If I Were to Do Power Rankings for Week 9…

Jun 4

“Do you know what Angelica said when we saw your first letter arrive? She said, 'Be careful with that one, love. He will do what it takes to survive.'"

-Eliza Hamilton, Hamilton the Musical

This was the week that saw the cracks beginning to form in the top teams. Not enough to break, but you can see some strains in the teams. Some of these cracks are actual injuries. Others are starting to put the lie to a team’s dominance. But because of these cracks you had a decent amount of upsets and almost upsets. Dan losing to Joey, Vinson losing to Mark, and James tying with me. Maybe Vinson losing to Mark isn’t that much of an upset since they’re both of similar ranks. But it’s still notable when Gulliver falls, the little people swarm on him.

We’re getting closer to the halfway point of the season and are one week removed from the Memorial Day season marker. It’s harder to hold onto duds and injured players who are projected to be back in the later months now. As the grind continues, it will be interesting to see how teams maneuver around these players as carrying them becomes harder and harder when you face a team like Mark’s who almost assuredly is going to stream you into the ground with pitchers.

For now, let’s see how week 9 went for everyone and where we all stack up:

Current Standings

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Mike
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Mark (+2)
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James
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Dan (-2)
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Vinson
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Andrew
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Pat
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Jon
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Joey
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Richard
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Ian
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Brooke
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Week 8 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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Pat 
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Jon 
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Joey 
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Richard
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Ian
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Brooke
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Week 9 Power Rankings

1. Mike

Another week, another win for Mike. This team keeps on cruising along and doesn’t really feel speed bumps like Corbin Burnes going down with an elbow related injury. I remain curious if Cal Raleigh can keep this pace up though. Six home runs in one week is absurd. I think even if he cools down, it’ll be at just a slightly above normal pace for a power hitter. That is to say, not really much of a regression.

Heller got some lucky hits in with that K/BB rate, but Mike was right there with all the other pitching stats and practically swept hitting. There’s not a lot to say about Mike’s team anymore. He’s good. He’s still good. He plays against Pat who should be good but just isn’t this year.

2. Mark

Hard to believe how good Mark’s offense has been despite carrying Rutschman’s deadass. The biggest issue plaguing Mark now is his pitching is wildly inconsistent. This isn’t too much to worry about because Mark punts every ratio stat each week for a bulk of Ks and IP while hoping to luck into winning SOLDs. So far, this strategy has worked well. Last week especially where Mark accumulated 100 Ks despite a 4.92 ERA and 1.405 WHIP. Mark just does not care about ratios, the moment they look like goners, Mark just grabs whatever pitchers sound good regardless of matchup or past performances. This strategy works well when you have an offense without any questions but the moment you start getting jammed up with bench bats, your ability to stream begins to be impacted. So long as Mark remains flexible with his team, he’ll be a tough one to beat.

3. James

This was an incredibly close matchup that could have been way worse had Iglesias not entered during a non-Save situation to strike out 2 batters and walk none to give James just the little push he needed to grab WHIP and K/BB. Unfortunately, James’s offense cooled down at the end of the week and allowed Runs, HR, and RBI to be grabbed. I’m not sure what to make of a player like Juan Soto right now. His average is garbage, but he’s providing everything else you’d want. I think I still underestimate James’s team. It looks like it was starting to break this week, but it still managed to almost pull out this win.

4. Vinson

Vinson had easily his worst week so far and a lot of it can be attributed to injuries. This is one of the teams I mentioned as having the cracks starting to form. Some players have stepped up to cover for the fall of Vientos and Betts’s toe, but not enough as .167 was a common batting average to see on his team’s players. It’s unlikely that Vinson’s team just completely collapses, but I talked about certain teams being vulnerable last week and how other teams can take advantage of such temporary weaknesses. This is the time where Vinson needs to be vigilant and very careful. Fortunately, he’s still in a good place standings wise so he has more wiggle room to take a loss here and there as opposed to other teams down below who need every win they can grab right now.

5. Dan

Congratulations are in order as Dan finally made the first three team trade last week. Unfortunately, his pitching completely fell apart and Joey was more than happy to take every one of those stats. Dan’s offense though held so consider this a weird bump in the road for his team as I can’t imagine his pitching being this bad every week. I’m not in love with any of his pitchers, but they can luck into more wins than losses. This just happened to be one of the losses. Last week saw Ben Rice finally start to be productive again as he was looking like someone that might need to be dropped with how poor he’s been and how his playing time was beginning to be taken away. Isaac Paredes and Geraldo Perdomo looked to have cooled down as they had 4 hits among them. We’ll see how they do next week, but they seem to be the only players on Dan’s team that are actually cooling down, the rest of the team have been playing their hearts out. Well except one. Goodbye Royce Lewis.

6. Richard

The bats came alive! Caminero is alive! Butler is alive! Hope is restored! My team is in tenth place but soon it's gonna be in first place, gonna rise up!

This team finally did the thing I had been waiting for it to do. Hit dingers and hit them often. I don’t really care what the score was, I am just so happy to see my bats being productive finally. Pitching is still the Achilles heel of this team as shown this week when Will Warren and Gunner Hoglund ruined the chances at beating James. Not playing one of those guys would have been more productive because I managed to win Ks by 6 anyway. New lesson: don’t be cute with the Dodgers. Even if the pitcher had been looking good the last two weeks, just say aces only for the Dodgers. It's going to be key that these bats continue this not only because I'll be facing Mark, but also to convince me that this isn't just some hot streak.

