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
It was another close finish in the Guillotine Leagues, although it was in League 2 this week. In League 1, Gary Tater went into the Friday slate of games with less than 100 points, which is a tough hole to dig your way out of. Although Gary did finish the weekend with 273 points, that was still more than 30 points behind mthrulow’s 5th place finish. In his own estimation, Gary “Spent too much, too early on the wrong guys” which is something I would imagine we all relate to if we’ve played in FAAB leagues. Once again in the top spot was Rich Holman. I have to assume at some point Rich will be staring down the barrel of elimination, but so far, so good.
This was the first week of single elimination in the Guillotines, so Gary had to go alone to the blade. On the Discord, Alex Drennan said that the Guillotine Leagues are so stressful and cutthroat because “Each week there’s like a mini-draft,” but in League 1 the draft was only a fraction of a round this week as there were only 4 FAAB moves. OK then. It was Alex flexing his financial muscle this week, picking up Juan Soto for $104 and Mike Clevinger for $57. Jake Matier made up the other half of the FAAB spree by picking up DJ LeMahieu and Zack Greinke for $3 and $2 respectively. There were a bunch of straight-up FA adds in League 1 this week, including big names like Rafael Devers and Kenley Jansen (Rich) and Matt Chapman and Tyler Mahle (mthurlow.)
With the sedate spending this week, Alex Drennan still remains atop the FAAB standings with $362. Rich remains at $0, and the dynamic duo of Austin Bristow II and Michael Ajeto are second-lowest with $25 remaining.
In League 2, on Friday morning, there was a mere 46 points between 1st and 6th place, with only 10 points separating 5th place from elimination. In the end, Benjamin Haller and his team Chopper got the chop, and it wasn’t just his ears that he had to say goodbye to. In the final accounting, only 8.5 points separated Benjamin from Donny Moskovits, and Hunter Denson finished in first with only a 46 point lead. Benjamin was done in by a spate of pitching postponements over the weekend, a good turn through his rotation could have easily seen him finishing comfortably near the top of the pack.
With Benjamin’s exit, League 2 saw a much healthier 16 FAAB bids placed. Although, like last week, a good chunk were $0 entries. Donny Moskovits’ conservative spending earlier in the season gave him a decided advantage in the bidding where he picked up a quartet this week for $30 each, adding Aaron Nola, Patrick Corbin, Trevor Story, and Max Scherzer to his roster. He also went discount shopping, adding Juan Soto and Dinelson Lamet ($17 each,) along with Zach Plesac and Dallas Keuchel ($5 each.) KingHippo made off with Max Fried for $0, beating out Myles Nelson on waiver priority, and Darrin Ambrose was able to pick up Corbin Burnes for free as well.
Let’s just take a second to appreciate Donny’s current pitching staff though:
Even after adding several notable players two weeks in a row, Donny Moskovits remains in first on the FAAB front with $104. He’ll (theoretically) be able to continue to dictate the market as the only other two teams in League 1 with any money left are Hunter Densen with $29 and Darrin Ambrose with $1. I kind of want to see this come down to the teams with $0 left, just savage waiver wire knife fights every week.
WorstBall
WorstBall Categories
This week we saw some separation return to the WorstBall Cats, with every team winning at least 6 categories, which means some real shakeups in the overall standings. Kyle Seiler pulled off a clean 9-0 sweep, but that was due to not meeting the innings minimum (a big risk when you’re intentionally picking bad pitchers). So this week, I am giving a shout out to Myles Nelson, who won 9-1, only losing out on BSV (0 to 1, of course.) And while my pitching stunk its way to a big win this week, Corey W’s offense put up an honestly impressive .190 SLG against me.
Hitter Of The Week: Niko Goodrum. Niko ended the week with a .304 OBP and a .211 SLG, which are pretty decent marks (well, SLG not so much) but it was his 13 Ks that really put him over the stop. Myles got over 30% of his K production for the week from one dude!
