Welp, due to a confluence of Real Life Things, I was unable to get some time lined up with a league member this week, so you’re stuck with just me this week, sorry.
But still, if you haven’t already, head on over to the PL+ sign-up page and get on there so you can start prepping for the 2022 Wacky Season.
The Guillotine Leagues
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Guillotine can be a brutal place to play. In League 1, SABRtooth Tiger came into the week with the 3rd highest point total overall, but a few negative point performances from his RPs seemed to spell doom, as he finished the week at the bottom of the standings. El Tigre was able to take it somewhat in stride: “At least I can take solace in the fact that I’m in 1st place in the PitchCon Blind Draft, 1st place in the regular Blind Draft, 1st place in Grand Theft, and 1st place in League of Leagues. This will still hurt, though.”
In the bidding for SABR’s roster, KingHippo and Christopher Reeves both picked up four players each, although Hippo spent $4 total to Reeves’ $111. Hippo wasn’t exactly scraping the bottom, either, picking up Tarik Skubal, Andrew Heaney, Ketel Marte, and Chris Flexen for a buck each. Meanwhile, Christopher spent $87 on Walker Buehler, beating out the next highest bid by a healthy $60 margin. Then there was Alex Drennen, who spent $31 on Max Fried just in time to see him go on the IL. Somewhere, Tina Yu is smiling ruefully.
In League 2, it was another down-to-the-wire win. At 1PM on Sunday, Jordan White was sitting on a 25 point lead over Michael Ajeto/Austin Bristow II. By 6PM that lead had shrunk to a single point. At 7:15PM the lead had flipped, as the Ajeto/Bristow II combo took a 3.75 point lead over Jordan, and they held onto the lead until the final at-bat of the night. How was the experience for the managers involved? Well, here’s how Austin described it: “This is, like, the third or fourth time we’ve been fighting for our lives on Sunday. This league is bad for my blood pressure.” And on the other side, Jordan left us with these parting words: “I will say that it’s slightly relieving having one less daily moves league to pay attention to, but this one was one of my favorites.”
Jordan’s departure wasn’t a windfall for the duo that barely eked out the win over him, however, as a technical issue meant they entered a grand total of zero (0) bids. Womp womp. Not everybody was so unlucky though, as Pablo López drew the highest bid of the week, going to Rich Holman for $19, who also picked up Carlos Rodón for $9. Rich also bid $9 for Wander Franco, who had been a free agent all year until his call-up. Nicole Cahill deserves the Value Shopper shoutout for the week, picking up Freddy Peralta for $4 and then immediately getting a 24.50 point start from him.
We’re well into the phase of the season where the non-Monday waiver periods can make or break you, so these summaries aren’t giving you the fullest picture, but such is the downfall of linear time and deadlines. Onwards to trying to survive one more week!
Grand Theft Baseball
Over in League 1, KingHippo won his matchup and knew exactly who he wanted: Frankie Montas. But he wanted to be sure he could get him on the roster in time for his Monday start, which Myles graciously made happen. Just in time for Montas to get absolutely lit up to the tune of a 12.71 ERA for the day. Sometimes the rush gets you into trouble, and Hippo saw this coming on Monday afternoon: “Now that I made such a stink to get Montas, it is all but assured he will poop the sheets tonight.” (Full disclosure: I also have Montas in Guillotine so there’s plenty of shame to go around here.)
Notable Thefts:
League 1: Hippo’s fortuitous Montas move aside, shout out to Tina Yu getting to make a steal this week, nabbing Yusei Kikuchi from Hunter Denson. Ben Bingham and Donny Moskovits also tied and we got another closer swap, with Alex Reyes going to Donny and Kenley Jansen to Ben.
League 2: Nicole Cahill stole Marcus Stroman right back from Christopher Reeves, who also let slip his protection list uh…strategy? “I just copy and pasted my protections from like 3-4 weeks ago and kept posting them. I forget we have to protect so I’m usually in a scramble at 4:58 haha.”
League 3: It’s Kyle Seiler’s turn to roster Luis Castillo as he stole him from Noah Scott. Will this be the week he earns a spot on a protection list?!
League 4: Mike Perugini also got to steal this week, taking Craig Kimbrel off of Dave Cherman’s hands. To give you another example of the thin protection lists at this point, Wynn McDonald also got to snag Ozzie Albies from Silversnail. Big names changing hands!
WorstBall
Categories: We had a pair of 8-0 wins with mirror images for notable team lines. In the offensively notable matchup, Scott Sieber came out on top over dmcnic with his team putting up a gross .283 OBP and .347 SLG for the week. Meanwhile, his pitching staff won with an almost respectable 4.33 ERA and 1.37 WHIP. The other shutout saw Alexander Chase winning the week against Mitch Bannon on the strength of his pitching staff given gup 9 HRs, 67 total bases, and a 7.62 ERA and 1.59 WHIP.
Points: We didn’t have any stratospheric points totals this week, but Justin Redler still put up a very respectable 354.25 points. Matt Harvey’s two-start week contributed 60.50 points alone. On the low end of the spectrum, Christian Mack’s injury-plagued team ended the week under 70 points, with only two of his pitchers putting up positive points for the scoring period. Not great, Bob!
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns on Twitter)