It is finals week! Or at least that’s how many head-to-head leagues will function. But that means I have lost a huge chunk of my audience. I feel so irrelevant in the fall, you know? It’s all gooses and gravy in March through June. People love me. They’re all over me, I’m the biggest thing going. Every tweet goes off. But then come August and September, I start to lose the people. The attention moves on, people pack it for the winter. And they stop giving me the attention and praise that I desire.
That is why I’ve started the fantasy football stuff. So I can try to stay relevant and still sleep at night, knowing that I still have the attention of a few hundred people on the Internet.
This is written as a joke. But one realization you have in life is that every decent joke has some truth behind it.
If you’re still reading this, congrats to you. That probably means that you’re still in contention in your leagues. Although, I do have a decent core of people who just really appreciate what I say and how I write it, and they read most of my stuff regardless of how their seasons are going. Those people are my favorite.
I really love the people who really love me. And so do you! That’s natural, and easy. And there’s a Scripture reference for that!
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them
That came right after the bomb Jesus dropped about loving your enemies. That’s the hardest command to follow, probably. But you can do it.
Not to make today all about a Bible lesson, but that passage is really instructive about what Jesus meant by the word love. We think of love as a feeling. But Jesus could not have meant a feeling here. It’s not possible to feel love for your enemies. If you could, they wouldn’t be your enemies. It’s a contradiction in terms. What he meant was serve, regardless of your feelings. Put them above yourselves, treat them as you’d want to be treated. That’s hard, but at least it’s doable. I mean I can’t make myself feel warm and fuzzy about every individual person in the world, but I can force myself to treat them a certain way.
To bring it back into the non-religious world, I think the result of this obvious truth was in Dale Carnegie’s book. That famous one How to Win Friends and Influence People.That book became a near holy text in the pop social psychology world. I read it in college. And it was very good and helpful. But the one part talks about how if you want someone to like you, all you have to do is show interest in what’s important to them. And specifically to ask them for advice. Even if you’re not interested, even if you don’t need advice. Just fake it, and the person who is directed at will immediately love you.
And it works. I used that on professors and in job interviews. The way I got my current job was by asking the hiring manager a bunch of questions about scuba diving. He was really into that, so I just tried to make as much of the interview as possible about scuba diving. The guy lived in France, and I’d never see him, and I don’t care about scuba diving. But I pretended, and I got the job. And then he got fired a few months later. I hope he’s still enjoying the scuba.
I think I was going to get that job regardless; they were freakin’ desperate, but I prefer to tell the story in the way I did above.
So that’s some possibly helpful advice for you young guys out there.
I advanced to the finals in the MLB DW points league in crazy fashion last night. The score was super tight coming into Sunday. Waivers run on Sunday mornings, so there’s a scramble for the available Sunday streaming SPs when matchups are tight. My opponent had all the money in the world, so he had his choosing. He outbid me for Yoendrys Gomez and German Marquez, leaving me with the only other option, Adam Mazur.
Things were not looking good for me. Framber Valdez gave me -3 points, and I thought I was toast. But then Adam Mazur goes six scoreless and scores 45 points. I was still behind, but then Marquez got whalloped for -18 points and I took the lead.
BUT THEN Jarren Duran triples and Aaron Judge homers on Sunday night, and I go down by five points!
BUT THEN I have Aroldis Chapman, who comes in and grabs 14 points with a 1-2-3 innings and a save, and I win by nine points. I was losing before the final pitch of the week. A great matchup (although an absolutely ridiculous one since we were scrambling to stream some of the worst pitchers in the league). I even made my wife sweat the Sunday night game with me. She learned a few things about points leagues.
My condolences to my opponent; that was a tough way to lose. But mostly I just want to say shout out to me.
There is really not much point in looking backward here. Pitchers are making their final starts, FAAB budgets are dried up, and we have two weeks (max) left in the fantasy season. So let’s look ahead. There will be many hours to review the 2025 season with an eye on next year. 2026 prep starts immediately after the season ends for me. I write every single relevant player up in detail throughout the offseason, and the only way I can do that is if I start in November (at the latest).
It’s the best offseason content on the market (according to me, and I haven’t even looked anywhere else so I must be right).
But let’s focus on this week for those of you still fighting.
