There are 2 notes before we get started. #1- "We Get Tacos" is being given honorary #1 status for life. At this point, it is completely unfair to everything else in the world to include it in these rankings, so in the spirit of TRL, it is being retired. For those of you who dont remember when MTV had music on it and who think Carson Daly is just the creepy guy who semi-molests people on The Voice, TRL (Total Request Live) was a daily video count down show that was on at the exact time when most middle and high schoolers were getting home from school but whose parents were not home from work yet. (Holy shit, I just looked it up and TRL, which started in 1998, was on the air until 2008? How did this happen? Was anyone still watching?) On the show, if a video was on for a certain number of days in a row (it started at 65, then dropped to 50, then to 40 because, heaven forbid people get to hear music and see videos they like on a show called Total REQUEST Live), it was put out to pasture and never shown on the show again. There were way too many of these videos (146 over the course of the show) and many of them featured boy bands like N'Stync and Backside Boys, but there were a few legit songs in there as well, from Korn's "Freak on a Leash" and "Got the Life," to Outkast to Tom Green's "The Bum Bum Song." Anyways, "We Get Tacos" is being retired at #1, forever and for always.
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| Larmer, JR, Goulet = many goals |
Anyways, back to the Goulet! The number in parentheses is the overall score at the moment; it is an amalgamation of the position rank for each team in each of the 12 scoring categories. LR means "last rank", as in the ranking in the last Goulet.
#855489965 - Jedd Jerko (.162 (his current BA) points; LR - #92) - Jedd is still dead to me. Though now is is also dead to Tyler and, most likely, to the Padres. Well, maybe not because he has a contract that will pay him roughly $35 million through 2019. Not a bad haul for him, though I cannot imagine the Padres are too pumped about paying a guy that much money when his first season looks eerily similar to Dan Uggla's first season and this year looks like Uggla's most recent season without the home runs. There's still time for Jerko to turn it around, hes only 25, hes a newish father and the Padres will keep giving him opportunities to earn all that money they now have to give him if he plays or not. I just wont be paying attention. You're no Garrett Richards, Jedd. Not in the least.#153 - Huckleberries (45pts; LR #149) - Kevin has taken over and the team is looking better (once again I am bracing for the inevitable loss that the Bastards will take facing Kevin this week), but the overall results have yet to be seen. In one of the stranger stat combinations, the Huckleberries are second in the league in both batting average and OBP, but dead last in runs and RBI. So...they get hits in bunches and get on base a ton, but never when anyone is in scoring position and no one ever hits them in? I am very confused. Luckily for Kevin, that is a trend that cannot continue long term. The pitchign categories are where this team is really hurting. They are in the bottom 3 for every pitching category except SV/H. The rebuilt staff should help, and this isnt a Roto League so the cumulative numbers dont mean much beyond giving me something to play with.
#152 - Lake Pepin Golf Course Men's Softball (52 pts; LR #NR) - So...I mentioned last week that my softball team managed to get ourselves shut out in an actual game (5 innings...we lost 13-0) and that, despite the terrible display, we are, in fact, in the top division in Rochester and managed to finish last season in 3rd place behind two teams that play tournaments on pretty much every weekend of the spring, summer and fall. So this week, we managed to go 4 more innings without scoring a single fucking run. NINE SCORELESS INNINGS IN A ROW IN SLOW PITCH SOFTBALL. We did manage to push across a crooked number in the 5th, but went in order in the 6th and had a double play turned on us on an infield fly in the 7th with no outs and the tying run at the plate. I feel much much shame. Weve now scored about 52 runs (I guesstimated, Im not looking that shit up) over 6 games, which isnt horrible, but it certainly isnt going to win us a whole lot of games.#15 - ZAttack (57 pts; LR #13A) - Zach may have fallen in the ranks, but in reality his team is performing better than it was at the last Power Rankings when he had 51 points. There has been a bunching of the teams as the top ones have fallen off their torrid start of season pace. Zach's offense has been middle of the pack in 4 of the scoring categories, but he is last in OBP, yet 3rd in SLG. A big part of that SLG% is tied to the otherworldly performance of Nelson Cruz (I'm not saying that his performance has been enchanced because of contact with extraterrestrials, but if you look at his hair in blue light you can see that it probably was enchanced by extraterrestrials) and his .624 SLG%. The ZAttack is in 4th in both ERA and WHIP, but is in the bottom 4 of all the counting stats.
