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: Gallo’s Cole (Kyle Bishop)
Kyle straight up routed my team this week, my second consecutive week losing to the best performance. But this isn’t about me — it’s about Kyle and his 14 HRs, 47 RBI, .294 AVG, 6 SBs, 2.69 ERA, and 1.12 WHIP in 63.2 IP. WHAT. And that’s without more than 2 HRs from any one player. Kyle improves to 4-0 on the year and continues his assault upon the legacy league.
Closest Matchup: Chapman and the Hosk (Myles Nelson) vs Bogaey On Your Tail (Alex Fast)
Wow. This one came right down to the wire, as Myles took the narrowest of victories: 5-4. Just how close was it? Myles took SBs by one and the two tied in saves. Despite that, it was almost a lot further apart, as Fast took ERA by .01 (2.82 to 2.83) and WHIP by .02 (1.02 to 1.04). Both these gentlemen posted phenomenal pitching weeks and neither deserved a loss from that perspective, but Myles backed it up with elite hitting as well.
-Dave Cherman
Prodigy League
Best Performance: Jeff’s Majestic Team
Every single matchup was crazy close (more on that later) and while Jeff’s team didn’t do much in the way of hitting, he did manage a 2.13 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 43 strikeouts in 42.1 innings, thanks in part to great outings from Zack Wheeler and Ross Stripling.
Closest Matchup: Take your pick.
Seriously. We had three matchups finish 6-4, one matchup finish 4-4, and one finish 5-3. In fact, Austin’s 7-3 victory over Adam was this week’s biggest margin of victory, and even that one was ridiculously close. Austin won HR, RBI, SB, W, and SV by one each. And that was the biggest margin of the week. It was a wild one here in the Prodigy League.
Weirdest stat:
Of all the super close matchups, I think Andrew Gould vs. Michael Haas was maybe my favorite. They tied at 4-4 and were tied with 10 home runs and 32 RBI each to end in an overall tie. However, Michael won in SB, W, and K quite handily, while Andrew’s team took the saves and ERA category by quite a bit. Funny how that works.
– Andy Patton
Futures League
Best Performance: Paul Ghiglieri (Paul’s Busty Posers)
Anytime you combine 17 dingers on offense with 100 Ks from your pitchers, you have a good chance of winning the week. In a 7-2 win over Colin (Knuckle Curve), Paul’s squad was fueled by jacks. He swept the hitting cats with 48 runs, 42 RBI, and an insane team BA of .343. Mike Moustakas, Max Kepler, and Namar Mazara provided the bats while Jack Flaherty and Mike Minor combined for 31 Ks.
Closest Matchup: Dan McNamara (AMC’s Breaking Bats) vs. Travis Sherer (Coffee’s for Closers)
A 6-3 win for Dan was much closer than it looked. Travis entered Sunday with a 6-4 advantage, but a collective 3-for-28 performance lost him BA: .277 to .274. WHIP was just as close, with Dan taking the category 1.19 to 1.23. He also eked out HR 9-8 and the teams tied with one SB.
Weirdest Stat: I’d love to see what Dave Fishman’s team (Not Dan) average was hitting with runners in scoring position. Despite hitting a league-low .218, Dave’s squad, filled with Charlie Blackmon, Kris Bryant, Josh Donaldson, George Springer, and Edwin Encarnacion, drove better than league average 35 RBI in Week 4. It was the seventh best RBI total for the week.
Biggest Performance-Enhancing Wire Add: Carter Kieboom, Dan Richards (Yu Can’t Judge)
Impact doesn’t get more instant than this. Dan picked up Kieboom April 25 and started him the next three days. Kieboom’s two HR were enough to earn Dan a 12-12 tie and win the week 5-4.
– Travis Sherer
PL-League-1
Let’s shake things up a bit as Stephen Dudas’s Team (Stephen Dudas) surges into second place with a dominant 9-0-1 week over the Beliebers (Ben Hizer), knocking the latter all the way down to seventh place. Mostly Nats (Charlie Wright) took care of business with a 7-3-0 showing against Led Z. Eflin (Max Freeze) to maintain first while knocking their rival from second to fifth; Hedenson’s Team (Hunter Denson) throttled Mikey’s Team (Michael Ajeto) by 8-2-0. If the standings stay close together, the difference can often be just how much good teams pound on bad teams. Let that be a lesson to the Maryland Wolfdogs (Ryan Fickes) who stumbled with a 3-7-0 against Nicholas’s Team (Nick Gerli) and subsequently lost ground on the Nats, falling from 3.0 GB to 7.0 GB.
