Despite being on both ends of games like this more times than I can count across this and our fantasy football league, I hold that pure head-to-head without games against the median is the best way to play fantasy. Still, I always feel bad for managers when they have this kind of week and end up losing.

This was the 15th time in AOA history the top two scorers were matched up with each other, meaning that a team has lost a game despite suffering only one all-play loss in more than 20 percent of regular season weeks in league history. Additionally, this was the sixth time this has happened in the game of the week.

For Sam, he is the 26th manager to take home both the Rickey Henderson and Manny Ramirez awards in the same week. It is the sixth time it has happened this season.

Sam now has 12 career Rickey Henderson Awards, tied with Eric Meyer for the third most in league history. His 17 Manny Ramirez Awards tie him with Cory Puffett for the league league. He is now 17-10 when playing in the game of the week while Rich is 2-3.

Sam wound up holding advantages over his opponent in both disciplines this week, but perhaps his biggest difference makers were Gavin Stone and Cristopher Sanchez who combined for two complete game shutouts on 204 combined pitches, each coming less than five pitches short of recording Major League Baseball's first Maddux of the 2024 season.

Rich was the only manager to suffer an unlucky loss this week and it was as unlucky as it gets. He is now by far the unluckiest manager in the league this year. He sits at 3 wins below expected based on median scoring with one lucky win and four unlucky losses. Based solely on his all-play record, his luck factor stands at -2.7, with the next worst luck belonging to Sam and Eric, each at -1.1.

Rich's top scorer: Ryan Helsley, 19.50 points (4 relief appearances)
Cory's top scorer: Seth Lugo, 25.25 points (2 starts)

Alex put together a strong offensive week, out-hitting and out-slugging Cory on his way to a 7-point offensive advantage by week's end.

Unfortunately, he also had the fewest pitcher starts, and as a result the fewest innings pitched, of any manager in the AOA this week and that allowed Cory to snatch a 37-point pitching advantage to secure the win as the league's third highest scorer of the week.

Cory's top scorer: Vladimir Guererro Jr, 24.25 points (7 games)

Alex's top scorer: George Springer, 17.00 points (7 games)

Though Eric looked like he might be able to compete this week, his inattention took away any hope as Stephen earned the regular season series sweep against the defending Scully Cup Champion.

Eric suffered from a disappointing pitching week, but that certainly wasn't the culprit for his loss. Stephen posted the league's worst ERA, WHIP, and FIP in Week 13, so even though he had two more pitcher starts and the same number of relief appearances, he only earned a 3-point pitching advantage over Eric.

The big difference was on offense. The two AOA East managers tied for the league lead in home runs and were two of three managers with batting averages over .300 and OPS's over .950. But thanks in part to Stephen's squad racking up 48 more plate appearances than Eric's over the course of the week, Stephen's offensive advantage came out to a difference of 90.25 points to 63.50 points.

Eric's top scorer: Rafael Devers, 14.50 points (6 games)
Stephen's top scorer: CJ Abrams, 18.00 points (6 games)

After losing seven straight, Evan has now won two straight and his weekly scores over the past two weeks have been within a quarter-point of each other.

This was a pretty big one for him. While he's all but eliminated from the playoff race, it certainly mixes things up for the rest of the managers still in contention as Sean, for the first time since Week 3, does not have even a share of the lead for the league's best record.

This was a close matchup all around. Sean had a 4-point offensive advantage and Evan countered with a 5-point pitching advantage. We'll have to keep an eye out for any stat corrections over the course of the next seven days.

Evan's top scorer: Aaron Nola, 21.50 points (2 starts)

Sean's top scorer: Tarik Skubal, 15.25 points (1 start)

For the 11th time in AOA history, the two lowest scoring managers were matched up against one another. It is the third time a manager has won his matchup with just one all-play win in the same week a manager lost his matchup with just one all-play loss.

Andrew earned his league-leading eighth John Gochnaur Award of the season and now has 14 of them for his career, tied with Sean Kennedy for the second most behind Cory Frontin's 20.

It also marks the second week in a row an AOA West division opponent earned a lucky win while facing Andrew after Sam got one last week. Cory now has two lucky wins this season with no unlucky losses to counter them. Only Cory Frontin and, by a very slight margin, Sean Kennedy have been more lucky than Cory Puffett this season.

Cory's top scorer: Garrett Crochet, 20.50 points (2 starts)

Andrew's top scorer: Zac Gallen, 14.75 points (1 start)