The Sportsballers

I want to start today’s writeup with a congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy! Sean and his lovely wife Julia had a wonderful ceremony this weekend and it was a pleasure to be included in the festivities. style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> With all of their planning over the past several months, and of course the hectic nature of their wedding weekend, Sean can be forgiven for essentially being a punching bag over the past few weeks, but good lord did he come close to pulling one out this week again Evan Ash.   Sean does still control his own destiny. A 13-0 finish would guarantee himself a playoff spot, so it’s not time to throw in the towel just yet. And even if that doesn’t happen, there will still be ample opportunity to be a spoiler.   Congrats to Cory Puffett on his fourth Rickey Henderson Award of the season and third in a row. He’s averaging over 10 more points per game than any other manager in the league this year and while his opponents’ poin...

I’m getting a late start on this week’s write-up so I’ll be fairly brief. style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> Cory Puffett led the league in scoring again this past week to take home his third Rickey Henderson Award of the year. He leads the AOA in at bats and it a close second in innings pitched, just 2.2 innings behind Evan Ash.   His players’ performances have been good but he’s also put a lot of focus into getting his team as many opportunities at the plate and on the mound as possible. For their part, Cory’s pitchers were brilliant in Week 6, leading the league in innings pitched (49.2), ERA (1.27), and FIP (2.28), despite Alex Reyes’s meltdown in the 10th inning of Sunday Night Baseball.   Andrew Perez won the Manny Ramirez Award by holding off Cory Frontin in a tight game of the week contest, aided by his league-leading 15 home runs, 41 runs scored, and .936 OPS.   Week 6 was the fourth time already this season in which all eight managers scored at lea...

We are now a quarter of the way through our inaugural season of the AOA so I felt it would be worth doing a slightly more in-depth review of the league so far this season. style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> We’ll start with a brief recap of the past week which saw some very exciting games, three of which had a margin of victory of less than 10 points!   In our game of the week, Cory Puffett and Eric Meyer became the first matchup between the top two weekly scorers in league history, with Cory outlasting Eric by a score of 151.75 to 142.25 to take home both the Rickey Henderson and Manny Ramirez awards for the week.   Eric had a distinct advantage on offense as his team set a new single-week record with a .307 batting average and had more home runs, runs, and RBI than Cory’s team. It was pitching that did Eric in.   Despite maxing out at 7 starts, Eric’s pitching staff logged the second fewest innings in the league with just 40 in Week 5 and in that limited w...

For the first time this year we did not see a new single-week team scoring record as Evan Ash led the way but didn’t even set a new team high for the season. style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> Overall it was a much tighter pack in Week 4 than in any previous week with a standard deviation between our eight teams of just about 10 points, down from the previous low of 15 in Week 1.   Evan’s 131.75 points set the pace in the second week we’ve now seen where everybody reached the 100-point plateau. He doubled as the winner of the game of the week, becoming our first manager to take home both the Rickey Henderson Award and the Manny Ramirez Award in the same week.   Cory Frontin set new AOA records with the most runs scored by his offensive players in a week (41) and as the first manager to post a team batting average of .300 in a single week, hitting that mark on the nose. It wasn’t enough, though, as his team still fell to Cory Puffett’s undefeated squad in the clo...

For the third week in a row a new single-week scoring record has been set. Eric is back on top of the Aces Only Association after racking up 172.25 points over seven days to claim his second Rickey Henderson Award. His squad set new single-week league highs in batting average (.297), OPS (.952), tied the single-week league high of 13 home runs, and his pitchers did pretty well, too, posting a 2.84 FIP. style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> Cory Frontin and Andrew Perez suffered their first losses of the season, in part because they only used four and five pitcher starts, respectively. Cory wound up with just 24 innings pitched and Andrew had 33, a big disadvantage when the rest of the league averaged 46 innings pitched. Alex Mayo scored 130.75 points this week, contributing to a new record combined score of 303.00 points he and Eric scored in their matchup this week. It was a stroke of bad luck for Alex who remains winless after posting his first Top 4 score of the...