7. Andrew

What happened to that offense I was praising two weeks ago? This was ugly. And not just because it was against Mike, so the chances of a win were going to be slim anyway. But this was a bad time for steady bats like Tatis and Turner to cool down as Arenado, Stowers, Abrams, and Jung all went ice cold. Arenado has been especially dreadful the last month. Heller’s pitching would have honestly been alright if it weren’t for the horrific performance from Sears that tanked all of his ratios for the week with 9 ER off 10 hits. Hopefully Heller can bounce back in week 10 as I still have faith that this is a top 5 team.

8. Joey

No one expects the Joey Pitching Bonanza! Dan certainly didn’t. Joey’s team is surprisingly competent despite not putting up big numbers for the offense. Sweeping the pitching stats can give you the luxury to afford that. So, what happened with Joey’s offense? Well, the power finally ran out on a lot of the guys. PCA finally slowed down (with power, not speed. He stole 5 bases) along with McMahon, Bobby Witt, and then Harper got hurt for most of the week while Spencer Steer has just never been right all year. Joey’s lineup is ugly to look at right now. But when you have your pitchers like Suarez, Boyd, and Rodon bailing you out, you can feel pretty good that something is still working. I don’t know if this is enough to push Joey into the playoffs this year as it stands. Some of these players will fall off and I have a lot of doubts in that lineup maintaining the pace it had been before. This is going to come down to how well can Joey keep up with and manage this team. And that’s something he’s only done casually so far.

9. Jon

Ranks 9 and 10 are pretty interchangeable right now. The only reason Jon is higher than Brooke is because Jon is still high in the standings and has a chance to make the playoffs if everything breaks right. It’s weird to say that. I can tell everyone reading that felt weird. But Jon’s team is kind of, sort of, starting to flip the ship back on its right side, patch the hole, and great Scott they got the boilers running again! There’s still so much left to do to have confidence that this team can make a push again, especially after selling off Machado. But guys like Josh Lowe, Jasson Dominguez, and… is that Jazz Chisholm back? It’s a lot of open water though. McLain, Robert, and Manzardo still haven't picked it up yet and now Torkelson has cooled off. Kjerstad needs to be dropped.

Let’s talk about pitching though because that’s way more positive. All of Jon’s starting pitching save for Rea had fantastic starts this week. I would list them, but it’s really all of them. The fact Morton pulled this performance out of his aging backside is remarkable. Does this pitching staff keep this up after this week? Maybe. It’ll luck into some good outings and if Jon supplements them with some strategic streams, could very well do it again.

10. Brooke

Brooke’s team is back! Well the hitting is. The pitching is looking like a complete mess past Castillo and Crochet. Which is where Brooke lost the most points this week (Although she did capture SV/HD). Any win at this point is a weird celebration though as Brooke has dug a rather deep hole for herself. But it’s only 4.5 games back from my team and I’m still optimistic so who actually knows! That being said, it’s incredibly unlikely that this team keeps going as Lopez is out for the year now with a LAT injury, Kirby hasn’t been himself since coming back from the IL, and this hitting just doesn’t have the stuff to keep going at this rate. If that hitting does keep going though, then all Brooke needs to do is keep up on streaming some pitchers until she finds some that stick. But that’ll require more engagement than she’s shown which makes me doubt how feasible this all is. Or maybe the Pirates could do us all a favor and just call up Bubba Chandler already. If not, then maybe she should start shopping some of her players around for some chips. If not Ohtani, then definitely Kirby, Castillo, or even Donovan might get back at least some stuff.

11. Pat

I want everyone to know that I resisted the urge to drop Pat down to 12th. It was hard. I can feel his frustration with this team and I know that losing to the worst team in the league is grounds for dismissal to the underworld. But I fought against that… not because I really believe in Pat’s team anymore, but because I believe in the players below him that much less. I also still like a decent core of players here even if they are surrounded by the White Sox prospect of the week and a bunch of other drivel that should have been dropped two weeks ago. I think Pat has been unlucky in a lot of ways this year but he’s also been incredibly trusting to the wrong players too. This team feels like James circa 2016. I don’t really know how Pat can correct this spiral, but I’m still rooting for him regardless. Eventually he’ll get a prospect that isn’t sent back down. And then he’ll love that player as the one that stayed

12. Ian

I don’t know if Ian actually deserves the last spot based on how his team did last week. Sure, he sold and his team looks weird now. But his OF is clicking with Chourio, JRod, and Heliot all hitting the snot out of the ball right now. That infield of Winn, Barger, and Turang is starting to come in nicely. Maybe a little more water and a change of dirt in the pot and you’ll have some nice azaleas blooming by mid July.

Let’s not talk about the pitching. I see Strider is doing alright and that’s all anyone needs to see here.

Performances of the week:

Hitter:

Cal Raleigh: 8/23, 6 Runs, 6 HR, 10 RBI, .348 AVG, 1.575 OPS

Pitcher:

Garrett Crochet: 13.2 IP, 23Ks, 1.98 ERA, 1.024 WHIP, 5.75 K/BB

Clutch performances of the Week: