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Acuna Slugs, Steals Way to MVP

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023

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The 2023 baseball season saw unprecedented change as a result of significant new rules:  a pitch clock, banning of the shift, limiting pickoff attempts and larger bases.  With the exception of the drastic decrease in average time of games, probably the most noticeable change this year was stolen bases coming back in style.  There were 1,652 stolen bases across the DTBL this season, an incredible 53% increase over a year ago and the highest league total since 1999.  In fact, we were just nine steals shy of this being a record breaking season for steals.  Almost every player with at least average speed increased their stolen base output this year.  But one player took that to an extreme while continuing to be one of the best hitters in the game.  Ronald Acuna Jr stole 73 bases while hitting 41 home runs, a pair of milestones no other player in DTBL history has ever come close to reaching.  In a unanimous decision, the Jackalope and Braves outfielder is the 2023 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

Acuna’s 73 stolen bases led the league by 19.  He is the first DTBL player to steal 70+ bases since Jacoby Ellsbury in 2009 and that 73 figure ranks third highest in league history, just five shy of the league record 78 by Jose Reyes in 2007.  Needless to say, his 41 home runs are the highest total ever among players with 70+ steals.  That mark was previously held by Kenny Lofton who hit 14 home runs with his 75 steals in 1996.  Even if you bump the HR/SB milestones down to 30/50, Acuna is still the first player in league history to reach those marks.  Oh, Acuna also hit .338, which put him second in line for the batting title, and led the league with 149 runs scored.  His 106 runs batted in, despite hitting leadoff all year, also put him in the top 10 of the league.  It was truly one of the best offensive seasons in league history.  By PAR, it currently ranks as the best season in all years that have been calculated (2005-present), by a wide margin.  His 19.0 Batting PAR blows away Aaron Judge’s previous high from last year at 12.2.  I should mention that this PAR total will likely be lowered when I get around to doing the post-season adjustment.  This is because stolen bases were drastically overrepresented in the PAR totals this year since the leaguewide total was so significantly higher compared to recent years.  That said, the adjustment isn’t going to cost him 6+ points, so this should remain the best Batting PAR individual season to date by a comfortable margin.  There is no question that Acuna had one of the best single season performances in DTBL history.

The Jackalope selected Acuna with the first pick in the 2019 Draft.  He immediately had one of the best rookie seasons in league history, hitting 41 homers with 37 stolen bases, earning him Rookie of the Year and runner up for MVP.  It was certainly a sign of what was to come for this five tool phenom.  Unfortunately, his ascendence was put on pause in 2021 when he tore his ACL halfway through the year and then missed the first month of the 2022 season as well.  In these abbreviated seasons, he did not flash the same type of power he had shown previously, but the speed was still there.  Then this season happened, leaving little doubt that he is now back to full strength and better than ever.  While not directly fantasy related, his ’23 stat that I found most impressive was his 11.4% strikeout rate.  He had been in 23%-30% range his entire career, and then suddenly cut that in half this year.  While the Jackalope finished a distant fifth place with Acuna, it would be scary to think how bad their offense would have been without him.  He joins Gerrit Cole for a Jackalope sweep of the non-rookie awards.  They’ll look for more contributions from the rest of the roster next year.

