Main Event Tracker: Week 10 review
I’m not going to sugarcoat things. This was a rough week. It’s one that drained me emotionally and took some of the wind out of my sails for the season. Poor performance – especially from the offense over the weekend – another miserable week in wins and more rough news on the injury front. Every season is going to have its ups and downs, and this week was definitely a down. Now let’s see if we can get up off the mat and respond.
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Hitting Review
The first half of the week was alright, we were tracking to most of our weekly targets. The weekend though? Not as much. Only one home run and a handful of RBI from the entire squad over the weekend including a one RBI disaster on a full slate on Saturday.
The catcher position continues to pace our offensive attack, though it was a down week for William Contreras by his lofty standards. He hit just .207 with zero homers and one RBI, though he still scored five runs and swiped a base. He also had a three-run homer robbed from him by Dominic Fletcher on Sunday afternoon. David Fry though is an absolute monster. After delivering two incredible weeks in his first two weeks on the squad, Fry saved his best work for his third week – leading our entire offense by hitting .412 with a pair of homers, eight (!) RBI, five runs scored and a stolen base for good measure. He obviously can’t keep up this torrid pace, but he has been an absolute godsend to this offense.
Paul Goldschmidt homered on Monday, then did basically nothing for the rest of the week. Ezequiel Tovar had another strong week, hitting .375 with a homer and four runs scored.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa did about as expected, he played everyday and contributed a couple of runs and RBI – though without a home run or a stolen base. The expectations are similar for Edmundo Sosa, who also went 5-for-20 (.250) on the week, though he did slug a two-run homer.
Jose Ramirez continues to pad his resume for American League MVP – hitting .348 with a homer, five RBI, eight runs scored and a stolen base. I’ve run out of compliments for him, he’s an absolute stud.
Jake Bauers only picked up three hits on the week, but he did manage to steal a pair of bases – the only player on our team with multiple thefts on the week. Jon Singleton played for us over the weekend but only started one game, ceding playing time to Jose Abreu as we had feared.
Max Kepler had his second rough week in a row, hitting just .100 with three runs scored and an RBI. He’s still a staple in our lineup against RHP, but perhaps he isn’t the major difference-maker that we had hoped for. Jarren Duran had a rough week as well, hitting .185 with no homers or stolen bases. Jo Adell went 0-for-10 with a boatload of strikeouts in the first half of the week and wasn’t in the Angels’ lineup on Friday so he rode the bench – only to belt a pinch-hit grand slam in that contest.
Jurickson Profar produced another strong week, hitting .381 with a homer and six RBI. Still don’t think it’s sustainable, but he’s never leaving our lineup.
Randy Arozarena had another rough week – both in our lineup and out of it over the weekend. He’s becoming a real problem. Jake Fraley got a start for us over the weekend and contributed four hits, two runs scored and an RBI.
Looking at our targets, and it’s not pretty. We did manage to climb over our target in runs scored (+3.8) and we hit 300 at-bats on the nose this week. The batting average was solid too at .257. That’s where the good news ends. We threw away all of the progress in the power categories, coming in with major deficits in homers (-4.2) and RBI (-6.3) and falling short in stolen bases as well (-3). Yuck.
Looking at the season-long numbers, we still have a sizable surplus in runs scored (+29) and are making progress in batting average. We trail in homers (-4), RBI (-23) and stolen bases (-5). Could really use a strong Week 11 across the board to stop the bleeding here and get back on track.
Pitching Review
We have already had several very tough weeks on the pitching side this season – with performance issues, lack of victories and major injuries to key contributors. Unfortunately, it was more of the same all-around in Week 10.
The pain started on Monday afternoon, as our FAAB’d double Taijuan Walker took the hill against the Giants. He simply didn’t have it in that one, giving up five runs on 11 walks+hits across his six innings of work. He did strike out four batters, but that’s not how we wanted to start the week – especially after overpaying for his services in FAAB.
Things got worse on Tuesday, despite the fact that we didn’t have any starting pitchers take the hill. Trevor Megill came on to work the top half of the 10th inning in a tied game against the Cubs and was immediately struck in the forearm by a hard line drive off the bat of Mike Tauchman. Fortunately, X-rays came back negative for any fractures. He took most of the week off, but returned in a low-leverage situation on Saturday and struck out all three hitters that he faced. Crisis averted, at least on that end.
