Points Leagues: Taylor WARDLE

Welcome back to week two of Pete. In fact, like I said last week, its name might change in the coming week. To be a man of my word, Pete will now be known as RePete. Consider it Pete with a few minor modifications in playing time calculations and weighted distributions of preseason projections and year-to-date performances. If you missed my post last week, you can find it here.

Before I dive into RePete’s words of wisdom, let’s talk about Taylor Ward. In 107 plate appearances, TW has 109 fantasy points. He is currently the only hitter with a points per plate appearance above one. Jose Ramirez and Bryce Harper are next on the list with 0.93 PPPA. Ward has literally come out of nowhere and is running away with the points league MVP. Perhaps this will put things into perspective. Mike Trout has two more fantasy points than Ward. Trout also has 21 more plate appearances. It’s no secret that Anthony Rizzo is having a stellar start to the 2022 season. With 30 additional plate appearances, Rizzo has two fewer points than Ward. Ward has indeed been more than a bit hard on the beaver!

I’m going to skip the list of top year-to-date performers. You can all look that up. What’s that? You don’t know where to look? Good lord people. Well then, here are the CliffsNotes.

Year-to-date Rankings (top 41)

Glad to see my man from last week, Rowdy Roddy Tellez, still clinging onto the charts. It was supposed to be the top 40, but I was feeling generous. I’ve already mentioned Taylor Ward. Based on a quick glance at the above list, I see Christian Yelich seems to be bouncing back nicely in points leagues. Eric Hosmer is surprisingly high on the list. Vlad Junior is a bit lower than expected. Thairo Estrada?

Rest of Season Rankings

Hopefully, this list will help you attempt to evaluate potential trades. As I always state with projection-esque posts, projections are nothing more than “educated” guesses. Guesstimates if you will. Notice the use of quotes around the word “educated”. Notice I did it again. If you are wondering how I came up with these numbers, I’m not going to tell you. Ok, fine. I generated new season-long projections and subtracted the number of points each player has already scored. How’s that for complex.

Fantasy points are based on player stats as of Sunday morning. In other words, Sunday’s games are not included.

In parting, I hope Marcus Semien chokes on a Chicken McNugget! Is that supposed to be capitalized?

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