I’m keeping with the theme of channeling the Guillotine dead this week, although our victim this time is Silversnail who is a much fresher departure.
Asher Dratel: So first off, how many leagues are you in this season?
I have six dynasty leagues, three best ball, one draft-and-hold, one redraft roto and three wacky leagues.
Wow, that’s a hefty dynasty commitment.
I got started in fantasy baseball doing dynasty, redraft was the new thing for me.
Well I guess we all have to start somewhere. Which three Wacky Leagues?
Guillotine, Grand theft, and the blind draft H2H Categories.
Ah, who is your co-manager in the Blind Draft H2H?
Jordan White, he is great! We complimented each other so well in the draft, balancing my risky picks with his safer picks. Our pitching is great with Cole, Glasnow, and Burnes as our first three pitchers. Our bats needed some work, but I highly recommend the format as you get to know some great people that you wouldn’t necessarily otherwise.
I haven’t actually looked at the Blind Draft leagues at all, how’re you doing in the standings right now?
10th out of 12 currently, but the standings are very tight with only 10 category points separating us from first place. I feel good about our chances.
Ooh, that’s a close race. In terms of the actual in-season management, how has it been working out? Do you talk out everything or have you delegated certain responsibilities to each other? Or a mix?
We exchange thoughts and ideas on acquisitions and drops to maximize our strategy. Whoever is first to looking at FAAB will usually send three potential adds with two potential drops and we discuss.
I can only imagine I would be a complete chaos agent if I tried a co-managed in-season league.
It takes getting used to, but one of my dynasty leagues I have a co-manager who was one of my groomsman, so it’s easier for me to be accustomed to working with someone who may have a different perspective than me.
Always nice to have prior experience. Is this your first year doing the Wacky Leagues?
Yeah this is my first year in PL+ and I only wished I joined sooner. I had a dive-head-first approach to many of the features offered. One of my dynasty leagues is a PL+ startup, the redraft roto is a PL+ community league. But the wacky leagues take the cake as easily the most nerve-wracking and fun.
Yeah, I guess one less thing you’ll have to stress about is your Guillotine team.
Yeah I just got the axe, but that was the league that I checked and stressed over the most, and I’m in a $300 a year dynasty league. It’s a format that I love and will definitely do in the future, I cannot recommend it enough.
You were voted the best team coming out of the draft and you had a definite plan going into the draft that you executed on, how do you grade your in-season work? What do you think spelled your doom?
Well coming out of the draft, I wanted to grab an ace and two solid bats. My ace was Cole and my two bats were Seager (injured) and Ozuna (injured + other terrible things). I was always near the bottom of the standings and I spent big FAAB on pitching. This last week I had Eflin’s start skipped and Cole didn’t have a good outing so I got the axe. Pitching is key in points leagues!
Yeah, missing a start from one SP can be a real nightmare in that format. I guess the good news is that you can still cheer on your co-manager in League 2.
Yeah I hope Jordan grabs my former SPs in Cole, Buehler, Alcántara, and Wheeler I’ll be rooting for him.
How much do you think Cole’s gonna go for?
FAAB is relative to what everyone has. So I think he’ll go for 300 or so where he might have went for 500+ a few weeks ago.
And to bring it all back to the last of the wacky leagues, how are you finding the Grand Theft experience?
Grand Theft has been really fun, and while I don’t have the best record I am coming off a win over Jordan (sorry Jordan, but Albies is mine now) The way that the protection list dwindles every couple weeks or so allows someone who struggled early on to build momentum later towards a strong finish.
Yeah, winning in the middle is almost better than winning early, if you had to pick. I mean you need the dubs regardless, but I would much rather pick from a nine-name protected list than the first few weeks.
100%. I haven’t lost anyone that’s had a giant impact on my roster, but I’ve been able to add a few pieces that have made a big difference. I also didn’t realize how enjoyable it is to steal a player from someone else’s roster.
Every format gives you a chance to do something that most fantasy players never get to experience. And on that note, what would you say to anybody who’s been considering joining PL+ and getting in on the action?
