So, I know that its Wednesday. I know that I havent posted anything since last Friday. And it hurts me as much as it hurts you (maybe moreso me than you). I have come to greatly value this blog as a way to output my creative juices...and I was going to make a joke about outputting juices, but this is a family establishment and I am sure that most of you can come up with your very own joke about the outputting of creative juices. Anyways, as the season winds down, I find myself getting a bit sad (and not just because my team is treating the last 3 weeks of the season like the Titanic treated Artic Ocean or like Craig treated Debo) that the season is coming to an end. We will continue with football (I think Kyler is working on something now), but for me, its not the same. I have never played football competitively (though I did used to play a mean dual threat QB in backyard and intramural games) so my understanding of it and appreciation for it are only based in what I think it feels like to do. I have never stood in the pocket and thrown a pass to a tightly covered receiver while multiple 290+ pounds gentlemen try to cause great bodily harm to me. I have never took a handoff and bounced it outside to find a 250 pounder who runs a 4.6 second 40 yard dash waiting. I have never seen a pass thrown in my direction and tried to coordinate my arrival and collision with a WR with the arrival of the ball. I can only think about what those things must be like because I have watched them so many times and heard countless players talk about them; I dont experience them while I am watching. I have faced a 95 MPH fastball (you have to basically start your stride when the pitcher thinks about throwing the ball). I have tried to hit a 87 MPH curveball that dropped from over my head about 4 feet in front of the plate to in the dirt just behind it (trying to hit that thing was like trying to hit a fly with a toothpick. the solution...hit the first straight thing that I saw in every other at bat against that pitcher...and it worked decently well until he stopped throwing straight things). I have faced a runner barreling down on me while I am turning a 5-4-3 DP at second (if you fall on top of them with your elbow pointed down, it isnt considered dirty and they tend not to try to take you out very often in future encounters). When I see these things during games, I feel the experience...I live it with the players. My mind takes what it sees and internalizes it in a way that connects me with every moment of every baseball game, and every player within that game (except the pitchers, which is ok because they arent really players anyways...they are just a necessary evil for starting the action) that I watch. I apparently extend this out to other things in life sometimes as well. Like, when my 3 year old is eating a snack and I am watching her, my wife always makes fun of me because I move my mouth like I am chewing, even though she is the one that is eating. I have done this since she was old enough to eat solid foods...and it is completely unconscious and I cant stop doing it.
Basically, all of that is my way of saying that, though I am excited for footbal season..I love footballs, who doesnt? My 3 year old says her favorite player is Jay Cutler and tortures her mother by constantly saying "Go Bears!" and this weekend told a story about Adrian Peterson getting lost in the dark forest and being chased by Lions until he was saved by a superhero named Cece...and that she likes him because he is on her fantasy team (he is...and she won our family fantasy football league last year beating both Kyler and me)...and I have all of this on video to document for whenever she decides to bring her first boyfriend home to meet the parents...I dislike that football means the end of baseball, as that is where my true sports love lies.
Here is where we are at right now:
| Rank | Team | W-L-T | Pct | Div GB | Playoffs |
| *1 | Bob's ATers | 145-90-17 | 0.609 | - | CLINCHED |
| 3 | UCCMA | 125-115-12 | 0.52 | 22.5 | +10.5 |
| 2 | ZAttack | 124-117-11 | 0.514 | - | +9 |
| 4 | MBHB | 123-117-12 | 0.512 | 24.5 | +8.5 |
| 5 | Les Moles | 124-120-8 | 0.508 | 1.5 | +7.5 |
| 6 | BySs | 117-116-19 | 0.502 | 3 | +6 |
| 7 | Dust Bunnies | 113-124-15 | 0.478 | 33 | -6 |
| 8 | MTMTAS | 110-124-18 | 0.472 | 10.5 | -7.5 |
| 9 | KIODL | 108-136-8 | 0.444 | 17.5 | ELIMINATED |
| 10 | Huckleberries | 103-133-16 | 0.44 | 42.5 | ELIMINATED |
Rather than look at last week (I am sure by now you have all had a chance to peruse the results including my second straight complete no show...youre welcome Zach), I am going to look at what each team needs to do in order to make the playoffs and what those potential matchups might look like.
Bob's ATers - Bob doesnt need to do anything. He has clinched the Bone Thugs Division title, the #1 overall seed and the bye week that comes with it. His team has been truely dominant...Bob's team is 55 games over .500...the next closest is Uncle Jimmy at 10 games over .500. If there is a prohibitive favorite in this horse race, Bob is the midget riding it.
