Week 9 Recaps

Dustys Nustys (60-43-5) 9
Huckleberries (41-62-5) 3

Attacking the Huckleberries ratios.  Thats Jim Johnson on the left,
Nathan on the right and Dickey in the middle.

Dusty came into this week in 3rd place in the Bone Thugs division, but now sits atop not only the division, but also the overall standings, thanks to his 9-3 victory.  Per usual, the Nustys won 5 of the 6 hitting categories (they have yet to win in the SB category this season, but have won the AVG, OBP and SLG categories 8 out of 9 times each), but also managed to lock down 4 of the pitching categories as well this week.  There were a couple of chinks in the offensive armor for the Nustys this week as Chris Davis (.080/115/080), Ian Kinsler (111/111/185) and even Troy Tulowitzki (150/182/150) came crashing back to Earth this week, but Mike Trout (444/478/611) and Joey Bats (458/567/750 were able to keep the team afloat.  The Huckleberry offense was hampered by the injury to Prince Fielder (no back up 1b) and the set back to Josh Hamilton who was supposed to be back in the lineup last week before a bone bruise in his hand.  Those holes left KP with only 6 hitters, one of them was Jimmy Rollins (156/270/156) and another was Adam Jones (200/188/300), who pulled off the incredibly difficult to do feat of having a lower OBP than batting average.  When you are already short handed, you cannot afford terrible weeks from supposedly good players like Jones.  On the bump, KP got great efforts from Jason Hammel (0.00 ERA, 0.57 WHIP, 8K, 1W) and Kyle Lohse (2.30 ERA, 0.77 WHIP, 11K, 1W) but his ratios were torpedoed by the Cerberus of Jim Johnson (18.00 ERA, 3.00 WHIP), Joe Nathan (18.00 ERA, 3.00 WHIP) and RA Dickey (9.00 ERA, 2.20 WHIP).  In addition, Dusty's pitching staff finally showed up this week, with Francisco Liriano, Fatolo Colon and Tiny Timmy Lincecum all turning in 0.00 ERAs this week and Colon, Lincecum and Phil Hughes all producing sub 0.87 WHIPs.


MB Hitless Bastards (60-44-4) 7
Bob's AutoTrackers (59-44-5)  5

This was supposed to be the matchup for first place, as Bob's ATers came into the week with a 1.5 game lead over the Hitless Wonders, but then Dusty happened.  For Bob, the loss drops him from first overall to 4th, his lowest spot in several weeks.  Bob's offense was led by the legs of Dee Gordon (4 SB, too bad for Bob he cant hit water in a floating boat right now) and the bat of Edwin Encarnacion.  Encarnacion (417/548/1125 9R 10RBI) is basically walking up to the plate right now, yelling out to the pitcher, "It puts the lotion on its skin or I hits a home run again", then actually following through when the pitcher tries to kill his dog instead of using the lotion.  Hes one crazy MFer, that Edwin Encarnacion.  Also for Bob, despite hitting a grand slam, Brandon Moss finished the week with only 5 RBI.  A couple of the Hitless Bastards lived up to their name, as recent pick up Brian Dozier (103/161/207) and David Wright (182/250/303) struggled while #SpringerDinger (321/424/750) continued his assault on American League pitching, Communism and Dolph Lundgren.  On the pitching side for the ATers, Yordano Ventura (16.88 ERA, 3.75 WHIP) got lit up by Springer and the Astros and Adam Wainwright (14.54 ERA, 2.08 WHIP) finally allowed runs to someone other than the Cubbies, leading to Bob's 5.07 team ERA for the week.  MBHB got stellar outings from Felix Hernandez, Madison Baumgarner, Justin Verlander and Michael Wacha (all WHIPs under 0.78), but the real story was Garrett Richards.  Every single hitter that Richards retired this week was done so via strikeout.  Unfortuantely, he only got 2 guys out, leading to the highest ERA (67.50) and highest WHIP (12.00) that I can recall of anyone in the league this year who wasnt an injured Closer for one of the Chicago baseball clubs (and owned by Uncle Jimmy at the time).


MWP Masters (47-58-3)           7
You Can Call Me Al (52-52-4) 5

LURCH!!!

MWP finally gets back on track, this week, behind the strength of their pitching staff as John's squad won 5 of the 6 pitching categories.  Kamakaze Tanaka, Hyun-jin Ryu, and Johnny Cueto combined for 4 wins, 5 QS, 30 K and all posted week long WHIPs under 0.98.  They were joined by John Lackey (LURCH!) striking out 8 over 6 1/3 shutout innings and 5 combined saves from Kenley Jansen and Joakim Soria (sorry KRod, no saves for you).  UCCMA, on the other hand, had 5 pitchers with WHIPs over 1.50 and got Huston Street saves on Friday and Saturday afternoon to earn a win in the saves + holds category or they would have been skunked with the arms.  At the dish, UCCMA used YoEnis!'s big Saturday (5 RBI) to win the RBI category by 4.  Cespedes was otherwise terrible this week (3 for 26 if you take out Saturday).  For John, Tacoby Bellsbury's 4 SB helped the Masters eek out that category this week while Alexei Ramirez, Pedro Alvarez and Ellsbury posted OBPs over .400 for MWP to overcome the .500 OBP put up by TMGS for UCCMA.

Lester the Molester (41-63-4)                                  7
Merry Tyler's Moor Traveling All Stars (49-52-7) 5


Pitcher's best friend this week.

Most of the time, I can look at the stats and they make sense to me.  The stats from this matchup do not.  Les Moles registered 10 quality starts this week, dominating that category as MTMTAS had only 5.  Those 10 quality starts for Tom turned into exactly 3 wins while Tyler's 5 starts all turned into wins and he got another from the bullpen to take the wins category 6-3.  That just further proves that wins are fickle, or maybe that going 6 innings and giving up 3 runs or less might not be the best barometer of what makes a good start.  Anyways, Tom won 4 of the 6 hitting categories despite having 3 of the 4 worst hitters in the matchup.  Ian Desmond (059/238/235), Joey Mauer (167/194/200 -- when he hits like a 8 year old, he's Joey, not Joe), and Adrian Gonzalez (190/346/238) were bailed out by Josh Donaldson (393/469/857 7R 12RBI) and Andrew McCutchen (333/467/542) while MTMAS couldnt overcome Starling Marte's 120/241/160 week.