Stephen has been on a tear. He earned his second conescutive Rickey Henderson Award this week, and his third of the season, while also capturing the Manny Ramirez Award in his first career appearance in the Game of the Week. Sam falls to 15-9 in his appearances.

While the Bowie representative enjoyed a pretty terrific week at the dish, Sam's Airlanders did all they could to keep pace. In fact, the league owes Sam a bit of thanks since this is the first time since Week 2 anybody has had more home runs in a week than Stephen. Coupled with his team drawing 11 more walks and getting two more hits than Stephen's allowed Sam to outscore his opponent by almost 10 points on offense.

Unfortunately for Sam, Stephen's pitchers came to play in Week 8. I may have to go back through our data to see if I can pull weekly offensive and pitcher point totals for every team because I'm genuinely curious if this is the first time we've ever had a manager score 100 points just from pitching in a single week. It's unlikely it never happened before 2024 simply because the pool wasn't as diluted when we only had eight teams, but this was an incredible performance for Stephen regardless.

As the second highest scorer, this is Sam's third unlucky loss of the year, offset by only one lucky win so far. He's been the unluckiest manager in 2024. This was the 14th time in league history the top two scorers were matched up against one another. It was the second straight time Sam found himself on the losing end of one of these games, and Stephen's 35.75-point margin of victory broke the previous record of 32.75 points when Cory Puffett beat Sam in Week 12 of the 2022 season.

Both managers did a good job of managing their teams this week. Rich had eight relief appearances, the most any manager has had in a 7-day matchup this season. Robert Suarez and Ryan Helsley almost did enough to get him back in it, and if they hadn't both given up home runs in their saves on Sunday, this would've been a one-point game and had the potential to flip on a stat correction.

But Cory also had a solid week of management. His 66 games played by offensive players is a new AOA record for a 7-day matchup, breaking his old (unofficial) record of 62 games played during Week 19 of the 2022 season. Games played records from prior to 2024 will remain unofficial because double-headers were only counted as one game played during those seasons.

Ultimately, Cory's win came down to pitching. While he and Rich were pretty evenly matched in terms of volume, Cory's ERA, WHIP, and FIP were all significantly better than Rich's, which allowed him to overcome a 5.5-point deficit in offensive output.

Evan continues to cost himself points each and every week, and this week it undoubtedly cost him a win and a .500 record. With Ronel Blanco continuing to take up a relief pitcher spot every day through the season's first eight weeks, he continues to be inelligible to receive a point for any quality start he makes (he's had five of them so far this year, including one on Sunday).

This choice also takes away a starting roster spot from a relief pitcher who could be earning him saves or holds or even just a few innings through the week. As a result, he has just 18 relief appearances through 8 weeks this season. For context, Cory Puffett has 51 relief appearances thus far and only Sean Kennedy, with 28, joins Evan with fewer than 30, which is pretty impressive considering Andrew Perez didn't have a relief appearance until the 16th day of the regular season.

Instead, Alex won despite a 2-point deficit on offense and a significant volume deficit from his pitching staff, as his pitchers threw roughly 8 fewer innings than Evan's did.

Cory didn't do much roster management this week, getting only four starts from his pitchers, but that was one more than Eric got as Nathan Eovaldi continues to eat up a starting spot during his time on the 15-day IL. Eric also has not had a single starting appearance by a first baseman since Week 3 as Triston Casas continues his stint on the 60-day IL with a rib injury.

As a result, Cory got a pretty easy win this week. His point total was respectable but fell outside the Top 5 scores of the week, making this his second lucky win of the season. He's one of two managers who are +2 in the luck category this season. To Cory's credit, though, he is now the only manager in 2024 who has scored at least 100 points in every single matchup he's played.

The other lucky manager is Sean, who joins Cory Frontin at 2 wins above expected through Week 8. His team has been solid, but a bit inconsistent. This was the first time this year he fell below 100 points, but Andrew was unable to take advantage.

Despite a solid home run output, Andrew set one of the lowest plate apperance totals of a 7-day matchup in AOA history, lower than any but a few of Cory Frontin's weeks from 2021 and 2023, the two seasons where he paid no attention to his lineup.

Because of Andrew's lack of attention, Sean got away with his pitching staff posting the worst FIP and the third worst ERA of any week in 2024.