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: Chapman & the Hosk (Myles Nelson)
It’s been a rough year for Pitcher List’s manager of operations, Alex Fast. I mean, he got married, but we all know what’s really important is your fantasy season and his has been rough, taking a 9-1 blowout loss to Myles, which takes Alex down to 1-14. If there’s a positive for Alex this week, it’s that his team poked out 20 HRs … the problem is it came with just 47 RBI and a .254 average.
But enough about Alex, let’s talk about Myles. His offense held strong with a .295 average, 9 SBs, and 58 RBI in the dominating effort, getting a huge week from Rafael Devers, Mookie Betts, and Oscar Mercado (combined 24 R, 7 HRs, 25 RBI, 4 SBs). His pitching wasn’t too shabby either posting a 3.06 ERA with a cool 1.19 WHIP on the backs of aces Justin Verlander and Mike Clevinger. Myles improves to 5-9-1, climbing up to 10th place. He’ll face Who’s Your Vladdy in Week 16 … wait, that’s me. I don’t want to face Myles. This should be fun.
Closest Matchup: The Legacy League honestly did not have any close matchups in Week 15. I could try to hype one up but it wouldn’t make much difference. Here’s hoping there’s more excitement in Week 16.
Jon Metzelaar Transaction Watch: While the rest of the league sits between 17 (Alex Fast) and 45 (Austin Bristow) transactions on the season, our favorite resident Mets fan sits at 148 transactions on the season. For those who are curious, that’s 31% of all transactions league-wide this year. It’s been a fun ride.
— Dave Cherman
Prodigy League
Best Performance: Acuna Moncada vs. Adam’s Okay Team (8-2)
The prodigy league had two 8-2 victories last week, but Austin’s victory had a bit more dominance. He ran away with all five hitting categories and earned victories in wins, saves, and strikeouts by a healthy margin. His only losses were in ERA and WHIP, which was a close 1.28 to 1.22. I love that Ronald Acuna had eight steals, more than Adam’s entire team (6). What a week.
Closest Matchup: Troy Klauder vs. Astudillo Ghibli (5-4)
We also had two 5-4 matchups last week, but the matchup between Troy’s first-place team and Ben’s ninth-place team was the closest, with Ben pulling off the upset. The two tied in saves (four each) and were very close in steals and wins (9-7) and WHIP (1.14 to 1.07). The speed of Trea Turner and strong pitching from Noah Syndergaard and Yu Darvish helped Ben earn the victory.
Biggest waiver wire add: A.J Pollock
Ben’s squad nabbed Pollock off the waiver wire at the start of last week, and he proceeded to hit .357 with three runs, a home run, five RBI and two steals – which helped Ben win the steals category and the batting average category, giving him a 5-4 win over Troy’s first-place squad.
– Andy Patton
Futures League
Best Performance: Rob (Inglourious Baezterd) def. Snell’s Bells (Michael Augustine), 8-2
This was a week of emphatic wins in the Futures League, with results of 9-0-1, 8-1-1, and Rob’s 8-2 victory taking the cake. He had the most impressive win of the three, propelled by 19 jacks (thanks to Jorge Soler and Xander Bogaerts’ four homers apiece) his offense swept with at .303 AVG, 9 SB, 19 HR, 61 RBI and 57 Runs. Merrill Kelly, Sonny Gray, and Mike Clevinger led the way for a pitching staff that K’d 83, won 5 and had a 1.25 WHIP, all category wins.
Closest Matchup: Travis Sherer (Coffee’s for Closers ) def. Dan (AMC’s Breaking Bats) 9-0-1
The closest matchup looked anything but from far away. Travis scraped by to a blowout win, almost losing every offensive category in the process. Each squad finished with a .265 AVG but Travis earned the victory. The two tied with 45 RBIs, and Travis edged out SB (6-5) and HR (15-14). Pitching categories were decided by Friday, however, with Travis sweeping Wins (5-2), Saves (3-0), Ks (91-72), ERA (2.44-4.99) and WHIP (0.96-1.52). Still, this could have easily been 5-4 had Sunday gone differently.
Weirdest Team Stat: Dave Fishman (Not Dave)
Not really a weird stat, Dave’s team just hit 29 home runs in Week 15. Thought that needed to be said. Eduardo Escobar, George Springer, Mike Trout, and Josh Donaldson hit four apiece … not too shabby.
Biggest Performance-Enhancing Wire Add: Oscar Mercado
Scott Chu (Big League Chu) scooped up Mercado July 17, and he responded by going 9-for-24 with 1 HR and a SB. That SB took the category for Chu, who won his week 6-4.
– Travis Sherer
PL-League-1
Have you ever shot a man in Reno just to watch him die? Nick Gerli has. Entering Week 15, Nicholas’s Team sat in dead last, cruising towards relegation, 14.5 GB of avoiding that fate. After Week 15, Nicholas’s Team sits in dead last, cruising towards relegation, with a still-large 11.5 game deficit in avoiding that fate.
