When Ubaldo Jimenez has his best outing of the year and its
against you, you know this isn’t your year.
That pretty much sums up my matchup with the Sex Panthers.
Ubaldo’s eight shutout innings helped the Panthers win seven pitching
categories and double-digit hits from four players helped her win nine on the
batting side in a 16-5-3.
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New Rules for 2015
For the sake of competitive fairness, the JLB will
be
changing a few roster and scoring rules for the
2015 season. This will not
affect anyone’s future
plans with their rosters, so no worries.
First, on the batting side, everything will remain
the same roster-wise.
You will keep six batters of
different positions and one wild card, and we’ll
start
the same lineup for the foreseeable future. The only
change that will be
made at any point is the addition
of a DH and subtraction of a UTIL if the
National
League adopts the DH.
Until then, it will remain the same.
The big change will come on the pitching side where
I believe
we have lost the strategy of fantasy baseball.
On the batting side, everyone in the JLB is constantly
playing matchups and hot streaks to get the best bat
in the lineup. I love the
strategy we have there, and
it’s really created some great battles in the JLB.
Pitching is a different story. There’s either compiling
or
holding back, and to me, it’s really changed the
competitiveness of the game.
We’re all guilty of it and
that’s why I plan to change it. It’s time for owners
to
make more strategic decisions on pitching. The decision
should never be,
“Well, my ERA is blown, so I’m just
going to start everyone and pick up five
more pitchers to
win all the compiling stat categories.” In essence, you’re
in
line to split the pitching stats despite having a far worse
week. Vice versa,
it’s not a great strategy to make four
starts and then just hold out for the
ERA, walks, losses
and WHIP wins.
Again, everyone has done something like that at least
once,
and yes, there’s a bit of strategy in it, but it’s not
the kind of strategy I
think is good for fantasy baseball,
and we’ve let it go for too long.
It should be more like the offensive side where you look
at
two second basemen and make a decision on who gets
the start based on matchups.
That’s what we need to have
with pitching.
So here’s how we’re changing it.
1. Pitching minimum starts per week will be raised from 4 to 9.
Everyone must have pitchers make at least 9 starts each week.
There also
will now be a cap. You will be limited to 14 starts.
This will create more
strategy within the pitching ranks. Owners
will have to look at the week ahead
and plan out their starts.
With the max 12 starters, an owner could be looking
at a
potential of 12-20 starts; but they’ll have to pick out their best 9
to 14.
(I have to wait until July 14-28 matchup this year to see
how minimums and
maximums are affected by the longer All-Star
Break matchup. That and the
matchup at the start of the year
may be the only exceptions because I’m not
sure if ESPN prorates
it or not. If they don’t, the rule remains in tact and it
means you’ll
have to be very strategic over the two weeks. Both these longer
matchups will continue to NOT be divisional games.)
2. The category of Shutout will be dropped. We will only
have
Complete Game, instead of both CG and SO. That will give us
11 pitching
categories, and to balance it out, I will be getting
rid of GWRBI on the
offensive side. It’s the one stat that you
really can’t strategize for, so it’s
out. Sorry, Choo, no BABIP
or anything like that added.
And that’s it. It’s a major change in terms of how we play
the
pitching angle, but it’s one that will not be hard to adjust to.
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It was the biggest win of the year for the Panthers and it
moves her to within 17.5 games of the final wild card spot in the American
League.
Choo increased his lead in the American League thanks to an
Outs’ spanking of the Gamblers — it’s now at 17 games — and the Bombers beat
Vandelay 13-7 to move to 27 games back, and a 7.5-game lead on the final wild
card spot.
With the Outs win and Vandelay’s lost, the National League race
has tightened significantly. Vandelay leads the Outs by only 2 games, followed
by the Cheese Steaks at 5 games back and Steroid.ERA at 8.5.
The aforementioned Slammers are 30.5 games back and 22 out
of the wild card.
Time to sell, I suppose.
Maybe I sell to the Gamblers. He could use the help after
such a big loss to the Outs. And look at all the great young talent I can get
from him.
Everyone knows Mike Zunino, who is batting .217! Man, what I
would give for a .217 hitting catcher.
Or maybe we can make a deal for Nick Castellanos, the great
hitter the Gamblers have lauded for more than a year. He’s batting .263 with
six homers and 30 RBIs… Man, I’m intrigued already.
Or, we go with Andrew Heaney who is 0-3 with a 6.53 ERA. The
next Clayton Kershaw. “I never said that,” he says.