Absolutely do it, I only wish that I had joined sooner. The info I get is worth the price alone not to mention the other perks like the wacky leagues (which are so much fun) as well as the personal interaction you get from top minds in the industry. I also like to shout out Nick, Jordan, Shwebsi, and Andrew who are people that I’ve jumped into voice chats with and have answered any questions I have had at the time!
In lieu of a Twitter account, Silversnail requests that people join him on the Discord, 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 2022 Wacky Season.
The Guillotine Leagues
In League 1, we had to wave goodbye to Collin Carlone after a weekend inversion that saw Mike Perugini dig himself out of a 24 point hole. We’re down to only eight teams left in each league, so starting next week we’re in the truly uncharted territory of roster construction.
Collin’s departure gave KingHippo a chance to flex that FAAB he’s been holding onto, as he added Gerrit Cole and Corbin Burnes to his roster for $240 each. Adam Howe was the only one to spend any money on position players this week, grabbing Whit Merrifield for $47 and batter Shohei Ohtani for $12. We are definitely deep in the $0 bid weeds now, and there are still many weeks left to play!
As you read above, last week was Silversnail’s final one in League 2 and they are keeping the pursestrings tight over there. The waiver class this week was headlined by Gerrit Cole, but a lot of big arms were available.
Silversnail guessed around $300 for Cole, which I would have agreed with…and in the end he went to Nicole Cahill for a mere $177. Rich Holman paid that same price for Zack Wheeler, to give some context. Those were the high prices for the week, with Walker Buehler going for $88 (to Charley Butcher) while Sandy Alcántara went for a mere $42 (to Nicole, that’s a good rotation strengthening week for her!) The bidding for position players wasn’t much more lively than in League 1, as Cedric Mullins was the only active one to garner any bidding at all, going to Nicole for $33 (Charley also picked up Corey Seager for $3, but he’s still on the IL). Rich Holman leads the league in FAAB with only $267 remaining, so I don’t expect to see any of the prices going up in the coming weeks.
Grand Theft Baseball
This week in Grand Theft 2 we had some art imitating life as Justin Paradis triumphed over Adam Sloate, and used his win to roleplay some Brian Cashman and steal Gleyber Torres while dropping Didi Gregorius to make room. This in turn allowed Adam to try his hand at being the Yankees fanbase in 2019 and be sad. Although I guess he’s sad about losing Gleyber so that would make him the Cubs fanbase? I’m not sure, this whole thing has gotten away from me a little bit here.
Notable Thefts:
League 1: Ryan D and Allen Vaughan tied and continued on the tradition of Perfectly Symmetrical Violence by swapping closers, with Hector Neris and Craig Kimbrel swapping rosters.
League 2: Nicole Cahill continued her Cedric Mullins Appreciation Week in GTB as well, stealing him from Will Pratt.
League 3: TZ Zencka and Matt Nielsen tied, and I have to give TC the edge in moves as he got Buster Posey, although Neilsen added a pretty good Matt to his own team in the form of Matt Barnes.
League 4: Jeremy Siegel made a serious upgrade at C, stealing JT Realmuto to replace Yan Gomes.
WorstBall
Categories: I try to kind of abstract this out in the recaps because it’s tricky to track, but Yahoo doesn’t actually support this kind of format at all. What this means is that in order to win a week in this league, you actually have to lose more categories than your opponent, and standings are in reverse order, with the lowest win pct at the top.
With that context, I have to say that I am very proud of my .319 win pct, and Justin Paradis is right on my tail with a .347. Justin got the shutout win last week, with his offense putting up a truly putrid line: 43 Ks, 3 GIDP, .210 OBP, and .259 SLG. Whew. ZappyAlex also deserves a shoutout for having two pitchers who put up 135.00 ERAs, with both David Peterson and Carlos Martínez failing to escape the first inning.
Points: Myles Nelson was the best of the worst last week, scoring a total of 311.75 points! Matt Shoemaker’s terrible turn in KC was worth 52 points alone, and Starlin Castro added his own 51.50 point contribution from the offensive side of things. That’s some serious production.
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns on Twitter)