Aces Only Association:

2024, Week 18

Written by Cory Puffett
Published August 12, 2024

We have reached the end of the 2024 regular season. Our playoff matchups are set and we're ready to say goodbye to six of our managers until next season.

Stephen April held on to the top seed in the league and will face Sam Martin in in the Wild Card round. The other matchup will feature a rematch of a wild card matchup from last season between Cory Puffett and Sean Kennedy, the second and third seeds, respectively.

Sean got the better of Cory last year and will attempt to do so again. Stephen, playing in his first season, will attempt to prevent Sam from making his first Scully Cup appearance since our first season in 2021.

Players of the Week

Catcher - William Contreras, 13.00 points (Richard Blorstad)

1st Baseman - Vladimir Guerrero Jr, 11.50 points (Cory Frontin)

2nd Baseman - Ketel Marte, 12.00 points (Stephen April)

3rd Baseman - Elly De La Cruz, 15.00 points (Sean Kennedy)

Shortstop - Bobby Witt Jr, 13.50 points (Sean Kennedy)

OF - Yordon Alvarez, 25.00 points (Alex Mayo)

UTIL - Nick Castellanos, 14.50 points (Alex Mayo)

SP - Logan Webb, 25.25 points (Cory Frontin)

RP - Tanner Scott, 16.00 points (Stephen April)

Vladimir Guerrerro Jr. finished the fantasy season nearly as well as you can. After leading all utility players in scoring in Weeks 16 and 17, his manager moved him back to first base where he'd already won two Paul Goldschmidt Awards this season. Now he's got three of them this year and five total weekly positional awards in 2024.

The only player to finish as hot as Vladdy was Bobby Witt Jr. He earned his third straight Barry Larkin Award and, unbelievably, his tenth of the season! Sean will be looking for big things from him this week as he attempts to make the Scully Cup for a second straight year.

Now, I led that last paragraph with "as hot as Vladdy," so I technically wasn't lying. But there was one player to finish hotter than both Vladdy and Bobby Witt Jr. Ketel Marte closes the season with four straight Ryne Sandberg Award. This week's is his seventh of the year, all of them coming in the last 10 weeks!

And while this was Logan Webb's first career Bobby Witt Award as the AOA's top scoring starting pitcher for the week, it was the second straight week that award went to a pitcher on Cory Frontin's staff after Corbin Burnes took the award in Week 17.

And perhaps the most impressive performance of the week was Nick Castellanos. He won the Week 18 Hal McRae Award as the highest scoring utility player despite no tragedies occuring to allow him to hit a home run this week.

Sam Martin (121.50) vs Sean Kennedy (190.75)

All-time H2H: Sam leads series 6-3

If this week was a sign of things to come, Sean should have this year's Scully Cup in the bag. Only five single-matchup team scores all season were higher than Sean's score this week, and all five of them came between our 11-day matchup in Week 1 and our 10-day matchup in Week 16.

Sean became the 28th manager to pull the Ramirez/Henderson double, earning his fifth career Rickey Henderson Award by leading the league in scoring and his seventh career Manny Ramirez Award by winning the game of the week.

Sean is now 7-8 when playing in the game of the week while Sam drops to 18-12 in his career. His 30 appearances in the game of the week is three more than any other manager in AOA history.

Sam's top scorer: Michael Wacha, 13.50 points (1 start)
Sean's top scorer: Jackson Merrill, 21.00 points (6 games)

Cory Puffett (129.00) vs Richard Blorstad (159.75)

All-time H2H: Rich leads series 2-1

After falling out of the playoff race, Rich didn't have a whole lot to play for in Week 18, but he put together his second best 7-day score of the season and ended Cory's winning streak at 10 games.

Cory will hope this serves as a reset for him as he enters the playoffs searching for redemption after Sean prevented him from playing for his third consecutive Scully Cup last year.

Meanwhile Rich secured a winning season, a winning division record, and the season series against Cory in his his first year in the AOA. He'll look to build on all of those marks in 2025.

As a Top 5 scorer, Cory suffered his first unlucky loss of the season, bringing him down to 2 wins above expected by median scoring and 1.7 WAE by breakdown, both top two marks in the league in terms of good luck.

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly Kyle Schwarber's incredible 12.50-point performance on Wednesday, the highest single-game hitter score of the season.

Cory's top scorer: Bailey Ober, 14.75 points (1 start)
Rich's top scorers: Kyle Schwarber, 19.50 points (7 games) & Luis Castillo, 19.50 points (2 starts)

Stephen April (123.50) vs Cory Frontin (130.00)

All-time H2H: Stephen leads series 2-1

While he'll be left out of the playoffs due to his 5.25-point Week 17 loss against Sam Martin, Cory finished the year with his second career winning record, marking a strong bounceback from his 2-17-1 record in 2023. He also avoided the season series sweep at Stephen's hands.

Stephen had won his last three games and 10 of his last 11, so he'll join Cory Puffett in hoping this loss serves as a reset for him. Stephen hasn't lost back-to-back games since the first two weeks of the season.

This was Stephen's second unlucky loss of the year. He finishes the season at 1 win above expected by median scoring and 1.3 WAE by breakdown.

Stephen's top scorer: Teoscar Hernandez, 17.25 points (6 games)
Cory's top scorer: Logan Webb, 25.25 points (2 starts)

Andrew Perez (59.75) vs Alex Mayo (113.75)

All-time H2H: Alex leads series 6-5

It wasn't a particularly remarkable performance for Alex this week, but he did just enough to secure his first ever season without a losing record.

Andrew, meanwhile, will have to wait until scores are officially final for Week 18 to find out just how bad this season was for him. He finished one game better than he did in 2022 but his point differential was 3.50 points better. We'll see soon enough how 2024 measured up to his woeful -10.3 comparison factor score from two years ago.

Andrew's top scorer: Zac Gallen, 11.25 points (2 starts)
Alex's top scorer: Yordan Alvarez, 25.00 points (6 games)

Evan Ash (43.00) vs Eric Meyer (87.00)

All-time H2H: Eric leads series 6-5

Remarkably, two of Eric's three victories this season came against Evan. The other was a Week 14 victory against Cory Frontin that one might argue wound up being the difference maker for his division rival's playoff fate.

Eric's two wins against Evan pushed him ahead after they ended 2023 with .500 records against each other in their all-time series.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure Evan became the only manager this year whose highest scorer for a week did not reach double digits.

Evan's top scorer: Luis Arraez, 7.50 points (5 games)
Eric's top scorer: Kevin Gausman, 14.00 points (1 start)

Game of the Week: Sam Martin vs Sean Kennedy

Despite featuring two of the top six scorers for the week, this was the most uncompetitive matchup of the week by a good margin. The next biggest blowout of the week was by 15 fewer points! Sam joined Stephen and Cory as playoff teams who ended their regular seasons with losses.

Sean enjoyed a huge offensive week and a strong pitching week on the league’s highest volume. It all added up to the highest 7-day score any team has mustered this season and a Wild Card date with the manager he beat last season to earn a berth in Scully Cup III.

After being dropped from first to third in the power rankings in Week 17, Sean put together the best week any team has had all season to claim the final #1 spot of 2024, the sixth of his career, all coming this season.

At the bottom, Andrew claims his 18th last place ranking, just four shy of the all-time record.

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.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse