Aces Only Association:

2024, Week 14

Written by Cory Puffett
Published July 8, 2024

This week was highlighted by some incredible single-game performance, and lowlighted by one of the worst weeks a player has ever had in our league.

Starting with the bad, Paul Sewald was absolutely awful for Evan this week. In two relief appearances, he recorded only two outs, giving up five runs on five hits and a walk. He blew both save opportunities and took the loss in both outings.

When all was said and done, Sewald became just the fourth relief pitcher, and in fact the fourth player in general, to finish a week with a score at least 10 points in the negative in AOA history. His -13.25 points represent the worst single-week player score we've ever seen, putting him below:

Camilo Doval, who scored -11.00 points for Sean Kennedy in a wild card round victory in 2023
Josh Hader, who scored -11.50 points for Cory Puffett in Week 14 of the 2022 season
Jorge Lopez, who scored -12.50 points for Evan Ash in Week 12 of the 2022 season

Now to look at a couple of highlights from this week. Unfortunately, with the number of individual days of baseball we get over the course of a single fantasy baseball season, let alone the past four years, I have not found a great way for me to consolidate and then sift through all that data yet. I hope to work on that a bit if I have time this offseason.

Even for this year alone, I can't confirm that these were the first two such performances, but I don't recall any others so I'm fairly certain we got our first two 10-point games from position players this week!

First came Christian Walker's impressive performance for Andrew on Wednesday in LA. With a single, a double, two home runs and a walk, he scored 10.00 points that night, a really impressive single-game feat we've only seen a handful of times in league history (somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 prior to this year).

For an encore, Walker hit another two long balls Thursday night and scored 8.25 points. Again, I don't have a way to confirm and it would be even more work to organize the data in a way to verify, but I'm fairly certain 18.25 points is a two-day record for any non-starting pitcher.

Two days after Walker's 10-point outing, Dodgers catcher Will Smith topped him, giving Eric 11.25 points on the strength of three home runs and a pair of walks.

Congratulations to both Christian Walker and Will Smith, who were able to ride those games to appearances on our Players of the Week list.

Players of the Week

Catcher - Will Smith, 15.00 points (Eric Meyer)

1st Baseman - Freddie Freeman, 14.00 points (Rich Blorstad)

2nd Baseman - Ozzie Albies, 12.25 points (Cory Puffett)

3rd Baseman - Rafael Devers, 18.25 points (Eric Meyer)

Shortstop - Bobby Witt Jr, 18.25 points (Sean Kennedy)

OF - Yordon Alvarez, 19.75 points (Alex Mayo)

UTIL - Christian Walker, 21.00 points (Andrew Perez)

SP - Nathan Eovaldi, 30.25 points (Eric Meyer)

RP - Craig Kimbrel, 21.25 points (Stephen April)

Freddie Freeman's 14 points don't represent a ridiculous point total for the week, but he doubled up the next highest scoring first baseman, giving Rich a distinct advantage over the rest of the league.

Even with that incredible 11.25-point night on Friday, Will Smith barely held off Willson Contreras. The older brother of William Contreras, who has himself been the AOA's catcher of the week three times this season, returned from injury this week for Cory Frontin and came just a quarter point away from a share of his second Mike Piazza Award of the campaign.

Craig Kimbrel did everything he could to keep Stephen in his contest this week. Only Emmanuel Clase joined him in scoring more than 10 points at the reliever position this week, and his 14.00 points for Alex Mayo put him further behind Kimbrel than Jake Cronenworth was behind Freeman in the Paul Goldschmidt Award race.

Nathan Eovaldi overshadowed a great week from Grayson Rodriguez, whose 26.75 points for Alex would have been enough to lead the starting pitcher position in most weeks.

For Eovaldi's part, his is the third 30-point week for a starting pitcher this season and the 11th in AOA history. They used to be much more rare, with Max Scherzer and Sandy Alcantara each being the only pitcher to record such a week in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, respectively. Last year we had six such weeks for starting pitchers, so we'll see if we can hit that number again over the final four weeks of the regular season plus three playoff contests.

Finally, we had a pair of Christians atop the utility position leaderboard this week with Christian Yelich finishing the week with 20.25 points for Sean, just behind Walker's total.

Cory Puffett (113.75) vs Stephen April (95.75)

All-time H2H: Cory leads series 1-0

In the first contest between the two, Cory managed to pull off the upset.

Both managers came into the game on long winning streaks. Stephen had rattled off seven straight victories while Cory's streak was sitting at six games. Something had to give.

After both received poor pitcher starts early in the week, it looked like neither manager would even sniff triple digits by week's end.

Instead, Stephen came up just short and Cory managed to make his way back up amongst the Top 5 scorers for the week thanks in part to a huge bounce-back game for Luis Gil on Sunday night. Though he took the loss, giving up a 7th inning home run in a 3-0 loss to the Red Sox, he ended a three-game skid during which he never scored more than half a point.

Cory earns his 18th career Manny Ramirez Award with the win and is now 18-8 when he plays in the game of the week. Stephen is now 1-1 when playing for the Ramirez Award.

Cory's top scorer: Brent Rooker, 15.25 points (5 games)

Stephen's top scorer: Craig Kimbrel, 21.25 points (4 relief appearances)

Sean Kennedy (139.25) vs Rich Blorstad (179.25)

All-time H2H: Sean leads series 2-1

A week after losing as the second highest scorer in the league, Rich came back with a vengance in Week 14 to snap a 4-game losing streak.

