M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 9)

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: THE MANCIES ARE BACK AT .500 GET REKT HATERS:

"But David," you're probably saying, "you were never below .500! In fact, at the time of your last update the Mancies were a respectable 44-37!" 

Yeah. About that. We lost Week 8 pretty badly (1-9) and the Mancies refused to get out of bed for the weekly post. But let's not dwell on the past, so get off my back why don't ya?

THE GOOD

  • Matt Holliday and his 4 HR, 10 RBI, and 27 TB over the past two weeks.
  • Matt Adams is shockingly similar, with 4 HR, 10 RBI, and 32 TB. Thanks to /u/HateMcLouth (nice name) for suggesting I drop Margot for him two weeks ago. 
  • It's not related to fantasy baseball, but I've run out of good things to say about the Mancies and it's neat news: my wife and I are buying a minority share in a local craft brewery that's opening up. It's two blocks from my apartment. I can literally walk to a source of free beer whenever I please. Experts disagree on whether or not this will be good for my long-term health.

THE BAD

  • The entire pitching staff. Over the past two weeks, only Matt Shoemaker has an ERA under 4.00. I'm, like, 99% certain they're pitching poorly to balance out my surge of just-bought-a-brewery positive karma. 
  • Masahiro Tanaka specifically. I benched him for his Oakland start (where he gave up 1 run in 7+ innings) and promptly started him for his Baltimore 7-run shit show. At this point I have more faith in Zoo Pandas breeding than I do in Tanaka pitching consistently. 
  • Matt Carpenter is 7-for-46 in the last two weeks, and hitting .213 on the season. And he's the only M-named 2nd baseman available to me. 
  • Having only pitched 5 innings in the past month, finding Mark Melancon on a pitching mound is like searching for pre-2011 Bin Laden. 

THE UGLY

  • I finally dropped Manuel Margot. He promptly went on the DL. No regrets.
  • The Nationals went to a closer-by-committee for two weeks, so I grabbed Matt Albers and let him waste a pitching slot. He got zero saves in that time, and then Dusty Baker inexplicably named Koda Glover (he of the 4.58 ERA) the permanent closer, even though Albers is literally the only reliever on the Nats with an ERA+ above 100, and has the best K/BB ratio.
  • Rival fantasy baseball owner Pitch Slap tried to trade me Carlos Gonzalez for Matt Shoemaker. When I countered with an offer for Matt Bush (the only non-Melancon closer) Pitch Slap said he didn't want to trade Bush for anything. I'm here to publicly shame him for disrespecting the Mancies. 
Mancy Week 9_Trade.PNG

Here's how the Mancies look today. Mitch Haniger is set to come off the DL in the next week or so, and I'll have to decide who to drop for him. 

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 7)

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Hello everybody! The Mancies are cruising along at a successful--but uninteresting--clip, so we're condensing Week 6 and Week 7 into one post. First, the thing about which we care the most: STANDINGS!

Holding strong in 4th. Which is alright, but could have gone better, because in Week 6 I was narrowly defeated in a potato-load of categories. Week 7 was better, but still hard-fought for every point I could grab.

What a dick!

What a dick!

Dinger derby all day erry day

Dinger derby all day erry day

But hey. When you've got a gimmick team, simply keeping your head above water is a victory. And we're treading water with floaties the size of Mark Trumbo's guns. 

THE GOOD

  • Michael "Good for the Mancies" Conforto is hitting .341 over the past two weeks with 5 HR and 35 TB. If he loses any at-bats when Cespy comes back from the DL I'm going to smash my monitor against the wall and ragequit this entire thing. 
  • Matt Kemp is back and open for business, hitting .340 since returning from his own DL stint. 
  • Mark Trumbo remembered how to play baseball and is making up for lost time, batting .373 with 3 HR and 31 TB over the last two weeks. 
  • Unlike your every day, run-of-the-mill Sicilian cobbler, Matt Shoemaker has 3 Wins and a 1.45 ERA over that period. 

THE BAD

  • Everything about Manuel Margot. 1 SB in the last two weeks? That's, like, literally the only reason I have you on my roster, Manny. 
  • Matt Harvey has an ERA approaching the number of hot dogs I ate at Dollar Dog Night at the Rangers game last Wednesday (6). 

THE UGLY

  • Not to be outdone by his New York comrade, Tanaka has a 27.00 ERA over 4.2 innings in his last two starts. Yes, that's bad. No, it's not a typo. Yes, he needs to get it together. No, I'm too proud to drop him. 
  • Mitch Haniger is still on the DL. When is Mitch Haniger coming off the DL? I need Mitch Haniger to come off the DL. 

Here's how the Mancies look today, with their total 2017 stats. Got any criticism? Ridicule? Think this gimmick is stupid? Well you can just keep it to yourself. Jerk.

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 5)

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The Mancies are hitting on all cylinders. They're a well oiled machine. They're [insert other cliche metaphor or scrappy underdog analogy]. We won our matchup last week 9-2...

...which puts us firmly into 4th place.