The ratios were much improved on Wednesday as we had four hurlers take the mound, but it still wasn’t everything that we hoped it would be.
Corbin Burnes took the hill against Kutter Crawford (who we benched for the week) and it turned out to be the correct call as Crawford was lit up for five runs and Burnes went seven innings without an earned run while striking out five to earn a victory. That was the highlight of the day.
Ryan Pepiot pitched well in his start against the Athletics, giving up just two runs on four walks+hits over 5 2/3 innings while striking out seven. He exited in a 2-2 game though and was denied a victory despite the strong performance.
Alek Manoah looked like he was on his way to a victory, with three early strikeouts over 1 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball before he was removed from his start with an elbow issue. He would ultimately be placed on the injured list with a UCL issue and it sounds like it’s only a matter of time before he’ll undergo Tommy John surgery. That’s a large amount of FAAB that we’ll never get back and the second major arm that we have lost for the season already this year. Ugh.
Justin Verlander finished the evening with another gem – piling up nine strikeouts over seven innings of one-run baseball with only four walks+hits allowed. The Astros offense couldn’t provide him the requisite support though and he was denied a victory as well.
Heading into Friday we had a total of just one win on the week and zero saves. That’s not where you ever want to be. It also didn’t help matters that we had just two starts remaining for the entire week.
Alexis Diaz finally took the mound for the first time on Friday afternoon and allowed a run in a shaky ninth inning against the Cubs – but managed to escape with the lead intact to earn our first save of the week.
We then had Erick Fedde take the hill on Friday night and undo all of the good work that we had done on the ratios throughout the week. He gave up four runs on a whopping 13 walks+hits over his five innings of work against the Brewers. On the plus side though, he racked up eight strikeouts on the evening. He even exited with a 5-4 lead though and was in line for a garbage victory, but the White Sox’ bullpen was unable to hang on for him. I mean, why would you expect anything otherwise.
We nabbed another save on Saturday as Josh Hader worked a scoreless ninth inning against the Twins. While he recorded just one save on the week, Hader did manage six strikeouts over three scoreless innings. Diaz then came back and secured a save on Sunday as well.
The other starter on our bench this week, Michael Wacha, pitched decently in a no-decision – but he also took a comebacker off of his left foot and wound up with a fracture. He hit the injured list on Sunday and is expected to miss at least 3-4 weeks. Wacha is a nice extra arm to have, but there’s simply no way that we can hold him as a zero for three or four weeks.
Our final start of the week came from Walker on Sunday night, and it was not something that was worth waiting all week for. He gave up four runs with a poor WHIP over five innings of work, destroying some of the progress that we had made in ratios throughout the week.
Overall, the injuries to Manoah and Megill – in addition to the limited starts – held us to only 43 1/3 innings on the week. It’s actually somewhat impressive that we still managed 51 strikeouts and only fell 5.4 short of our target there.
That wasn’t the case in wins. Our worst category on the season coming into the week got predictably worse and we won just one ballgame for the entire period. We fell another 2.9 wins behind the number which is now -9 on the season. That’s more than two full weeks that we’re behind in the category. Yikes.
We did get three saves on the week despite the Megill injury, though we’re still chasing six saves there on the season. Our ratios continue to disappoint, though it’s probably our fault for picking up and rolling the Taijuan Walker double. Let’s see what we have to say after the Ty Blach and Ryne Nelson doubles in Week 11.
FAAB Plan
Have you ever had one of those weeks that just beats you down to the point of absolute exhaustion? That’s what I’m dealing with right now.
As always, let’s take a look at the roster and see what we’re looking at for drops, or who could stand to be upgraded. The roster, as a whole, definitely doesn’t look as strong as it did a couple of weeks ago and our FAAB budget is already hurting. We need to churn through some players this week, but do so at a discount. I already don’t like where this is heading.
Unfortunately, we need to cut bait on Manoah. The biggest play that we have made in FAAB this season, hoping that he would solidify our pitching staff, and he wound up going the same way of Shane Bieber to the surgical ward.
