Cory and Rich each had strong two-start pitchers this week. In fact, Nick Pivetta gave Rich a quarter-point edge on Cory's top pitcher, Corbin Burnes.

Unfortunately, that was the only edge Rich had in this contest. Only one other pitcher and one offensive player reached double digits for him while Cory had a slew of players reach the 10-point mark.

Joining Burnes from the mound were another two-start pitcher, Shota Imanaga, along with Tyler Anderson and Logan Webb, who each made just one appearance this week. On offense, Cory had the 2nd baseman of the week, Ryan McMahon, alongside Isaac Paredes and Brendan Donovan, each with at least 10 points.

These players' performances culminated in Cory taking home his 7th career Manny Ramirez Award and improving his record in games of the week to 7-7 while dropping Rich to 2-2. This was Cory's first game of the week victory since Week 19 of the 2022 season.

Through seven weeks, Stephen now has two Rickey Henderson Award. That as many as Cory Frontin, Sean Kennedy, and Andrew Perez have in 67 weeks of play in the Aces Only Association!

He certainly benefited from having the highest individual scorer of the week on his team. Mitch Keller gave Stephen and the Pirates two strong starts this week, giving up just two earned runs across 12 innings.

Stephen also was the only manager in the league to reach double digit dingers in Week 7, thanks in large part to three each from Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson.

This allowed Stephen to overcome a pretty big disadvantage with an Orioles-heavy lineup this week. They only had six games scheduled for Week 7 and one got rained out and pushed to July, so two of his Orioles hitters played in five games and another two only played in four.

But even with the third fewest plate appearances of the week, he posted the only OPS above .800 and had a massive 26-point pitching advantage over Evan, who's failed to win a matchup since Week 4 despite all three of those games coming against teams that were .500 or worse entering their matchups.

Cory's Fireflies have been consistently mediocre this season. He ranks just 8th in scoring but has scored between 109 and 112 points in four of six 7-day matchups. The two exceptions were a 123.50-point outing in Week 3 and a 97-point outing in Week 5.

Sean, meanwhile, leads the league in scoring, so we were gearing up for quite an upset when Cory entered Sunday with a narrow half-point advantage over Sean.

That upset was not meant to be. George Kirby fell flat against the Orioles on Sunday afternoon for Cory and Yu Darvish, who hadn't pitched all week since leading the AOA in scoring among starting pitchers in Week 6, turned in a terrific 16.25-point performance for Sean on Sunday Night Baseball.

I suppose congratulations are in order for Eric this week. While the 2023 champ lost yet again and remains winless in 2024, he did reach 100 points in a 7-day matchup for the first time this season and avoided a third straight John Gochnaur Award as the lowest scorer of the week.

For several days, an upset appeared to be brewing. In fact, by week's end Eric had a slight advantage in the pitching category. He had five mor innings pitched, the best FIP in the league for the week and a better ERA than Alex.

But on offense, Eric fell well short. It certainly didn't help that he had the fewest runs scored in the league and tied for the fewest home runs and RBI and had the second fewest plate appearances for the week.

Sam got a bit lucky with this week's win as the #8 scorer of the week, but that's how it goes in H2H fantasy sports. He was fortunate enough to be matched up with Andrew Perez, who took home his fifth John Gochnaur Award of the season and the 11th of his career.

For the second week in a row, Aaron Judge was the highest scoring outfielder in the AOA, but this week he was much more dominant. He led the AOA with 16 points at the position in Week 6 and increased that by nearly 44% for Week 7.

With 8 extra base hits in six games, Judge slashed .500/.630/1.200 (yes, that's BA/OBP/SLG, not BA/SLG/OPS). It's been an impressive two weeks for the 2022 AL MVP who was off to a very slow start in 2024 through our first five weeks but is now the fifth highest offensive scorer in the AOA this season, only behind Soto (OF), Betts (UTIL), Ohtani (UTIL), and William Contreras (C).