Best Performance:
There wasn’t much in the way of a truly dominant week, as Stephen Dudas’s Team led the way with a .700 zW% and .714 xW%, followed closely by Mostly Nats’ .698 and .709. Those numbers are good and not too far below the top zW% from Weeks 2 and 3, but by the end of the season it’ll probably take something in the range of .750 to .800 to really move the needle. That being said, the 1.63 ERA and 1.09 WHIP posted by Nicholas’s Team — significant improvements from the first two weeks — and the 1.68 ERA and 0.93 WHIP posted by the Wolfdogs were impressive, especially considering they were over 49.2 IP and 53.2 IP, respectively.
Strongest Category: Alex’s Team (Alex Isherwood) with a 2.08 zK from 79 K.
Weakest Category: Roop Dog (Ben Ruppert) with a -2.22 zW from just 1 W (this is a theme).
Closest and Best Matchups:
The best matchup was the No. 1 vs No. 2 tilt coming into the week between Mostly Nats and Led Z.Eflin. Z.Eflin was actually a slight favorite, with an expected record of 6-4 against the Nats based on their performances so far, but the Nats were able to continue performing when it matters. Z.Eflin took R by 36 to 34, W by 5 to 4, and SV by 3 to 2, meaning all of their victories came in toss-ups. Meanwhile the Nats took HR by 14 to 13, RBI by 44 to 43, and SB by 6 to 5, which combined with the non-toss-up but still close victories of AVG at .278 to .268, K at 74 to 65, ERA at 3.45 to 4.04, and WHIP at 1.15 to 1.21 to secure the win.
That was also probably the closest matchup, although the previously mentioned pitching performances from the Wolfdogs and Nicholas could count, too. In addition to the extremely close (and excellent) ERA and WHIP performances by both teams, Nicholas took K by 56 to 54 and W by 5 to 3, which given that the Dogs are built around pitching (see their horrendous -6.05 zHit for the week and -2.87 on the season), crippled their chances.
Statistical Oddities:
Hedenson’s Team came into the week relying on pitching for their success, but their hitters really upped their game in Week 4 with a 3.81 zHit, which still only raised their season zHit to -1.62.
The Muffin Stumps remain the “luckiest” team so far with a 5.4 xLuck (aW% – xW%), followed by the Nats at 4.8. Roop Dog sits at what is surely a frustrating -6.0, thanks to the 3rd best overall xW% but only 8th best aW%.
– Ryan Fickes
PL-League-2
Best Performance:
Austin’s Team doesn’t need a name to continue dominating PL League 2. He just wrapped up another pounding, this time an 8-2 win over Ol’ Dirty Bastardo (Adam Lawler). Austin’s team slugged 17 home runs, drove in 49, and batted .307 for the week, taking advantage of hot streaks from Cody Bellinger, Max Kepler, Carlos Correa, Mookie Betts, and others. Scoreless weeks on the mound from Josh Hader, Marco Gonzalez, Jerad Eickhoff, and Roberto Osuna helped him overcome an ugly Carlos Rodon outing to post four wins, four saves and a 3.18 ERA across 51 innings pitched as a staff.
Closest Matchup:
Madison’s Wild Ride (Jamie Sayer) and Holland Otts (Clay Cotton) had a nail-biter of a matchup that ended up in a 6-3-1 win for Otts. Sayer’s team took runs 36-33 while Cotton won by just two RBI, 35-33. The two tied with a pair of stolen bases each. Only three total saves and wins separated the teams in those categories and WHIP was possibly only one or two base runners away from flipping. Holland took the category with a 1.32 mark, edging out Madison’s 1.35.
Weirdest Stat:
The pitchers from The Story Profar (Jordan Larimore) and MonStarz (Kyle Monson) recorded almost the exact same number of innings. Profar’s staff went 60.2 innings while the Monstarz pitched 60.1.
– Jordan Larimore
The Bottom of the Barrel
Best Performance: Donny’s Dandy Team (Donny Moskovits)
Donny had one of those weeks where it really didn’t matter who he would have faced, he was average or better in every category and down right dominant in five. The .316 average put up by his squad wasn’t empty — coming alongside 44 runs, 10 HR, 39 RBI, and 7 SB. That effort was led by Hunter Dozier, who hit an astounding .571 with 6 RBI during Week 4. Great performances by Yadier Molina, Freddie Freeman, Rafael Devers, and a healthy Daniel Murphy cemented Donny near the top of all hitting categories. Donny’s pitching ratios weren’t as clean (3.88 ERA and 1.24 WHIP), but his team still managed to convert 5 SV and 5 W, putting him near the top in both categories.
Closest Matchup: Jim’s Team (Jim Chatterton) vs. Rich’s Team (Rich Holman)
In the battle of generic team names, Jim and Rich were fairly even matched in most categories. Rich beat Jim by a since run, Jim beat Rich by a single win, etc. Aside from the difference in RBI (Jim 41 – Rich 28) and Strikeouts (Rich 77 – Jim 38), both teams could have tilted the match up with one terrific or terrible day to end the week. One interesting note is that Rich’s team nearly doubled the innings thrown by Jim’s squad, which led to the skewed K numbers.
– David Fenko