Any other good pennant races out there?

[cool hand]

AL 4X4
For the first 9 weeks of the season, I was in last place.
(Solidly projected lineup, LOTs of veteran underachievers)
2 weeks ago, I was 11.5 points out of first.
Today, at the close of games I'm 2.5 points out.
I've made one relatively low impact (single player) trade, but have had a TON of waiver & free agent acquisitions.
This season is getting FUN, quickly...

[chancellor]

Was in a brutal 3-way race, but my pitching took a dump the last couple weeks (Kazmir, Archer, C Young) and I've fallen out of it. 12-teamer and it was running 100-98.5-97 or so for about a month. Last two weeks took me from 98 - 99 points down to 91-93, so I'm pretty much toast.

[Mithrandir]

Was in a brutal 3-way race, but my pitching took a dump the last couple weeks (Kazmir, Archer, C Young) and I've fallen out of it. 12-teamer and it was running 100-98.5-97 or so for about a month. Last two weeks took me from 98 - 99 points down to 91-93, so I'm pretty much toast.

There's still a month left. You can't gain back those points with a solid month?

[senorsheep]

I had a brief scare two weeks ago when my closest competitor's upswing coincided with one of my downswings, closing the gap to 4 points. Since then, I've opened up a 12-point lead on him, and he's experienced some key injuries that will likely keep him at bay for the remainder of the season.

Regrettably, I got nervous when he pulled within 4 and panic-traded my keepable $10 Homer Bailey for Brandon McCarthy. Blecch...

[Judge Jude]

NL-only 12-team 5x5, generally takes 100 or better to win, and never lower than 97:

87.5
84
83.5
81.5
81.5

top 3 teams each have only one of their six season-long "can cut an active player for a FA" left. and if your player gets hurt and no DL, no way to replace him except using a waiver move. the other 2 contenders each have FOUR optional moves left.

it's on. it's so on.

[Jefe]

I just made the world series in my H2H point league, and I'm in 3rd place right now for overall points. My world series opponent is in 1st overall.

I just won a 2-week playoff game (cumulative points over two weeks) by about 10 points. It was a close one.

The world series is cumulative points over 3 weeks. Fingers crossed.

[kawaise]

I'm in two -only local leagues. I'm toying with the field in my NL-only league, but there's something special going on in our AL-only league.

I've NEVER rooted for an opponent to win in my 28 years of playing with the exception of this year. This winter one of our community's generous business owners and member of our league died unexpectedly in January. He suddenly got ill and died within a couple days. He'd played in our league for thirteen years, only finishing in the money once. You know the cliché about nice guys ..... At some point Carl invited his oldest son to play along with him, and in time we had an opening in our league that Tyler took. Tyler has finished in the money a couple times but has never won the league.

Tyler's team has been in first place since the end of April, at times having as much as a 20 point lead on the field. His lead has gradually decreased, as one would expect. Typically 70+ points wins this 4x4 league. This morning the standings were:

62.5 (Tyler)
61 (defending champion)
58 (me)
55
54
54
52

The top five finish "in the money." I truly admit that I would be disappointed if Tyler didn't win the first Carl G. Memorial Trophy; it would be an honor to finish second or third place this year.

[Mithrandir]

As of today I am 27 points up in my 14-team mixed (with madducks and Mag7)..going for an unprecedented three-peat.

I know the lead is large, but I am still not counting the proverbial chickens....

[Judge Jude]

start of day, guy with best keeper list in our 31-year history still led 95-94
as the last ABs arrive in LAD-COL, it appears he has lost, 94 to 93.5

he used his last of 6 'free' moves to grab Lohse a couple of weeks ago, which worked well, but he couldn't or wouldn't cut loose a cheap but not playing Arenado down the stretch. he kept Arenado but lost the war. injuries to Jose Fernandez, Wacha, Gio, Ryu, Goldschmidt and Arenado, with loss of Street to AL leading to acquisition of AReed, who sucked. Lincecum addition was even worse before he dumped him after a 9.49 ERA in 6 starts. dumping him even one sooner start would have been worth 3 ERA pts and a title.

#badbeat

winner was in 5th place on Sept 1, though only 8.5 pts back
Posey, Cueto, Bumgarner, and Kimbrel among the heroes

[overkill94]

In my 11-team NL-only it's been a 2-team battle between me and the new guy for a while now. Right now he's got 86 and I'm at 84 with 3rd place at 69. Losing Trumbo for an extended period of time has hurt but my only other major injuries were to Jaime Garcia and Jhoulys Chacin which ruined my pitching depth but they weren't exactly core guys anyway. My real problem has been that all my expensive hitters are underperforming - Heyward (not bad, not worth $37), Bruce (traded for him a little over a month ago, definitely not worth $38), Trumbo (the injury didn't help, but either way he's not pulling his $30 weight). Now that a couple of my early season pitching darlings are showing their warts (Beckett and Eovaldi) I've started to lose ground in the pitching categories, but hopefully my hitting will make up for it. On paper my team is much better than his, but I need some of these guys to start producing.

Ended up pulling off the title 88.5-84. My excellent starting pitching (Kershaw, Cueto, and Zimmerman primarily) led to 50 pitching points while a 2nd place finish in steals (thanks to Revere, Rollins, JHay, Heyward, and Wong) buoyed an otherwise mediocre offense dragged down by some overpaid "stars" (Bruce mostly). It looked to be in the bag when I had a 10+ point lead a couple weeks ago but my hitting completely tanked, losing me a handful of points in OBP, and Soriano lost the closer gig which also cost me a couple points.

Anyway, it was a gratifying season and I still have some good keepers going into next year since I didn't really have to make any blockbuster deals (only dealt away Archie Bradley and Matt Wisler). It's been a long time since this league has had a back-to-back winner (if ever, I've only been in it 8 years) but with some savvy drafting hopefully I can do it!