We can also churn the roster spot that Taijuan Walker held this week. Looking ahead just to be sure, he takes on the Mets in London next weekend, which is a major hitter’s paradise so he wouldn’t be useful there. He would then battle the Orioles in Baltimore the following weekend, not ideal either. He’s an easy drop.
As mentioned above, Wacha looks to be an easy drop as well.
The hitting side is a bit more complicated. Bryan Ramos is an easy drop, as he was inexplicably optioned out to Triple-A Charlotte on Thursday. Not sure what exactly the White Sox are doing there, but he’ll be down there until he proves himself according to manager Pedro Grifol. After that though, it gets a bit more tricky. Jake Bauers had a rough week at the plate for us in Week 10, and I expect his playing time to get squeezed again with Rhys Hoskins back from the injured list. Jon Singleton hasn’t seen his playing time impacted much yet by the return of Jose Abreu, but can we count on that to continue? We can’t cut Randy Arozarena, though the way that he’s playing you’d like to be able to punt him into the sun at this point.
So there’s four easy drops, if we can even find four players that we’re interested in adding for next week. If we want to go any deeper, it would have to be Singleton.
So what’s out there to bid on?
It’s funny, when you look at the default sort on the free agent list (% rostered in Main Event leagues), four of the top five names are players that were once on our team: Mark Canha, Jarred Kelenic, Trevor Williams and Kyle Gibson. If we go a bit further down through the top 14, we add in retreads Joey Meneses, Josh Rojas and Jorge Polanco. Maybe we’re cutting bait on some of these guys too soon? The only one throughout the season that I really regret so far though has been the early drop of Brent Rooker – and I still think it was justified at the time.
Back to this week though. Two of those guys from above – Williams and Gibson – actually look like the top two targets on the pitching side as both are lined up for two starts once again. Williams will take on the Mets and Braves – both at home. Gibson will do battle against the Astros in Houston and the Rockies at home. Both will probably attract attention from other managers though, and since we’re looking to conserve FAAB this time around it’s unlikely that we’ll land either one of them.
Looking further down the pitching list, Frankie Montas also doubles, though the first one is at Coors Field. Joey Estes is lined up for two starts – against the Mariners and Blue Jays both in the spacious confines in Oakland. Ty Blach has been throwing the ball well and lines up for two starts (vs. Reds and at Cardinals). Ryne Nelson, Andre Pallante and Ryan Feltner are added to the bad double mix, but will probably make the bid list.
David Peterson has returned to the Mets’ rotation and draws a nice single against the Nationals in Washington. He’ll go for more than I’m willing to spend though. Spencer Schwellenbach looked good in his first start and he’ll take on the Red Sox in Boston. Cal Quantrill was a stud for us last week and draws a decent single against the Cardinals. He’s probably worth a buck or two if we need a start.
As far as hitters go, there’s nothing too exciting, but we need to replace Ramos and could stand to upgrade Singleton potentially. Pete Crow-Armstrong has rejoined the Cubs and their intention is to play him every day. His speed makes him worthy of a bid. Akil Baddoo is seeing close to nightly action with the Tigers now that Kerry Carpenter is sidelined and he’s always possessed an intriguing blend of power and speed. Blake Perkins is playing everyday in a Brewers’ lineup that has been piling up runs. After that – Corey Julks, Jarred Kelenic, Gio Urshela, MJ Melendez, Jose Siri, Rob Refsnyder, Canha, Jose Abreu?, Paul DeJong, Mitch Haniger. We’ll add a pair of bats most likely, but it’s not going to be anything exciting or that we’re going to spend big on.
If I were a betting man, my assumption is that we’ll wind up with something like Ty Blach, Joey Estes, Akil Baddoo, MJ Melendez and Gio Urshela for a combined $15 or so.
FAAB Review
The real prize of the free agent period wound up being Henry Davis. It had been reported just before the FAAB deadline that the Pirates planned to recall him from Triple-A Indianapolis on Tuesday, and he wound up pulling in the highest bid of the week at $57 ($47). He was on my list, but with terrific production already at the catcher position, it simply wasn’t a need for me this week.
Spencer Schwellenbach pulled in a similar bid at $56 ($13) but once again was out of my bidding range.