That 5.42 ERA from my pitchers isn't the best, but you know who has two thumbs and doesn't care? This guy. The Mancies are all about quantity of pitching over quality, and last week the strategy worked as designed. 

THE GOOD

  • Machado/Trumbo finally woke up and started justifying their high draft spots. 
  • Matt Carpenter? 4 HR and 20 TB last week. 
  • Mike Moustakas isn't on my team, but I've been trying to trade for him for three weeks and have been rejected each time. He was on my opponent's team last week and hit .174 with 1 RBI. You bet your ass that goes in THE GOOD column. 

THE BAD

  • While I was fighting for Wins/QS, Matt Harvey lost his start on Saturday, which was almost the first--and hopefully only--time I was ever screwed over by a big black dildo. 
  • Marcus Stroman shit the bed against the Yankees before leaving with an arm injury. All signs point to him being fine, but it's not as if I have much depth, here. 

THE UGLY

  • Matt Albers was poised to grab some vulture saves for the Nats, so I picked him up for a few days. He rewarded my diligence by giving up a walk, a hit, and a HR in 0.1 IP of work. Thanks for your contribution to the Mancies, Matt. 
  • Manuel Margot is on my team to get me steals. Manuel Margot has not gotten me very many steals. Manuel Margot will not be on my team much longer if he does not start getting me steals. 

Here's how the Mancies look on the season, for my fellow statistics nerds.

The guys that smack the ball

The guys that smack the ball

The guys that toss the ball

The guys that toss the ball

In tangential news, I was in St Louis last weekend and visited Busch Stadium for the first time. It's a gorgeous stadium, and I had great seats... but the beer was seriously lacking. I think I walked probably 270 degrees around the concourse and never saw anything other than Budweiser or Bud Lite. Was I not looking in the right place? Is there some hidden Craft Beer Paradise in the only corner of the outfield I failed to check? 

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Week 4)

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Good news everybody! We're finally performing at the level deserving of a top shelf gimmick team, almost running the table on our opponent. 

Look at those stats! A 2.13 ERA from a team going for quantity instead of quality pitching? 18 dingers? Winning the Saves category with only one closer? We've reached our peak, folks. And by "peak" I mean "one game over .500". 

THE GOOD

  • Miguel Sano hit a videogame-like .524 last week with 21 TB. 
  • My 4th round pick Matt Kemp is back from the DL and mashing like it's 2011.
  • Matt Wieters? Good at baseball again.
  • Pretty much the entire pitching staff. Fulmer had the worst outing this week and it was still a Quality Start.

THE BAD

  • Mitch Haniger is on the DL with an oblique strain because god hates the Mariners. 
  • My 6th round pick Mark Trumbo has probably been the biggest bust of the year. 
  • Manuel Margot has descended into the "fast outfielder with a small bat" category, and is dangerously close to being on THE UGLY list next week.

THE UGLY

  • Mike Napoli has been so bad that I finally dropped him. Currently running Matt Holliday full-time at 1B, while keeping an eye on Mitch Moreland. 

I've been doing my best to trade Mark Melancon, but it's just not happening. I've tried packaging him with starting pitching in exchange for Miggy twice, but the other team rejects it without comment. The teams with Scherzer and Bumgarner won't even respond to my trade requests. But you know what? The Mancies don't give a fuuuuuck. I've added Michael Lorenzen to snag vulture saves and am going to chug along with what I currently have. 

Full team stats from last week below.

 

 

M as in Mancy: A Fantasy Baseball Experiment (Closer Edition!)

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I was rocking. I swear I was. All week I was winning 10-1 or 9-2, until yesterday my opponent puts up these bullshit stats:

So even though my team crushed it last week, I got narrowly passed in 7 categories on the final day to lose 4-7. Life ain't fair, I tell ya.

This week we're going to talk about relief pitching. Namely, the league's lack of it.

Let's backup a bit. When I was deciding which letter-gimmick to play this year, relief pitcher was the only real gap. There's Mark Melancon and nobody else. Literally nobody who is an established closer. So my strategy was to pick up Matt Bush with the assumption that he would win the closing spot sometime this year. I live in DFW and have Rangers season tickets, so I was pretty confident Bush would be my huckleberry. And it was unfolding perfectly: Sam Dyson blew three consecutive saves this April, and Bush was looking more and more likely.

But then I did something stupid. Bush had shoulder fatigue, and was sent home to get some platelet injections in his arm. I made the mistake of listening to local sports radio, where everyone was doom-and-gloom. "His four years not playing in prison is biting him in the ass," they said. "He's not used to a real workload," they claimed. So with Bush looking like he was heading for a trip to the DL, I dropped him, confident that I could pick him up later.

He didn't get put on the DL. He was back pitching two days later. And someone in my league snagged him immediately.

Now I'm sitting here with one really good closer and not a lot of options. So let's take a look at all the available relief pitchers who have a chance at becoming closers, and the guys ahead of them in the bullpen. I'll be using Closer Monkey for all my rankings here. 

Mike Dunn, COL (7.2 IP, 10 K, 1.17 ERA, 0.91 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Greg Holland (9.0 IP, 10 K, 2.00 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 9 SAVES)
  • Adam Ottavino (8.1 IP, 12 K, 2.16 ERA, 1.32 WHIP)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 75,000-to-1 (the odds of Greg Holland being hit by a meteorite thanks to the thin Coors Field air--though when park-adjusted the meteorite's size is actually below-average)

Mychal Givens, BAL (9.0 IP, 8 K, 1.00 ERA, 0.89 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Zack Britton (7.0 IP, 6 K, 1.29 ERA, 1.86 WHIP, 5 SAVES)
  • Brad Brach (9.0 IP, 12 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.44 WHIP, 3 SAVES)
  • Darren O'Day (6.0 IP, 6 K, 7.50 ERA, 2.17 WHIP, 1 SAVE)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 10 million-to-1 (the odds of the Baltimore Orioles team plane crashing over the Appalachian Mountains on their May 12 trip to Kansas City; Mychal Givens walks away unscathed like the guy from Unbreakable and plays the rest of the season with the newly-promoted AL East Norfolk Tides)

Matt Bowman, STL (9.2 IP, 8 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.52 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Seung-hwan Oh (9.2 IP, 8 K, 5.59 ERA, 1.66 WHIP, 5 SAVES)
  • Trevor Rosenthal (5.1 IP, 11 K, 3.38 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 1 SAVE)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 10,000-to-1 (Oh suffers a freak toilet-related injury; Rosenthal is subsequently injured while breaking down the stall door trying to save him)

Miguel Socolovich, STL (7.0 IP, 5 K, 7.71 ERA, 2.00 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him: the same guys as above (Oh, Rosenthal, and Bowman). Aren't you paying attention? 

Odds of inheriting closer role: 20,000-to-1 (Matt Bowman sprains finger dialing 911 after seeing what has befallen Oh and Rosenthal #NeverForget)

Michael Lorenzen, CIN (11.0 IP, 12 K, 5.73 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 1 SAVE)

Guys ahead of him: 

  • Raisel Iglesias (11.1 IP, 14 K, 1.59 ERA, 0.79 WHIP, 3 SAVES)
  • Drew Storen (8.1 IP, 10 K, 1.08 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 1 SAVE)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 40-to-1 (Raisel Iglesias pitches lights out and gets moved back to the rotation; Storen re-breaks his thumb playing MLB The Show 17 will a little too much passion)

Marc Rzepczynski, SEA (5.2 IP, 2 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.53 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Edwin Diaz (6.2 IP, 7 K, 5.40 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, 2 SAVES)
  • Nick Vincent (9.1 IP, 9 K, 2.89 ERA, 0.86 WHIP)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 100-to-1 (manager Scott Servais decides that closers should be selected based on the Scrabble point value of their last name)

Matt Belisle, MIN (7.1 IP, 8 K, 2.45 ERA, 1.23 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Brandon Kintzler (8.1 IP, 4 K, 0.00 ERA, 0.84 WHIP, 4 SAVES)
  • Ryan Pressly (6.2 IP, 6 K, 10.80 ERA, 1.50 WHIP)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 1,000-to-1 (Kintzler gets injured; Pressly quits baseball after learning he's the long lost heir to the Elvis Presley estate who was overlooked due to an unfortunate birth certificate typo)

Miguel Diaz, SD (8.1 IP, 4 K, 5.40 ERA, 0.84 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him: 

  • Brandon Maurer (7.2 IP, 10 K, 3.52 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 3 SAVES)
  • Ryan Buchter (7.2 IP, 8 K, 3.52 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 1 SAVE)
  • Brad Hand (9.0 IP, 11 K, 1.00 ERA, 0.67 WHIP)

Odds of inheriting closer role: whatever the odds are of Miguel Diaz not sucking at baseball, because that needs to happen before we even consider him as an option.

Matt Barnes (10.0 IP, 11 K, 3.60 ERA, 1.20 WHIP)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Craig Kimbrel (9.1 IP, 17 K, 1.93 ERA, 0.64 WHIP, 7 SAVES)

Odds of inheriting closer role: 1 million-to-1 (the odds of Craig Kimbrel being struck by lightning. Alternatively: the Orioles throw a high-and-tight fastball at Pablo Sandoval as revenge for Matt Barnes throwing at Machado, and Kimbrel is injured in the ensuing brawl. All part of Matt Barnes' evil plan.)

Mauricio Cabrera (injured)

Guys ahead of him:

  • Jim Johnson (7.2 IP, 10 K, 3.52 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 3 SAVES)
  • Arodys Vizcaino (9.0 IP, 11 K, 5.00 ERA, 1.33 WHIP)
  • Jose Ramirez (10.1 IP, 7 K, 1.74 ERA, 0.87 WHIP)

Odds of inheriting closer role: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alright. Who'd I miss? Are there any hot up-and-coming prospects who might prove themselves in the bullpen that I missed?