As we head into the final month of the 2021 fantasy baseball season, we have been monitoring some changes at the top end of the Fantasy Baseball UK standings, with Secret Agents and The Sofa Boys taking over first place in the main and Limited Trade games respectively. With the end of the season in sight – on 3 October – there are likely to be more twists and turns before the game is up! Scroll down for the full round-up…
Don’t forget that you can view the full standings for each division and combined in the main and Limited Trade games in the Standings section of the website.
Manager of the Month: August
Having finished among the top five performing managers of the previous month, Ken Plumpton‘s Uplands Yankees continued moving in only one direction (erm… upwards), scoring the most points in August to earn Ken the Manager of the Month title. Unsurprisingly, given their respective teams’ ascent to the top of the overall standings, Rene Becker (Secret Agents) and Rupert Henley (Glasgow Kiss) featured among the best managers of the month. However, for a bit of variety, the top three managers’ teams are all outside the top ten in the overall standings
Also, here are the top five ‘most improved’ teams in August, measured as a percentage rise on their total points at the end of July:
Ken Plumpton – Uplands Yankees – 35%
John McElwaine – Ambrose’s Rabbits – 35%
Matt Blackmore – Soxy Beast – 34%
David Polgreen – Pumpsie Green – 34%
John Borthwick – Ready Eddie Go – 32%
Fantasy League Standings (top): 4 September
In both the main and Limited Trade games (where there is a limit on the number of player transactions per team) fantasy teams are grouped into regional divisions but they are also combined to give overall standings across the two formats.
Main game
The top of the overall standings looks considerably different to last month’s update. Back then, several of the top teams had reached their innings pitched (IP) limit of 1400 and the question was whether the chasing pack with more pitching capacity could close the substantial gap in the remainder of the season. For now, the answer is yes, as there is a new top three, all of which have a small amount of their IP limit left to play with.
However, the two teams that had dominated first and second place for much of the season – Wake Field Padres and Davy Dodgers – are currently hanging in there despite no longer scoring pitching points, whereas a number of the other teams that had hit the IP limit rapidly fell away from the top ten.
What is for sure is that the standings have got much closer going into the final month of the season; now only a few hundred points separate first place from tenth and below, whereas in the middle of the season it was a gap of a thousand points.
Among notable changes in the regional divisions, there has been a significant reversal in the South: wherehaveYugone erased the 250-point lead of Mighty Mighty BoSox and now itself has a division lead of 200 points or so. In the South East, Secret Agents‘ strong August enabled them to open up a similar-sized division lead over Hakuna Moncada. Prior to that, the two had been trading places in first and second. In the North, Merriment Masters are one of the teams that have faded since reaching the IP limit, as has their early dominance of the division, with Glasgow Kiss now taking prime spot.
Limited Trade game
There has been a change at the top of the overall Limited Trade game as well. Having enjoyed a steady lead of around 300 points for a few months, the Masters of Merriment party has been raided by The Sofa Boys and now it is very close at the top. In their respective regional divisions, The Sofa Boys are sitting comfortably on a lead of 700+ points in the South, while the Masters of Merriment still hold a 200+ points lead in the North.
Touch base with FBUK
In the lead-up to the season we launched new forums on the FBUK website, which is where you can contribute to the conversation on how the game is run or ask technical questions.
You can also follow Fantasy Baseball UK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Thanks for playing, stay safe, and good luck for the rest of the season!
Fantasy Baseball UK