Meanwhile, the Maryland Wolfdogs (Ryan Fickes) had started to correct the discrepancy between their metrics (a solidly .550+ team) and their actual winning percentage (.512), climbing into fifth. But then Nicholas’s Team went and committed a senseless act of 6-3-1, bolstered by a 3-0-1 record in toss-ups, to drop the Wolfdogs back to .500 and clinging to sixth place and the final wild-card position, two games up on Air Yordans (Alex Isherwood). The Wolfdogs spent Saturday at the beach, but it was baseball that made them salty this weekend.
Best Performance: Massive Deverstation (Ben Ruppert)
Massive Deverstation (Ben Ruppert) dropped a monster week on Air Yordans with a .786 xW%, .760 zW%, 8.77 zTotal compared to the league’s average for the week, good for a 5-3-2 record. That’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow for the Yordans, whose .600 xW% and .559 zW% would have resulted in likely moving into the final wild card spot if the matchup had been a bit more favorable.
Deverstation’s long week saw him post 70 R, 57 RBI, 23 HR, 10 SB, and a .319 AVG, none of which ranked worse than a tie for third for the week. The team also lead the league with 11 SV while posting a respectable 3.38 ERA and 1.19 WHIP, supporting the strong week. Air Yordans avoided a disaster by the extremely close margin of a 3-0-2 record in toss-ups, tying in R and W while winning K by 97-96, ERA by 3.22 to 3.38, and WHIP by 1.17 to 1.19.
Best Matchup
It’s hard to get much better than the Deversation vs Yordans tilt, but first place Led Z.Eflin (Max Freeze) and fourth place Mostly Nats (Charlie Wright) fought to a 5-5 tie, although neither team had a particularly dominant week. They combined for a .527 xW% and .497 zW%.
Statistical Oddities
The Beliebers (Ben Hizer) are a fairly middle of the pack team in terms of pitching ratios, but they sure did put up a solid week and a half after the All-Star break with a 2.33 ERA and 1.12 WHIP. The two teams they’re chasing for wild card position are the Wolfdogs and Air Yordans, both of whom are playing top tier teams in Week 16, while the Beliebers get the 10th place The Ice Horse Train (Justin Paradis). Playoff position is reachable this week.
– Ryan Fickes
PL-League-2
Best performance: You can’t not give this to a team that put up a 9-1 victory, right? Otto Von Bettsmarck (Rob D.) nearly skunked Aaron Raised a Cain (Daniel Port) with an incredibly solid all-around performance. Daniel won only batting average, and needed a better than .300 mark to do so. It was a slightly extended week given the All-Star break, but even so, Rob’s 59 R and 63 RBI were bonkers numbers. His team also smacked 21 homers and stole 12 bases. His pitching went nuts, too, to the tune of eight wins, one save (which won the category as Daniel rosters only Ryan Pressly in RP), 105 Ks, a 3.33 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP.
Closest matchup: This could honestly be a number of them this week as some matchups’ final scores were tight but individual categories weren’t while some had several categories close but the final scores weren’t. The battle of the Johns (Wallace and Hale), for example, finished 4-4-2, but most of the categories that didn’t tie weren’t all that close. Meanwhile, my matchup with MonStarz (Kyle Monson) wound up with him beating me 6-3-1, but HR and RBI were each separated by just one, W and SV by two, and ERA and WHIP by a combined 0.72 points.
– Jordan Larimore
The Bottom of the Barrel
Best Performance: New World Odor (Colin Ward)
Yes it was a long week, but Colin’s strategy of only rostering one positional bench player and pitchers galore really showed in the extended week. New World Odor accumulated 138 IP and 146 K during the 11-day week. Aside from Julio Teheran (what?!), none of Colin’s other pitchers were particularly effective, but they made up for it with decent quality in excessive quantity. Josh Donaldson and George Springer had hot weeks at the plate, which helped Colin nearly pace the league in R, HR, and RBI.
Closest Performance: Jim’s Team (Jim Chatterton) vs. Rich’s Team (Rick Holman)
Rich’s team took the week of the plain team names 6-4, but based on roto scoring for the period, both Jim and Rich accumulated 69 points for the week. Several categories were in close proximity over the 11 days, with runs being separated by 2 (56 – 54 Rich) and WHIP being separated by 0.01 (3.35-3.36 Jim), and two metrics that aren’t even categories were neck and neck with a difference of 1 hit (96-95 Rich) and 1 AB (358-357 Jim) being the differentiator for batting average. Ultimately, Jim’s pitching only having a 9 K/9 for the week is probably what led to his loss, given that Rick put up a 11.76 K/9, allowing him to better leverage the 69 2/3 IP into 91 Ks, easily beating Jim there.
– David Fenko
(Graphic by Nathan Mills/ @NathanMillsPL)