If I Were to Do Power Rankings for Week 12…

Jun 27

“When one of us falls, we continue.”

-Expedition oath, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Another late power rankings although this time I can’t blame it on a bad back (it’s actually feeling a lot better today). Instead, the reason this didn’t come out on Tuesday is because of the game Expedition 33 stealing all my time. And not just because it took forever to find a physical copy (which wouldn’t be needed if PlayStation didn’t make network access mandatory for downloaded games to play). I digress, it's been a while since a game has gripped me this much and it's been fun to just let it happen. Especially when compared to the power rankings this week which saw a total of ZERO changes in the standings for the league. Yes, that's probably the most boring thing to unpack, but unpack it we shall.

Let’s see how week 12 went for everyone and where we all stack up:

Current Standings

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Mike
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Dan
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James
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Mark
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Vinson 
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Andrew
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Richard
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Jon
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Joey
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Patrick
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Brooke
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Ian
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Week 11 Standings

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Mike
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Dan
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James
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Mark
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Vinson
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Andrew
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Richard
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Jon
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Joey
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Patrick
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Brooke
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Ian
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Behold, week 12’s roto standings. Witness the sins that stymied your league’s change in standings!

Week 12 Power Rankings

1. Mike

I’m starting to wonder if Mike’s offense is just 90% Cal Raleigh. I know he has other guys that are doing other things. People like Devers, Greene, and Machado, but Raleigh seems to always be the guy hitting .400 with 4 home runs each week. Week 12 in particular should have seen Mike have a down swing in hitting what with Devers in AT&T park now and Oneil Cruz hitting under his body weight. Instead, Mike came out just fine. Pitching remains dominant as usual. There’s not much to report except how losing Ks and IPs will happen some weeks. Mike’s pitching is too deep and too good to just drop and stream. It’s not really a drawback even if it means Mike loses once and a while.

2. Dan

Well, well, well. Topping Mike. Well done sir. Have yourself a pat on the back from me. You won not by having just six stats on one side (such as all pitching and then tied steals), but a fairly even mix. It looks better because it means your team has a legit chance to continue to go toe to toe with Mike. I think I was most impressed with you tying home runs. And you were pretty close to RBIs too. I’m still not sold on your pitching, but I think you know that too and thankfully you’re making up for it with streaming. Grabbing K/BB from that is particularly exceptional. Oh and congratulations Dan, you won the Acuna gamble. Looks like he’s going to be fine, so that’s a nice cheap round 1 pick you nabbed in the 2nd round.

3. James

He can’t keep getting away with this! James continues to be absolutely fine. Even more, his prospect call ups have particularly hit. Well Jacob Misiorowski has. We’re still waiting for Jac Caglianone to hit above room temperature. But the fact that James put this guy in his lineup and end up fine lets you know how deep his hitting is. Alex Bohm, Will Smith, Juan Soto have all been producing at levels you would be thrilled to see. On the pitching side, James had a rough week: Brandon Walter, Ryan Gusto, Kyle Finnegan, and Aaron Civale all screwed over James’s ratios causing him to lose every single one to Joey. To be fair, Joey’s pitching can put up a fight, but this was just bad luck from James. Bad luck and trusting the Astros’s young pitchers.

4. Mark

Mark is back! Well his pitching is as it just swept Heller. But that’s not to say the hitting didn’t show some life. Those ratios actually look serviceable which is encouraging for the future. It’s just too bad Heller’s offense exploded this week or else Mark probably would have had him. On the pitching side, other than Shane Smith finally regressing to the mean and a reliever blow up, Mark sailed through this easily. I do find a certain humor in the injuries to both Sale and Rutschman, two guys part of the “blockbuster” deal Ian made.

5. Vinson

Back in 5th place. It was fun while it lasted, but Vinson just has been more consistent than my team and so it’s time to shuffle this back. I never should have doubted his team. He also had a stroke of good luck with Kristian Campbell being sent down so now he can stash him without having it hurt him. Add in some dropping of other dead weight and Vinson’s team is looking like it’s in motion again. I still think Michael Harris is absolutely useless, but maybe he’ll have his end of July surge and hit .500 for a month and a half so that his final numbers look like he hit .270 with 27 home runs for the year. And every analyst will say how good he is and rank him high and we’ll do this all over again next year.

6. Andrew

I don’t know what to do with Heller’s team. One week his offense is missing, the next week he’s hitting 20 home runs with an .867 OPS. He’s ranked 6th because the upside of his team is bludgeoning another into pulp, but at the same time his team has the downside of being asleep at the wheel. His pitching is shaky right now and relies almost too much on streaming, having been done in by poor outings from Bradley and Falter. There might be a trade that could balance this team out, but I’m not sure what that looks like. I will say that James Wood is looking like a first round player for 2026. So good work Heller in nabbing him. He’s the piece that a team should sell the house for.