UCCMA - Uncle Jimmy needs to not lose to Kevin's Huckleberries by a 12-0 or 11-0-1 score in order to secure a playoff spot...and I am pretty sure that he will accomplish that easily (he is up 8-3 as of this writing). Jim is locked out of a bye (22.5 games behind Bob will do that), but could finish anywhere from 3rd to 6th, depending on his week and others. His most likely first round matchup is against Kyler's Backyard SuperStars.
ZAttack - Zach is in the driver's seat in Harmony, holding a 1.5 game lead over Les Moles. Zach is facing Bob this week (and is up 9-3) and needs to beat Bob by 2 more wins than Tom would beat Tyler by (currently 5-5). So basically, Zach needs his brother to do the dirty work so that he can make get the first round bye. Were Zach to totally tank, he could miss the playoffs, but he would need to lose 11-1 to Bob AND Dusty would need to win 11-1 to make that happen...and in that case I think that Zach still makes the playoffs because it would mean that MBHB would have also lost 11-1. The odds of Zach missing the playoffs are less than 1%, but he could very easily drop from the top spot in the division to the #6 spot in the playoffs.
MBHB - My team has decided to phone in the end of the season. In the last 2 weeks we are 4-19-1 as John's injury bug seems to be easily communicable. Luckily, we had a large enough cushion to handle that nose dive. We are facing Dusty this week (currently up 7-4). If we hold on and beat him, it makes all this other mumbo jumbo meaningless and then we are all just jockeying for position amongst the 6 playoff spots. In order for MBHB to miss the playoffs, Dusty would need to by us by 8.5 wins this week, so 12-0, 11-1, 10-1-1...something along those lines. With the matchup where it is on Wednesday, it would be unlikely that this result would happen. MBHB can still finish anywhere from 3rd to 6th place, but we will definitely be playing in the first round, most likely right now, against Tom's Molesters.
Les Moles - Tom's squad is up 7.5 games on Dusty, meaning that in order for Tom to miss the playoffs, his team would need to lost to Tyler while getting fewer than 3 wins and that Dusty would need to beat MBHB with at least 8 more wins than Tom (so if Tom got 3, Dusty would need 11. If Tom got 2, Dusty would need 10, ect.) Unlike with Zach, Tom could fall behind Dusty and not overtake MBHB. If MBHB and Les Moles were to lose by identical scores, MBHB would remain in the playoffs and Les Moles would miss them. Again, this is very unlikely as Tom's team has been the hottest in the league over the second half of the season. Look for Tom to finish in 5th place and take on the Hitless Bastards in round 1.
BySs - I just realized that all 6 playoff teams are over .500 for the first time since the first week of the season. Congrats guys, we dont all suck. Kyler's team is the one in the most danger, though it really isnt that much danger. For as close as we have all been all season, there is a surprising amount of distance between 6th and 7th place. In order for Dusty to jump Kyler (metaphorically, I have seen Dusty and I have seen Kyler and I have seen them together. There is not an operation in existence that would give Dusty the ability to physically jump Kyler, though I would love to see him try), Dusty would need to have a great week and Kyler would need to have a craptastic one...it would need to be somewhere in the vacinity of Kyler winning 3 games and Dusty winning 9. Kyler's team is doing its best to make this happen (holy balls that pitching is terrible so far this week), but Dusty needs both parts of that equation to happen in order to have a chance, and his team is down (though they arent down much and are playing decently well). Kyler's boys need to step it up to ensure he isnt scoreboard watching both baseball and football all weekend. Kyler could jump into first place with a solid week and a mediocre one by Zach, but that isnt in the cards so far this week.
Dust Bunnies - To get it, its simple. Beat MBHB by more than 9 wins this week. Short of that, they need a whole lot of help.
MTMTAS - This is the extreme dark horse team that hasnt been talked about much recently. The Moors are 7.5 back of Kyler, so they are a bit of a long shot, but a 10 or more win week coupled with 2 or less win week for BySs would propel Tyler into the playoffs and knock Kyler into football season.
KIODL/Huckleberries - The season is over after this week, but there are keepers to be had. I have not gotten a response back from everyone, so I will send out a few texts. I am still waiting on Bob, Kevin, Tyler and Dusty and right now there isnt much clarity. I can only say with any confidence is that keepers will not be due at the end of the 2014 MLB playoffs.
