We’re finally back on schedule with the earlier publication of our weekly write-up this week!
The biggest story of the week is certainly Cory Puffett’s first loss of the season. After opening the year 8-0, with wins against every single other manager in the AOA, he finally fell this week in his game of the week matchup against Andrew Perez.
When you look at the weekly stats near the end of today’s writeup, you’ll see that every stat we look at on a weekly basis favored Cory in this matchup, other than a miniscule advantage for Andrew in plate appearances. So how exactly did Andrew pull off the upset to claim the Manny Ramirez Award?
The difference didn’t come on offense. While Cory’s team grounded into two more double plays than Andrew’s did, they had a stolen base advantage that made up for half of that difference.
It appears the difference came from the pitching. While Cory had advantages in innings, ERA, and FIP, his starting pitchers went 2-2 in their decisions and his relievers only totaled one save. Meanwhile, Andrew’s starters went 4-2 in decisions and his relievers totaled five saves.
Everything came down to the final day of the week.
Andrew benched Xander Bogaerts in favor of Javier Báez, but then the Cubs sat Báez for the day. The cost Andrew 3.25 points, which looked like it would be the difference late in the day when, entering the final inning of Sunday Night Baseball, he trailed Cory by 1.5 points.
Meanwhile, Craig Kimbrel, one of Andrew’s two relief pitchers, had worked in each of the Cubs’ last three games, including appearances on both Friday and Saturday. But with a 2-0 lead over the Cardinals, they brought him in he recorded three strikeouts and got the save, totaling 3 points to swing the game in his favor.
Cory will still be kicking himself, though, because even if Andrew had started Bogaerts for Báez, the resulting 4.75-point advantage for Andrew would have been eliminated if Cory had left Matt Olson at 1st base for Cody Bellinger, who was expected back Sunday but wound up siting while Olson hit two home runs for a 6-point day.
Of course, Andrew also left Matt Chapman and his 14 points on the bench all week. Those 14 points would have made Chapman the team leader for the entire week.
Long story short, it was basically a comedy of lineup errors for these two and Cory was the one who suffered on the final scoreboard in a week where neither finished in the top half of the league in scoring.
A more deserving game of the week would have been the matchup between Eric Meyer and Alex Mayo. Both entered the week well under .500, but Eric was coming off his third Rickey Henderson Award of the season. He’ll add a fourth to his virtual trophy case this week as he now has the three highest single-week scores in our league’s 9-week history and has been involved in the four highest-scoring games of the year.
It’s the second time now this season that Alex has finished in the top half of the league in scoring but lost his matchup. To be fair, his one victory came in a week when he didn’t finish in the top half, but at 1-8 now on the year, he certainly could have used at least one of those victories when he did.
What makes this loss even harder to swallow is that Alex set a new league record this week when his team combined for a weekly OPS of 1.009, the first single-week OPS over the thousand mark this season!
Evan Ash was the second highest scorer of the week and keeps his one-game advantage in the West division of the AOA. His pitchers were a huge part of the win this week as they combined for an ERA of 1.32, the second lowest single-week ERA of the season by any team, making up for the week’s lowest home total of just three long balls as his team beat Cory Frontin’s.
This was a bit of a bizarre week, all told. At least one team had recorded 240+ plate appearances in every week of the season until this week when Sam Martin led the league with just 229 plate appearances. Between his 10 home runs and strong pitching for the week, he did enough to avoid giving Sean Kennedy his second straight win.
Despite the significant dip in plate appearances across the league this week, which was partly due to there only being three major league games on Monday, June 7, all eight teams of the AOA hit triple digits for the fifth time this season!
Evan, Andrew, and Cory Frontin joined Cory Puffett, Eric, and Sam in the 1,000-point club this week. Alex is less than 10 points away while Sean will need 104.25 points to join the rest of the league at the 1,000-point mark at the season’s midway point. For context, Sean has scored at least 104.25 points in just three of his first nine games of the season despite reaching the 100-point mark in seven of nine games.
Check out our Week 9 recap below, followed by this week’s power rankings:
Game of the Week: Andrew Perez at Cory Puffett
The closest game of the week lives up to its game of the week designation. Despite a furious comeback over the week’s final three days, Andrew held on to hand Cory his first loss of the season thanks to the Cubs using Craig Kimbrel for the third day, and fourth game, in a row, flipping the matchup from a 1.5-point victory for Cory’s Mandalorians to a 1.5-point victory for Andrew’s DeepFly Factory in the final inning of Sunday Night Baseball.
