The 2019 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Mayomaniac]

Re:

My man Carboni cracked in spectacular fashion today - 15+ minutes behind, dropping from 8thto 22nd in the GC. Sigh.
Still, very happy I have Nibali.

Same here, I also have both of tem on my team.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I can understand why nobody picked Fuglsang.
He had his highest points score ever last year and given his age it's totally reasonable to think that you shouldn't gamble on him doing well.
Nibali and Lamprecht are doing good this week, now I just need a solid final stage from Carboni. May will be a key month for me, Padun having a knee injury an Aru's health problems have been bad news for me.

Of course, I didn't even consider him for a second, either. It just shows how much out of nowhere this spring has been. He can potentially break into top 5 in the year-long ranking on Sunday.

Yeah, even if this game can make you feel pretty smart at times, it is always a reminder of how much we don't know about this sport. Even the right decision can come from a misguided idea of what a rider can become. I mean when I picked Lambrecht, it's NOT because I envisioned him turning into a top 5 hilly classics specialist this year.

 

[Mayomaniac]

I can understand why nobody picked Fuglsang.
He had his highest points score ever last year and given his age it's totally reasonable to think that you shouldn't gamble on him doing well.
Nibali and Lamprecht are doing good this week, now I just need a solid final stage from Carboni. May will be a key month for me, Padun having a knee injury an Aru's health problems have been bad news for me.

Of course, I didn't even consider him for a second, either. It just shows how much out of nowhere this spring has been. He can potentially break into top 5 in the year-long ranking on Sunday.

Yeah, even if this game can make you feel pretty smart at times, it is always a reminder of how much we don't know about this sport. Even the right decision can come from a misguided idea of what a rider can become. I mean when I picked Lambrecht, it's NOT because I envisioned him turning into a top 5 hilly classics specialist this year.

Yes, I treid to pick young prospect who could take it to the next level or guys who underperformed last year because of various reasons (often injuries) or signed with a team that seems to be more competent, but a decent amount of luck is always involved, you can always end up picking the wrong guy.
An example, I picked Porte. Not because I think that he'll ride a great Tour, but because he's able to score a ton of points in short stage races. A decent start in Australia, then he got sick and misses Paris-Nice and rode a bad Catalunya. I hoped that he could repeat his 2017 season, or those before that one, but now I'd be ok with just getting my points back with him.

 

[skidmark]

Question - is anyone interested in writing updates in the next few months? Normally I go away for remote work from April-July; this is sort of the case this year, but currently I'm nursing a broken collarbone so I won't start until mid-May, and also I might be in a location with a bit more internet than usual. Still, it's not likely I can get out the most timely updates, so if someone wants to sign up for May, June, or July, let me know here or PM me!

As a heads up, this week's will most likely be out Tuesday, unless I find some unexpected time on Monday when I'm in transit.

 

[tobydawq]

Very nice to see my two big-hitters Nibali and Landa looking so good before the Giro.

 

[Salvarani]

Not that many points this week...

Vlasov got some GC points in TotA.
Was very happy to see Gaudu, Landa and De Plus scoring some points LBL.

 

[Gigs_98]

Nice to have Nibali, Landa and Gaudu today but I really wish they hadn't finished 6th, 7th and 8th in the sprint. Still close to 300 points from these three riders but I still the main reason why I'm happy about this result is because they have shown good shape and promise for the rest of the season. The Giro could be a lot of fun with those two.

 

[armchairclimber]

Back in the swing this week with Schachattack, Lambrecht, Gaudu, Nibali and Pogacar. With any luck, some more Green Jersey points.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Lamprecht and Nibali scored good points this week, Landa was a pleasant surprise.
Zakarin seems to be on track for a good Romandie and a strong showing at the Giro.
The bad thing was Carboni crashing on the final stage around Bolzano, he lost his top 10 place on the gc and wasn't able to do anything today, seeing how well he did in the Tour of the Alpes he could have been in the group behind Masnada.