Yeah, but you implied it.
Heaney’s “great” start last week against the Cardinals (3.2
innings, eight hits, five runs, three walks and one strikeout) didn’t hurt the
Gamblers as much as one would think as he won the ERA battle 2.927 to 2.972.
One of the closest ERA battles we’ve seen in a while.
The Gamblers also countered the Outs CG SO with one of his
own to help him only lose pitching 6-3-3, but the 7-3-2 advantage for the Outs
on the offensive side made the matchup one-sided.
For the Outs, it has been a rather impressive season on the
pitching end. With a JLB-best 3.101 ERA, 1,377 strikeouts, 126 quality starts
and 97 wins, he’s easily winning the majority of his pitching matchups each
week.
In the last six matchups alone, 43 wins have come on the
pitching side. The usual suspects have been strong — Yu Darvish, Jordan
Zimmermann and Madison Bumgarner — but it’s been the other guys who have really
made the difference.
Players like Garrett Richards, who would qualify for
Parker’s “Waiver Wire Pickup of the Year” award. He went 2-0 last week with two
quality starts, 20 strikeouts and a 2.35 ERA in 15.1 innings.
He’s 10-2 overall with 119 strikeouts and a 2.71 ERA. He’s
been an excellent addition to the Outs, and yet another success story for him.
But to me, the bigger success story for the Outs has been
Corey Kluber.
I know a lot of you may think I know it all when it comes to
fantasy baseball and prospects, but I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t. I make
mistakes and I miss out on some players.
Kluber was one of them.
When I saw the Outs were keeping him, I scratched my head
and couldn’t figure out why. At the time, it made no sense.
Either he got lucky or he really knew that Kluber was going
to become a potential All-Star. Either way, it happened.
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60 Percent of the Time, Gina Brags Every Time
Of course I had to write some more on the Sex Panthers. She got
mentioned in the lead and then never again in this whole post.
She would have posted and posted and posted some more.
To avoid that annoyance, I give you, the Sex Panther breakout.
So hey, how about that Jeff Samardzija. Bet you that Coldsmith is
smacking himself on the head for not drafting him at No. 3.
The Jerks are upset he didn't drop to No. 5 and he keeps trying to
trade for him.
But he's staying put. Unlike he has in real life. Samardzija was
traded from the last-place Cubs to the MLB-best A's.
He had a great outing in his A's debut, going seven innings in a
win. He helped the Panthers post a 3.07 ERA.
Still, the biggest blow to my fantasy team was the Panthers
offense, which kept hitting. Albert Pujols, Andrelton Simmons,
Brian Roberts and Christian Yelich all had 10 or more hits,
including a combined five home runs.
I still wound up winning that category, thanks to a J.D. Martinez
home run late Sunday night, but her 38 runs, 51 singles, 15
doubles, 36 RBIs were among nine batting categories she won.
Even after batting .293 for the week, I couldn't match. Pujols
had one of his better weeks of the year, hitting three homers and
driving in eight.
Worst of all, Roberts made the difference in a few categories, and
she picked him up because I told her that he would be a viable
option if she traded with Choo.
Just my luck.
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Kluber is 8-6 with a 2.86 ERA and 137 strikeouts on the
season, and last week, he logged another 15 innings with 15 strikeouts and a
1.20 ERA.
Offensively, the Outs made a similar great decision in the
draft, taking Nelson Cruz in the fourth round. A lot of people slept on him,
including his two prior owners — myself and the Jerks — and he’s gone on to bat
.294 with 28 homers, 55 runs and 73 RBIs. An All-Star starter.
The Outs competition in the National League, Vandelay, had a
strong week pitching, too, and he’s thankful for it. His six wins on the
pitching side help soften the blow of a 10-1-1 shellacking on the offensive
side by the Bombers in a 13-7-4 win.
The Bombers also could be up for a few “Waiver Wire Pickups of
the Year” with Casey McGehee, Brock Hold and Steve Pearce. All three are
batting over .300 for the year, but McGehee is the only one who has been doing
it all year. He’s been an amazing comeback story, batting .322 with 35 runs and
53 RBIs.
Last week, McGehee led the Bombers with 11 hits, including
10 singles, five runs and five RBIs. Add him with Evan Longoria, Devin Mesoraco
and Paul Goldschmidt, who all homered last week, and the Bombers lived up to
their name, batting .289 with 43 runs, 53 singles, 14 doubles, three triples,
10 homers and 43 RBIs.
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