Man's League Blog: Week 15 v. Traveling Pants Ben

The streak is over. The Five-Ways had won three match-ups in a row, matching their longest stretch of the season in weeks 1-3. But I'm not too disappointed with my squad - they actually played fairly well by the numbers. Except for Cody Ross, whose performance came off more like this.

The All-Star break and the short week meant that every number counted just a little bit more. With that in mind, the boys on the hill clamped down and gave up very few runs. Unfortunately, Ben's crew was even better, hurling 5 quality starts in the 7 permitted for the contest. I had a shot at saves, but in the end, Rivera got more chances than Street and Franklin. So despite a good effort and Ricky Romero's kindly nature, Ben wrested four of the five runs from me here.

To counter that, I had the clubhouse guy order some of Big Papi's magic eyedrops and hand them out. This resulted in Ichiro, Ethier, Pedroia, Castillo, and Seth Smith hitting over .350 for the week. That's right, Seth Smith! Apparently someone informed the Rockies that although Eli Manning played ahead of Smith, it wasn't required that Carlos Gonzalez do the same. You would think that would be pretty clear, since Archie is definitely not Carlos' father. Here's hoping Smith remains in the regular lineup, as the blogosphere has been begging for since early June. And what of the offensive categories? Well with that kind of spark in the lineup, it wasn't that hard for the Queen City Nine to grab four of the five categories and even out the score.

So although the results weren't quite what a manager hopes for, I can't really complain about a tie game. Except for the fact that this is a form of baseball. There's no tying in baseball! Oh wait, maybe there is. In any case, week 16 awaits, and that means a face-off with Weaselly Brian. Like his nickname would suggest, he's a very sneaky type of fantasy player, frequently hitting up the waiver wire to improve his team with undrafted young talent. This practice is far more respectable than his original weasel-deed, where he registered his young son for tumbling rather than tee ball, and while delivering the boy to his activity, had the nerve to blame the switch on his wife. With any luck, at the end of our contest he will have to claim she was at fault for my team's victory. Fingers crossed...