And that's one week in the books! Well more like a week and a half but it counts as just one week all the same. We had some close games, some not-so-close games, and a LOT of fun. And now you all get your very first official recaps of the season! What a time to be alive! I hope you all appreciate the now-fully-functional newsletter, equipped with standings and player peformance. Halfway through the season I'll also begin including the "Next Games" section where you'll be able to see your record against your upcoming opponent, but right now that's all just empty sooo not much use for it.

Week 1 and Done!

The Standings

Let me briefly explain the standings. You'll see the dotted line after the top 3 teams, the top 3 teams make the playoffs plain and simple. The fourth and final playoff team is a "wild card" team that is chosen, at random, based on probability tied to your wins. So, if this was the last week of the season, the two teams with wins that aren't in the top 3 would each have 1 of the 2 total wins of that group, so they'd have a 50% chance each.

This will update weekly. I'll make it clear when teams have actually clinched the playoffs, the Playoff % is simply the probability that you'd make the playoffs if the season ended today. Obviously its only been one week, so its kinda silly to even look at that right now. But I went ahead and coded it in becuase why not?

The standings are ordered by wins (ties counting as half a win), then tiebreakers are:

1. Head-To-Head Record vs Team(s) Tied With
2. Total Points Scored

The standings themselves (should) include a note explaining the tiebreaker in the event of ties, but if you're ever confused of course feel free to reach out.

Stats Stats Stats

The first week obviously went longer than most will, and therefore had higher total scores than we'll probably be used to seeing. Becuase of that you'll find I often try to tie records (like "most points scored in a game") to a normalized, per-day rate. So when we see that Nathan broke 500 points... yeah don't get too familiar with that. The long did give us over 4,000 points scored, (4,001 to be exact). 2,223, or 55% of those points were scored by batters.

Joe had the most extreme split of points, 67% of his points came from batters. His pitching stats have room for improvement, currently rocking a 5.49 ERA on only 62 IP, the 2nd lowest volume in the league.

Seb had the opposite problem. Seb saw 55% of his points come from pitching, and he sits in the top 3 of pitching points in the league right now. Its very much a quality over quantity strategy for Seb, as he's got the lowest volume by a wide margin (57 IP, the rest of the league averaged 76), but with a stellar 1.57 ERA and 11.3 K/9. Seb's issue, of course, was the near absent offense, last in the league with both a .205 average and 32 RBIs.

Nathan is essentially leading in every category, he really just tore it up this past week including a league-leading 23 home runs. He's leading in both pitching points AND hitting points. So I tried to find a couple other good stats to give people credit for. All I could really come up with was John Luke leading the league in stolen bases with 15.

And LETS TALK ABOUT XAN. This man took Cal Raleigh as his first pick and WOW what a disaster. Seven total bases, TWENTY strikeouts. That man needs to get it together and FAST. If Clark would have made the comeback I would have blamed Cal completely, I'm convinced its because of his handshake debacle at the WBC.

And don't worry everyone DAVID IS IN THE LEAGUE TOO. HI DAVID, DON'T FEEL LEFT OUT.

Recaps

Nathan 514 - 388 Joe

Well lets get this bloodbath out of the way. Nathan, first of all, needs to chill out. Classic that he'd take all my draft picks and then light up the scoreboard in Week 1, those should have been my points Nathan. And its not like Nathan was going crazy on the waivers, he only made 2 transactions, them boys were just clicking. Led by Cam Schlittler with 48 points on 11.2 IP with no earned and 15 Ks.Joe, after a pretty brutal start, wound up scoring well enough all things considered. He outscored Seb and Clark, but there was just no catching Nathan. Joe's points came primarily from his bats, 4 batters with over 30 points led by Xavier Edwards, who's batting .471 through 8 games this season. Nathan turns to John Luke for week 2 as Joe will try and find the win column against Seb.

Seb 344 - 435 David

This one wasn't as bad but still solidly controlled by David the whole time. Seb has no one to blame but himself, he made 0 adjustments to his roster or lineup the whole matchup. You don't have to be insane about it, but over 10+ days that's not a recepie to win (ignore the man behind the Garrett-shaped curtain). David put up the 2nd best score of the week against Seb, who put up the lowest. Two good starts from David's first rounder Tarik Skubal contributed 39 points to the campaign and Ben Rice's 3 home runs helped him break 40. Seb can give a nod to Sandy Alcantara, who's complete game shutout vs the White Sox on Wednesday was good for 31 points. Seb my brother, if you do a little lineup work you can be something special, but you gotta put in the time. David, see you next week bitch.