Oh, by the way, it’s Producer Lee vs. Police Officer Paul in the home league finals. Lee might actually do it, he might actually notch his first championship. But probably not lmao.
Streaming SPs
Monday 9/15
In case you’re super drunk or something, Monday 9/15 is today. So we have the full projections out already.
You get some really weird ownerships this late in the season. Certain guys get dropped out of desperation. We see Ranger Suarez at 36% owned. I don’t have any leagues on Yahoo, but that sounds like it’s not right. Could he really have been dropped that much? Or maybe the website I scrape from is just bugging out. Not really worth fixing anything now!
If Kyle Bradish is available, he should not be. But he’s surely taken in your league if you’re reading this, because that means that you don’t play in a completely dead league.
So there’s not a ton to love today. Maybe Jameson Taillon vs. PIT. He missed a good bit of time but has made three starts since August 19th. It’s just a 15% K% and a 6.0% SwStr% since then. He’s thrown 62 and 79 pitches in his last two. You should be able then to grab 85 pitches against the poor Pirates lineup. But Taillon is never a great option, and it’s especially worrisome seeing the lack of whiffs since he’s returned from injury.
Jack Leiter takes on the Astros tonight. He’s thrown some gems lately. His last ten starts:
27.7% K%, 11.8% BB%, 12.7% SwStr%, 37.9% Ball%, 3.32 JA ERA
The strikeouts have been there (10, 7, 8 and 4 in his last four), but the command still has not been very good. He’s risky, but the ceiling puts him in the conversation. I’d definitely be using him in points leagues where the downside is a lot less.
I’d stay away from Braxton Ashcraft, he looks like a 3-4 inning guy right now. Being held below 75 pitches lately.
I like Leiter, and I don’t think it’s insane to go with Taillon. But it’s not the best day for streaming.
Tuesday 9/16
Zebby Matthews vs. Yankees: Quite a risky proposition to go with a fly baller against the Yankees, but Matthews still sports a 3.04 JA ERA with a 19% K-BB% this year. The .358 BABIP has crushed him. He’s given up a 12% Brl% to lefties. So there’s always the risk of a blowup caused by multiple homers. But I like the profile. I know I’ve banged this drum to death this year, but we sticking to the best numbers works out over the long haul, and that’s what I’ll keep doing.
Joey Cantillo vs. Tigers: Eight scoreless from this guy last time out. And that followed six strong innings the time before that. So he has a 12:2 K:BB with just one run allowed on nine hits in his last 14 innings. Can you trust him? NO! But the 3.39 JA ERA and 16% K-BB% on the year absolutely put him in this fair streaming category.
Connelly Early vs. Athletics: We have a one start sample on Early. But that was an 11-strikeout, 19-whiff beauty against the Athletics last week. He gets them in Boston tonight.
Tyler Wells vs. White Sox: Wells was a popular streaming pickup. And it’s fine. I just know the history here. The guy isn’t good, or at least he never was in the past. But it’s a fine matchup, and he does have a 54% Strike% with a .245 xwOBA allowed in his 174 pitches thrown since returning to the big league mound.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you really don’t need me for this. The tools I’ve developed over the years are all you need to get a big edge. I don’t mention the weekly projections super often. But yeah, I have weekly projections. Every day the script projects out the next 10 days. So you can go see stuff like this:
Tomorrow’s SP Projections
That projection model doesn’t include some of the finer details like weather, umpires, and exact lineups (obviously), but other than those adjustments, that’s what you’ll see tomorrow on the daily pitcher projections. So you can go ahead.
You can even just go filter to the next seven days with an ownership filter and see what’s available:
Some of you have probably been subbed all year and didn’t know you could do this stuff, and now you’re like well that would’ve been nice to know a few months ago! But that’s your freakin’ fault, man!
And that is not even to mention the sweet SP Planner on the Streamlit App.
Some hot hitters before we bounce outta here. This is highest xwOBA under 45% owned since 8/25:
I will do my best to answer all questions that come in this week since it’s such an important week. Send them my way and I’ll get back to you! You can do that in the Discord or in the comments here or my DMs on X. Although I do think you’ll have to be verified to DM me. I was getting dozens of porn bot DMs a day so I had to do something.