As expected, Acuna won this award unanimously, the second straight season in which the MVP winner received all of the first place votes after Judge did the same a year ago.  No other player even received half as many total points as Acuna’s perfect 100.  In fact, Acuna was the only player who even appeared on every ballot.  Five different players received second place votes, making it a tight race for all of the other finishing positions.  The runner-up is Demigods outfielder and Rookie of the Year winner Corbin Carroll.  The sparkplug to the Demigods championship winning offense, Carroll finished second in the league behind Acuna in both stolen bases (54) and Batting PAR (10.7).  If our league’s MVP vote mimicked real life where sports MVP awards often simply go to the best player on the best team, Carroll would have been the choice.  He received half of the second place votes and finished with 49 total points.  Third place will be shared by a pair of players who have things in common with Carroll.  The first being his Demigods teammate Freddie Freeman.  Freeman was another key cog for the championship squad.  The veteran first baseman hit .331 with 29 home runs and even stole 23 bases.  He received a pair of second place votes and three thirds to finish with 37 points.  The other player with 37 points is Mavericks shortstop Bobby Witt Jr, who shares Carroll’s status as a rookie with elite power and speed.  Witt stole 49 bases while hitting 30 home runs.  Very few players in league history have reached the HR/SB levels that all three of Acuna, Carroll and Witt hit this year.  Witt now had a third place MVP finish to go along with his third place ROY standing.  For MVP, he only received one second place tally, but four thirds allowed him to tie Freeman.  There is yet another tie for fifth place.  Moonshiners star Shohei Ohtani was the unanimous choice for AL MVP.  But in this league, his pitching prowess doesn’t increase his value, making his season slightly less significant while still incredibly impressive.  Ohtani hit .304 with 44 home runs and 20 stolen bases.  I hear he had a pretty good year on the mound as well.  Ohtani only appeared on three ballots, but did get a second place vote, pushing his total up to 15 points.  That ties him with yet another rookie, Diamond Dogs first overall draft pick, outfielder Julio Rodriguez.  Rodriguez’s DTBL career got off to a bit of a slow start.  He made up for it in the final months of the season though, accumulating 32 homers and 37 stolen bases.  Like Ohtani, he received a single second place vote, but with more down ballot support to also reach 15 points.  So that’s three DTBL rookies among the top six MVP vote getters.  The future is certainly bright.

Click here to view the full voting results.

And with that, we have concluded DTBL awards season.  Hopefully soon, I’m going to get the post-season PAR update done.  I anticipate it is going to cause significant changes in the numbers across the board due to the wild statistical shifts that occurred this season.  It will probably be worth writing about at some point.  In the meantime, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Jackalope | No Comments »

Cole Reaches Pitching Apex

Monday, November 20th, 2023

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Gerrit Cole has been one of the best pitchers in baseball ever since making his big league debut in 2013.  The first overall pick in the 2011 MLB Draft has been anchoring rotations for the better part of a decade.  Yet the Cy Young award had eluded him, both in MLB and the DTBL.  Until this year.  Cole put up his usual exceptional numbers.  But this time he was actually rewarded for it.  The Jackalope and Yankees righty finally earned the American League Cy Young award in a unanimous decision.  In the DTBL, the competition was a little stiffer, but he came out on top there as well.  For the first time in his career, Gerrit Cole is the DTBL Cy Young award winner.

While Cole is known mostly as a power pitcher who can sometimes be victimized by home runs, inflating his ERA along the way, it was actually the ERA and WHIP numbers this year that ultimately set him apart from the field.  He was the only qualified pitcher to post a sub 1.0 WHIP (0.98) and his 2.63 ERA trailed only Blake Snell, who threw nearly 30 fewer innings.  While still an elite total, his 222 strikeouts only ranked fifth in the league.  Cole was one of just four pitchers to throw over 200 innings this season, further cementing his workhorse status.  He led all DTBL hurlers with 11.8 Pitching PAR.  Part of what pushed this Cole season to a higher level was his ability to keep the ball in the park more often.  After surrendering a league leading 33 home runs in 2022, he lowered that figure to a very respectable 20 in 2023, the first time his HR/9 was under 1.0 since 2018.  Perhaps the 32 year old Cole is gracefully transitioning to more of a finesse pitcher than he was earlier in his career.