Clark 363 - 406 Xan

Clark kept this game interesting for a while, but thanks to a 63-point Friday Xan walked across the plate for the win without a throw. Missing 2 possible Strider starts was not the best thing for Clark, but hey you gotta be able to roll with the punches. Drake Baldwin is my king and while he deserved the win, I can't this one away from Xan. Max Fried with a stellar 54-point week (he managed to get 3 starts, but still) to pair with Andy Pages' 40 was too much for Clark to handle is his debut, and he'll start the season with an L. Xan didn't even use all his starts either, hard to argue. Xan will bring the energy to Ethan this week, while Clark regroups vs a Garrett team that very possibly lost his password to ESPN.

Jake 412 - 396 Ethan

This one did not look great at one point, after last Saturday Ethan held a 78-point lead partly due to -15 points from Rays' reliever Ian Seymour, who was prompted taken outside and executed after that outing. But Jake (I refer to myself in the 3rd person in these, get used to it) scratched and clawed his way back, and after two-consecutive 60-point days on Monday and Tuesday the game stayed close through the end. There's been reports of Jake beginning work on a shrine to Yordan Alvarez, who led the league with 57 points this week. Ethan had a great week from the As catcher, oddly enough, Shea Langeliers, who ripped 5 dingers for 32 points. Really a tight game, hard to take much away from Ethan who scored in the top-half of the league this week, but Jake edged him out. Jake will direct his firepower into pummeling David into submission while Ethan will try to take out his frustrations on Xan in Week 2.

Garrett 393 - 390 John Luke

For fuck's sake Garrett if you're going to literally not touch your team I need you to lose. I can't let you poison the minds of these fragile, impressionable leaguemates of yours into thinking they can be complacent. Very selfish of you to win this week. John Luke... I wish I could come up with the blame but like 390 was a perfectly respectable score this week. Missing out on the win based on 3 points though? Ouch. JL tried to mount a small comeback on Sunday, down 10 he managed to close the gap buttttttt not by quite enough. UGH I can't beleve we let Garrett get away with this man... so sad. Do yourselves a favor and go check the box score of the JL-Garrett game this week. John Luke may have played double the people Garrett did. Clark, do me a favor and knock some sense into this boy this week por favor.

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

Honorable shoutout to Carlos Estevez for his -19 points that I called out last week, but I'm not in the business of reusing content so even though its still the same week, I've got a new entry for the final Week 1 newsletter. Blue Jays are pitching, down 1, 2 on and 2 out, with the inferior Acuna at the plate. The MDIBAMJA (Mark Derosa "I'm Bad At My Job" Award", if you couldn't piece that together) goes to the entire Blue Jays infield for whatever the hell this play was:

Like look if you can't get the guy at first fine, I'm not going to pretend like I could make that play. But there's two outs!! Just tag literally anyone!!

Sports: In the Real World

Okayyyyy early season woes its all good, we'll get things back on track! Well certainly one of our teams will. Also David is a Braves fan, there David I mentioned you an extra time now you don't get to complain to me.

• Braves: The Braves took 2 of 3 vs the As and split a four-game series in Arizona thanks largely in part to Drake Baldwin doing anything he wants to. They head to Anaheim to play Seb's former team before coming home to host the Guardians over the weekend. At 6-4 the Braves are 0.5 games behind Miami in a crowded top of the NL East.
• Red Sox: So things are... not great in Boston. Getting swept in Houston and dropping 2 of 3 to the Padres puts the Sox at 2-7 with the worst record in baseball. The Red Sox have Wilyer Abreu and, well, that's about it. The Sox keep up the homestand vs the Brewers and finish the week with the Cardinals.
• Orioles: Things are slightly better in Baltimore, but unfortunately the bar is low enough that that isn't really good news. The 3-3 start has turned into 3-6, but with the White Sox coming up there's a road to recovery. Gunnar Henderson and Taylor Ward are both slugging over .400 so if Pete Alonso can get it together the bats will be there, just need to give Trevor Rodgers the ball as much as possible.