Month One Finale, 2x Pick-Em

  As means to keep all of the General Managers engaged year round, whether their team is competitive or not in a particular season, Monthly Pick-Em Payouts have been a staple since the conception of the HumBabe Dynasty Fantasy Baseball League.  Every week, one of the eight (8) Match-Up’s is selected as the “Match-Up of the Week” for GM’s to cast a Pick-Em vote against.  Correct picks are totaled up for four weeks, or one Month, with a Payout going to the team with the most correct picks at the end of each.  Should two or more teams tie with the same number of correct picks at the end of a month, the tiebreaker is determined by which HumBabe team scored more fantasy points in the same time frame.

  Now that the standard rules have been thoroughly reiterated, let’s introduce the new 2024 Season curveball.

  In the final week of each Pick-Em Month, two Match-Ups will be featured as the Pick-Em Finale.  The Finale will move each month’s total from four picks to five, giving everyone an additional stab at the $20.00 cash prize (paid via Venmo, not cold hard cash given the required commute).

  For the first month of the 2024 Season, Jackal Attack v Orlando and Wally Mash v LeBronto will act as the inaugural Pick-Em Finale.  Currently in the driver seat for the first payout, Wally Mash is three for three on picks to this point, but the tiebreaker over Perth Playtpi’s three for three is just sixteen points going into Week Four play.  Perth is the only other GM that’s gone three for three, but with two picks left via the Finale, Orlando may also be in the running for a payout given his +200 FPts advantage over Wally Mash.

  The Orlando Splitters lead the League in Fantasy Points Scored to date, and hold a 3-0 record, but now enter the “Jackal Den.”  The Owner of Jackal Attack has made himself notorious on Twitter / X and recently voiced frustration that not every HumBabe team has an official X account to tag when they enter the Jackal Den.  While HumBabe’s presence on X could certainly use some additional attention, we’ll have to wait for Jackal’s Owner to draft that excerpt for a HumNow publication.  In the meantime, Jackal’s hired GM has also put together a 3-0 squad that makes a strong case against Orlando for Top Dog in the 2024 Standings.  Freedie Freeman and Shoehi Ohtani will lead Jackal’s effort against Juan Soto and the flourishing Splitters offense that has managed to carry the burden for their injured pitching staff.

  Wally Mash enters Week Four on the heels of a gut-wrenching loss to the Say Hey Kids, who only managed a victory thanks to the Ronald Acuna Jr and other Atlanta Braves during Sunday Night Baseball.  LeBronto has been disappointed with their 2-1 start to the season but seems to have righted-the-ship in Week Three’s victory over Perth.  Rumor has it that LeBronto is on the cusp of adding Mike Trout to their Kyle Tucker outfield as well.

  All of this makes for a nail-biting Week Four.  Report back to the next HumNow issue to see who landed the Pick-Em Payout Venmo-cash prize.

Who’s Still Healthy?

  If there has been one overarching theme to the 2024 Season so far, unfortunately the mass quantity of injured players seems to come to the forefront.  Every single HumBabe team has at least one player injured, but some teams have certainly been hit harder than others.  

  The Orlando Splitters started the season with Gerrit Cole on the Injured List, a Spring Training punch to the mid-section, but then added Spencer Strider and Shane Bieber to their list of damaged aces.  In LeBronto, Sandy Alcantara, Luis Garcia, and Lance McCullers were known injuries, but Jhoan Duran and now Garrett Whitlock have started to consume roster space while mending wounds.  Luis Robert Jr and Devin Williams look better in Golden City uniforms than injury-caused street clothing, and the Brooklyn Robins see to have accumulated injuries from Costco (in bulk) with Bobby Miller, Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, Jose Urquidy, and Cody Bradford.

  Each of these teams could plead their case for holding the short straw in the injury landscape, but who has had it the best to date?  Who has been the healthiest?  

  In terms of raw data entering Week Four, the healthiest HumBabe teams are the Lone Star Drillers (2-1), the Eastside Bombers (3-0), and the Super Smash Stros (2-1).  Lone Star saw Kris Bryant go down recently, but what’s new there?  An outfield made up of Bryan Reynolds, Giancarlo Stanton, and Josh Smith should do for now.  The Bombers are still building for the future and can manage without Pete Fairbank’s struggles for now, Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford frontline this rebuild in the best of ways.  Lastly, the Super Smash Stros would prefer to have Josh Jung and Nick Pivetta in the lineup, absolutely, but compared to their competition, they look pretty darn healthy to date.

Sunday Night Stardom

  Had the Atlanta Braves and Texas Rangers Sunday Night Baseball game been postponed, the Brooklyn Robins would have defeated the Nashville Stars by sixteen fantasy points in Week Three.  But it didn’t get postponed.  Instead, Michael Lorenzen toed the rubber and Adolis Garcia stepped up for four AB’s.  As a result, Lorenzen shoved for six innings of three-hit ball on his way to a seven-strikeout quality start and earned the dub (23.5 FPts) and Adolis scored twelve fantasy points on the back of a double and a bomb.  There was plenty else that unfolded during this Week Three match-up but with these last second Sunday Night performances, Brooklyn moves to a 1-2 record despite the League’s fourth best points scored total.

  The Nashville Stars have turned their 8th best point total into a 2-1 record in the early going, and look up only at the Jackal Attack in BCL Mays Division competition.  Adolis Garcia continues to carry this team with his fifth best player point total League-wide (135 FPts).  The next best Stars have been Steven Kwan (31st), Andres Gimenez (35th), and Ronel Blanco’s No-Hitter (36th in total points to date among all players).

  As the trade market activates for the 2024 HumBabe season, Brooklyn may look to bolster what currently ranks out as a 9th best pitching staff to support their second ranked offense.  But then again, Walker Buehler leads a long list of injured pitchers for the Robins that may solve this probably without any transactions.  The Stars, on the other hand, shine as the League’s sixth best pitching staff and despite Adolis’s heroics, fall to tenth in total hitting points.  Trevor Story, Jake Burger, and Jake Fraley all sit on Nashville’s Injured List for now while Jared Triolo, Brice Turang, and Ryan O’Hearn look to fill in during their Week Four Match-Up against the Florida Squeeze.