Man's League Blog: Week 18 v. Pod Vader

And what a battle it was. It began with Willy Aybar blasting two home runs on Monday, laying down the challenge to brother Erick, a player near and dear to Pods' heart. That, and Cole Hamels just begged to be traded. Then came the revenge of Ryan Roberts, who was unceremoniously dumped from my squad back at the end of June. He hit three home runs and .471 for the week. Talk about holding a grudge. I could continue, but to keep this blog post readable in one sitting, I will now return to our regular format.

So besides the crazy overall number of taters hit (27), here's how the offense played out. Vader's evil speed demons (mostly Nyjer Morgan) netted him steals. I had top of the order guys score me a feast of runs. Guzman, Ethier, Ichiro, and beast of the week Chris Coghlan scored 6 or more times each. Russell "the Muscle" blasted a grand slam, cinching RBIs for the good guys, but the forces of evil finished with one more home run. And yes, I left David Murphy's two home run performance on the bench earlier in the week. Good call there.

With Bedard, Oswalt, and Wakefield still on the shelf, I had to rely on Derek Lowe, waiver-wire pick-up Tommy Hunter, and opposing two-start wonder Luke Hochevar to seal up ERA and WHIP. The pitching side of things also provided some tension on Sunday, as both wins and saves sat dead even. Neither team was able to take advantage, and I smartly kept Hideki Okajima glued to the bench for the Sunday night game, leaving those as ties. And as usual, I punted strikeouts like they were a cute little dog named Baxter. In fact, I should probably just start calling them Baxters.

When all was calculated, good defeated evil and I can forever claim to have defeated Pod Vader. Not convincingly or by a giant margin, but a win is a win. Now the schedule gets really tough - I face Claymate Ryan, who is atop the Anne Hathaway division and 2nd overall in the league. He earned his Man's League golden ticket by admitting to voting for Clay Aiken when he was on American Idol. Despite this flaw, his team is very formidable, and a tough match-up for me because we had similar ideas about how to build a good team in an all Fantasy Focus-listeners environment. Does my squad have what it takes to pull of the upset? Fingers crossed...