 

[skidmark]

Update #16: Object Extends Lead with Top 5 Finish on the Week

This week saw points gained from the later two Ardennes classics and the Tour of the Alps, for the most part, as well as a few smaller races. As we transition from the classics to the first Grand Tour of the year, we are also transitioning to different riders scoring in the races. Although nobody in this game had the form-of-his-life Fuglsang, some other consistent classics performers (like Schachmann, Lambrecht, etc) are likely set to take a seat after a string of results.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 merengues 901
2 Sestriere 865
3 karaev 831
4 Poles & Co. 740
5 Object 738

A very impressive week from merengues this week, whose team tops 900 points and the weekly rankings. This is the very essence of a top heavy team this week, as their team had THREE riders over 200 points on the week (the ever-giving Schachmann with 231, Sivakov with 214, and Nibali with 200), as well as two others over 100 (106 from Lambrecht and 105 from Gaudu). Aside from that, 40 from Cosnefroy and 5 from Sean Bennett and that's it - 900 points from 7 riders, wow! Sestriere spread out the minor points a bit more, but still had the big points from all the above mentioned except Gaudu. karaev nabs third without Schachmann but the other 4 big scorers named on merengues' team, plus a handy 100 points from unique pick Andrea Vendrame (who has already nearly doubled last year's 177 points, when he was MY unique pick, dang it).

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 Poles & Co. (+31)
2 merengues (+26)
3 Sestriere (+24)
4 rote_laterne (+23)
5 armchairclimber (+20)

Poles & Co leaps into the top 3 on this ranking, topping it with a 31 point leap on the back of Sivakov and Gaudu, but also rare pick Davide Cimolai (5 teams) who quietly picks up 162 points to bring his total for the season to 239 on a cost of 88; 77 points from Hirt and 67 from Kwiatkowski also help a fair bit. The other two on the podium were mentioned on the podium in the first ranking.

This Month's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this Month
1 Sestriere 2739
2 EvansIsTheBest 2441
3 skidmark 2358
4 fauniera 2271
5 Kryvo 2266

It's the end of April, which means it's time to recap the month. Sestriere runs away with this one by almost 300 points, highlighted by a crazy month for Max Schachmann with 559 points. Bettiol at 338 was the next highest scorer on the team, but Sestriere was really helped by some rarer picks: Politt (297, 4 teams), Lambrecht (278, 23), Sivakov (214, 21) and Kudus and McNulty (139 points each, 4 and 7 teams respectively) really put it over the top. EvansIsTheBest comes in second, without Schachmann but that supernova Mathieu van der Poel picked up 716 in April, making the most of his truncated spring. A supporting cast of Bettiol, Nibali, Lambrecht, Gaudu, Evenepoel and such helped out as well. Team skidmark finishes third on the month with a similar lineup to EITB (ie. no Schachmann but MvdP).

This Month's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 Sestriere (+93)
2 postmanhat (+57)
3 SafeBet (+53)
4 EvansIsTheBest (+48)
5 will10 (+45)

The same name at the top on this one as Sestriere turns it almost all the way around, moving up 93 spots on a 110-spot table. postmanhat and safebet each leap about half the table to nab 2nd and 3rd on the month, as well as a feeling of relief for moving so far up the table.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Googolplex 144
2 armchairclimber 135
3 Popchu 118
4 Sestriere 113
5 skidmark 110

Some movemment here this week, as armchairclimber grabs 20 points to leapfrog Popchu into second; the aforementioned Sestriere jumps into 4th with 35 points on the week for 2nd, while team skidmark gets 10 points for 11th on the week to move into the top 5 as well.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (-) Object 5506
2 (+3) fauniera 5240
3 (+1) Kryvo 5154
4 (-1) Tigerion 5137
5 (+6) EvansIsTheBest 5088
6 (-4) tobydawq 5087
7 (+3) skidmark 5057
8 (-) Googolplex 4872
9 (+18) karaev 4811
10 (-1) SafeBet 4809

Object's 5th on the week really solidifies their team's position at the top of the field, extending the lead to over 250 points. Previous winner fauniera parlays a strong week to jump into second, while Kryvo nudges Tigerion by 17 points for the final spot on the podium. EvansIsTheBest and karaev move into the top 10 while Joelsim and Lortnoc fall out.