#11 - Merry Tyler's Moor Traveling All Stars (63 pts; LR #13B) - Last Goulet, we couldnt seperate the brothers from one another, this time we say "Grow up Fuckers. This is the real world and not everyone gets a trophy. Now go grab me another carton of Marlboro Reds and 3 Schlitzs." MTMTAS has the single worst offense in the league so far, coming in the bottom 2 spots in RBI, AVG, OBP and SLG and in 6th spot in both R and SB. The totals have been severely hampered by the slow starts from Carlos Santana (sans hitting ability) Brian McCann and Andrealton Simmons. The numbers show Tyler has been lucky in both RBI and OBP, as despite being the 9th best team in the league in those categories, he has gone 5-4-1 in RBI and split OBP 5-5 through 10 weeks. While his hitting has been atrocious, his pitching has been the second best in the league. The Traveling ones are in the top 3 in the league in every pitching category other than strikeouts, in which they are a mediocre 6th despite having Cory Kluber and his 104 K and Stephen Stratsburg and his extremely quiet 108 K. With the pitching, Tyler is getting a bit unlucky as despite having the best ERA in the league so far, the Moors are only 5-5 through 10 weeks.
#10 - Dusty's Nustys (63 pts; LR #8) - It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.... Dickens may have been writing about the dichotomy between Dusty's hitters and his pitchers instead of about the French Revolution (his foresight from 1859 is pretty incredible. Maybe he was buddies with Nostrodomous). The Nusty's hold the top spot in R, RBI, BA, OBP and SLG (last in stolen bases) behind what is arguably the greatest fantasy baseball 8 hitter lineup in history. The problem is that Dusty's pitchers are the lowest scoring group in our little game. He is last in K, ERA, WHIP and QS, 8th in wins and 6th in SV/H. It isnt going to get better now that Francisco Liriano has hit the DL and Dusty has stocked his bench with nothing but hitters. Phil Hughes's 7 wins and Glen Perkins's 16 SV/H are the only things keeping Dusty above the cellar in those categories. Relying on Twinkies to keep you competitive is a bold strategy on par with not having enough players to play in the championship Dodgeball match on ESPN8: The Ocho.
#9 - Ulnar Collateral Ligament - Platnoic Ideal Edition (65pts; LR #NR) - I am not sure how many of you are familiar with Plato and his ideas on archetypes, but the quick and dirty is that Plato belived that there was a perfect version of every object floating around out there in the heavens somewhere and that every version of that object on Earth was an imperfect reflection of that perfect version. So...take a chair for example. The ideal chair is out there somewhere, hanging out with the Nelson Cruz aliens, and every single chair on Earth is a different, abstracted reflection of that one chair. Now, the Platonic ideal of the Ulnar Collateral Ligament was never discussed in the versions of Plato that I have perused (maybe it was a translation issue), but I am pretty sure that the perfect one up there is now snapped into a couple of pieces and it is just taking time to reflect down to those of us on planet Earth and it isnt hitting us all at the same time. There have obviously been a number of these injuries this year requiring Tommy John surgery, but if that damn Tommy John takes Adam Wainwright and his majestically beautiful 12-6 curveball away from me for a second time, I might just go Postal on everyone's UCL and speed up the process of our Earthly UCLs catching up with the ideal UCL. |
| Jose Veras - We Can Call Him Al for life |
#7 - MWP Masters (69 pts; LR #3) - My how the mighty have fallen. In the first Goulet, John's Johns were far and away the best team in the league with 96 points. Since that week, John's team has been thrashed by injuries, with none more damaging than the season ending UCL injury to Jose Fernandez. With that injury, MWP has fallen to the middle of the pack in W and K, but has been able to maintain a stellar ERA and WHIP thanks mostly to Kamakaze Tanaka and the Whirling Dirvish Johnny Cueto. What has really perpetuated the fall has been MWP's hitting as they are now in the bottom half of the league in 5 of the 6 offensive categories (second in SB thanks in large part to Tacoby Bellsbury's 18).
