Though Luis Gil and Carlos Rodon both had terrible outings for both the Yankees and Cory's Fireflies this week, last week's highest scorer was able to put together a fifth straight winning performance this week thanks in part to strong hitting from his lineup in Week 12.

Sunday was far from ideal for the two-time AOA champion, with his nine hitters totaling -1.5 points, but on the whole this was a terrific week for Cory. For the first time since his 10-day Week 1 matchup, his team tallied double digit home runs. His .789 team OPS was the highest he's enjoyed this year.

Despite this strong performance, Sean actually had the offensive advantage over Cory in Week 12 by about 2 points thanks to sizeable advantages in both batting average and team OPS.

But Cory had a much bigger pitching advantage. Though Cory had those two very poor stats from his Yankees pitchers, costing him more than 10 points, Sean had to deal with a blown save and loss from one of his relievers, a terrible outing from Cy Young candidate Tarik Skubal, two underwhelming performances by Bryce Miller, and deficits in quality starts, saves, and holds compared to Cory's pitching staff.

With the win, Cory earned his second straight Manny Ramirez Award and the 17th of his career, breaking a tie with Sam Martin for the most in AOA history. Cory is 17-8 when he appears in the game of the week while Sean is now 6-8 in his appearances.

Cory's top scorer: Paul Skenes, 23.25 points (2 starts)

Sean's top scorer: Logan Gilbert, 16.25 points (1 start)

We won't have a repeat of last week where a stat correction wound up giving Cory Puffett the Rickey Henderson Award to go with his Manny Ramirez Award. Stephen easily beat out the rest of the AOA in scoring to secure his fifth Henderson Award of the season.

It took a very impressive performance for Stephen to secure the win, along with quite a let-down from Cory Frontin's team. See, Cory led the AOA this week with 17 home runs. Only Stephen's Week 10 total of 18 was a more impressive display of power in 2024. To go with that home run total, Cory had a .320 batting average, the third highest we've seen this season, and a .989 OPS, the best mark of 2024 so far.

Unfortunately for him, Stephen's .330 batting average is the best the league has seen this year and while his power numbers were not nearly as impressive as Cory's, his situational hitting was superb as his batters drove in 39 runs and scored 40 of their own, both Top 5 totals this season not including totals from the 10-day Week 1 matchup.

And while neither manager had a particularly outstanding pitching week, Stephen's was certainly much better than Cory's, especially where WHIP is concerned as his Orange Team pitchers led the league giving up only .750 walks plus hits per inning pitched this week.

Stephen's top scorer: Gunnar Henderson, 17.50 points (6 games)
Cory's top scorer: Brendan Donovan, 14.75 points (6 games)

Evan finally snapped a 7-game losing streak with his highest point total since his most recent win back in Week 4. A big part of that was undoubtedly the recent return of Shohei Ohtani to his starting lineup. Though Ohtani had only spent a limited stretch of time out of the Dodgers lineup, Evan went quite some time without checking his lineup until this week when he finally put Ohtani back into his UTIL spot.

Ohtani responded with a huge week, mashing four dingers. Right behind him, outfielder Anthony Santander contributed another three long balls to Evan's cause this week.

Impressively, Rich's offensive players took advantage of their higher volume to keep pace and they even gave him a quater-point advantage over Evan on the week. The big difference maker was Evan's pitching. His staff led the league in ERA, had the second best FIP and the second best WHIP and suffered just one loss compared to five losses recorded by Rich's pitching staff, which had the league's worst WHIP this week.

Evan's top scorer: Nestor Cortes Jr, 21.00 points (2 starts)

Rich's top scorer: Kyle Schwarber, 16.75 points (6 games)

For the fifth time this season, Eric claims the John Gochnaur Award as the league's lowest scorer. He is the fifth manager to own 10 of them for his career. None of the five managers behind him has more than two.

Alex had been suffering through a losing streak of his own, having lost three straight since his Week 8 matchup against Evan. He got back on track with his best outing since that one thanks in part to his hitters recording their best team batting average of the season. Pair that with a strong pitching week, including the league's best FIP in Week 12, and you have a performance worthy of a victory even if he hadn't been matched up with the league's worst team in 2024.

Out of 10 counting and rate stats I publish in our weekly stats graphic, Eric had the worst number in the league for seven of them! Yikes.

Alex's top scorer: Pablo Lopez, 21.00 points (2 starts)

Eric's top scorer: Nathan Eovaldi, 12.00 points (1 start)

Last week we talked about how unlucky Sam has been this season after he suffered his fourth unlucky loss against Cory in the game of the week. Well this week the luck turned in his favor as he finished sixth in the AOA in scoring and Andrew was unable to take advantage despite being in the mix early in the week. A huge 26-point Thursday advantage for Sam gave him the lead for good.

This was Sam's second lucky win of the year, so he's still sitting at 2 wins below expected for the year, but that's no longer the worst mark in the AOA. He is tied with Rich Blorstad. In fact, if you base expected wins on breakdown rather than Top 5 scoring weeks, which is also a valid metric to consider, Sam's 1.1 wins below expected make him just the third unluckiest manager of the season. Evan Ash (1.3 WBE) and Rich (1.8 WBE) both have had worse luck than Sam by that standard.

I mentioned above that Eric posted the worst stats in the league in 7 of the 10 categories I publish ever week in the Weekly Stats graphic below the game-by-game breakdowns. Of the remaining three, Andrew finished last in two of them: plate appearances and innings pitched. That lack of volume proved to be his downfall as he was roughly even with Sam on the rate stats, beating him out in batting average and OPS and trailing by about the same amount in ERA and WHIP.

Sam's top scorer: Zack Wheeler, 16.00 points (1 start)

Andrew's top scorer: Bryce Harper, 17.25 points (6 games)