RCL Update: The Week That Was, Week 5

Welcome to the recap of week five.  Week five already, that doesn’t seem possible.  Five, as in the number of feet tall Jose Altuve is.  The numbers this little man is putting up don’t seem possible either.  After the 5th week of the season Altuve has 30 Runs (tied for first), 9 HRs (tied for 9th), 19 RBIs (still pretty amazing for a leadoff hitter), 13 stolen bases (most in the league), and a .325 batting average.  In week 5 alone his drafters got 2 HRs and 4 SBs.  I mentioned how Bryce Harper was a roto wet dream a few weeks back, but Altuve is making his 10 HRs/5 SBs look like pocket change.  The best part for his drafters is, they didn’t need a top 3 pick to nab him.  Altuve had an RCL ADP of 10.79.  He was taken as high as 4th overall by the *ahem* “Goat F*ckers” of Albright’s ECougarHarmony.com (great league name, questionable team name) and fell to as low as 18, where “cardinals # !” nabbed him in Razzballero2.  Grabbing Altuve around pick 11 likely meant you could pair him with a power hitter such as Miggy, Abreu, Bautista, Chris Davis, or if you were lucky, Kris Bryant.  That sure seems like a pretty nice start right about now.  It got me thinking, I wonder what impact drafting Altuve has had on the average standings position.  So, employing the help of the ever helpful VinWins we set about figuring out the average standings position of those teams that drafted Jose Altuve.  The result?  Glad you asked!  Those teams that drafted Jose Altuve are currently, on average, in 5.88th place, we’ll call it 6th.  They are also averaging about 68.5 standings points.  Not too shabby, you certainly could be doing worse.  By comparison, Mike Trout drafters are averaging 6.34th place and 65.84 points.  As luck would have it our brand spanking new #1 team in all the RCL land was a drafter of Jose Altuve themselves, at #13 overall.  They paired him with…Clayton Kershaw of course!  Want to find out more about our new #1 team?  Then come on down and check out the rest of the week that was, week 5.

‘PERTY ‘PERTS

Each week we’ll peek in at our resident ‘perts & other industry names to see who is laying claim to best “expert” RCLer in the land.  We’ll take notes, check the standings and generally stalk them.  Click the heading above to check out the ‘Perts League home page and follow along.

Despite losing 1.5 points this week, Big Magoo remains atop the ‘Perts League standings.  JB leapfrogged Team McLeod this week into 2nd as he looks to reclaim that number 1 spot, despite my calling out his crazy trades.  JB gained 3.5 points this week while Team McLeod lost a whopping 8, tied for most in the league this week.  Grey did call his shot, moving into third place.  He is incredible, said he.  Prospector Ralph was this week’s other biggest point loser, also losing 8 points and dropping from 4th to 6th.  Ralph and Grey are now heading in opposite directions.  My semi-callout of J-FOH last week seemed to spark his squad.  J-FOH was this week’s biggest gainer in the ‘Perts league, picking up 9 points and jumping from 9th to 5th.  He’s now almost completely recovered from last week’s disastrous 13.5 point, 5 spot drop.

TOP 10

For those too lazy to check the MASTER STANDINGS, I present to you, the current top 10

Down goes Fred, down goes Fred!  Team Bromelia is our new leader.  Bromelia edged out Guy Montag (5th last week) by the difference of 1 LCI point.  Both teams are sporting 105.5 league points, however Cougs R Us and it’s 102 LCI gives Bromelia the extra boost.  Bromelia gained 12.5 league points this week and moved from 15th last week to #1 this week.  Nice work Bromelia!  As I mentioned in the intro, Bromelia started their draft Kershaw/Altuve providing solid pitching ratio foundations and surprising power foundations as well as a nice speed and batting average base.  Bromelia had a heck of a line this week going 55/20/47/5/.321 on the hitting side as well as 5/67/1.44/0.97/10 in the pitching department.  Brandon Phillips and newly acquired, Yoenis Cespedes, chipped in 5 and 4 homers respectively while Kershaw, Salazar and Tanaka all pitched to a zero ERA.  Bromelia is making fine use of RPs, filling all 9 unused pitching slots with a high strikeout and/or good ratio reliever whenever possible.  Way to go!

In other top 10 news, Breaking Balls fell from 3rd to 4th, Team Sullivan fell from 4th to 9th, Ra’zbahl Al Ghul fell from 6th to 12th, Yapping Chihuahuas fell from 9th to 13th and team Bender also fell right out of the top 10 from 2nd to 17th.  Also leaving the top 20 overall this week were A Man Named Brady(37th) as well as The Education of Dr Z (40th).

