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
TRADE ALERT!!!
The Legacy League actually featured two trades this week. In the first deal, I acquired Joe Musgrove and Griffin Canning from Myles Nelson for Max Kepler. Myles wanted to improve his OF and I desperately needed pitching help. Your classic win-win-win. In the other deal, Ben Palmer traded Ronald Acuna to Ian Post for Walker Buehler. Ian was thinking this deal over until Buehler imploded in Colorado, which urged him to hit the accept button. Time will tell who wins this deal of studs.
Best Performance: Who’s Your Vladdy (Dave Cherman)
For the first time this season, I get to give this distinction to myself. There was significant competition for this title this week, as Nick beat Myles Nelson 9-1 and Rick Graham beat Ben Palmer 8-1-1 while I only won my matchup 7-2-1. However, had my team faced either of Nick or Rick, Who’s Your Vladdy would have emerged victorious, so here we are. So who was at the mercy of my big week? Only the former first-place squad, Ian’s Pornogriffey.
Pacing my offense was Max Muncy and Kevin Newman who combined for 8 runs, 6 HRs, and 17 RBI. But more than that, it was a team effort – every healthy member of my team hit a HR, and that certainly helps. On the pitching side of things, there were no standout performances, aside from Madison Bumgarner, who combined for 13 IP, 2 W, 20 Ks, 2.08 ERA, and a 0.77 WHIP. WHAT YEAR IS IT. With the wins, both Nick and I break out of the four-way tie for eighth place and into a new three-way tie with Ben Palmer for seventh. Ian falls all the way to third with the loss.
Closest Matchup: Troy & Amed in the AM (Austin Bristow) vs Choo-Choo to Buxtown (Max Posner)
I’m sure Austin would really like not being featured here, as he spends his second consecutive week in this column thanks to his 5-5 finish against 10th place Max. Sometimes, a 5-5 score is not as close as the scoreboard indicates because the matchups are clearly won. This is NOT that as many of these matchups were closely contested.
Austin stole AVG (.298 to .294), saves (3-2), and WHIP (1.21 to 1.26) while Max took HRs (13 to 12), RBI (41 to 35), Ks (41 to 37), and ERA (4.08 to 4.35). I know Austin is going for the long game by stashing all these pitching prospects, but this strategy likely cost him the W here, as dropping one for a Sunday streamer could’ve saved him; Max posted 8 Ks and a 2.35 ERA over 7.2 IP, which was enough to take both categories in the matchup. Austin, however, lamented his decision to start Jose Ramirez over Eugenio Suarez, which left a HR on the bench. That HR would’ve tied the score and given Austin the win. Oh well, hopefully these minor leaguers pay dividends for Bristow.
Interesting Stat: Jon Metzelaar has almost made more moves (131) than the next four teams combined (134), which explains how he sits with only $9 in FAAB budget at a little over the halfway mark of the season. Meanwhile, Who’s Your Vladdy (aka me) has only used $5 of their budget.
— Dave Cherman
Prodigy League
Biggest victory: Troy Klauder vs. Adam (10-0)
Our fearless leader, Troy Klauder, padded his lead in the Prodigy league with the first 10-0 sweep of the season. It helped that Adam’s team didn’t reach the 30-inning minimum, or else he would have pulled off victories in saves (3-1) and ERA (4.58 to 5.08) and a tie in wins. Regardless, Troy’s team crushed the hitting categories, with 16 home runs, 47 RBI and four stolen bases. David Dahl and Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. led the offense, while Shane Bieber had a dominating week on the mound. Troy now owns a commanding 4.5-game lead over second place heading into the All-Star break.
Closest Matchup: Andrew Gould vs. Acuna Moncada (5-4)
We had two 5-4-1 matchups in the prodigy league this week, but the contest between Andrew and Austin was particularly close. The two tied in RBI (24 each) and Austin narrowly won in wins (6-4) and saves (2-1) while Andrew escaped with runs (39-34) and strikeouts (55-51). It kept both players near the bottom of the standings, at ninth and 10th, respectively.
Biggest waiver wire add: Lourdes Gurriel, Jr.
A big part of Troy’s 10-0 victory this week came from the Blue Jays infielder, who mashed four home runs and had seven RBI with nine runs scored after Troy picked him up. He’d have won anyway, but Gurriel was a really nice pick-up.
– Andy Patton
Futures League
Best Performance: Dan Richards (You Can’t Judge) def. Alex Brennan (Bomb Voyage), 6-3-1
There are two real options but Dan gets it for Week 13 because he not only had a solid all-around performance, winning five out of the six pitching categories (6 Wins, 62 Ks, 2.98 ERA, 1.09 WHIP) behind Trevor Bauer, Matt Strahm, and Griffin Canning, he also had the second-best power performance with 13 home runs and could have easily taken both runs and RBI (both 35-34).
Closest Matchup: Travis Sherer (Coffee’s for Closers) def. Dave Fisher (Not Dave), 6-4
I got pretty lucky to earn the win this week. Dan won most of his categories handily, meanwhile, I took Ks 61-60 and Saves 5-4. The only close category Dave won was batting average, .303-.300.
Weirdest Team Stat: Scott Chu (Big League Chu) tied Rob (Inglorious Baezterd), 5-5
A true stalemate. The first time this has happened in this league this season. Scott swept the pitching categories with 7 Wins, 2 Saves, 78 Ks, a 2.96 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP. Rob swept the hitting categories with a .325 AVG, 14 HR, 42 Runs, 41 RBI and 7 Stolen Bases. The only category that was even close was saves 2-1.