Originally selected by the Mavericks with the ninth pick of the 2014 DTBL Draft, Cole spent one season with the Mavericks before being traded to the Jackalope in exchange for Aroldis Chapman prior to 2015.  He has been the Jackalope ace ever since.  Cole has topped 200 strikeouts six times and this was the fifth season in which he won at least 15 games for the Jackalope.  Assuming they keep him around, sometime early next season he should pass Felix Hernandez as the Jackalope career leader in strikeouts.  Including his season with the Mavericks, he passed the 2,000 career strikeout milestone in September.  While this was his first Cy Young winning campaign, it would be hard to make an argument for it being the finest season of his career.  That would have to be 2019 when he struck out 326 batters, the highest single season total for any DTBL pitcher not named Randy Johnson.  He also won 20 games with a 2.50 ERA and 0.90 WHIP that year.  Unfortunately for him, Justin Verlander also had an incredible season in ’19, bumping Cole to second in the Cy Young vote.  This is the sixth straight year that Cole has received Cy Young votes, and seventh time overall.  He is a six time DTBL All-Star, making the team every year since 2018, excluding the 2020 season when there was no game.  Cole is the first Jackalope Cy Young winner since Jake Arrieta in 2015.

Unlike the AL Cy Young vote, Cole did not win this one unanimously.  He was placed first or second on all 10 ballots though, making him the only player who can make that claim.  He received seven first place tallies and three seconds to secure 91 of the possible 100 total points.  Two other pitchers were within shouting distance of Cole.  Darkhorses rookie Spencer Strider, fresh off his second place finish in the Rookie of the Year vote, now has another runner-up finish.  Strider lapped the field with 281 strikeouts and also led all pitchers with 20 wins.  He had an impressive 1.09 WHIP as well.  What probably cost him this award was his good but not great 3.86 ERA, more than a run higher than Cole’s.  Strider received a pair of first place votes and three seconds.  His 66 total points were enough to put him in second place.  Just behind him is the NL Cy Young winner, Choppers lefty Blake Snell.  Snell finally regained the magic that earned him Rookie of the Year and a second place Cy Young finish in his DTBL rookie season with the Cougars in 2018.  This year, he led all qualified pitchers with a 2.25 ERA and was third in strikeouts with 234.  Snell received the final first place vote and four seconds for a total of 57 points.  Cole, Strider and Snell were the only pitchers to receive top two votes and to appear on every ballot, comfortably placing them ahead of the rest of the pack.  The fourth place finisher is the champion Demigods ace Zac Gallen.  Perhaps a bit under the radar prior to the Diamondbacks pennant winning run this fall, Gallen has been dominant for two straight seasons now.  This season, he set career highs with 222 strikeouts and 17 wins, finishing only behind Strider in the latter category.  Gallen received a pair of third place votes and 23 total points.  Rounding out the top five is Darkhorses reliever Felix Bautista.  In his DTBL debut season, he saved 33 games while striking out 110 in just 61 innings.  His 1.48 ERA was lowest among all pitchers who threw at least 60 innings this year.  Bautista appeared on seven ballots, accumulating 13 points.  So that’s an impressive fifth place finish for both Rookie of the Year and Cy Young for the dominant reliever, despite missing the final month of the season.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Two down, one to go.  Probably not a lot of suspense surrounding the Most Valuable Player award, but you will just have to wait a couple days for the official announcement.  Look for that on Wednesday.

Posted in Awards, Jackalope | No Comments »

Carroll Leads Elite Group

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

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Entering the 2023 DTBL Draft back in March, many believed this was going to be one of the stronger rookie classes in recent memory.  Eight months later, that belief has been pretty much validated.  Three of the league’s top five finishers in Batting PAR this season were DTBL rookies.  Two of the top five in Pitching PAR as well, including a relief pitcher whose cohorts rarely sniff the top of that leaderboard.  All five of those rookies figure to be top contenders not only for this Rookie of the Year award, but Most Valuable Player and Cy Young as well.  If these players continue to perform at this level, this could go down as the best rookie class in league history.  Only one could win the league’s top rookie honor though.  As quite possibly the primary reason why the Demigods were able to win their first ever DTBL Championship, it is not a surprise that outfielder Corbin Carroll is the 2023 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