Moving up this week was Straight Outta Omaha (7th to 3rd), If You Can’t Stand The Heat (11th to 6th), Pettygrove’s Penny (20th to 7th), Eaton p*ssy or Eaton dong (19th to 10th) and S’All Goooood, Man, who wasn’t even on my radar last week, but debuts at #8 this week.

I also wanted to call attention this week to some new additions to the Master Standings page.  New this week, you can see every team’s Games Started (GS) and moves!  This is pretty exciting for seeing where everyone stands in the pitching categories as well as who the most chronic rosterbators are (guilty as charged). Rudy is Booty holds a commanding lead on all move-makers though, continually swapping out their offense, they have made a ginormous 640 moves.  That is 394 more moves than the next closest team.  Rudy is Booty is first in their league right now and 4th in all RCL teams in ABs.  The most GS thus far belongs to Weekly Leader regular, Hoboken Squat Cobblers.  They have led all RCLs in strikeouts 4 of the first 5 weeks and wins once.  They currently have 101 games started.  Only 79 games remaining until they hit their max.  101 games started has only yielded the Cobblers 39 wins however.  That’s not a very good percentage.  I thought my win luck was crummy…yikes.  On the bright side, RP stats will still count for the Cobblers, so a few extra wins will trickle in here and there once the maximum is reached.  On the flip side, Frequent Commenter, Johnny Utahs owns 4 teams that have 4, 8, 12 and 13 games started.  I’m very curious to see how the Utahs play this one out.  Maybe he’ll chime in down below and fill us in on his master plan.

TRADES

All the trades that have gone down in the past week.  Public ridicule is not only allowed, but encouraged.

In my best Jerry Lee Lewis voice, “There’s a whole lotta tradin’ going on”!  With so many trades, I can’t possibly break them all down, nor would you want me to.  So, peruse as you wish.  I can’t believe someone actually was able to trade someone Mat Latos, clearly they haven’t been reading my DFS articles, #Latos.  In a trade that is sure to make Ralph shed a tear, Nomar Mazara was traded for Lance McCullers.  Second Stage Turbine Blade got a pretty good haul for Jake Arrieta, as did team Studer.  Trevor Story for Brandon Drury doesn’t seem like getting enough back to me, but to each their own.  Interestingly, Yasiel Puig was moved twice this week, each time for a closer.  See a trade you hate/love, break it down in the comments section and let’s discuss!

WEEKLY LEADERS

The best of the best from the week that was.

R – 65 – Team Mozzie (Mighty Minions)

HR –25 – Team maxwell (Straight BESTBUY Homie)

RBIs – 72 – Team Dalmore (Center Field)

AVG – .358 – Team Schmidt (Play with FOH)

SB – 14 – I Did It All For The Mookie (Opening Day)

W – 9 – Grey’s Balls (All Hail Beddict Tha God), kumamoto banpeiyu (Diickin Around), Kenny Powers (RCL Razz)

K – 115 – Hoboken Squat Cobblers (Brave Frontier)

SV –  17 – Vin and Jackie (Stream or die!)

ERA (Min. 40 IP) – 0.81 – The Schmohawks (Original Recipe 2016) (in 55.2 IP)

WHIP (Min. 40 IP) – 0.62 – Pseudo Intellectuals (The Third Greatest) (in 40 IP)

We have new high water marks for weekly leaders in RBIs and AVG set this week with 72 RBIs and a cool, .358 batting average.  Hoboken Squat Cobblers makes their 5th appearance on this list (4 for Ks and once for wins) as they lead the world in games started.  VinWins set a new high weekly mark in saves this week with an amazing 17!  I’m pretty sure I have teams that don’t have 17 saves on the year yet!  The Pseudo Intellectuals just squeaked in at the minimum IP requirement and set a new low in weekly WHIP in the process.

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Our weekly shout out to the team that killed it the previous week.

Team: kumamoto banpeiyu

League: Diickin Around

Stats:   H/AB: 94/292, AVG: .322, R: 54, HR: 17, RBI: 56, SB: 3

IP: 77.1, ERA: 2.21, WHIP: 1.00, K: 82, W: 9, SV: 11

Summary:  At first glance I thought the team name was created by smashing a head against a keyboard.  Upon closer examination however, I learned an awful lot about Japanese citrus fruits and now, I’m hungry.  These banpeiyus look delicious, and HUGE, just take a look at this thing!  Enough about fruit though, the banpeiyus (and most other well to do teams this week) enjoyed a 5 HR week from Brandon Phillips as well as a nice week from Christian Yelich, Lucas Duda and Ryan Braun.  The relief pitchers were phenomenal this week, finishing with a 4 save day on Sunday.  The banpeiyus streamed wisely with Jon Gray (twice), Kyle Hendricks and even 2 streams from Chris Tillman that weren’t half bad.  Nice work all around as the banpeiyus look to parlay team of the week honors into a move up the standings as they are currently 5th in Diickin Around.