Some 13-point leads are safer than others. I was fully aware of this as I carried a 124-111 advantage into the final week of the season in LABR Mixed. I had spent almost the entire year among the top four teams in this 15-team league and resided in first place for the entire month of September.
But there were a lot of close categories, a lot of ways for me to lose multiple points in nearly every category and even some ways for me to increase my lead. In other words, the season wasn’t nearly over on the morning of Sept. 23.
That’s when Steve Gardner of USA Today, the LABR commish who also happened to be the second-place team, sent out an email to the league saying that there wasn’t a whole lot of drama as to the final outcome. He then thanked everyone for their participation this season. I even got a congratulatory note from one owner. I’m not a big believer in jinxes, but this nonetheless made me uneasy. Some 13-point leads are safer than others.
Our draft was held on Feb. 12, and this super-early date is noteworthy in that there’s no way Pete Alonso would have still been on the board in the 16th round had the draft taken place a month later. Even in mid-March, Alonso was fairly cheap, as he wasn’t even assured a spot on the Mets’ Opening Day roster, but his price did gradually rise as spring training progressed. Anyway, I figured I’d take a flier on him in the 16th, and that decision turned out to be one of the biggest reasons why I was in contention throughout the season.
Aside from choosing Justin Upton in the 5th round over George Springer, I didn’t make any big mistakes in the draft. Nolan Arenado, Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo were my first three picks, and all three of those guys at the very least earned their price. As the saying goes, you can’t win your league in the first few rounds of the draft, but you can lose it. I didn’t lose it, and I then went on to make several highly profitable picks aside from Alonso, including Brad Hand (7th round), Kirby Yates (9th), Tim Anderson (10th), Julio Teheran (18th) and Mitch Garver (20th). On the FAAB front, Lance Lynn, Oscar Mercado, Albert Pujols and Aristides Aquino all made significant contributions, while Garrett Hampson, Harrison Bader and Sean Manaea played key roles down the stretch.
After trading for Jonathan Villar in mid-July, I quickly gained five points in steals, and even though I was still in a tight race with three other teams, I began to think that a championship could be in my future. On the morning of Sept. 23, before the troubling email was sent out, I closely analyzed the standings and came to the conclusion that if everything went wrong for me over the final seven days and everything went right for Steve, there could be an 18-point turnaround. Ahead by 13, I pegged my probability of winning at 90%. It was an unscientific estimation, but it seemed about right.
Then, the games began on Sept. 23 and my unscientific probability estimation began to plunge.
(9/23) Adam Wainwright @ARI : 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 2 BB
(9/24) Jack Flaherty @ARI: 7 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 2 BB
(9/25) Anibal Sanchez vs. PHI: 7 IP, 6 H, 2 ER
(9/25) Charlie Morton vs. NYY: 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 3 BB
(9/25) Julio Teheran @KC: 2 1/3 IP, 6 H, 6 ER, 1 BB
(9/26) Jose Quintana @PIT: 5 IP, 12 H, 5 ER
As you can guess, I owned Wainwright, Teheran and Quintana while Steve owned Flaherty, Sanchez and Morton. Teheran had struggled in his previous two outings but I really thought he would bounce back in a favorable matchup against the Royals. Nope. By the end of the night on Sept. 26, Steve had passed me in both ERA and WHIP, cutting four more points from my already dwindling lead.
There were other reasons why Steve was able to eventually turn a 13-point deficit into a 0.5-point deficit heading into Sunday and a 3.5-point victory by the end of Sunday. There was another poor outing by Wainwright on the penultimate day of the season, a Jack Flaherty gem on the last day and injuries to Anthony Rizzo and Jean Segura limiting my counting-stat production during that final week. But when looking back at how things fell apart, I will most of all remember that four-day stretch of starting pitching from Sept. 23-26.
Oh, and I’ll also remember that email.
Zach Steinhorn is the 2016 Mixed Auction Tout Wars champion. Follow him on Twitter @zachsteinhorn.
