Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Weekly Matchups - Week 9

Sunday, June 2 - Red Sox @ Yankees

8pm - Location: TBA (but probably TITS) 

 

Week 9's installment of the DDWPIPOTCFFBE (Diamond Dynasty Weekly Preview In Pursuit Of The Chalice For Fantasy Baseball Excellence)

 

Last week – TJ regains first place with a win over Jarrett who falls 4 spots in a log-jammed race, and Alex bolsters his staff with a familiar face in the first DD trade of the year (brought to you by ScottTrade ®)

Sleepy's® "Snoozer of the Week" – Ben (2nd) vs Drew (10th)

Ben was the dominatrix of the week (that's absolutely a thing now), winning by the largest margin of victory (8-2 over Colin). It was closer than the score suggested though, as Ben won by 2 RBI's, 1 SB, percentage points in average, and 1 win. Much of the thanks goes to Chris Davis, who blasted 4 homers and hit .480. On the bump, Max Scherzer netted him two wins and 13 K's, and Derek Holland and Matt Cain each got a win and double-digit strikeouts. He was able to put up a solid sub-3 ERA and flirted with a sub-1 WHIP, nice goin' Benjamin. It was a good bounce back win for the scientist, or whatever you do, after losing 2 in a row. He moves back up to second place, narrowly above the 3rd and 4th placemen. He's the favorite this week as he has Drew in his sights, who lost to Alex 6-3 last week. It's 7 L's in a row for Donovan and the offense is struggling more and more every week. Only 2 home runs – the lowest number I can recall since starting these write-ups – and 26 RBI's against Alex, the latter of which actually won him the category. He actually managed to go 2-2-1 on offense this week but it's still tough to see those results. I probably don't have to comment on the pitching, it's a broken record at this point. The blowout potential plus lack of animosity between these two puts this firmly into the Snoozer of the Week.

(season series 0-0)

Dell's® "Dull Duel" – Colin (8th) vs Richie (9th)

I need help coming up with a name for the opposite, or the submissive victim of the dominatrix. Any ideas? Either way, Colin was that person this week. His 8-2 loss to Ben dropped him to 8th place and he is in a mini free-fall. He's followed up a 3-1 stretch with a nasty 0-2-1 mark, including back to back 8-2 losses. Like I mentioned, it was sort of close but tough shit son. Anyway, the bash brothers - I think I'll just go with Crout from now on – were spectacular again this week. This was probably their best week of 2013, stacking up a vicious stat line of 17/5/17/4/.400ish. It must be awesome to roll those guys out every week. But despite all this smoke I'm blowing up their asses, the offense went just 1-4 last week. The pitching was decent (16 K's from Cole Hamels) but it wasn't good enough to catch Ben. But if there's one remedy for a losing streak, it's getting to play Cheech and Chon-I mean, Drew and Richie. Colin draws the better-looking basement-dweller this week in hopes of Wrighting the ship (segue! You see that?) Richie handed over the Martha Jones Trophy to James following a 7-2 beat down last week (he held it since week 7 of 2012 with a 6-4 victory, which was followed by a 4-4 tie in week 16.) He got shelled offensively, losing all 5 categories for the umpteenth time this year. I don't have the records nor do I wish to spend the amount of time digging them up, so I'll just assume that Richie's 2-27-1 mark on offense over the past 6 weeks is the worst offensive output in league history. The sputtering offense led to one of the bigger trades that the Diamond Dynasty has seen in it's history, prompting Richie to take action to try to become more offensively competitive by dealing Felix Hernandez (back) to Alex for David Wright and a conditional draft pick in 2014. Richie acquired Hernandez from Alex just 2 years ago for Jimmy Rollins, John Axford, Hiroki Kuroda and J.J. Putz when the managers faced similar situations; Alex was making his playoff push while Richie was acquiring a new potential keeper. I regrettably mentioned to James that he might consider covering all of the DD trades this year and give his two cents on the blog so that we can get some more articles up, and he proceeded to rip me to shreds. I have tried to take the high road and bite my tongue, but I simply will not allow myself to be attacked so maliciously and erroneously. Full disclosure: The next paragraph is a public bitch session directed to James and is probably white noise to most of you, so feel free to skip over it.

