It’s August 11th. Every team has played at least 110 games leaving just about a third of the season left at most.
That is still plenty of time to make a lot of movement in your standings, but the margin for error has slimmed considerably and for those of you out of the money/in the back half of your standings it is time to start making decisions that directly impact your standings as opposed to simply acquiring the best talent available. Threading the needle and making considerable gains in all 10 categories (assuming a standard 5×5 setup for this discussion) is unlikely in most cases. It’s time to start narrowing the focus and making some tough cuts.
Paul Sporer: Hello everyone! Are we recovering from the frenzy?
1:01
Walker Buehler: Level of concern about my injury for next season?
1:01
Paul Sporer: Too early to say.
1:01
Chuck: Is it time to give up on Castellanos?
1:03
Paul Sporer: Definitely depends who you’re picking up for him, but my goodness has he been bad! Given the substantial fall off and just utter lack of power, it’s hard not to think he’s playing through something, right? His skills didn’t just melt, right?! At any rate, I understand moving on in shallower formats
1:03
Chuck: Do you believe in Detmers’ recent surge? Apparently he tweaked his slider during his recent sojourn in Salt Lake.
WOW!!! Who had Hader getting dealt?? Put your hand down, no you didn’t. Nobody did!! This stunner feels particularly crazy because Milwaukee sits with a 3-game lead in the Central right now, but when we dig in deeper, you that both lefty relievers are coming off horrendous Julys and while Hader is the much more dominant arm (42% to 28% K rate), they haven’t been that different on the whole this year.
I’m curious if there are specific things you’d like to see me do beyond the pitcher review. I still haven’t figured out a good Monday one. Maybe the pitcher review is enough, but I’m open to ideas if y’all would like more stuff besides the weekend streamers and FAAB picks which are the two that have really stuck around the most consistently on Thursday & Friday, respectively.
A few thoughts on the pitchers from the weekend’s games:
Took a little time and then the All-Star break, but it’s good to get back to the grind. There is still so much time left in the season. About 3 weeks ago, I was lamenting to Justin about a dip in our Main Event standings. I had fallen to 14th after sitting in the 4th-7th range for a bit and thought I was making a move. He – sitting in 1st at the time – gave me the pep talk about how much the standings move day-to-day and that I could be back up just as quickly as I fell with a couple good days. I entered the break in 8th, 2 points ahead of Justin in 9th.
I don’t bring this up to roast Justin in any way, but to underscore just how much many league’s standings are still shifting day-to-day. Every league is different and sometimes there just aren’t enough gettable points in the roto standings. But oftentimes, we let go of 8th-12th place teams that are still very much in contention with some quality play and diligent management. I like to go through the standings and count the realistic points I could acquire if my team plays well.
That exercise also helps me assess categories I might consider attacking via FAAB (or trades if your league allows – the Main Event does not). There are definitely some teams that are buried at this juncture often due to a rash of star player injuries, but don’t count yourself out just because you might be in the bottom half of the standings right now. With 70-some games to go, there is still so much to be decided!
A few thoughts on the pitchers from Thursday’s games:
