WEEK 3 RECAP: SOUND & FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING
Sometimes attrition is a good thing.
This week was a weird one, and some teams got a welcome chance to exhale. Only one match-up ended with any team scoring more than six wins. Offense was down across the board with only three teams scoring double digit homers. Meanwhile, in the game between two teams which desperately needed a win, the victor was… neither of them.
sad trombone noises
By the way there will be no Gifs this week for each match because i’m very busy. Think something funny in your head, like your mother telling you that she’s proud of you if you won or your father’s hairy arms whipping you with a wooden spoon if you lost.
shirley’s sox (w) vs i like ian on topper (l)
6 - 4 - 2
The offensive side of the ball was uninspiring. Get ready for that trend.
Brooke was mostly done in by a tragic pitching performance by Garrett Crochet against the Phillies in which he gave up seven runs. With her ratios tanked it was a shame she couldn’t stream her way to being competitive in the volume categories otherwise this could have gone another way. As it is the top-to-bottom speed on her squad and William Contreras’ hot start kept her just ahead of Topper on offense and allowed her to squeak out a nail biter.
Topper continues to flounder at the shallow end of the success pool with Vinson as his offense puttered to another substandard finish. With Albies injured, and Freeman continuing to play below star level, things are looking fairly bleak. Nasty Nestor and Freddy Peralta emerged as unlikely heroes this week to continue to buoy a pitching staff that is desperately trying to keep him afloat. The schedule doesn’t get easier either with Johnson up next. Bichette, Torkelson, and Castellanos will have to muster up OPS higher than .700 in order to give this squad a much needed spark.
kourtside king (w) vs cashman’s cashouts (L)
6 - 5 - 1
After this week, Joey McDermott officially has the best pitching staff in the league, and it keeps getting better. Edward Cabrera joins a stellar staff which is performing at the highest level. The following is the list of Joey’s pitchers who did not give up a run last week:
Ranger Suarez
Logan Webb
Luis Severino
Tanner Scott
Tanner Houck
Christian Javier (Injured but you get what I mean)
McDermott is lucky that his pitching staff performed as well as they did because his hitting was absolutely impotent aside from steals. McDermott’s .212 batting average was last in the league for week 3.
Cashouts fell back to earth with his first offensive hiccup (BA .224, only 7 HR), but also had one of his best pitching performances. It was a shame that he ran into the buzzsaw of McDermott’s staff because Kikuchi, Lodolo, and Turnbull all delivered stellar numbers for Jon. Despite the disappointing loss, Sitko can look forward to Walker Buehler’s season debut within the next few weeks to further augment a staff which is rounding into form. This week will be telling to see whether Sitko’s hitting in the first two weeks was a mirage or if week 3 was just a hiccup.
honey nut chourios (w) vs pickle the beast (l)
9 - 3 - 0
Thank goodness someone decisively beat someone else. I was about to fall asleep thinking about this slog of a week.
The thing that makes this match-up so devastating for Heller is that he was very close to flipping Runs, RBI, SB, IP, and SV/HD, but some weeks just be that way. Schwarber and Abrams were particular bright spots for Heller, as both combined for 6 homers, 8 RBI, and 13 Runs. Keeping Abrams is looking like a league winning move for Heller so far as he’s already hit 6 homers and has an OPS over 1.000. If Abrams can keep up his power production at this pace he is primed to put up a Corbin Carroll - like season. And that’s 2023 Carroll, not 2024 Carroll…
As bad as Staron’s luck has been so far this season, this week the numbers swung in his favor. Chourio managed to produce counting stats despite the low average, Kyle Tucker and Starling Marte contributed 5 steals between the two of them, and Aaron Nola remembered that the Phillies are paying him to pitch, not pick his nose on the mound for 6 innings like a squeezed dick. Average and OPS are highly variable from week to week and the extremely low output recently isn’t cause for alarm yet, however Jackson Chourio’s low batted ball metrics may be…
bux in six (t) vs you don’t know jax (t)
6 - 6 - 0
Neither of these teams managed to eke out a win so I’m going to punish them by making grandiose statements not backed by any sort of facts.
Vinson Mulvey just had the worst offensive output in his history in the league. 1 home run. 1. Yes that’s incredibly variable and unlikely to be repeated but it’s also symptomatic of a larger issue which is that everyone is underperforming and there’s not much to do about it. At the risk of sounding condescending i’m going to say that I’ve been in Vin’s shoes. More specifically this start mirrors my start from the beginning of 2022 when everything was going wrong all at once and everyone was awful. There’s really not much to do in this situation other than staying the course, making incremental changes on the wire as possible, but not making massive trades which won’t fix the problem. These guys will figure it out at some point… probably.
Weaver’s offense was much closer to its true self than it has been so far, but his pitching apparently missed the sternly worded email from management. Weaver is in the throes of “early season” Blake Snell and an underwhelming start from Corbin Burnes. Weaver’s big three of Burnes, Grayson, and Snell has wrinkles at the back-end but then depth past that trio hasn’t created value.
This tie has forestalled any panicky judgments for another seven days, but the pressure remains for both seasoned owners to spark a turnaround.
brokenrufus (t) vs elly enchanted (t)
6 - 6 - 0
Johnson had a tough go of this one on the offensive side with putrid output from Muncy, Gorman, and “superstar” Jackson Holliday the latter of which didn’t get a single hit all week. Johnson’s batting average suffered (.217), and he’s starting to feel the strain of his bopper heavy build with Muncy, CES, and Morel all dragging his average with sub-mendoza line performances. Pitching again bailed him out with Wheeler and Sonny Gray leading the way.
Martindell turned out an all-around strong line this week and must be frustrated that it didn’t result in a win. The saving grace though is that Vinny Pasquantino has woken up and shaken off the rust and Elly De La Cruz looks like a possible MVP candidate. He’s still striking out a ton but the counting stats are massive. 30-50 is definitely within the realm of possibility and Martindell must be counting his blessings that he held firm and didn’t trade him away, as he is shaping up to be a potential dynasty anchor for years to come.
oneil & o’neill attys at law (w) vs red soto cups (l)
6 - 4 - 2
I’ll be frank. I did not deserve to win this week.
I think Swindell would agree that neither team was at its best for this match-up. On my side will point to the injuries to Yelich, O’Neill, and Burger as crippling to my offense, but Swindell has the same gripes as he amassed a full MASH unit worth of injured players weighing down his roster.
Standouts for me included the Red Sox pitching staff (feels strange to say), and Tyler Glasnow (have my babies). James was betrayed by Jack Leiter and David Bednar. Without their abysmal numbers it’s likely that he would have swung the pitching ratio stats to save his week. The key going forward for Swindell will be to hopefully stem the deluge of injuries as he currently has 5 IL players and 2 more DTD, a totally unsustaiable amount. If he can get healthy this core has the legs to get back into the chase through ratio stats on the offensive side and strong pitching.
quick fire notables:
I said it once but I’ll say it again because it bears that much notice. Vinson Mulvey had only 1 home run for his team in Week 3. That is his worst mark in his 4 year history in the league.
Jackson Holliday is striking out in over 50% of his plate appearances through 9 games. He’s going to be fine, but maybe after a quick trip to AAA.
week 3 matchup to watch:
you don’t know jax vs shirley’s sox
IT’S WEAVER-BOWL 2024 LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