Outside of Week 1, which was a 10-day affair, only two managers had scored 170 points through the first 13 weeks of the season. Stephen April scored 170.50 points in Week 8 and Sam Martin scored 172.00 points against Rich just last week.

Rich bested both of them and soundly defeated Sean Kennedy in the process to keep his slim playoff hopes alive.

Both managers had really impressive offensive showings this week. Entering Week 14, there had only been 12 instances of a manager recording a team OPS of 1.000 or higher over the course of an entire matchup. Both Sean and Rich did that this week.

Only 18 times had a manager recorded a team batting average of .330 or higher for an entire matchup. Both Sean and Rich did that, too.

Only 24 times had a manager's team tallied 15 or more home runs in a 7-day contest. Again, both Sean's and Rich's teams did that in Week 14.

All told, Sean got 93.75 points from his hitters, more points than Andrew and Evan got from their entire teams this week. Rich's slightly more impressive 100.75 offensive points was also better than Stephen's team total.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Rich's offense this week was the balance across his lineup. Seven different hitters reached double digits for the week and Heliot Ramos was only a point away from being the eighth member of that club.

Pitching is where Rich really opened it up against Sean. Though he didn't have an outstanding pitching week by any means, his team WHIP was nearly 500 points better than Sean's, he gave up more than a run per 9 innings less than Sean did, and his staff racket up seven more innings than Sean's did.

In the end, his performance earned Rich his second Rickey Henderson Award, pushing him past Alex Mayo on the AOA's all-time list.

As the third highest scorer of the week, Sean suffered his first unlucky loss of the season, helping to offset the pair of lucky wins he's already earned this year.

Sean's top scorer: Christian Yelich, 20.25 points (7 games)
Rich's top scorer: Justin Steele, 18.50 points (1 start)

Alex Mayo (147.00) vs Evan Ash (70.25)

All-time H2H: Evan leads series 9-3-1

Alex has been all over the map lately. He's been a Top 3 scorer twice in the last six weeks and a Bottom 4 scorer four times in that same time frame.

This was one of the better weeks Alex has had. In fact, it was his best week since he led the AOA in scoring in the first contest of the season.

Perhaps the only disappointing thing for Alex is that this sort of week couldn't have come when he was facing a better opponent.

Instead it might feel a bit wasted on Evan, who was not only eliminated from the playoffs this week but also became the only manager besides Andrew Perez and Eric Meyer to finish a week as the lowest scorer in the league.

With this poor performance, Evan earns his third John Gochnaur Award of his career, the fifth fewest in league history and the third fewest of those who have played more than this season.

Alex's top scorer: Grayson Rodriguez, 26.75 points (2 starts)

Evan's top scorer: Aaron Nola, 11.75 points (1 start)

Cory Frontin (113.00) vs Eric Meyer (134.75)

All-time H2H: Eric leads series 6-5-2

After Cory won their first two matchups this season to push their all-time series into a tie, Eric managed to get his second win of the season thanks to a huge pitching week.

Thanks to a pretty significant volume advantage, Cory actually had 7 points on Eric on the offensive side of the ledger, despite Eric leading him in home runs, RBI, batting average and OPS.

But a three-inning volume advantage from his pitching staff, much better numbers across ERA, WHIP, and FIP, two more wins and two fewer blown saves all combined to give Eric a massive 27.5-point advantage over Cory on the mound.

Eric's top scorer: Nathan Eovaldi, 30.25 points (2 starts)
Cory's top scorer: Willson Contreras, 14.75 points (6 games)

Andrew Perez (75.50) vs Sam Martin (109.25)

All-time H2H: Sam leads series 11-2

A week after leading the league in scoring by a healthy margin, Sam may have needed an easy opponent to get this win.

Fortunately, he got just what the doctor ordered and faced the second lowest scorer of the week. Because of that, it didn't matter that he finished 7th out of ten managers in the AOA this week.

Sam now has three lucky wins this season, the second most in the league, to help offset his four unlucky losses, which are tied for the most in the AOA. Only Cory Frontin (4-1) and Rich Blorstad (1-4) have played in nearly as many 'luck games' as Sam's seven.

Andrew's top scorer: Christian Walker, 21.00 points (6 games)
Sam's top scorer: Jake Irvin, 18.00 points (1 start)

Game of the Week: Cory Puffett vs Stephen April

In a week that saw both managers’ starting pitchers put together poor early-week outings, Cory was the one who saw his pitchers turn it around in the closing days of the matchup.

While Stephen’s relievers, most notably Craig Kimbrel, kept him in the contest with five saves in six appearances, Paul Skenes, George Kirby, and Luis Gil used the last three days of the week to help Cory build an 8-point pitching advantage to go with an eventual 10-point advantage on offense, keeping Cory’s win streak alive and ending Stephen’s at seven games.

This week I finally went back and tallied up how many times every manager has appeared at the top or bottom of the AOA power rankings through four first 3+ seasons of play.

Congratulations to Sam on earning the #1 spot in our power rankings for the third time in his career! Andrew fell to the last spot for the 14th time, fewer only than Cory Frontin (16) and Sean Kennedy (22).

Though three may not sound like a lot for Sam, that's actually not too bad a number. He's tied with Rich Blorstad, granted this is Rich's first season, and he's only one behind Sean Kennedy and Eric Meyer. Stephen April, also in his first year, has been atop the power rankings five times. The two manager with the most #1 rankings across the league's history are Evan Ash (15) and Cory Puffett (39).

Note: MLB issues stat corrections up to 7 days after games. These corrections will be applied to games, including those that have been completed, but these articles will not necessarily be updated with those stat corrections.

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