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| Can anyone seriously look at this and not thing "Bazumbas!"? |
#5 - Mark Baker Hitless Bastards (74 pts; LR #7) - Movin on up! The Bastards are a middle of the road offensive group with above average counting stats and below average rate stats...aka the opposite of Kyler's team. It seems that, if a Bastard gets on base, he seems to score at a disporportionate rate compared to other players or that we have one Paul Goldschmidt who has 49 R and 48 RBI propping up the team totals to respectable levels. That does not bode well for the future output for the Commish. Luckily, the Bastards can pitch a little as we sit atop the league in W, K and QS while we are middle of the pack in ERA and WHIP and scrapping the bottom of the barrel in SV/H. That is obviously directly related to the SP/RP strategy that maximizes innings pitched in hopes of doing exactly what the results show, increase W, K and QS while not hurting ERA and WHIP too much and punting SV/H. I'm not sure if thats a long term viable strategy or not, but we will see.#4 - Senile Billionaires (74.5 pts; LR #NR) - So there have been a couple of billionaires in the news in the past couple of weeks that seem hell bent on proving to the world that they are senile. One of them, Donald Sterling, some how thinks that getting kicked out of an old boys club for making racist remarks in the privacy of his own home, but having racist actions for the last 30+ years in his housing business entitles him to sue said boy's club for $1 billion or keep his team. However, he has to prove that he isnt a crazy old man so that the courts will allow him to stop the current sale his wife negotiated for $2 billion. Obviously the best way to do this is to get super pissed off and threaten to sue everyone who ever lived, then to back off and make extremely public remarks saying that you are ready to move on and want it all to be over with, and then a few days later deciding that, no, you arent going to take this shit lying down and your dignity and First Amendment rights are at stake. Most people would think that that twisty turny list of events is definitely evidence of someone who should be in charge of billions of dollars and is more than capable of making their own rational, thought out business decisions. He damn near made his wife's case for him. I wish he would just go away and be an old curmedgeony ass hole out of the TV spotlight. And the only way that is going to happen is if he volunteers to go away. The only thing that people love to hate more than a billionaire is a racist, ahole billionaire, and hate draws ratings and the TV stations know it.
The other senile billionaire resides on the North side of Chicago, where Tom Ricketts seems to think that if he keeps pushing forward with the Wrigley renovations that the roof top people (with their signed contracts with the Cub organization) are going to eventually break and allow him to put up giant screens and billboards that will definitely block their view. He is even going as far as to threaten to move the Cubs from Wrigley if he doesnt get his way. So much for the "being good neighbors" crap he was trying to feed them when the family first took over as owners. Ricketts better be careful, there are people who drive from all over the country to see a game at Wrigley, they dont come to see the Cubs play. People have always flocked to Wrigley regardless of the product on the field because of the historical significance of the park itself. Take that away and people stop coming to experience the field, see the ivy and imagine what it was like there when Babe Ruth trotted around the bases in the 1932 World Series, when Gabby Hartnett hit his "Homer in the Gloamin" or when the lights went on for the first time back in 1988. I dont know if youve seen the product on the field lately, but it isnt pretty. The future looks bright for sure, but for every top prospect that turns into a superstar, there are a baker's dozen that never see the show.
I understand that Ricketts wants to update the player facilities like the locker rooms and batting cages and whatnot, and I can fully support that as a fan of the franchise knowing that players weigh those things in deciding where to sign or more importantly for the Cubs if the prospects pan out, where to stay. But fundamentally changing the Wrigley field experience by adding a jumbotron or more advertising spaces in hopes of raising revenue when the owners are already multi-billionaires, reeks of greed and craziness and a complete lack of understanding of what makes Cubs fans Cubs fans. Of course, if the Cubs win a World Series, Ricketts could personally drive the bulldozer into Wrigley field while wearing a White Sox hat and a Cardinals jersey screaming "Fuck the Bears and I hope D Rose never recovers" and people would happily join him.#3 Lester the Molester (75 pts; LR #6) - Wait, what? Despite being 46-69-5 and in last place overall, Les Moles is actually the second best team in the league if you look at the sum of their stats. Les Moles is average to slightly above in every hitting stat, 4th in R, RBI, OBP and SLG, 5th in AVG and tied for 6th in SB. On the pitching side, Tom's team is second in W, K and QS while slightly below average in 7th place in ERA and WHIP and dead last in SV/H. Whereas most teams are stronger on one side of the ball than the other, Tom's team is built to be above average across the board...and it is killing him in the standings. To be honest, I am very surprised that Tom's team has done as poorly as it has, but these numbers prove one of two things. 1) Tom has been one of the most unlucky fantasy baseball players in the history of fantasy baseball, or 2) having a well rounded team is the best way to limit your chances to be successful because you will never be dominant enough in other stats to overcome a down week in others.
#2 Bob's AutoTrackers (88 pts; LR #5) - Bob is still a dick. But he is a dick with what has been so far a spectacular team. If Tom's team is the arguement against a balanced approach, Bob's is the arguement for it. Bob's hitters are 5th in R, 3rd in RBI, 7ths in AVG, and 6th in OBP and SLG. The biggest difference is that Bob's hitters are dominating stolen bases. He has 68, the second place team has 42. That domination means that he can pencil that stat as a win every single week (he's 9-1 this year) and that he can sustain a few blips across the other offensive stats and still be competitive. When he won Billy Hamilton for $30 and Dee Gordon (I wont mention the price so that Kyler doesnt start crying and ruin his computer), I snickered a bit because I view those guys as 1 dimensional players. I was right, they are, but I was wrong in their value provided Bob could surround them with the right other pieces, and he has. While the ATers have been averageish in hitting, they have dominated the pitchign categories. They are 1st in WHIP, 2nd in ERA and SV/H, 3rd in W and K and 5th in QS. Seriously, look at that pitching staff and those base stealers and you have to figure that Bob is going to win 6-7 categories more often than not, and in the playoffs that is all it takes to advance. Hey rest of the league, were all chasing Bob at this point...time to step up. Now get me some Marlboro Reds and 3 Schlitzs.
#1 Mike Trout, Salty
Pretzel Pusher (158 pts; LR #NR) -
Uncle Jimmy sent me this picture last night in a text with the note, "If this had Garrett on the cover, you might stick your junk in this box!" and he isnt wrong. There are so many things that are right with this picture that I dont even know where to start. First, soft pretzels...I am sold already. But that picture of Trout in the corner makes me imagine him at Angels games hanging out at the end of the dugout before the game starts where players usually sign autographs, only he isnt signing autographs, hes wearing a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and hes trying to get 10 year olds to try the pretzels he keeps magically pulling out of the pocket of the sweatshirt. "Just try one meng (hes apparently Mexican too), they are super good for you. So much salt, its the food of the God's you know. It's so chewy, if you dont want more you dont have to have any more, its just a trial man." And before you know it every single kid in Angels stadium is gnawing on a soft pretzel and begging their parents to go to the concession stand to buy them more and to buy them pop because the salt made them thirsty. Its a self perpetuating cycle, and the single greatest non taco related item I have come across this season so far. As Trout says when the kids walk away, "Stay Thirsty my friends."
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