Unfortunately, my schedule got a little too wild this week, and I wasn’t able to line up an interview with one of our intrepid Wacky Leaguers this week, but we’ll be back to your regularly scheduled insight this time next week, and there were some good storylines you’ll see below I want to follow up on.
All the leagues are a mix of 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 2022 Wacky Season.
The Guillotine Leagues
League 1 was another pretty standard finish last week, as we all bid a fond farewell to Jeremy Siegel. A disappointing week from several of his starters and some general offensive malaise saw him down 40.75 points on Sunday, after having come into the week as the 4th highest scoring team. To quote KingHippo: “Guillotine is brutal.”
And while we will miss Jeremy, that didn’t stop us from all picking over his former roster like the horrid vultures we are. This week it was me setting the market, spending $275 to pick up José Ramírez, plugging the Eugenio Suárez-shaped black hole of production I had previously. Corbin Burnes was right behind J-Ram, though, going to Collin Carlone for $222 and hopefully not staying on the IL much longer. On the bargain end of things, KingHippo spent $50 each on Jesse Winker and Jared Walsh, which marks his first real spending even though he says he’s “not incredibly happy to pay for both.” At $100? I wouldn’t sweat it.
For as big as the spread was in League 1, it was a completely different story in League 2. Going into Sunday, the bottom four teams were separated by less than six points, and the bottom three by less than two!
The final difference between Silversnail moving on to next week and Matt Tavernite meeting the blade ended up being a mere 0.25 points. If Alec Bohm had come around to score, the positions would have flipped. Truly a razor’s edge.
With all Matt’s players available, League 2 decided they didn’t want to have another week of subdued spending, with the top FAAB getter, Shane Bieber, fetching a price of $702! That pickup leaves Ben Haller with just $31 left in his coffers, but he’s already got Tuesday’s 20-point start from Bieber to help make up for it. In second place for FAAB pricing this week by a large margin was Yordan Álvarez, who went to Alex Tran for $128. The Terrible Twosome of Michael Ajeto and Austin Bristow II got themselves a sweet deal, picking up Emmanuel Clase for only $22, which should help them get some of those good good SV points given the rest of their bullpen is Drew Pomeranz and Yimi García.
I’m looking forward to seeing how everybody’s newly rostered friends do this week…
Grand Theft Baseball
Guillotine isn’t the only brutal league, as Wynn McDonald was the third-highest scoring team in Grand Theft League 4, but had the bad luck of squaring off against the second-highest scoring team, captained by SABRtoothTiger. Up in League 3, 8-2 weeks from both Charley Butcher and Kyle Seiler have them jockeying for first place, with Kyle in first with a 32-14-4 record to Charley’s 31-17-2. And Matt Nielsen is right on their tail with a 30-16-4 overall. With protection lists dropping to a mere 10 names this week, we may see some of these frontrunners really slingshot ahead of the pack.
Notable thefts:
League 1: Ben Bingham made an IL move, taking Stephen Strasburg from Hunter Denson. Ryan D also bolstered his rotation, nabbing José Berríos from KingHippo.
League 2: Liefmeyer grabbed himself a two-start week by lifting Chris Bassitt from Christian Mack, and Collin Carlone put in a vote of confidence on Kenta Maeda, stealing him off of Ben Brown’s roster.
League 3: ZachTipp snagged Dylan Cease from Mary Ankenbruck, who said: “Even though I’m sad to lose him, I’m happy to see another Cease believer!” That’s always nice.
League 4: Jeremy Seigel got a sweet tooth and stole Coffee Cakes himself, JT Brubaker from Myles Nelson.
| Rank | League 1 | League 2 | League 3 | League 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ryan D | Justin Paradis | Kyle Seiler | Dave Cherman |
| 2 | Ben Bingham | liefmeyer | Charley Butcher | SABRtoothTiger |
| 3 | Donny Moskovits | Alex Tran | Matt Neilsen | Doug Carlin |
| 4 | Allen Vaughan | Collin Carlone | ZachTipp | Jordan White |
| 5 | Liam Casey | Ben Brown | TC Zencka | Wynn McDonald |
| 6 | KingHippo | Christian Mack | Avery Meyer | Myles Nelson |
| 7 | Hunter Denson | Adam Sloate | Mary Ankenbruck | Silversnail |
| 8 | Benjamin Haller | Christopher Reeves | Josiah DeBoer | Jeremy Siegel |
| 9 | Justin Redler | Nicole Cahill | Noah Scott | Scott Sieber |
| 10 | Tina Yu | Will Pratt | Myles Nelson | Mike Preugini |
WorstBall
Categories: So not only did we have Jay Bruce retire out from under a manager this year, last week Mitch Bannon saw Albert Pujols get released by the Angels. Although there’s a chance he can still contribute to his team in the future, it’s a big blow for his CI slot. Meanwhile, Liam Casey’s team didn’t seem to get the memo about what league they’re in, as his rotation has so far put up a 2.38 ERA and 1.06 WHIP, which is his best performing staff out of the five leagues he’s in. I like to talk about the overlap between the WorstBall draft and normal leagues being a funny inflection point, but the overlap between WorstBall and normal league waiver wire names is always slightly more sobering.
Points: There were some big swings in the standings this week, mostly around the middle and bottom-half. Wynn didn’t have the best luck in Grand Theft, but in WorstBall his team was the highest scorer for the week, helped by 41.00 and 46.50 point performances by Austin Riley and Alec Bohm, respectively. They combined for 51 at-bats with only eight hits between them, while also striking out a combined 15 times with five GIDPs for good measure. On the other end of the scale, Matt Tavernite scored less than 60 points for the whole week, with Brandon Crawford’s offensive explosion in Colorado hurting to a -19.50 point week. Welp, you can’t lose em all.
| Rank | Categories | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Justin Paradis | Myles Nelson |
| 2 | Asher Dratel | Jeremy Siegel |
| 3 | ZappyAlex | Ben Brown |
| 4 | Adam Howe | Wynn McDonald |
| 5 | Mitch Bannon | Matt Nielsen |
| 6 | Alexander Chase | Alexander Chase |
| 7 | Scott Sieber | Christian Mack |
| 8 | TC Zenka | Collin Carlone |
| 9 | nvita | Matt Tavernite |
| 10 | Liam Casey | Adam Sloate |
| 11 | dmcnic | BigRedRocket |
| 12 | Nicole Cahill | Justin Redler |
SP Only
I was reminded this week that the SP Only league is true BestBall, not just draft-and-hold, and at the end of the season everybody will get to drop their two lowest-contributing players, which means these standings may change a lot when it comes to the final outcome. Meanwhile, Justin Paradis is no longer the sole holder of first place in HRs thanks to…*check notes* Adrian Houser? Erik van Rheenen looking back fondly on that draft pick right about now.
| Rank | Manager |
|---|---|
| 1 | Justin Paradis |
| 2 | Alex Tran |
| 3 | Noah Scott |
| 4 | Erik van Rheenen |
| 5 | Kyle Seiler |
| 6 | Geoff McGovern |
| 7 | Jordan White |
| 8 | Myles Nelson |
| 9 | Phil Moyer |
| 10 | mlchiang |
| 11 | Scott Sieber |
| 12 | Adam Howe |
| 13 | Alex Drennen |
| 14 | dmcnic |
Featured image by Justin Paradis (@freshmeatcomm on Twitter)