There were a couple of week 21 performances that were worth noting:
Hitters:
Jose Abreu - Bob's ATers - 542/633/667 3R 5RBI 1SB (just another week for the Cuban Missle Crisis)
Hunter Pence - MTMTAS - 520/581/680 7R 6RBI (finally doing things other than scoring runs)
Tacoby Bellsbury - KIODL - 522/500/1174 6R 9RBI 2SB (where has this been all year Tacoby?)
Pitchers:
Alex Wood - Bob's ATers - 1W 18K 1.80/0.73 2QS
Jeff Samardzija - ZAttack - 1W 19K 1.69/0.69 2QS
Madison Bumgarner - MBHB - 2W 20K 0.60/0.47 2QS
I'll hit up the couple of waiver adds and the trade tomorrow.
It finally happened. On one end of the spectrum we have the Yanger Zone to signify players who hit 000/000/000 for an entire week, but no one had been the Unbreakable to his Mr. Glass...until now. Carlos Gomez hit 1000/1000/1000 this week (who cares that it was only 1 PH at bat on Sunday), meaning someone has finally acheived perfection and that man is Gomez! So, should another man improbably hit 1000/1000/1000 for a week, he will be said to have Gomezed (and shudders just ran down John's spine...sorry John, its like Nightmare on Elm Street come to life.) In other news in this matchup, both Buster Posey (565/593/957 8R 8RBI) and Michael Brantley (444/500/519 4R 4RBI 2SB) Escalatored for Jimmy while Javier Baez (083/214/125 1R) hit the adjustment window like a sparrow who didnt see it coming. On the flip side, Danny Santana (417/440/500 7R 1RBI 3SB) continued to show the Twinks that he belongs in the discussion as part of the next contending MN team (think 2018) and makes an interesting case to be kept as a keeper with is 320/358/475 season line in 354 plate appearances. Also, Victor Martinez (who needs to present no case to be kept) continued his monster season with a 480/567/960 6R 7RBI line for Kevin. On the hill, Jim won 5 of the 6 categories, but didnt get a truely dominant effort from anyone on the staff. Tyson Ross struck out 15 over 2 starts, but those Ks were accompanied by a 1.63 WHIP. The recently traded Wade Davis had 4 SV/H and 0.00/0.67 ratios, and Joe Smith picked up a pair of rogue wins to lead the staff. Kevin got the weeks best SP effort, as Gio Gonzalez picked up a pair of wins to go with 3.00/0.83 ratios, but only got 7 Ks. Trevor Rosenthal picked up a win and 3 SV/H to lead the relievers.
On the hill, Dusty's SPs were fairly strong, but they only had 5 starts on the week, leading Dusty to lose all the counting categories. For MBHB, Cole Hamels had a pair of quality starts (including the first 6 innings of the first combined No-Hitter in the 132 year history of the Philadelphia Phillies), but the real hero of the matchup was Brad Boxberger and his 2W 7K 0.00/0.25 1SV/H. If only Dusty hadnt fallen asleep behind the wheel during the middle of the season...
In a preview of what might be the first league championship, the two division winners squared off with Zach needing to put in a good showing to clinch the first round bye. His win is nice, but with Tom and Kyler struggling, Zach would have clinched the bye with a much more mediocre showing. Instead, Zach takes a win over the top team in the league into the bye. The ZAttack was led by How Many Altuves (429/455/714 5R 4RBI 2SB) and a Nelson Cruz ressurection (407/467/963 6R 12RBI). Zach even started Shin Soo Choo, who is on the DL and is out for the year, as a giant "F" you to Bob. Zach told me (through a medium, since I have never actually talked to Zach), "Bob can suck it. I dont even need to field a full team to beat his bunch of scroats." Bobs scroats struggled on offense, with no one player standing out for the week. Jose Abreu finished with 0s in the runs and RBI categories. Dee Gordon didnt steal a base. Billy Hamilton finished 200/273/200. Yuck. Luckily, they have time to get their heads right before taking on the winner of Les Moles vs MBHB (i think...I have no idea if they re-seed or not). On the bump, Zach got spectacular outings from Shelby Miller (1 QS 5K 0.00/0.86) and Clayton Kershaw (1W 8K 1.13/0.63 ho hum) and a decent outing from Jeff Samardzija (9K 0.86 WHIP but 5.14 ERA), as well as 14 Ks across a pair of starts from Zach Wheeler, but he was able to take only 2 pitching categories. Bob's SP group of Wainwright, Sale, Jordan Zimmerman, Yordano Ventura, Alex Wood, and Marcus aStroman combined for 5W 37K and 7 QS. Each of them had an ERA under 3 for the week. Even better than the SPs, the RPs combined for 11 Ks 6 SV/H and didnt allow a single run.
