Ok fellas, how are we all feeling? I'm here today on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon to bring you all your weekly update. Generally speaking, I'll be delivering these on Monday afternoons upon the completion of the matchups. For this week, we have a long matchup and I'll dip your little piggies in the water with a mid-matchup update. This one centered around making sure everyone is getting it.

For starters, I'm glad to see everyone is playing around with their lineup management. Besides Seb and Garrett, everyone has made lineup changes and most of us have dabbled with the waivers. As a reminder, you have a limit of five transactions per week, but you are encouraged to use them as necessary! There's not benefit to holding them, you don't get rollover transactions. This week, because it's longer, you get nine, but generally you'll be limited to five. It may or may not be valuable to use some of them on pitcher aquisitions to get your fill on starts. You are limited to eight pitcher starts per week (14 in this long week), but as you may have noticed a good start can be huge for your score.

Early Trends

Let's look at some of the early trends. I think this will highlight the imporance of roster balance. So far after 6 days of play, 19 of the top 20 player scores in a day have come from pitchers, led by my KING Kevin Gausman with 27 points on Friday. The only non-pitcher to break the top 20 was Jose Altuve, who went 4-4 with two solo dingers, plus two more runs and a walk for 17 points on Monday. So, pitchers are the kings of the diamond, right?

Well not necessarily! As a whole, 62% of all points scored have come from batters, despite batters only accounting for 57% of the lineup. And while 19 of the top 20 scores in a single day have come from pitchers, only 11 of the top 20 cumulative scores so far belong to pitchers, and only 2 of the top 8. 2-3 points per day does not feel very exciting, but those points will add up very, very quickly.

Recaps

Weekly, I'll do a recap of each matchup to give snaps where snaps are due, belittle and shame those who deserve it, and just broadly offer my valuable two cents on the comings and goings of the league. These are the bulk of the newsletter, and some weeks I'll get busy/lazy and do them half-assed. I apologize in advance, but in a 20+ week season its absolutely bound to happen. I like to lead off with some fun stats where I have them, and with baseball there's no shortage of stats to be had. I may also do a playoff update as the time draws near, depending on how tight the standings are. And, very occassionally, I'll do something fun like a poem or maybe a guest interview. Only time will tell how far my creative reach will go, so stay tuned!

The Mark De Rosa "I'm Bad at My Job" Award

Every week I'll dole out one assignment for the Mark De Rosa "I'm Bad at My Job" Award. This could be someone who scored very poorly, made an abhorrent play, or maybe just someone who I don't like *cough Kyle Schwarber cough*. For example, I'd love to give it to Ian Seymour, the Rays relief pitcher who entered the game on Thursday after the Rays had just scored 6 runs in the top of the 6th to go up 7-1 and proceeded to give up 5 hits and 5 earned runs without recording a single out for an amazing -15 points.

But that's biased on my part, seeing as I was his victim. If we're going with negative points, then we have to put flowers on the grave of John Luke. JL had the Royal's closer Carlos Estevez on the mound when he gave up 6 runs to the Braves to blow the save, topped off with a walk-off grand slam from Dominic Smith. -19 points, just brutal.

Sports: In the Real World

I'll also give us a little update on where our favorite teams are in the non-fantasy version of fantasy baseball. The Braves (obviously), the Red Sox (for John Luke and Garrett), and the Orioles (for Nathan). Seb has informed me he's sworn off the Angels and dedicated his fandom capacity to the Professional Lacrosse League.

• Braves: The Braves won the series vs the Royals 2-1 and host the As in the 2nd of 4 very favorable series to start the season. MLB is trying to atone for sending us to LA and San Diego to open last year. Bryce Elder had a sneaky 6IP 0ER game on Monday to cement his place in the Cy Young race.
• Red Sox: After winning the opener in Cincinnati the Sox have dropped 3 in a row, including an 11th inning loss on Saturday. After they wrap up their series with the Astros they'll head back to Fenway for the home opener against the Padres. Wilyer Abreu has started the season 8-16 with 2 HRs and 5 RBIs.
• Orioles: Another AL East team, the Orioles beat the Twins 2-1 in their opening series and are now hosting the Rangers before heading to Pittsburgh and Chicago (White Sox) for their first road trip of the year. Catch Trevor Rogers on the mound on Wednesday to build off his first start where he went 7IP 0ER in the season opener.

Until Next Week!

Well that'll be it for this week. Short and sweet, there's still plenty of ball left to be played for our matchups this week and even if you're down big right now just make sure you get your starts in and keep those lineups active, there's always time for a comeback!