Jose Siri we did have interest in – and came in as the runner-up bid at $8 – but it wasn’t anywhere close to the $55 that he went for. This is as far as I have gotten down the list so far, and I have a feeling that’s going to happen a lot.
David Peterson was on our list but went for more than we were willing to spend as well at $49 ($23). Same for Pete Crow-Armstrong who was our top hitting target, he was snagged for $37 ($36). Corey Julks was another of our top outfield targets, and once again our $8 was the runner-up there – this time to a bid of $36.
Jarred Kelenic had been even lower on our list, but he went for $36 ($13). Joey Estes was a double that we were interested in – fourth on the list I believe – but he went for $28 ($7). Kyle Gibson was one of our top pitching targets, it doesn’t look like he’ll be joining our team for a third time as he was scooped up for $27 ($22).
We also had a rogue $1 bid down on the list for Cal Quantrill, which finished as the runner-up to a bid of $22. Let’s hope it’s not a precursor that the entire rest of our list gets depleted before it gets to us.
If Gibson had been our 1A target on the pitching front, then Trevor Williams was 1b. He also exceeded our budget at $19 ($12). Pain.
Joey Meneses ($13 to $9), Mitch Haniger ($13 to $8) and Paul DeJong ($12 to $4) were all on our lists, but near the bottom part. We didn’t get any of them.
Blake Perkins had been our No. 2 target among hitters and this one actually hurts to miss out on ($11 to $9). He’s someone who I think could have actually helped the team and the price was something that we probably could have gotten to.
Into the bargain bin we go.
We also had interest in Gio Urshela and came in as the runner-up bid there ($9 to $3). Same goes for Frankie Montas ($9 to $2). We’re now 17 players down the list on a week where we’re realistically trying to replace five players. These aren’t the type of gifts that you want to be unwrapping on Christmas morning.
Three names that we didn’t have bids in on finally come off the board in Spencer Turnbull, Chad Green and Kodai Senga. Then we finally land our first player of the week in Akil Baddoo with an overpay of $5 (unopposed). Bryan Ramos was the drop on that one.
We follow that up with a $4 ($1) MJ Melendez and a $4 ($1) Enmanuel Valdez. Wacha and Singleton were the drops on those additions.
Mark Canha went to fellow Tigers’ fan Rob Giese for a bid of $3. A few more names fell by the wayside until we got down to our two pitching additions. Both Ty Blach and Ryne Nelson were added for $2 apiece – Blach unopposed and Nelson with a $1 runner-up bid. Manoah and Walker were the drops.
Looking back to the prediction from above, and we landed three of the five players that I thought we would – spending a total of $17 instead of $15. Whether or not the players end up helping us this week, at least it feels like I had a good read on the room this week.
As far as interesting drops from around the league, I was expecting to see Spencer Torkelson here after the report of his demotion to Triple-A Toledo. To my surprise, he was not dropped. The ones that did pique my interest though are Jonny DeLuca, Tommy Edman, Justin Turner, Shane Baz, Griffin Canning, Mike Tauchman, Harrison Bader and Seth Brown.
As far as the budget goes, despite trying to conserve this week we’re still down to just $348 remaining out of our $1000 starting budget for the season. That’s not exactly ideal. Only four teams in the league have spent more, while nine teams still have between $544 and $986 (!) remaining.
Looking Ahead
Alright, focus. Time to get things back on track.
Starting with the pitching decisions for next week, it honestly looks pretty straightforward to me. We have 10 pitchers and need to start nine of them after trimming the IL’d arms (Manoah and Wacha) from the roster.
All three closers are in for sure. Burnes (at Jays, at Rays), Verlander (vs. Cardinals, at Angels) and Crawford (vs. Braves, at White Sox) each double and would be in the lineup anyways even for singles. That gets us to six.
Pepiot is an easy start as he goes at the Marlins, and it’s possible he could get a second start against the Orioles at home on Sunday depending on how the Rays play things during their five-game week.
That leaves just the two doubles that we picked up via FAAB and Erick Fedde. Pitching for the White Sox, Fedde is never going to be a favorite to earn wins. He’s also in a tough spot taking on the Cubs at Wrigley Field (Taillon). Fedde has been significantly better at home this season. Seems like an easy fade.