Following a short stint in the big leagues to close out the 2022 season, Carroll retained his MLB rookie eligibility and entered this season as the NL Rookie of the Year favorite, an award he would go on to win handily.  Known for his speed and modest power, Carroll exceeded almost all reasonable expectations for his first full season.  He swiped 54 bases, ranking second in the league behind Ronald Acuna.  He hit .285 with 25 home runs, 76 runs batted in and 116 runs scored.  As mentioned in the Demigods’ championship article, Acuna and Carroll became just the second and third players in DTBL history to steal 50+ bases with 25+ home runs in a single season.  The other was Hanley Ramirez in 2007 with the Mavericks in what happened to be his DTBL rookie season as well (he also won ROY that year).  While stolen bases absolutely exploded across the league this season, Carroll still stood well above most of his peers in that regard.

The Demigods managed to land a franchise altering talent with the eighth pick of the draft.  That’s not to say that many of the teams who picked ahead of them are kicking themselves for their selections, because most of the players picked ahead of Carroll had outstanding seasons in their own right.  But Carroll was the perfect fit for a Demigods squad that needed an offensive boost.  He led the team in Batting PAR and stolen bases, accounting for about a quarter of the team’s totals in both of those categories.  No chance the Demigods would have finished anywhere near second place in stolen bases without him, and he helped them considerably in the other four offensive categories as well.  Carroll was a welcomed addition to a team that has had pretty much the same high caliber infield mix for quite some time, but had been a bit short on impact outfielders.  Along with teammate Freddie Freeman, Carroll should receive serious consideration for Most Valuable Player as well.

The Rookie of the Year vote was quite interesting.  All ten ballots had the same five players on them.  There were plenty of other players who did not receive a single vote that would have been serious contenders most other years: American League Rookie of the Year winner Gunnar Henderson and his Orioles teammate Adley Rutschman, just to name two.  So while the ballots were consistent on the five players chosen, they were wildly different on which of the five received which vote.  Carroll was the convincing top choice, receiving six first place votes and three seconds for a total of 86 points.  The only other player to receive multiple first place tallies was Darkhorses pitcher Spencer Strider.  Strider led the league with 281 strikeouts, beating every other pitcher by more than 40 whiffs.  He also led the league with 20 wins, three more than the next best.  He received a pair of first place votes for this award, along with two seconds and five thirds, for a total of 62 points.  Right behind him is Mavericks shortstop Bobby Witt Jr, who actually had very similar numbers to Carroll.  Witt had five more homers (30) than Carroll and five fewer stolen bases (49).  Not sure we’ve ever simultaneously had a pair of rookies who packed so much punch with their elite stolen base totals.  Witt got one first place vote, three seconds and four thirds, finishing with 57 points.  The fourth and final player to receive a first place vote is Diamond Dogs outfielder Julio Rodriguez.  The first overall pick in the draft had a season that would have made him a lock for this award most years.  Rodriguez led all rookies with 32 home runs while stealing 37 bases as well.  He and Witt are the first rookies to join the 30/30 club since Acuna did it in 2019.  In this vote, Rodriguez was hurt by receiving just three top three votes:  one first and a pair of seconds.  That gave him a total of 43 points.  Finally, the fifth player who appeared on every ballot is Darkhorses reliever Felix Bautista.  The Mountain had one of the most dominant reliever seasons of all time, not just among rookies.  He saved 33 games while accumulated 110 strikeouts in just 61 innings, with a 1.48 ERA.  Unfortunately, he succumbed to an elbow injury in late August and will likely miss most, if not all, of the 2024 season.  Bautista only received fourth and fifth place votes, placing him fifth with 12 points.

Click here to view the full voting results.

The tentative schedule for announcing the other two awards is next Monday, November 20th for Cy Young and Wednesday the 22nd for Most Valuable Player.  Expect to see all five of these Rookie of the Year vote receivers in the mix for one of those awards as well.

