Road to Glory: Blowout Dynasty League ($25 yearly)

[Hollywood42]

Round 1 review! Quick recap of the initial matchups and seeing if my players to watch turned out to be difference makers one way or another:

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

#4 Chitty vs #5 Hollywood
Regular season series: Split 1-1
Chitty regular season points rank: 3
Hollywood regular season points rank: 5

#4 Chitty
Player to watch: Ronald Acuna. It's a boring answer, but Acuna is a such a weapon and is a legitimate threat to put up 50 points in a single week. This offense is going to put up a lot of points - it's averaged 177 over the past 6 weeks. If Acuna is on fire, it almost becomes irrelevant what the pitching staff does with so much of a cushion to work with

#5 Hollywood
Player to watch: Cole Ragans. This guy has been a massive free agency find for me over the last month, and without looking it up has to be one of my top scorers since August. I'll pretty much need him to continue that run to have a shot, with so many of my SPs either out for the year or simply being ineffective

With only Chitty's Ketel Marte still with half a game of action left from either team, I think it's safe to say I'll be moving on in a close matchup. On Chitty's side, I called out Acuna as the main player to watch, and he was Chitty's top scorer this week with 27 points. That's a solid outing, but when Acuna has been so explosive this year, it has to feel just a little disappointing not to get an even better week from him when it mattered. It's not fair to put the loss all on Acuna, as guys like Schwarber, Pena, Justin Turner, Glasnow, and Verdugo all contributed with less than 10 points each for the matchup, and any one of them easily could have made up the ~15 point margin that I'll ultimately win by. But it's well within Acuna's abilities to top 40 points in a matchup, so he easily could have made up the gap himself, too

On my side, I picked Cole Ragans as an x-factor. In a pretty close matchup, pretty much any mid-tier player could be picked as the difference, so I think it's fair to say Ragans wasn't really a difference maker either way. He had a tough draw with a start against the Astros this week, and put up a 7-point performance. Any positive output is important in a close matchup, but it wasn't close to his string of 30 point starts to close out August, either. Looking around at the rest of my team, Wheeler is lucky he escapes the week without being labeled the negative kind of goat, as he threw out a -3 point start (granted it was against the Braves, so easily could have been much worse). And even worse, Eli Morgan totaled a -15 point week, and it would have been really upsetting if a random RP was the reason for a loss for me. On the positive side, Lucas Giolito was a surprise huge figure with a 12 strikeout, 35 point outing against the Rangers, and a well timed stream of Sawyer Gipson-Long was clutch for me yesterday with 19 points, too

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

#3 Bosox vs #6 Dbacks
Regular season series: Bosox wins 2-0
Bosox regular season points rank: 1
Dbacks regular season points rank: 6

#3 Bosox
Player to watch: I honestly can't pick one. There's just too many studs on both sides of the ball to pick a single guy who could step up and shove. And there's so much talent that it's almost pointless to pick a Jordan Walker or Elly instead as someone who could post a 30 point week and supplement the studs, because it doesn't even seem like Bosox really needs that

#6 Dbacks
Player to watch: Hunter Greene. The offense has been a bottom 3 group all year and probably is what it is at this point, so the key to making a run is going to be getting a ton of points from the starters. Greene is a key component of making that happen, as you can feel good about Strider, Kershaw, and Eflin pulling their weight, but after that we'll need to see some lower tier SPs have a strong run to help Dbacks move on. Greene has the highest upside ROS for the remaining starters, and I think if he isn't effective, it may not matter what anyone else on the team does

This matchup doesn't end up even close after a huge 100-point day today from Bosox, but it was a great, valiant effort from Dbacks who had a very good week himself with 330 points, which would have easily knocked out myself or Chitty. I wasn't able to pick out a single player to watch for Bosox, and his team showed me exactly why, as he finished with 4 different 30+ point performances and 11 different 20+ point contributions. Soto and Framber combined for nearly 100 points on their own, and he got so many strong outings from so many different players that at the end of the day this matchup is a blowout

On Dbacks' side, I picked Hunter Greene as needing to have a big week to have a shot. And credit to his team, they showed when it counted that they didn't need Greene to have a strong week. Greene had a fine 12-point outing, but the real key to a strong showing was 30 point outings from Eflin, Grayson and Littell, along with 20+ point outings from Gunnar and Goldy, which made up about half of Dbacks' points right there. We could dig in and pick on someone like JT Realmuto or Charlie Morton for not helping out enough, but to be honest, Dbacks had a great week and it's not worth trying to find a scapegoat for. He just ran into a buzzsaw in Bosox and no team in the league would have stood a chance

[Hollywood42]

Round 2 mini preview:

#1 Tex vs #2 Hollywood
Tex wins regular season series 2-0

Tex X-factor: What version of the starting pitchers are going to show up? Tex finished the year with the 2nd best offensive group, and that should continue. It felt like he had a pretty quiet bye week offensively with no real standout offensive performances... and he still put up around 170 points from bats alone. The pitching has faltered a bit lately though, topping 150 points just once in the last 4 regular season matchups. If Tex's pitchers stay under the ~150 point mark, I think that opens up a chance to beat him - though he'd still likely finish with 300-330 points for the matchup. But if his SPs take care of business and blow past the 150 point range, this could be a blowout

Hollywood X-factor: How many 20+ point pitchers will I get? Same here, it's all about the pitching staff. My offense is "just" the 4th best group on the year, but they've shoved lately, with at least 150 points in each of the past 4 weeks, and topping 190 in 2 of the past 4. On the flip side, I've failed to top 100 points from my pitchers in 2 of the last 3 weeks, and the one time I did (round 1), I only got to 120 points from pitchers. To have a chance against Tex, I'll have to have a good week all around, but I think I'll need 20+ point weeks from at least 4-5 pitchers

#2 Todder vs #3 Bosox
Todder wins regular season series 2-0

Todder X-factor: Gausman and Cole. Todder has a pretty deep pitching staff, but I think we need to focus on the elites here. If both of these 2 do what they're capable of, they can post 60 points alone and give Todder a lot of flexibility when choosing which other SPs to start. But Cole and Gausman combined for exactly 0 points last week while Todder was on bye, and that'd be a big problem if that happened again. These guys probably aren't too likely to post back to back poor starts, so maybe it's a good thing they got bad starts out of the way last week. Either way, I think how good or bad Cole and Gausman's combined performances are will mirror how good or bad of a week Todder has as a whole

Bosox X-factor: Does everyone show up? When Bosox's team is clicking, he puts up 370+ point weeks with ease and is nearly impossible to beat. But also had a number of matchups down the stretch of the regular season (3 of the last 5, 4 of the last 7) where things just didn't come together and he failed to put up even 250 points. I'll keep this general for now and not take the next step of diving into how this does or does not happen, but Bosox is boom or bust, and I could easily see him blowing Todder out, or getting blown out himself

[Hollywood42]

Big day yesterday and I managed to pull pretty much even with Tex with 2 days to go. 3 HR day from Judge sure helped with that, lol. Not liking how the remaining SP matchups shake out for each of us, but we'll just have to play it out and see what happens

[texmcpherson]

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

Big day yesterday and I managed to pull pretty much even with Tex with 2 days to go. 3 HR day from Judge sure helped with that, lol. Not liking how the remaining SP matchups shake out for each of us, but we'll just have to play it out and see what happens

I swear if you hit another 20 pt streamer I’m quitting. Lol

[Hollywood42]

Last shot was Phillips today, was down to either him or Williamson and pretty much a tossup. Neither were great options, but that's pretty much all that's left. Definitively have done well with them overall this week tho

Originally Posted by texmcpherson

I swear if you hit another 20 pt streamer I’m quitting. Lol

[Hollywood42]

Oh man, Phillips was looking like the stream of the year through 5 before giving up 3 and turning it into a just ok start. Major bummer. But that pales in comparison to the Reds blowing a ***9 run lead***

[texmcpherson]

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

Oh man, Phillips was looking like the stream of the year through 5 before giving up 3 and turning it into a just ok start. Major bummer. But that pales in comparison to the Reds blowing a ***9 run lead***

I think you’ve had enough streaming help pal. 51 points from SP streamers

I got a total of -13 from Civale, Steele, and Woodruff combined! Gonna need some good performances today.

[Hollywood42]

I'm the biggest Giants and Marlins fan out there today - both you and my opponent in Redrafter's have Lynn and Peralta starting

I'm up 20 at this point with one SP left with a good matchup, but Ryan has been hit or miss in the second half. This can easily go either way

Originally Posted by texmcpherson

I think you’ve had enough streaming help pal. 51 points from SP streamers

I got a total of -13 from Civale, Steele, and Woodruff combined! Gonna need some good performances today.

[texmcpherson]

Congrats Hollywood - my “aces” used their PTO this week.

[Hollywood42]

I'm not gonna jinx it until if/when your last few SPs do enough to not end up with 30 points apiece, but getting a combined total -5 points from Woodruff, Peralta, and Steele in a playoff matchup is brutal

Originally Posted by texmcpherson

Congrats Hollywood - my “aces” used their PTO this week.

[Hollywood42]

Me watching some guy I've never heard of strike out 10 in 7 innings against the Mets and force me to uncomfortably stay up late watching this matchup finish out

[Hollywood42]

Ok I feel a lot better with Lynn out of the game and capped at 17 points. Leaves a 20 point margin for Freddie/Flores/Ozuna to make up in a few innings left, with me still having a few innings from Olson/Meneses. SHOULD be ok at this point

[texmcpherson]

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

Ok I feel a lot better with Lynn out of the game and capped at 17 points. Leaves a 20 point margin for Freddie/Flores/Ozuna to make up in a few innings left, with me still having a few innings from Olson/Meneses. SHOULD be ok at this point

Good week. Stinks that I only needed one of my upper level pitchers to come through for a W and no one stepped up. A lot of opportunities to win but I chose my matchups early in the week and sometimes the guys you expect to show up, don’t.

[Hollywood42]

Well this isn't exactly how I wanted the championship matchup to start

[texmcpherson]

Peralta and Woodruff not starting this weekend to get extra rest. Awesome.

[texmcpherson]

Talk about having your team firing on all cylinders. That must feel great. Lol.

[Hollywood42]

Right now I am closer to getting tripled up in points than I am getting doubled up in points ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Hollywood42]

Ok I've calculated it out and all I need to win is for Giolito and Houser to each throw 13 strikeout perfect games, my offense to hit 17 home runs, and Todder not to score any points

[texmcpherson]

Cool, so now that Steele isn’t starting I lose out on Steele, Woodruff, and Peralta.

What are the thoughts on shortening the season a week so we don’t run into this?? I’d be pissed if I was playing for the championship and this happened.

[Hollywood42]

I would like to shorten it by one. The big plus that the current schedule has is it allows us to have every team play each other twice in the regular season before the playoffs - perfect balance that way so we don't get some times having to play the toughest teams twice while others only get them once. Pros/cons. But I do think it would be better to move it up by a week

Originally Posted by texmcpherson

Cool, so now that Steele isn’t starting I lose out on Steele, Woodruff, and Peralta.

What are the thoughts on shortening the season a week so we don’t run into this?? I’d be pissed if I was playing for the championship and this happened.

[Chris Lyle]

I think all the leagues including this one could move up a week. Extra days off for players shortened starts, etc. It may change the schedule but I think better playoffs is more important.

[Ray27Ray52]

Orrrrr..... we could go true Roto style instead of the arbitrary totally random head to head route. Just a thought. It doesn't matter my teams will suck regardless.

[Hollywood42]

Originally Posted by Ray27Ray52

Orrrrr..... we could go true Roto style instead of the arbitrary totally random head to head route. Just a thought. It doesn't matter my teams will suck regardless.

[Ray27Ray52]

Originally Posted by Hollywood42

Yeah I know. I'm an old head though, what can I say.

[Hollywood42]

FTR roto is absolutely the "fair" way to do it. It's just so much less interesting to me though