NEW YORKERS PULL AWAY LATE FOR 4-PEAT

New Yorkers took control of 1st place late and didn’t look back for an unprecedented fourth straight Gold after sitting in 2nd & 3rd place most of the season. They finish with 96 pts, a comfortable seven ahead of #2 My Balls Ichiro (89) after we saw the closest finish in the Roto era last season at just a point. The last two champs (New Yorkers) finished with 93 pts after the first two Roto champs (McNamee’s Heroes: 102, New Yorkers: 111) topped 100 pts. New Yorkers peaked at 98 pts on September 22 after a sudden surge in late August. They sat in the mid-to-high 80s (under 90) every day from June 10 to August 28 when they hit 90 and then kept climbing from there, in the low-to-mid 90s from August 30 to September 14 then hitting 96+ nearly every day since. Like the last two seasons and unlike the first two seasons of Roto, it was a hard-fought battle for the top spot for most of the season, with a handful of teams holding 1st place and no team cracking 100 pts except for a few days in April. Also like last season, New Yorkers had to work extremely hard to win with a league-leading 83 moves (86 last season). My Balls have medaled in three of the last four seasons, back on the podium after just missing it with a 4th-place finish last season following a Bronze in 2021 and a Silver in 2020. They started the final week trailing New Yorkers by 11 pts (97-86) but closed the gap to just 5.5 on Sunday morning after it was 7.5 for three straight days, making a final-day miracle possible, but they’d end up three pts higher than last Monday at 89 while New Yorkers fell a point to 96. Meanwhile, McNamee’s Heroes collect their second straight Bronze in an exciting finish to a tight and crowded battle after El Niño started the week 3.5 pts ahead of them in 3rd place. El Niño had a final-week collapse as they led them by at least two pts until Sunday morning, leading them by 4.5 on Thursday morning. McNamee’s still trailed them 78-76 on Saturday morning but took 3rd place from them on the final day with 78 as El Niño suddenly fell to 5th place behind 2Shadez, who trailed them 78-75 in 5th place on Saturday morning, with them each separated by a point (78, 77, 76). McNamee’s would lose a half point to 77.5 while 2Shadez fell 1.5 to 75.5 and El Niño fell a point to 75 in a narrow finish.

After dealing with offensive struggles last season and successfully patching it together with pickups, that was true for New Yorkers’ pitching this season. Like last season when J. deGrom missed over half the season, debuting in August, and fellow keeper W. Buehler (Tommy John surgery) went down in June after struggling, their pitching was ravaged again, losing ace keepers J. deGrom & S. Bieber in the first half and another keeper A. Manoah melting down (dropped on June 6 after a 6.36 ERA & 1.90 WHIP over 58 IP), sitting last in WHIP for much of the season. But they patched together a new staff and eventually got to a third-best 3.80 ERA and a middle-of-the-pack 1.23 WHIP while easily taking W by 12 with 106 and characteristically dominating K with 1,676, 209 more than the next team. Unusually, their offense carried them (other than a second-to-last AVG) as they led R (874), HR (281, third most through 2006 behind 299 by 2019 McNamee’s Heroes & 297 by 2019 2Shadez) & RBI (848) while finishing third in SB (155), led by a prolific campaign from #1 pick M. Olson (127 R, 54 HR, 139 RBI), 47 HR from K. Schwarber (claimed off waivers in May from My Balls, 33 HR for them) and 47 SB from C. Abrams (30 for them). They win their seventh title (18th medal) after finally securing their first Gold since 2008 in 2020 (four Silvers in the previous five years), with the last full decade of Head-to-Head (2009-2018) filled with unbelievably unlucky and agonizing finishes to stellar seasons (six Silvers since 2008), as Roto has treated them much better with now their fourth straight Gold.