeouts (46-45) none of the categories were even remotely close. Boydz-in-the-hood took commanding victories in runs, home runs and RBI thanks to Nelson Cruz, Mike Moustakas and Mike Trout’s dominance, while Adam’s team crushed it on the mound with a 2.14 ERA and a 0.80 WHIP, thanks to Walker Buehler, J.A. Happ and Kyle Hendricks.

Workin’ the Wire: Trey Mancini by Astudillo Ghibli

Ben’s squad won handily 8-1 thanks primarily to Nate’s team’s disappointing week, but his addition of Mancini, who hit .385 with one home run, certainly didn’t hurt.

– Andy Patton

 

Futures League

 

Best Performance: Michael Augustine (Snell’s Bells) vs. Alex Drennan (Bomb Voyage), 9-1

With a lack of a true all-around performance in Week 10, the best offensive outburst wins the day. Snell’s Bells hit .315 with 12 homers, 33 RBI, 21 Runs and six SBs – all wins. A less-than-great pitching performance was still good enough to get four more wins and collect the near-sweep.

– Travis Sherer

 

PL-League-1

 

As the league approaches the halfway point of the season, there’s starting to be more significant separation between the winners and the losers. The last wild card slot, currently held by Hedenson’s Team (Hunter Denson), has expanded to a 6.5 game lead over the first team out, currently The Ice Horse Train (Justin Paradis).

All of the underlying team metrics in xW%, zW%, and pW% support this stratification, with the exception of Stephen Dudas’s Team (Stephen Dudas), which is being punished by the baseball gods for its unoriginal name, now having fallen into third. It’s entirely likely that Dudas has banked enough wins to slide into the playoffs, despite poor marks in xW% at .445 and zW% at .435, but there is definitely enough time to continue slipping down the standings if things don’t pick up.

Hedenson’s Team had one of their worst weeks of the year, posting a -5.83 zTotal compared to their weekly average. It’s not the worst thing in the world to get a bad week out of the way against Led Z.Eflin, since the pRec was only 1-6-3. They need to bounce back and pay the pounding forward to Alex’s Team next week, where their pRec is a more favorable 6-1-3.

League Analysis Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VAs_S5aqpySHugE5ockmotQswK-UNc-S3T-WnzpxSio/

– Ryan Fickes

 

PL-League-2

 

Best Performance:

This was another week where there weren’t really any overall outstanding performances, but a handful with some sturdy numbers and some other outstanding ones. Ol’ Dirty Bastardo (Adam Lawler) eked out a 6-4 win over Otto Von Bettsmarck (Rob. D), and had his shortcomings in some categories, but overall performed very well. His best categories were ERA (2.96), SB (6), HR (15) and RBI (32). He also scored 33 runs and batted .260.

Closest Matchup:

DeJong and DeRestless (Nathan Mills) won 5-4-1 over Austin’s Team (Austin Gretencord) this week, and as many as four or five categories were within flipping distance. Both teams had seven saves. Wins were separated by just one, a 4-3 victory for Nathan, Austin took runs 36-30, and RBI 34-32 and WHIP 0.88 to 0.97.

Statistical Oddity:

Call this weird or just plain sad, but The Story Profar (Jordan Larimore) took a 9-1 loss to Holland Otts (Clay Cotton), largely due to missing the minimum innings pitched requirement by one. single. frame. Had Jordan’s pitchers notched one more inning, he’d likely have won ERA, WHIP and Saves, salvaging a more manageable 6-4 loss.

– Jordan Larimore

 

The Bottom of the Barrel

 

Best Performance: Donny’s Dandy Team (Donny Moskovits)

Donny’s team flat out hit this week. The third-worst average in his starting lineup belonged to Mike Trout, who hit .273 with 8 R, 3 HR, and 5 RBI. For reference, that average (remember, third-worst on his team for the week) was better than nine of the remaining 11 teams’ entire batting average for the week. Coupled with a week-leading 44 R, 17 HR, 40 RBI, it should be abundantly clear that Donny’s team set the bar for offense this week. Curiously enough, his depleted opponent (me) was the only squad to outperform his in average (.322 to .304). On the rubber, Donny’s team had a 0.98 WHIP in almost 73 innings with a 9+ K/9. Aside from the unsightly 4.09 ERA, Donny is in contention for the best weekly performance over the course of the whole season.

Closest Matchup: New World Order (Colin Ward) vs. The Bull Doziers (Evan Rockow)

Neither team had a great, or terrible, performance in Week 10. Using rotisserie calculations for the week, Colin earned 51 points and Evan earned 45, which would have put them 10th and 11th in the overall league standings for the week. Most of the other matchups were lopsided, but neither Colin or Evan seemed to want to win this matchup this week. A pesky tie at three Wins is the only thing keeping this matchup from having finished 5-5 for the week.

– David Fenko