It’s shaping into a four-team race in the American League, while the National League is still open for all six teams.
The American League had a much better week in Interleague play than it did the week prior, winning three matchups in Week 10, including the Gamblers’ big 13-7-4 win over the National League’s top squad Vandelay.
The Handi Jerks pulled out an annoying win over my team — I’ll get to that later — and the Bombers won 13-7-4 over the Otto Parts.
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| Scherzer Back On Choo Choo Now, everyone can shut up. The Choo has both Max Scherzer and Johnny Cueto. As part of a semi three-way deal, the Choo sent Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Martinez away to the Cheese Steaks for Scherzer, and the Cheese Steaks shipped off George Springer for Victor Martinez and Jon Lester. For the Cheese Steaks, who has made some epic deals since joining the JLB, picks up some really good bats in Tulo and Martinez, while sending a potential star outfielder away to the Jerks. Of course, as soon as he became a Jerk, he got hurt. Typical. I'm sure he'll hit the 15-day DL here any moment. For Choo, he puts a lot of weight on Jimmy Rollins after riding the strong start by Tulowitzki. I'm not sure if this will work out for him. He's banking on Tulo succumbing to his annual injury. If that doesn't happen, he may regret this deal greatly, especially if Scherzer continues to pitch like he has over the last 30 days, posting a 5.56 ERA in 32.1 innings. His last four starts have all been disappointments, giving up at least four runs. The Cheese Steaks could afford to send away a former Cy Young and he's really banking on having a big boost in offense. His lineup is now stacked and it will be interesting to see how many wins it leads to with Tulo and V-Mart joining his other sluggers. |
The National League squads that took care of business were Steroid (11-9-4 over Choo), the Cheese Steaks (10-9-5 over the Sex Panthers) and the Outs (18-3-3 over Coldsmith).
That big win brings the Outs with 1.5 games of his brother, Vandelay. The Cheese Steaks remain 3 games out and Steroid is 5.5. The Slammers are 19 games out and the Otto Parts are 23. The latter two are only a big Coldsmith win away from getting back into it.
Adam Jones came alive for the Gamblers in his second straight win over a National League team. He hit three home runs and had eight RBIs. He also was one of two players with 11 hits, as Nick Castellanos was the other.
Mike Zunino batted .500 in his one game played, which is super amazing. I sense a breakout coming. He’s batting .218 with 7 homers and 22 RBIs. That makes him almost as good as Salvador Perez who is only batting .271 with 6 homers and 20 RBIs.
Perez played a huge role in the Slammers matchup, crushing one of 15 homers for the Slammers and driving in seven RBIs. His eight singles were pivotal as well, keeping the loss at only 12-9-3.
It was a tough one to take, as I posted a 3.07 ERA, 1.23 WHIP with 108 strikeouts to 27 walks, 10 quality starts. Yet, I won only four pitching categories as the Jerks used only five pitchers to post a 2.96 ERA. He won walks and losses easily because he logged 55 less innings than my pitchers, and his three saves and eight holds allowed him to win pitching 5-4-3.
On offense, he edged me out in runs (40-38), triples (2-1), strikeouts (50-52) and average (.276-.269) to cap off the big win. It was unfortunate for the Jerks because he hit 12 homers and had 44 RBIs and easily would have won more categories against another team.
I led heading into the weekend but it all fell apart.
The Sex Panthers also fell victim to a similar collapse. She led big time over the Cheese Steaks, but a pair of quality starts, wins and an 0.56 ERA helped him take over several pitching categories, while a triple, six walks, only six strikeouts, six RBIs and .444 average on 12 total hits helped him overtake all five categories.
When the Cheese Steaks showed up at the beach house we were staying at Sunday night, he walked in saying, “Man, Gina is killing me.”
I was like, “Um, you came back. And you’re winning.”
His face was priceless.
And that is why he is perfectly happy with a slim 10-9-5 win.
Choo would have been happy with any kind of win, too, after a Week 9 shellacking, but Steroid.ERA used King Felix to beat his trade partner.
In the offseason, Choo sent King Felix to Steroid for Sonny Gray who he subsequently traded to me for Yasiel Puig.
This week, that didn’t work out. King Felix logged two quality starts, punching out 23 with a 1.29 ERA and a 0.93 WHIP.
Puig only went 3-for-16 with two singles, a double and no RBIs. Might be time to trade him.
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| Manny Being Manny ... Machado Apparently Manny isn't as cool as we thought he was. He seems to be a bit of a hot head. He blew up over a tag that he viewed as overly aggressive, but it was not. He then threw his helmet and got in the face of Josh Donaldson. Two days later, he took some extra long swings and hit the catcher on the follow-through. He showed no care for Derek Norris, who finally left the game after the second long swing. A few innings later, he followed up an inside pitch with an unimaginable move. Another inside pitch came and after it had already passed him, he stepped into a swing and released the bat toward Donaldson at third base. Fortunately he missed, but he's now suspended five games for the whole ordeal. To me, that's not enough. If you intentionally throw a bat at a player, you should be gone for much longer than five games. What's that say about baseball? A glob of gooey pine tar on the neck deserves a more severe punishment than intentionally throwing a bat — essentially turning it into a weapon — at an opposing player. What if he hit Donaldson? What if he didn't, but pulled it into the stands? Nothing good can come out of throwing the bat, and MLB failed to make that point in this instance. I hope Machado really re-evaluates his career during this five-game break. He's a young star and I'd hate to see him be tarnished by such occurrences. Hopefully this was just a one-time thing, but if he steps across the line again, he better watch out. Cole Hamels will teach him a lesson. |
The Outs also got a CG SO, this time from Jordan Zimmermann, to annihilate Coldsmith 18-3-3.
With 12 homers, 39 RBIs and a .300 average, the Outs won eight batting categories and added 10 pitching categories in the win.
Adrian Beltre and Matt Carpenter each had double-digit hits, and combined for 13 RBIs. Beltre homered three times, as did Brandon Moss.
The Outs actually struggled in ERA with a few rocky starts, but Zimmermann’s 17 shutout innings and 2-0 record were big.
The Bombers also had a pair of pitchers put together two quality starts in the week as Anibal Sanchez and John Lackey combined for four quality starts and 20 strikeouts. Sanchez had a 1.38 ERA over 13 innings and Lackey had a 2.81 over 16. That helped him win strikeouts (65-64), quality starts (9-7), ERA (3.15-3.99) and WHIP (1.10-1.20).
In all, eight pitching wins and five wins on offense helped him win 13-7-4 over the Otto Parts. I feel the Otto Parts' pain as six categories were very winnable for him, but they went the other way. It’s been the story of the year for both he and I.
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