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[Tigerion]

Thanks for the update skidmark. Dropped off the podium but happy that my week was saved by a great ride by Masnada in the Alps

 

[Koronin]

Thanks for the update.

Still trying to figure out how I moved up in the standings this week instead of dropping.

 

[Mayomaniac]

Thanks for the update!
Moved one up, could have been even better without Carboni crashing on the final stage of the Tour of the Alpes.
This week my main hope is Zakarin, Ganna and Kung could also score a few points for me.

 

[Object]

Thank you for the update skidmark. It is really appriciated that you are so early out with the update.

It is hard to wait for the update when you are at the top of the ranking

I hope my guys will keep grinding to score me some more points.

 

[armchairclimber]

Cheers Skidmark. A feast week. Famine is sure to follow.

 

[shalgo]

Thanks for the update. Between Gaudu and Nibali, I was thinking that I had a decent week. Well, the rest of my team combined for 15 points. Given that Nibali and Gaudu are both popular picks, it is not surprising that this was a terrible week after all.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Thanks for the update skidmark. Great month by my team (and by team I mean Van der Poel). The problem is that I don't have many GC specialists so the next few months should be a lot tougher.

 

[Tonton]

Back in the top-100 . The classics did me, as expected, and now here we go. Gaudu doing well today, Sepulveda and Hirt in the top-10, I'm ready to Rocky Balboa myself up the rankings. Beware .

 

[Sestriere]

I have to say this game is a lot of fun when your team is doing well Not so long ago my team was outside of the Top 100 and I was wondering how I could be so far off with my selection. And coming into the classics I was even more pessimistic because my team does not include some of the more obvious picks like Van der Poel, Van Aert and such. But the selection of Schachmann, Politt, Lambrecht, Asgreen and Bettiol as main scorers for the spring turned out to be great.
So now its Giro time. I fully expect to be able to drop in the standings as quickly as i climbed them.

 

[tobydawq]

Lol, Quintero continues to do his magic.

I really could have done with Gaudu in my team. Hard to know this was the year he would fulfill his potential after having looked quite stale last season.

 

[fauniera]

Re:

I really could have done with Gaudu in my team. Hard to know this was the year he would fulfill his potential after having looked quite stale last season.

The second album is often difficult, the third one often great.

 

[MADRAZO]

Re:

Lol, Quintero continues to do his magic.

I really could have done with Gaudu in my team. Hard to knoe this was the year he would fulfill his potential after having looked quite stale last season.

Yes Gaudu is a big handicap for us that skipped him. And me picking Lobato instead, that has been a complete flop despite all the confidence and motivation he had before the season, only makes it worse. You never do know when the big breakthrough will come but for me the main reason for not picking Gaudu was purely a interview close to the start of the competition where he sounded like he would race more or less the same calendar as Pinot to learn from him, meaning he would race as helper more or less all the time. That made me feel it was worth the risk of leaving him out despite the big talent, and go with a old favourite in Lobato, where the interview made me believe he would be back to his best, while getting a great raceprogam for those skills.
I do wonder what happened to that plan of racing with Pinot, and what happened to Lobato also, but I will perhaps consider not reading such interviews next year

 

[bminchow]

Bernal down!! There goes any chance of my recovery. I banked my season on a podium finish. Now I'm wishing I had Tao or Pavel as a back up. Now my only hope is Porte wins the TDF. Hahahahaha!

 

[shalgo]

Poor Bernal. RIP my team.

 

[fauniera]

First Landa breaks a collarbone, now Bernal. What the ***.