Nightmare’s Week 12 Power Rankings

By Nightmare—

Happy (belated) 4^th of July!!!  I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday and didn’t get into too much trouble or blow off any fingers or anything (Sorry Nelson… I feel like I know you well enough for that joke, but if I don’t, I apologize). 

Anyways, the short week doesn’t mean I’m shorting you on this week’s rankings.  Believe me, I thought about mailing it in, but then I envisioned Vlade’s tirade about how I should just give up and blah blah blah.  What do you say to the god of crankiness?  Not today.  (Vlade, that is a Game of Thrones reference, but you won’t get it because… old and lame).

1. The Dodgers swept the Whalers last week.  Psych hit another 30 bombs.  Just kidding, only 6.  I'm too lazy to do the work, but can we all agree Psych will be the fastest hitter to 100 bombs.  Holy cow, 100 bombs in his first 100 games (he's at 82 HRs in 91games now).  It's unlikely, but anything is possible for this kid right now (including giving up 9 to the Pups).  Anyways, with Psych hitting this well, and Epstein and the rest playing pretty darn good ball too, the boys in blue get the top spot... if even just for a week.

2. The Mets haven't lost in about 50 days.  That's pretty impressive.  If I ruled the world… I'd force the Mets and Dodgers to Jack Swing Off for my amusement the top spot.  But I don't, so the Dodgers get the slight edge, based pretty much solely on Psych hitting all the homeruns.  I mean to take nothing away from my favorite Hopkins team (well, really just JC, the rest, meh).

3. Three weeks of .500 wiffleball for the Biscuits.  Have the wheels completely fallen off?  Can the buttery boys bust this slump?  Is this the beginning of the end…?  I played with the third nicest guy in the HRL* this spring (Huck Finn).  And I will say to the Biscuits, what he often said to me in "clutch" moments (there were no clutch spring moments really)... "I believe in you."  It's way more meaningful when Huck says it (because he’s a great human being and I’m not), but I believe in the Biscuits.  If for no other reason, so I can plug them back in at #1 and just ignore them the rest of the season.

4. The Yankees beat the Bears twice last week and will probably beat the Pigs a couple times later this evening.  Although talking about Yeller is my favorite, I'll take a minute to highlight future ROY, Z-Dog.  Hitting .333 with 15 HRs.  That's pretty nice.  Jeez, this team is hitting .320... They're pretty good.

5. The Americans' 10-game win streak is on the line tonight against los perritos.  A month ago I'd be talking about a 12-game win streak… I'm not so sure tonight.  For their sake, I I hope Mierda de Doctor, Pelp en el Pecho, and company bring their 'A' game.  (For the record, you know I don't speak Spanish... but I did eat a whole wheel of cheese...)

6. Can you imagine how good the Braves would be without Vlade?  Just kidding, I think they'd be about the same.  Which is very good.  Since their 0-3 start, they're 15-2, which is great.  They take on the Mets this week, and if I ever went to Hopkins willingly, this is a series I'd actually check out.

7. The Reds play the Lugnuts tonight.  I have two predictions:  1) They'll score 40+ runs, and 2) I will have snarky things to say about it.

8. I take it all back.  I do not want to see any celebration videos from the RubberDucks.  At least not until next week.  The Ducks were off last week and this week get to participate in the first ever HRL Moist Water Splash Night!  Four water-themed teams will get wet and splash around to determine who rules the seven seas...sigh…  This is getting out of hand quickly.  Anyways, Ducks, Seamen, Pirates, Fish all on one field this week.  See you there, landlubbers.... (I'm so disappointed in myself).

9. The Marlins barely take two from the orange birds last week.  The scores don't reflect the games.  Fish had 3 hits (all bombs!) for the series.  I'm going to blame the weather.  Oh, and the Orioles.  More on them later.  Anyways, since our manager hasn’t, I’ll post an open invite for a game-3 versus the Marlins.  We got all 3 left, it would be a shame not to use any of them.  Although, I hear we may have one earmarked for…

10. The Kardinals... Day 21 of a 24-day vacation... yuck.

11. Know what teams should think about when they think of the RoughRiders?  How much you don't want to see them on August 17 (Wifflepalooza).  At this point, it is the only thing I am certain of when it comes to H8R and Co.

12. The Athletics are kind of an unpredictable bunch right now.  One of nine (!) teams with fewer homeruns than Psych… but they keep winning games.  I don't know what to make of these guys… but I will ask, is there a manager of the year award?  And is it too early to give it to Kong?

13. The Chihauhaus… it would be really poor/sloppy writing to just plug in another .gif ("jiff") this week…

14. The Pirates are still solid.  Nothing happened during their bye week to change that… just as one would expect.

15. The Giants need to snap this 5-game losing streak if they want to… stay in 3rd place in their division...  I'm not good at the maths, but are they (and half of Hopkins) already mathematically condemned to Wifflepalooza? 

16. The Twins were off last week, after losing a couple to Eagan (the league's superior city).  They play the Giants (another team that is better than their record reflects) this week where K-Mart will look to add to his long list of accolades with his HR #200.  No, it isn't 500, but he's about three times** nicer than Sanchez, so it feels like a bigger accomplishment.  Also, Nelson is almost at 600 hits.  That's cool... but apparently we don't care about 600 hits since no one said anything when I did it...

17. The Mariners no longer have a guy named 'Beah.'  So that's pretty cool. 

18. EAD leads the Iron Pigs in every statistical category (the good ones anyways).

19. I said it a couple weeks ago about los Perriots, and I'll say it again this week about the Orioles.  These guys are better than their record.  I'm trying to think of which cliché to use to describe them… first, these guys can pitch a little.  I got to strike out against see Slim and Shaggy throw and was pleasantly surprised.  Both of them have a really good [insert pitch] but need a second pitch (hey, there’s my cliché!).  Anyways, cliché, but true.  They’d also both benefit from going out with a bucket of balls and throwing a couple hundred pitches (yes, I'm talkin' 'bout practice)... They just need to work out a couple kinks… make a couple tweaks… whatever you want to say, but the point is that they both have the potential to be very good.  The Orioles hitting isn't what I expected either, they showed a lot of patience the other night.  Especially considering most of them are rookies.

20. I said the Bears would win ten games…I don't feel great about that right now... but I'll stick by it.  I mean, do I have to beg the Professor to come back??  Because I would.  And Truck… I just love that guy.  That has nothing to do with anything, I just wanted that out on the internet, so that it would be "out there" forever. 

21. I sincerely hope that what we're seeing with the Whalers is not Sanchez trying to go out with a bang.  He's putting up some monster numbers and has all the important stats/records (the ones I would care about anyways: 1100 hits, 500 HRs, 1100 RBI)… I hope this isn't a Sanchez swan song (say that three times fast).
22. I don't know about you, but the Lugnuts have been feeling 22…  Unlike the rest of my former team, I'm not that into T-Swift (or Ke$ha, or the Frozen soundtrack), so I had to go look this up… finally.  My bad.

*Nicest guy in the HRL is Box and the 2^nd nicest is Fedawg.

**K-Mart is probably actually only about twice as nice as Sanchez, but I had to tweak it so the math worked out."