Written by Cory Puffett
Published August 17, 2025

It's time for the fifth edition of the Scully Cup!

It's been quite a ride this season. After earning three lucky wins early in the year to keep his team afloat, Cory Puffett's Fireflies were absolutely dominant down the stretch of the season and set an AOA record with 16 wins. Cory's squad recorded the fewest points from hitting stats in the entire AOA during the regular season. His pitching was so good, however, he led the league in overall scoring to earn this year's Joe McCarthy Award. He had 201.50 more points from pitching than any other manager!

Stephen April countered Cory's AOA West title with his own division title in the AOA East, his second division title in as many years in the league. Though he finished about 30 points shy of Cory's point total for the season, he had one more all-play victory than his West division counterpart, earning the Dusty Baker Award as the AOA's all-play champ for the season.

Just a game behind Cory in the West was Rich Blorstad, who finished equal with Stephen at 15 wins in the regular season. He was red-hot to start the season, finishing in the top half of the AOA in scoring in eight of the first nine weeks. He cooled off significantly as we entered the second half, though, finishing in the bottom half of scoring six times between Weeks 10 and 16, before closing the year with four straight top-half performances.

And then there was Sam Martin, the reigning Scully Cup champion from a year ago. He was aflicted all year with some terrible luck. Only Sean Kennedy was more unlucky than Sam over the course of the season. Sam suffered four unlucky losses, three of them in the first half of the campaign. Despite finishing two games under .500 at season's end, with four bottom-four performances in the final six weeks of the season, Sam snuck into the tournament on the strength of his three head-to-head victories against Sean.

In the league's first three years, the two top scoring teams in the semifinal won their matchups to face off in the Scully Cup. Last year was the first time the manager with the second highest total in the wild card round was facing the top scorer when Stephen suffered an unlucky loss at Sam's hand.

Well, it's happened again. Find out who the unlucky victim of this year's bad luck playoff bug was below.

Players of the Week

Catcher - Cal Raleigh, 9.55 points (Stephen April)

1st Baseman - Nick Kurtz, 8.75 points (Cory Puffett)

2nd Baseman - Ketel Marte, 11.95 points (Rich Blorstad)

3rd Baseman - Junior Caminero, 9.00 points (Stephen April)

Shortstop - Francisco Lindor, 15.60 points (Sam Martin)

OF - Christian Yelich, 13.90 points (Rich Blorstad)

UTIL - Shohei Ohtani, 9.55 points (Sam Martin)

SP - Logan Webb, 14.90 points (Sam Martin)

RP - Aroldis Chapman, 7.90 points (Sam Martin)

Story

In the headliner, this marked the third consecutive year the AOA’s Lou Piniella Regular Season Champ lost in the wild card round, and the second year in a row Cory Puffett was the victim of this travesty.

After a very successful regular season, Cory’s Fireflies put together a strong performance in the wild card, recording the second most points of the four playoff teams. Alas, this was also the second year in a row the top two scorers in the wild card round were facing each other.

Sam’s squad was on fire this week. Only Stephen scored more offensive points than Sam, and by less than five points. Meanwhile, Sam’s pitchers had a very strong week with six quality starts in seven opportunities and a pair of saves across four relief appearances. His 71.10 pitching points were almost 10 points clear of Cory’s pitching total and nearly 30 points ahead of Stephen’s total.

In the 2-3 matchup, Stephen and Rich played a bit of cat-and-mouse through the first four days of the week, but Stephen made his move on Friday thanks in part to seven extra base hits in 32 at bats.

With Rich’s pitchers having a disgraceful week on the bump, there was no way he could close the gap in the final days of the week. Prior to this week, the worst pitching week in an AOA postseason contest was Andrew Perez’s 2021 wild card performance when his staff, across 42.1 innings in seven starts and seven relief appearances,  recorded a 5.53 ERA, 1.394 WHIP, and 4.19 FIP. Rich’s dredgers, or perhaps more appropriately ‘dreadfuls,’ blew all three of those numbers out of the water.

Scully Cup V Preview

We've reached the final game of the season. Two managers will face off, one looking for his second career Scully Trophy and the other looking for redemption.