That means we roll Blach (vs. Cubs, at Cardinals) and Nelson (vs. Giants, at Padres). That gives us 11 starts for the week (12 if Pepiot gets a second one) while still rolling out all three closers. If this isn’t the week to make up ground in wins, I don’t know what us. Four would be a disappointment. I want six.
On the hitting side, let’s get the easy ones out of the way first. Contreras, Fry, Tovar, Ramirez, Profar, Duran and Rengifo are the seven guys that are making our offense go most weeks. They’re all easy starts. Here’s what’s left and who qualifies at each:
1B: Goldschmidt, Bauers
MI: Kiner-Falefa, Valdez, Sosa
CI: Kiner-Falefa, Sosa, Bauers
OF: Baddoo, Melendez, Kepler, Fraley, Arozarena, Adell, Bauers
From that group, we need a 1B, MI, CI, three OF and a utility.
You’d really like to be able to trust Goldschmidt and he gets the advantage with four games compared to three for Bauers. Seems like he gets that first spot.
Kiner-Falefa gets four against the Orioles, all RHP (Rodriguez, Burnes, Suarez and Bradish). The four games are nice, the matchups not so much. Sosa only gets three, but he sat on Sunday so he should play in all three you’d think. He gets three weak RHP from the Brewers (Wilson, Rea, Myers). We’ll see what exactly the Red Sox do with Valdez – whether or not they simply let him run with the job with Grissom sidelined. He gets two against the Braves (Fried and Schwellenbach, then takes on Fedde and the White Sox). Early lean is IKF from this group for the extra game.
Looking back at the same group plus Bauers for the CI spot. Bauers also gets three games, but they’re tough against the Phillies. He’ll have to wrangle Nola and Wheeler with left-hander Cristopher Sanchez in-between. Not ideal. Maybe it’s IKF here and Valdez as the MI if he’s in the lineup? They don’t play until Tuesday though. IKF plays in one of these spots for sure, then it’s either Sosa or Valdez. Might have to be Sosa.
On the outfield battle (four spots if you include UTIL), it gets more interesting. Baddoo gets three RHP against the Rangers (Eovaldi, Dunning and Urena). Melendez gets one LHP in his three against the Guardians, so he’ll probably only play twice. Kepler gets one LHP in his three against the Yankees in New York – drawing Gil and Stroman in the other two. Fraley gets four games with only one LHP, so he’s in one of the spots for sure. Jo Adell gets at least two RHP from the Padres (Cease and Waldron) and probably a rookie hurler or a bullpen day in the other. Arozarena only gets two games for the period – but it’s two LHP against the Marlins (Luzardo and Garrett). These options still aren’t ideal. Back against the wall, my early lean is Fraley, Kepler, Baddoo and Adell, though I could probably be swayed to Arozarena potentially.
Where we Stand
I hate everything about how this week played out – especially the carnage in the three days over the weekend. It has soured my overall mood and taken the wind out of my sails on this Main Event squad. I’m sure that I’ll wake up on Monday motivated once again, but this was a very rough week – particularly after all of the progress that we had made last week.
We entered the week at 107.5 league points with a 12.5 point lead on third place in our league and 10 points behind the leader. After the debacle of the weekend, we crawled to the finish line of Week 10 with just 97 league points. That puts us just 4.5 points ahead of third place while the gulf between us and the leader is now a whopping 21 points.
We had also climbed up to 73rd place in the overall standings at the end of last week. The drop hasn’t been quite as catastrophic there, but we finish Week 10 just inside the top-100 at 95th.
The one place that we made up ground this week is in the CLQ standings – thanks to strong showings from both the OC and DC teams. We’re now in ninth place, comfortably inside the top-15 that we’re shooting for to land a seat at that auction table next season. Let’s go.
This week, more than any other, really feels like an important pivot point for our season. A strong week across the board, we can regain some of the losses from last week and continue our charge up the standings. Another poor week like this one though, and we could see our total league points fall into the 80’s, putting us into a critical situation.
As always, I would love to hear your feedback on what you think of the article, the team, my decision making, the emotional roller-coaster – anything. Those that have reached out so far, I can’t tell you how much it’s been appreciated. Just drop me a line on X (@DaveShovein) and I would be happy to discuss.