James,

I should have known that a Mariner fanboy would write up that shit – you would have said I got the short end of the stick if I gave up Felix for Colin's imminent panic-trade of Crout (still on the table my man, FYI. Anyone you want.) But the fact of the matter is David Wright is a 30-30 threat at a position that does not feature those types of guys. You try to belittle the draft pick I also acquired by pointing to Danny Espinosa and Corey Hart, but you fail to mention that Carlos Gomez (17th), Clay Buchholz (12th), and Chris Davis (4th) all went in that round or the immediate round after. There can be IMMENSE potential in picks in that area – it's not a last round pick like you make it out to be. It's not my job to make or not make trades based on how it effects my trade partner – I evaluate trades based on what I think is best for my team. If you think Alex has a better team, so be it – at least I'm not sitting on my ass in the basement hoping for a miracle and predictably missing the playoffs (sound familiar? I'll give you a hint – YOU LAST YEAR). Last thing - “Maybe I’m just angry you wouldn’t even entertain a single offer from me for weeks and then went on listening to everything Alex had to say and went as far as verbally committing to something after rejecting me flat out without hearing a single player offer”...the FUCK are you talking about?! I literally gave you the chance to match via text and you said, and I quote, “Not officially (deal/offer of Adam Jones), but if you want to, pull the trigger with Alex...I don't wanna trade just to compete with him, I'd think about doing something if you really wanted to though. Plus, I really love my team right now.” I don't really care who you think won the trade despite the fact that you went way over the top, essentially mocking me for getting cents on the dollar (never mind Wright has a better O-Rank than Felix). It's genuinely interesting to get different points of view on it instead of me just filling up the blog all the time, I really mean that. But at least get your facts straight if you're going to try to make me look stupid.

(season series 0-0)

The Average Match of the Week presented by Not Your Average Joe's – James (3rd) vs Adrian (6th)

James beat up on Richie this week – both in the match up and (poorly) on the blog. But facts are facts – James' offense is clicking in a big way. 12 homers, 10 SB and a .300 average will go a long way toward ripping off a big winning streak. He's arguably the hottest team right now, winning 4 out of his last 5 at a .667% clip (TJ leads the league at .581% this year). Adam Jones had 4 solo shots and scored 7 runs to lead the team. A 2-2-1 record on the pitching side of things led to an easy victory for James, as this match was over by the weekend. He's got a tougher match-up this week against Adrian, who's had some really close matches the past two weeks. He was edged 6-4 to a suddenly rolling Kurt, who we'll touch on in a minute. Adrian went 3-2 on offense but could only take saves from closer-less Kurt. Adrian was only one good spot start away from changing things dramatically though, but it was not to be. A big win by either of these guys and we could be looking at a new first place team!

(season series 0-0)

The Post-It® "Noteworthy Match-up" – Jarrett (5th) vs Kurt (7th)

Roommate battle!! Lots of smack talk already brewing for this match up despite one of them maintaining his always stoic demeanor. Rumors of upwards of $800 is being wagered on this match up with a possible unsuspecting third party taking the fall. Aaaaaaanyway, Jarrett lost last week to TJ, relinquishing the top spot in the DD. It dropped him down to 5th just because y'all are so tightly packed way up there, but a closer look at his weekly results suggest a troubling trend. He is 3-3-2 on the season, but he doesn't have a big win to hang his hat on. In weeks 4-6 he played Colin (currently 8th), Richie (9th), and Drew (10th) and ripped off 3 wins in a row. Outside of that stretch, everything else has either been a tie or a loss. Jarrett kind of stunk all around this week, with only 6 homers, .264 average, 2 wins, and undesirable ERA/WHIP's. He's taking on Kurt who has very quietly turned the luck around. He's won 5 of 6 though he hasn't scored better than 6-4 in any of the wins. In fact, he's given up 4 categories in all of his wins but his least recent one. I wouldn't say that he's reached a dominating streak yet, but he's starting to show some signs of a title defense. Carlos Gonzalez kept plugging away with a 6/3/5/1/.296 slash line and is now the second-best fantasy baseballer in the land and Joey Votto scored 8 runs and hit .381. Kurt has made it back to .500 on the season and I think he's got a good shot to keep the good mojo goin'.

(season series 0-0)

Diamond Strike Anywhere Matches® "Match-Up of the Week" – TJ (1st) vs Alex (4th)

Congratulations to Mr. TJ Geers, the big winner of last week's Diamond Strike Match-up of the
Week! He walloped Jarrett 7-3 to re-take first place in the DD. TJ had really solid offensive numbers across the board last week, with 40+ runs and RBI's and a .314 average. He spot-started his way to 8 wins, 6 saves, and got juuuuust enough strikeouts from Jerome Williams's spot start on Sunday to win by one little strike out. But this match up will be long remembered for Kurt's words of wisdom, shown below:

LOL! Where does Shit Happen? The Clay Buttholes! LOLOLOLOLOL”
-K. Gottschalk

Truer words have never been spoken.

Geers has a tough draw this week against Alex, who's won 5 of 6 and now features one of the deepest rotations in the league with his acquisition of Felix Hernandez. He's got 5 pitchers currently ranked between 31 and 66, though he's hovering around .500 in W, K, ERA, and WHIP. He took care of business last week against Drew, 6-3, despite a pretty quiet offensive week from his squad. He only managed 5 homers and a .221 average but found a way to gut it out for the win. Curtis Granderson's seat on the DL wasn't even cold yet when he broke his knuckle on a HBP – he'll miss another 4 weeks. You'd think Curtis would try to get out of the way by now, as he's lost 95% of his season thus far to HPB fractures. Regardless of the outcome, I'm sure it won't provide much clarity in the standings. Next week is revenge week people! Get back at those who did you wrong on the first pass!

Drew, we have a lot of work to do.

(season series 0-0)

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