7. Jon

Jon’s team is doing what Pat’s team had hoped it would do: own a bunch of high risk, high reward unconventional players that all fire on all cylinders. It’s annoying he’s getting away with it, but he is and this might be promising. The tragedy is the Machado trade happening a month too early and he’d be in here really giving opponents a tough time. The rest of Jon’s trades are all looking like 4D chess moves as Jazz and Kurtz are doing some damage. Jon’s team is going to be fun to watch and is probably fun to own. I still have my doubts on this continuing but a lot of that is now on whether Lowe and Jazz can stay healthy rather than if they’re legit or not.

8. Richard

Ugh. What a week. Gore and Flaherty ruined what was shaping up to be a decisive victory. I finally face a team that I don’t have to stream against and my actual core lets me down. On the offense side, I’m pleased with 16 home runs, a decent AVG, and keeping the rest of the stats close. Caminero is finally starting to look like the player I was hoping he’d turn into and Butler is not too far behind. Unfortunately, my team losing Burger means I have to send in CES as a regular and he’s been awful since that first week. If a couple other bats don’t wake up, I’m going to be in trouble.

9. Joey

Taking a tie to a team like James is pretty good. And like I said about Dan, it was in stats that were all over the place rather than in all pitching or all hitting. That shows this team still has a good fighting chance. That being said, there are still parts of this team that make me itch. I don’t know what we’re waiting for from Nootbaar anymore. His average is atrocious and his power numbers are meh. Hicks can be safely dropped. I don’t see a reason why Joey wants to stash him when he already has so many IL guys that he can’t even fit Harper and Chapman in IL spots. His team’s flexibility is severely limited with having guys like Cortez, Lowder, and Hicks sitting there. Two have been waited on way too long to justify holding anymore (Cortez and Lowder) and the other is just not worth the stash (Hicks). If Joey can do to his team what Vinson just did to his, he could have a very threatening force.

10. Brooke

Stop Weaver on Weaver violence! Brooke completely smashed Pat on offense with a lot of the damage coming from Pena, Burleson, and Rafaela. There's been some comparisons of Rafaela to PCA with both having similar approaches: elite defenders with big strikeout numbers, plus speed, and a swing that could unlock more power if tweaked right. I'm not saying Ceddanne Rafaela is the next PCA, but there is a blueprint out there for him now and I wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly starts becoming more and more fantasy relevant. I've always liked Rafaela, but in a more “none of you should follow me because it could be ugly” sort of way. On the pitching side, Brooke probably could have beaten Pat even more if she had streamed a pitcher or two to catch Ks and IPs and possibly even pad the ERA a bit after a few of her pitchers blew it up.

11. Pat

Woof. This was bad. Insert Simpsons gif “stop stop, he's already dead!” Pat's offense has completely collapsed and every other pitcher he picks up, leaves with elbow tightness. Worse, Corbin Carroll goes on the IL thanks to a fractured wrist. Now, many people harped on this team because of how risky a lot of Pat’s high draft picks were. But no one in a million years thought it would look this bad. A lot of those risks that Pat took had fairly high rewards too and Pat easily had the strongest core group of keepers going into this year such that he could take a few blow ups from those guys. All he needed was for one or two of them to work out and he'd be in a completely different position today. Instead none of them worked out (or if they did, it was on another team) and now his stalwart core is breaking down. I think Pat still has a solid core for next year and is bolstered by guys like Roman Anthony and Kris Bubic. This is a team in a frustrating position as there's little to do but wait as the ship that is your team finally slips beneath the waves. There's nothing better to add to this core. There's just next year’s rerack in the draft.

12. Ian

The one thing I can say Ian did this week was scare Vinson enough to start making drastic changes to his team. For a moment, Ian looked like he might actually beat Vinson in hitting categories. Unfortunately Ian's team just doesn't have the staying power any more and the sleeping giant, Vinson, woke up. Walker and Adames are showing some life though so that's something to hang your hat on at least. On the pitching side it was optimistic until Leiter and Rea ruined Ian’s ratios. Ian’s team is a quirky mess right now as the players he sold for try to get on track while he tries to squeeze the last bit of talent out of the veterans he picked up.

Performances of the week:

Hitter:

Cal Raleigh: 10/24, 10 Runs, 5 HR, 12 RBI, 2 SB, .417 AVG, 1.606 OPS

Pitcher:

Ryan Pepiot: 13 IP, 18 Ks, 1.38 ERA, 0.846 WHIP, 4.50 K/BB

Clutch performances of the Week: