It was a bit of an interesting Week 1, as a few members were traveling and at least one had technical difficulties. But the show must go on. At the end of our 15 weeks, we’ll be dropping the lowest score for each degenerate–so those who missed Week 1 still have a chance to hop in and compete!

Big Italy, one of the OG degenerates from 2017’s competition and the self-proclaimed “President of BigLon8 fan club, took home top honors in Week 1. The winning lineup scored 196.50 points:

Patrick Corbin (5% owned) got the quality start and 11 strikeouts against the Pirates, good for 38.5 points in this format. Corbin was 5% owned, meaning Big Italy was the only degenerate to brave the weather conditions and roster Corbin in the rain. Kevin Roth works really hard, and I’m not slighting him, but here’s a tweet prior to lock:

Again, no hate for Roth (love that guy). Just pointing out that playing Corbin was a risk, and the updates prior to lock had some people re-working their lineups. Point is, those bad weather games are a GREAT way to get a leg up on your competition if you can stomach the risk. So shouts to Big Italy for braving that deluge. I did so in some other places and had some success, but in this 20-man I didn’t want to lay an egg the first time out.

James McCann (10% owned) homered (off of right-handed Chad Green!) for 24 points, and that was another play that only two degenerates found themselves to–likely due to McCann’s cheap $3500 price tag and his RvL split against starter J.A. Happ.

Italy also had Rhys Hoskins (17 pts), Jonathan Villar (2 pts), Anthony Rendon (38 pts!), Tim Anderson (13 pts), Odubel Herrera (16 pts), Austin Meadows (48 pts!), and Amed Rosario (0 pts). The key play was Rendon, as he was only owned by two degenerates–Big Italy and Dennis M. Esser, who happened to finish first and second in Week 1’s contest. Risking the rain in Washington really did pay off in a big way. Obviously Meadows’ double dong day was huge, but he was 40% owned due to his relatively low price tag of $4900.

Esser got a great performance by Jake Arrieta against the hapless Marlins, and deserves all the respect for playing my boy Mitch Moreland (15 pts). Esser finished with 193.50, just three points behind Italy. He was arguably undone by his Yankees, as Austine Romine (8 pts) and Greg Bird (0 pts) didn’t contribute much against the mercurial Lucas Giolito. Esser probably wanted a bigger night from Carlos Correa (15 pts) against Wade LeBlanc, too. But hey, finishing second in this group is still a feat!

Here’s a tweet to round out the top five finishers:

That’s probably one of only a couple of times you’ll see yours truly up that high. Better to be lucky than good, I reckon. My full Athletics stack let me down out in Texas against Drew Smyly, but at least E-Rod finally turned in a quality effort–I felt better about using him since pitchers don’t get negative points on Fanball.

And that’s all she wrote! Be sure to check out the Twitter feed next Friday, April 19th! We’ll be playing the main slate each Friday, and I’ll be finding all the content our degenerates are producing and retweeting from the @realdfswars handle. Good luck out there!