Posted in Awards, Demigods | No Comments »

Judgement Day Finally Arrives

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

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Well, my lack of ambition when it comes to writing has struck again. We are so far removed from awards season that most of the marquee free agents have already found homes before I ever got around to finishing the DTBL awards announcements. With apologies to Aaron Judge, who had truly one of the best seasons in DTBL history and deserves a comprehensive write-up, I’m going to mail this one in to get it over with. I’m sure to the surprise of absolutely no one, Mavericks outfielder Aaron Judge is the unanimous selection for the 2022 DTBL Most Valuable Player award.

As you all know, Judge’s 62 home run season broke Roger Maris’ American League home run record. In this league, that ranks seventh all time behind Barry Bonds’ MLB record 73 in 2001, a pair of Mark McGwire seasons, and three for Sammy Sosa. Besides the obvious PED suspicions surrounding those three specific players, Judge’s season also stands out based on the leaguewide environment in which he was competing. All six of those single season home run figures ahead of Judge’s took place from 1998 through 2001, which we now know was the peak of the steroid era. This season, Judge hit 16 more home runs than any other player while also hitting .311, 131 RBIs, 133 runs scored and even 16 stolen bases. His 12.2 Batting PAR was more than double the next highest player this year and is the highest in any season I’ve calculated (2005-present). While there have been some other players who have had seasons with comparable or better raw batting stats, factoring in the current hitting environment in baseball makes this Judge season one of, if not the, best in league history.

It would have been fishy if Judge had not won this award unanimously. Sure enough, he received all nine first place votes. Trea Turner came in second, his second straight top four finish. Paul Goldschmidt came in third, followed by Jose Ramirez and Pete Alonso rounding out the top five.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Sorry again for not giving Judge the full due he deserved. We’ll see if I can get back in a writing flow next year.

Posted in Awards, Mavericks | No Comments »

Verlander Completes Comeback

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2022

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When Justin Verlander underwent Tommy John surgery after just one start in 2020, it felt like it could be the end of the road for one of this generation’s greatest pitchers.  While many pitchers have successfully returned from UCL surgery, most weren’t 37+ years old at the time.  After missing almost all of the 2020 season and all of 2021, Verlander returned this season as a slightly different pitcher, but as good as ever.  He helped lead a rejuvenated Moonshiners pitching staff to their first ever DTBL Championship.  In a year of countless great pitching performances, Verlander was quite clearly the best.  In a unanimous decision, Justin Verlander is the 2022 DTBL Cy Young award winner, earning the award for the third time in his career.

Verlander’s comeback season was quite magical.  The 39 year old defied odds to put up one of the best seasons of his career, which is saying something since he had already authored some of the best seasons in league history.  His ERA and WHIP tell most of the story.  His 1.75 ERA ranks sixth all time while his 0.83 WHIP is the fourth lowest single season mark in DTBL history.  Both marks easily led the league this season and were personal bests as well.  His 18 wins also led the league this year, but doesn’t quite stack up with historical records due to the modern suppressed pitcher win environment.  185 strikeouts is an impressive number, but was not near the league leaders and highlights a changed approach for Verlander in which he no longer dominates simply by not allowing hitters to put the ball in play.  Verlander’s 14.8 Pitching PAR led the league by over 2 points and is the eighth highest mark since 2005.  He now holds three of the top 8 figures in that stat’s single season leaderboard.

The Moonshiners are the third DTBL team for which Verlander has starred.  Originally drafted in the second round by the Demigods way back in 2007, he spent a dozen spectacular seasons with the Kings with whom he won four DTBL Championships and a pair of Cy Young awards.  Those two Cy Young campaigns (2011 and 2019) are on the short list of the greatest pitching seasons in league history.  He won 24 games while striking out 250 in 2011.  In 2019, he had a 0.80 WHIP with 300 strikeouts and a record Pitching PAR of 17.5.  Tommy John surgery ultimately ended his run with the Kings as he was dropped from the league roster while recovering from surgery in 2021.  The Moonshiners made him a second round selection for the second time in his career when they picked him with the 17th overall pick in this season’s draft.  That proved to be quite the steal for the Moonshiners.  Verlander joined Alek Manoah and Yu Darvish to make up the league’s best starting pitching trio.  Their championship gives Verlander a smooth five DTBL rings to go along with three Cy Young awards.  This is the second straight season in which a pitcher has won his third Cy Young, following Verlander’s former Tigers and Kings teammate Max Scherzer turning that trick last year.

