Murderer’s Row No Challenge for Division Contender

When you draft a fantasy team, you expect to challenge for a championship and hopefully win some money in the process. Baseball has the most extended season of all major North American sports leagues, so there are plenty of peaks and valleys in the season and with players’ performances.

Since fantasy baseball teams consist of many players, there is no excuse for peaks and valleys. Managers have a chance to add or subtract whoever is hot or cold. Some stay the course (Murderer’s Row, for example), while others just got lucky from the start and never have to stress about making adjustments on the fly.

We mention all that because if you want to know if your team is a contender or pretender, all you have to do is play a division leader or someone who has a winning record near the top to find out who you are. Murderer’s Row got smoked in their week seven matchup against SHABB’s Team, which is the only team still in single digits in the games behind column.

The writing was on the wall early in this matchup. Despite having eight extra at-bat opportunities, Murderer’s Row was no match for SHABB’s team, who dominated the pitching categories and doubled us up in every offensive category. It may look like we took a week off from managing our team; however, rest ashore, we were altering the lineup every day with little to no effect.

Murderer’s Row was outhit and outpitched in a fashion unseen so far during the 2021 season. SHABB’s team collected 16 more hits, 24 runs, ten home runs, 20 RBIs, four extra stolen bases, and a batting average of 0.075 points better.

The only categories we managed to win, since our opponent pulled all his pitchers for the rest of the matchup, were wins, saves, and strikeouts. After SHABB’s team compiled a 0.32 ERA and 0.56 and met the minimum innings requirements, there was no reason for him to continue throwing guys. Those numbers would be impossible to beat, which meant that we needed to turn our attention to other categories.In a growing trend, Murderer’s Row grabbed an early lead on Monday. The score may have been 2-1-7 that night, but it prevented SHABB’s team from shutting us out for seven straight days. As you can see, the matchup was over after Tuesday night, but we managed to pick up a few extra points on the weekend.
We were beaten in every offensive category by double digits (except for stolen bases), so unless we had a massive amount of points tucked away on the bench, there was no way these guys would have altered any score. The only noteworthy statistic to point out here is that our bench players had a higher batting average than the guys who played, 0.263 to 0.257.
Our franchise has consistently finished at the bottom of the standings. Usually, that also means that our overall team statistics are brutal. Even though we are not the worse team in the league, we are one of the worse offensive teams and only survive a plummet to the basement thanks to our pitching.

The best offensive category we got after seven weeks is stolen bases, where we rank fourth overall. After that, it is near the bottom in runs and home runs, followed by batting average and then RBIs. Outside of saves, our worse pitching category, we rank in the top four in wins, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP.

The pundits said our pitching staff would be desperate for points; however, they are currently the ones holding up the team.

When you look at the One Less Curse standings, there are two pretty big divides. The top two teams are neck and neck, and then there is everyone else. Six teams are within seven games of each other, which makes the fight for the final two playoffs all the more intriguing.

For the first time in weeks, Murderer’s Row didn’t add a player to end a season-high three-game losing streak. The only transaction during week seven occurred to make way for a player returning from the IL.

Weekly Move Total: 0/4

Season Move Total: 13/40