The rainouts and snow-outs continue to hamper the baseball season.
Major League teams are struggling to find dates to make up games, and for several teams, it’s really going to ruin the extra built-in off days that the new schedule allows.
For fantasy owners, the last week has really been a nightmare — especially for anyone who owns Cubs, Twins, Indians, Blue Jays and White Sox.
I personally had four starting pitchers lined up to go on Sunday and all four had their games postponed.
Now, chances are I could have maybe picked up one extra category in my 12-7-3 loss to Monkeys Never Cramp, so really, the bigger loss is having Shohei Ohtani’s start moved from Sunday to Tuesday.
Yes, I get him to pitch in a matchup where it will matter — I’ll get to that in a second — but it also limits when he can bat in my big matchup against the Natinals.
Now, why didn’t it matter?
Oh, only because Monkey had a ridiculous 2.93 ERA.
Mine bloated from the 2s up to 3.61 when I just started throwing everyone.
I could have held tight, but I would have lost strikeouts and wins, so no loss there.
Now, why am I going through all of this about my team and this matchup?
Because something crazy happened from Sunday through Thursday.
Yes, I know Sunday doesn’t count in this matchup, but that’s where this starts.
On Sunday last week, Ohtani took a perfect game into the seventh inning. He eventually lost it there, but still looked damn good.
Fast forward to Monday. Jake Junis took a no-hitter into the seventh inning for me. Again, he lost it there, but still, that’s two days in a row.
Now, let’s go to Tuesday. That’s where Blake Snell took a no-no into the fifth — no big deal in this matchup — and later that evening, Aaron Sanchez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning.
The three straight days of having no-hitters go into the seventh was rather neat to experience.
Monkey, however, looked at those performances and said, "Hold my banana bread beer."
While Sanchez was pitching his gem, Homer Bailey hurled 5 1/3 no-hit innings against the Phillies, and on Wednesday night, some dude from Miami named Jarlin Garcia pitched six no-hit innings and was pulled due to his pitch count.
Then on Wednesday, Rick Porcello, who apparently is back to his Cy Young form thus far, topped it off by taking a no-hitter into the seventh against the Yankees.
It was a rather insane stretch of starts for the two of us, and for Monkey, those three outings combined with several other strong outings to make the matchup out of reach for me by Thursday.
In the end, it was Monkey getting the aforementioned 12-7-3 win.
So what else happened in the JLB?
Did JV lose again?
No sir. Not even close.
He came back with a vengeance after losing his season-opening World Series rematch.
With a 17-5 win over Lebowski, he jumped all the way up to 2.5 games behind the Natinals, who had the huge 17-5 Week 1 win.
It’s still early, so we’ll not worry too much about the “games back.”
What we should worry about is the pitchers for JV being back after a not-so-good start in Week 1.
In Week 2, they went 8-1 with a 2.34 ERA and 83 strikeouts. That was good enough for the Steaks to take eight of 11 pitching categories.
That included Max Scherzer striking out 21 over 16 innings in a 2-0 week. He also hurled a complete game.
Offensively, it was Scott freaking Kingery — the guy many of us looked at on the wire last year and said, “Nah.”
Well, JV said “Yeah,” then and he shouted “Yeah!” numerous times this week.
Kingery batted .308 last week with 4 doubles, 2 homers and 11 RBIs.
That helped the Steaks take nine batting categories, including homers as Bryce Harper managed just one dinger last week for the Dude.
Cheese won RBIs 58-21, which is insane considering the Dude entered the matchup with a JLB-best 71 RBIs in Week 1.
In the American League, the standings are a bit of a mess, but it’s the Crox Sox out in front after an 11-7-4 win over defending AL Champ Big Ol’ Country Breakfast.
A complete game by Carlos Carrasco and another dominant outing by Jose Berrios helped on the mound, and the second baseman he wanted to flip for Jose Altuve was very Altuve like with a .333 average, 3 doubles, 3 homers and 5 RBIs.
Considering how taking Ohtani and other away from Choo may now seem beneficial for Crox, it’s looking more and more like falling asleep on that random November evening was the best thing he ever did.
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