Pitcher Of The Week: Brandon Bielak. It has been a rough couple of weeks for Bielak, this time he hooked Mary Ankenbruck up with 1 L, 3BB, and a whopping 40.50 ERA and 9.00 WHIP.
| Rank | Manager |
|---|---|
| 1 | Myles Nelson |
| 2 | Alexander Chase |
| 3 | Asher Dratel |
| 4 | Victor |
| 5 | Ryan Amore |
| 6 | Scott Chu |
| 7 | Mary Ankenbruck |
| 8 | Corey W |
| 9 | Kyle Seiler |
| 10 | Doc Brown |
-Asher Dratel
WorstBall Points
I’m starting to think that maybe Alex Isherwood has been hustling us all along. He must be a longtime WorstBall veteran, because he’s smoking us all so bad that I don’t think he’s ever going to come close to losing. Not only is he 5-0, but he has over 150 points more than any other team. That’s an average of 30 additional points per week! He’s like the reverse Midas, everything he touches absolutely craps the bed in baseball. He got big weeks from Adalberto Mondesi, Niko Goodrum, Derek Holland, Zack Godley, and Erick Fedde, and has just shown us all that we have no chance. At this point, I’m just playing for 2nd.
Hitter of the Week: Adalberto Mondesi. When you go 2/26 in a week, it’s kind of hard not to be the best performer. Throw in a caught stealing, a GIDP, and 7 strikeouts, and it’s a wrap.
Pitcher of the Week: Austin Voth. What a rough two-start week it was for Voth, only lasting 5.2 IP, giving up 11 earned runs, two home runs, and hitting a batter to boot.
| Rank | Manager | Record | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alex Isherwood | 5-0 | 985.5 |
| 2 | Myles Nelson | 4-1 | 669.5 |
| 3 | Joshua Botelho | 4-1 | 614.5 |
| 4 | Collin Carlone | 3-2 | 796.17 |
| 5 | Chris Nichols | 2-3 | 814.34 |
| 6 | Justin Paradis | 2-3 | 678.66 |
| 7 | Mike Bourg | 2-3 | 653.33 |
| 8 | Trevor Hooth | 2-3 | 527.01 |
| 9 | Liam Casey | 2-3 | 499.34 |
| 10 | Adam Howe | 2-3 | 460.5 |
| 11 | David Fenko | 1-4 | 507.5 |
| 12 | Erik van Rheenen | 1-4 | 436.83 |
Grand Theft Baseball
Pack it up, pack it in. My team never began to put it together this year, and after another embarrassing loss (this time losing because Ryan Pressly got not one, but TWO saves on Sunday), I lose my fourth player in five weeks. And just to rub salt in the wound, I lost Tim Anderson, who I just stole the week before. Grand Theft was so good to me last year, but this year, it’s treating me like a punching bag. I’m surely not the only person who felt this way though, because this week we could only protect four. measly. players. That’s right, roughly 80% of our roster was available for our opponent to take from us. It is really hard to make that list of players to protect, I had to leave off the aforementioned Anderson, Zack Greinke, JD Martinez, and a bunch of other players that I really did not want to lose. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Some of the top players stolen this week included Nelson Cruz, Lucas Giolito, Mike Clevinger, Eloy Jimenez, Max Fried, and Whit Merrifield. As bad as it sounds to lose players of this caliber, this upcoming week we can only protect two players. Had I only been able to protect two players this week, I would have had to leave Max Muncy and Kenley Jansen available, and solely protected Mike Trout and Lance Lynn. I need to win this week so that I can have some semblance of talent heading into the unprotected weeks, because I do not want to lose Mike Trout. I can’t think of a worse possible thing that could happen in a fantasy baseball league (knocking on wood before I get eliminated in Guillotine this week).
-Myles Nelson
Featured Image by Justin Paradis (@FreshMeatComm on Twitter)