Week 19 MSSSMRMoW - Murphy's Law Hit Kyler Where the Sun Dont Shine



Jimmy and Kyler's "tightish" match up is week 19's Mike Shaw
Subaru Super Mo Replay Matchup of the Week.

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with Murphy's Law. It states simply, that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.  It is also the name of a Charles Bronson movie from 1986.  I am going to try to keep myself from refering to the movie too often, we will see if I can make it happen.  Anyways...Murphy's Law often comes up in sports (though it is rarely references by on air talent...probably because the people on air rarely have talent and because Murphy's Law is just something that people say after everything has gone to shit), most notibly in my mind during the 2003 season, when both the Red Sox (Grady leaving Pedro in too long) and Cubs (Moises Alou flipping his shit over a fan trying to catch a ball Moises couldnt have caught anyways) blew their respective chances to get to the World Series and earn a chance to silence the demons that had haunted them for so long (the Sawks exercised their demons the following season; the Cubs are still waiting...and waiting...and waiting).  In the real world, companies try to have a plan for a "Murphy" situation when everything goes to hell all at once so that their customer's needs can continue to be met.  If a company doesnt have this, they are inevitably faced with a situation when they need one, because even though it goes against all reason, things really do seem to go to hell all at once.  Such was Kyler's fantasy baseball life this week (I almost wrote fantasy life, but I dont want to go remotely close to that) as Kyler fell back to the pack in Harmony and Uncle Jimmy jumped up and gave himself a bit of breathing room in the hunt for a playoff berth.  There has not been a single matchup this year that has altered the playoff possibilities more than this one has.  Lets look at the damage:

Team	R	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	W	K	ERA	WHIP	QS	SV+H	Score
Backyard Superstars	27	23	1	0.255	0.305	0.367	3	32	3.80	1.39	3	9	1
You Can Call Me Al	29	29	4	0.271	0.351	0.486	6	51	2.24	0.98	5	8	11

It's not pretty.  This was on the way to being a 11-0-1 skunking on Sunday afternoon, then Huston Street imploded and took the extra save away from Uncle Jimmy and Craig Kimbrel shut down the A's in the 9th on Sunday Night Baseball to give Kyler his only win.

Kyler's offense vs Jimmy Offense
Notice how Kyler's gets a little "o" and Jimmy's gets a big "O"?  That's because Jimmy's team brought their big boy games and Kyler's didn't.  Actually, in a couple of categories, Kyler just ran into plain bad matchup luck.  In runs, everyone on Kylers team scored exactly 3 times (except Justin Upton who scored 6) and thats messed up and may very well be a sign of the apocolypse.  Jimmy got 4 runs from Javier Baez, 5 each from Freddie Freeman, Carlos Gomez and TMGS, and 6 from Matt Carpenter, Evil Cardinal.  Even though he wasnt as balanced, the top end was enough to hold up for Jim.  In runs, Upton knocked in 8, but Daniel Murphy, Kung Fu Pandoval and Alexei Ramirez all had goose eggs for the week.  That was not quite enough to keep pace with the 9 from TMGS, 5 from Carpenter and 4 each from Freeman and Michael Brantley.  In SB, Carlos Gomez swipped a pair of bags against the Cubs back on last Monday, and they held up through the entire week.   In the slash stats, Upton put up a dominant 364/481/727 line, but it wasnt as dominant as TMGS's 391/533/783.  Yasiel Puig's 333/394/367 was good, but not as good as Freddie Freeman's 375/483/667.  The entire offensive stat line for both teams looked like a game of "Anything you can do, I can do better." 

No on can do better than this.  And when was the last time something made you as happy as that HR made Jose Fernandez?
I miss Jose Fernandez being a regular part of my baseball watching experience.

Kyler's pitching vs Jimmy's Pitching
The team's respective pitching staffs are a microcosm for their season at this point.  For Kyler, Sonny Gray started out spectacularly, but he has now thrown more innings this year than in any other season of his professional career, and it looks like it is catching up with him.  He has been knocked around in 2 of his last 3 starts and in the one he put up solid numbers in, he allowed 9 base runners and only struck out 2 in 7 innings. 
Tim Hudson has likewise struggles recently, going 1-4 over his last 7 starts with only 4 QS in that time frame and only 21 strikeouts.  There is nothing to say that these two cant bounce back, but in order for BySs to get back to where they were, and to avoid free falling straight out of the playoffs, Gray and Hudson need to join Henderson Alvarez and Alex Cobb in pitching well.  A healthy Yu Darvish or Gerrit Cole (he is supposed to be back this Wednesday) would help tremendously as well, but there is no gaurantee that Darvish will make it back to full health this year (though the Rangers insist he will be back around August 25th and would make 7 or so starts before the end of the season).  Maybe these work themselves out and Kyler can get rid of Huddy and let Gray take a few turns off.  <<Side note - I just checked the MLB schedule...holy balls, the regular season goes until September 28th?  Are you kidding me?  What in the world is the purpose of that?  I dont want to be watching baseball in November, I want to be knee deep in football season and getting ready for the Hawks (not the Atlanta Hawks).  No wonder baseball is hemmoraging fans faster than a neck hemmorages blood when the jugular is cut.  People dont want to start something in early April and not have it finish until the end of October or beginning of November.  I hate everything right now.>>Kyler's bullpen will continue to be a strength as 3 of the 4 teams are likely playoff bound and will continue to rely heavily on their bullpen stoppers.  Jimmy's staff has the reliable Max Scherzer, who turned the corner from thrower to pitcher during last season's run to the AL Cy Young award, Doug Fister, who despite being traded for roughly a bag of powdered donuts, is one of the better, unheralded pitchers in the NL, and Tanner Roark and Tyson Ross, who have turned into reliable, if not exciting starters.  Both Roark and Ross might be up against an innings cap, so Jimmy will need to monitor that closely.  As for the bullpen, the Smith Street texts keep flying, nearly nightly and the addition of strikeout machine Wade Davis to strikeout machine Dellin Betances, gives Jimmy a couple of weapons that not a lot of other teams can match. 


Also, I just heard on the radio an advertisement for a drive through career fair in LaCrosse.  What is this world coming to?  Anybody have a hooptie that I can borrow so I can try to get a new gig?