It comes down to this.
One final week in the National League to decide the division
winner, and all three teams that clinched playoff berths last week are in the
hunt.
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| Mark it zeroYou might be wondering why I chose this picture. Well, I Googled "Big League Vacation" to see if there were any funny photos to go along with what I was saying in the blog, and this popped up. How can you not choose to use a photo from the Big Lebowski? Grant it, the Dude — his Dudeness — is not in the photo, but I still had to do it. "What about the Dude?" Shut up, Donnie. |
In the American League, Big League Choo can go on vacation
now if he wants. Hell, he could have gone away two weeks ago, and it wouldn’t
have mattered. He holds an epic 32-game lead on the division and will easily earn the bye week.
He hasn’t played a meaningful fantasy matchup in about a month,
and he still has another two weeks before he has to actually sit down and care
about his lineup.
Battling for the two wild card slots in the American League
are the Gamblers, Bombers and Jerks.
The Gamblers and Bombers are currently in a tie
percentage-wise, but the Bombers, with 206 wins is two wins ahead of the
Gamblers (204-204-72). Wins are the tie-breaker, despite the fact that ESPN has the Gamblers ahead of the Bombers.
The Jerks are 10 games behind both of them and he’s got a
decent shot at booting one of the two teams out of the playoffs.
Both the Gamblers and Bombers are facing each other this
week, and it might as well be a playoff matchup for them. If either one of them
loses badly (and by badly, I mean posting six or fewer wins), they’re in
serious trouble.
Why?
Because the Jerks are playing Coldsmith. If the loser of the
Gambler-Bomber matchup only has six wins, he can make the playoffs with 17
wins. You can do the math in either direction to see other possible scenarios and how close this could be.
If the Jerks fall short, he can only look back to a couple
weeks ago when in back-to-back matchups, he tied both the Gamblers and the
Bombers 11-11-2.
That would be a tough pill to swallow.
Probably the same sort of horse pill I’m dealing with in the
National League as I sit here with 211 wins and out of the race.
The Outs ended any chance of sneaking in with a 12-9-3 win
last week, and now sitting 7 games out of first, the Outs will make a push for
that top spot held by Vandelay — and of course, who do the Outs play in Week
21?
Yes, you guessed it, Vandelay. Man, you have got to love the
schedule maker!
Philly Cheese is in the thick of it, too, sitting only one
game out of first place after a 16-7-1 win over Steroid.ERA last week. He has
to face yours truly in the final week in order to get the coveted bye week.
Also on the line in the final week is the makeup of the
divisions in 2015. It will be interesting.
Right now, the American League is almost locked up. The
National League is still in question. This is how it looks with one week to go:
American League
Big League Choo
AL Third Place
Sex Panthers (unless she somehow leap frogs the Jerks)
NL Second Place
Slammers
Otto Parts
National League
NL First Place
NL Third Place
Steroid.ERA
AL Second Place
AL Fourth Place
Coldsmith III
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