Verlander’s gaudy numbers made him the obvious choice for this award.  He received all nine first place votes to become the unanimous choice for this award, totaling 90 points.  That is definitely not to say there weren’t other great pitchers this season though.  In one of the most under-the-radar dominant seasons in recent memory, Diamond Dogs righty Sandy Alcantara put himself into the company of the league’s elite pitchers.  Perhaps most impressive was his 228.2 innings pitched, which was 26 more than any other pitcher.  Oh, and he also struck out 207 with a 2.28 ERA and 0.98 WHIP.  Alcantara was the only pitcher besides Verlander to appear on every ballot.  He received three second place votes and a total of 41 points.  Next comes what might be the most anticipated aspect of this vote:  where will Dylan Cease and Alek Manoah rank following their narrow Rookie of the Year competition?  Well, turns out they flipped for this award.  Rookie of the Year runner-up, Moonshiners young hurler Manoah finishes third for the Cy Young in his debut season.  His 2.24 ERA and 0.99 WHIP were incredible for such a young pitcher.  He received a pair of second place votes and a total of 31 points.  Right behind him is Rookie of the Year winner, Choppers fireballer Cease.  Cease received three second place votes, but was left off three ballots, which ultimately caused him to fall three points behind Manoah with 28.  For the record, nobody swapped the order between Manoah and Cease on their Rookie of the Year and Cy Young ballots.  It was just a matter of how those points were distributed.  One other pitcher received a second place vote, that being Cougars ace Corbin Burnes.  Burnes finished second in the league with 243 strikeouts.  He is the only pitcher to rack up 200+ strikeouts with a sub 3.00 ERA each of the past two seasons.  Burnes finished in fifth place in the vote with 13 points.  A total of 10 different pitchers received Cy Young votes.

Click here to view the full voting results.

It’s looking like I won’t get around to announcing the 2022 DTBL Most Valuable Player until early next week. There probably isn’t too much suspense surrounding who will win that award anyway though.

Posted in Awards, Moonshiners | No Comments »

Rookie Cease Fire

Monday, November 21st, 2022

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Starting pitchers dominated the first couple of rounds of the 2022 DTBL Draft.  Seven starters were chosen in the first twelve picks, six of them having DTBL rookie eligibility.  While a couple of them had disappointing seasons due to injuries and/or underachievement, this will still go down as one of the best rookie pitching classes in recent memory.  Three of those pitchers, in particular, were impactful contributors to their teams and wound up finishing at the top of the rookie of the year vote.  In one of the tightest votes imaginable, Choppers right handed hurler Dylan Cease is the 2022 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

Cease took a bit of a circuitous route to this award.  First, while he obviously was a DTBL rookie this season, it was not his first season in the league’s player pool.  After making his much anticipated MLB debut in the summer of 2019, he was added to the league for 2020, but went undrafted prior to that pandemic shortened campaign.  Late in the season, the Choppers took a flyer on him as a free agent signing, but did not put him on their major league roster.  Because of his somewhat pedestrian numbers that year, leading the American League in walks without a terribly impressive strikeout total, he was released by the Choppers and then dropped from the league for the 2021 season.  2021 was his true breakout season, significantly reigning in the walks while nearly doubling his strikeout rate, making him a hot commodity for the 2022 draft.

