Firstly, the important stuff:
I won every pitching stat, lost every hitting stat. Mmm hmm. That's one way to do it.
But you know what? I'll take it. After starting the year 3-9 I was desperate for a sign that a team of M-named players wasn't a stupid idea. I'm no longer in last place, and baby, that's good enough for me.
THE GOOD
- Mitch Haniger, bless his rookie heart, hit .391 with 14 TB last week, and is the 6th best fantasy player in my league. To the Redditor who suggested him to me at the beginning of the year: I owe ya a beer.
- Michael Pineda took a perfect game into the 7th last week before I jinxed it by turning the game on and texting my brother. Sorry, Mikey.
- All the rest of my pitching. Stroman? Shoemaker? Harvey, Perez, Estrada? All of them have M-names and all of them were terrific.
THE BAD
- Small sample size be damned: Tanaka has been bad and he should feel bad.
- Matt Holliday should be having a bounce-back year... but in a crazy Shyamalanesque twist he's not having a bounce-back year.
- Mark Trumbo and Manny Machado are in last place on my team in just about every stat. Trumbo somehow has a stolen base, though. Where are the dingers, Mark? Where are the dingers?
- Matt Kemp is on the DL because I still can't have nice things.
THE UGLY
- Marcus Semien, there's just no room for you. You're no longer in the running for becoming America's Next Top Model. At least until Machado goes down with an injury.
- One major problem with my fantasy gimmick: there's only one closer who fits the naming scheme (Mark Melancon). So I drafted him, and then I also drafted Matt Bush with the hope that he would steal the closer's role from Sam Dyson after a few weeks. Well, Dyson has blown four saves already, perfectly setting the table for Bush... who then came down with a shoulder injury and had to be injected with platelets. So I dropped Bush, and he was immediately picked up by another team. Why do bad things happen to good people, Batman?
That last bullet might prove to be more of a problem as time goes on. I somehow won Saves this week with just one save (wooooo!) but that's, uhh, not going to last. I may need to evaluate my potential options going forward and maybe punt on saves entirely by trading Melancon. I'll do a longer, more in-depth post about that in another week or so when things have shaken out more.
So that's how things stand. What'd I miss? Any players I need to have on my radar right now? It takes a village to have success with a gimmicky fantasy team and, uhh, I don't know where I'm going with this metaphor. Current roster is below.