Biggest Performance-Enhancing Wire Add: Brendan McKay
Paul Ghiglieri’s (Paul’s Busty Posers) pickup of McKay on June 26 put him in position to win ERA (5.10-5.59), and WHIP (1.22-1.26). The Tampa Bay phenom debuted three days later, throwing six scoreless innings with a 0.33 WHIP.
– Travis Sherer
PL-League-1
There’s been a shakeup in the playoff positioning as the Maryland Wolfdogs (Ryan Fickes) picked up a 6-4 win over previously second place Massive Deverstation (Ben Ruppert) to leapfrog both Stephen Dudas’s Team (Stephen Dudas), who went 4-6 on the week, and Hedenson’s Team (Hedenson), who posted a 3-6-1. The Dudas’ slide is expected based on the team’s mediocre .377 xW% and .397 zW%, but Hedenson’s is a bit more unexpected as the team ranks third in xW% and zW% and fourth in pW%. Prognosis Negative (Ryan Amore) got a bit of an unexpected boost for a 10-0 week thanks to Mikey’s Team (Michael Ajeto) missing the innings minimum, making it a Prognosis Positive pitching week at 5-0 instead of 2-3.
Best Performance
Overall, Week 13 was a down week across the board as teams averaged a -2.00 zTotal for the week compared to their respective team averages on the season and even the team with the best relative performance, Dudas at 3.93 zTotal, had a losing record despite a .618 xW% and .601 zW%. Led Z.Eflin (Max Freeze) had a characteristically strong showing with a .695 xW% and .677 zW%, good for a 7-3 week. That being said, the Air Yordans had an impressive week and probably the best overall performance posting a 6-4 record against Dudas via a .650 xW% and .633 zW%. They’re lurking around the fringes of the wild card race and while the metrics don’t view Air Yordans as a favorite for a playoff spot, you never know.
Strongest Category: Prognosis Negative with 2.40 zR from 48 R.
Weakest Category: Stephen Dudas’s Team with -1.95 zSV from 0 SV.
Best Matchup: The 6-4 by Air Yordans over Dudas saw an average .634 xW% and .617 zW%. Yordans had an incredibly strong week on offense slugging 39 R, 46 RBI, 14 HR, and a .296 AVG, all of which were good enough for 1st or 2nd on the week. Dudas countered with 8 W, a 3.22 ERA, and 0.97 WHIP, all good for first or second, and tossed in an extremely strong 71 K, too.
Statistical Oddities: Prognosis Negative had the best hitting performance in relation to the team’s year average, posting a 3.46 zHit on the week, posting 48 R, 40 RBI, 15 HR, and 5 SB. Unfortunately, the team’s hitters may have profited at the hands of their pitchers, as the team posted an atrocious -7.34 zPitch with just 2 W, 1 SV, 36 K, and terrible 6.53 ERA and 1.48 WHIP. Going 5 – 0 with that pitching line because the other team missed their minimum IP is about as lucky as a team can get.
– Ryan Fickes
PL-League-2
Best performance: We had the rarest of occurrences in fantasy baseball in PL2 this week: The skunk. You can’t not pick that. Holland Otts (Clay Cotton) picked up the 10-0 win over Otto Von Bettsmarck (Rob D.), who didn’t really even have a bad week. But man was Clay’s team strong. Highlights of the performance: 99 R/RBI, 19 HR, .319 BA, 74 Ks, 2.49 ERA.
Closest Matchup: Not a ton of categories in the matchup between Rhys Lightning (John Wallace) and Ol Dirty Bastardo (Adam Lawler) were super close, but those two had what has been a rarity in PL2 this year: Three ties. Both posted 33 RBI, 4 SB and 3 wins in Wallace’s 4-3-3 win(?).
– Jordan Larimore
The Bottom of the Barrel
Best Performance: Donny’s Dandy Team (Donny Moskovits)
This was a tight week for the top spot, with Danny just edging out Colin for the Week 13 crown. Donny’s performance was consistent across all 10 categories, coming in no worse than fifth place for any category for the week (R, ERA, and WHIP), while pacing the league in Saves and being the runner up for HR, RBI, and Average. The frustrating part for Donny is that in real life (for fantasy), he actually tied Erik, which goes to show how much luck there is in this game we love. It was a group effort for Donny on both sides of the ball, though Eric Hosmer’s .643 AVG, 3 R, 5 RBI week needs to be called out. Donny benefited from some vintage Jose Quintana on the rubber this week and some Ks from Robbie Ray and Jon Lester.
Closest Performance: Jim’s Team (Jim Chatterton) vs. Eschaff (Eric Schaff)
Jim ended up losing 3-5 this week, but both teams would have earned 49/50 rotisserie points. In the end, we saw another week where pitching carried one team (Jim) and hitting carried the other (Eric), with some ties and a single category making the difference. This week, Eric got an additional 14 IP over Jim, which translated into more strikeouts and a single win in a pitching category, which led to the uneven outcome. Of note in this matchup was a resurgent Patrick Corbin, who tallied 9 Ks on the way to a 1.29 ERA and 0.57 WHIP on the week, and Jean Segura, Matt Chapman, and Franmil Reyes contributing 8 HR for Eric.
– David Fenko
(Graphic by Nathan Mills/ @NathanMillsPL)