The Choppers took Cease with the ninth pick of the first round this year.  He proceeded to build upon that strong 2021 season with an even better 2022.  His ERA hovered around 2.00 most of the summer before settling to an extremely impressive 2.20.  He actually led MLB in walks. But despite that, his hit suppression was so strong that he still finished with an excellent 1.11 WHIP.  He won 14 games and led all rookies with 227 strikeouts.  Only three other pitchers recorded more strikeouts this season.  The Choppers led the league in pitching points and Cease was the primary reason for that.  He led the staff in wins, strikeouts and ERA among qualified pitchers.  It was all the Choppers could have hoped for in solidifying their staff.  Cease, along with fellow rookie Logan Gilbert, should give the Choppers a formidable pitching staff for quite some time to come.

This Rookie of the Year award was hotly contested.  Cease was hardly the only rookie pitcher to have a season worthy of the award.  And the vote reflected that.  Cease received five of the nine first place votes cast.  On the other four ballots, he was ranked second.  Meanwhile, Moonshiners pitcher Alek Manoah, who was picked two spots before Cease in the draft, received the other four first place tallies and was placed second on all of the other ballots.  Manoah won two more games than Cease and had a better WHIP, while Cease had more strikeouts and an ever so slight edge in ERA.  Manoah also had a slight edge in PAR (11.7 vs. 10.4).  So this was a tough call for voters.  In the end, Cease’s 78 points put him three ahead of Manoah’s 75.  Both figure to be candidates for the Cy Young award as well, so it will be interesting to see how they stack up in that vote.  Yet another starting pitcher came in third in the vote.  Komodos lefty Shane McClanahan was possibly the leading candidate for this award before being knocked out by injury for a bit in the late summer.  He still managed to strike out 194 with a 2.54 ERA and a sub-1.00 WHIP.  McClanahan was the third and final player to appear on all nine ballots, receiving five third place votes for a total of 35 points.  Finally, we have a hitter in the mix with Jackalope outfielder Adolis Garcia finishing in the fourth spot.  Garcia led all rookies with a 5.7 Batting PAR.  He hit an impressive 27 home runs with 25 stolen bases.  Garcia received the other four third place votes that didn’t go to McClanahan and finished with 28 points.  Rounding out the top five is another starting pitcher.  Darkhorses first round selection Logan Webb also lived up to the rookie hype with 15 wins and a 2.90 ERA.  Webb compiled 10 points in the vote to finish in fifth place.

Click here to view the full voting results.

I haven’t figured out the exact schedule for the announcement of the other two awards, but am hoping to do both before the end of this week.  It seems unlikely the vote for either will be as close as this one, but we shall see!

Posted in Awards, Choppers | No Comments »

Guerrero Named MVP

Wednesday, November 24th, 2021

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On an individual player level, 2021 will be remembered as the year of Shohei Ohtani.  The two-way player did what had previously been thought to be impossible:  dominated the league as both a hitter and a pitcher.  He was unanimously selected as the American League Most Valuable Player.  However, in this league, he was not able to accumulate stats for the Moonshiners as both a hitter and a pitcher, making his MVP case not nearly as clear cut, yet still very much in the discussion.  In the end though, he was edged out by his Moonshiners teammate.  After a somewhat disappointing DTBL rookie campaign, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lived up to the hype and then some this year.  He is the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player.  Amazingly, this is now consecutive seasons in which the award has been won by the son of a former DTBL star.  Last year, Fernando Tatis Jr. shared the award with Jose Abreu.  Maybe Bo Bichette or Cavan Biggio will make it three in a row in 2022.

In last year’s abbreviated season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit nine homers with a .262 average.  Not a terrible season, but not what the Moonshiners were hoping for when they drafted him sixth overall in the loaded 2020 draft.  This season, he put it all together and became the best hitter in the league.  He hit 48 home runs, tied with Salvador Perez for most in the DTBL.  He also led the league in run scored (123), finished third in batting average (.311) and fourth in runs batted in (111).  His 9.50 batting PAR also topped all hitters.  The Moonshiners have been looking for a star hitter to lead their offense for a while.  Now it seems they have at least three such players, with Ohtani and Rafael Devers joining Guerrero.  The Moonshiners easily led the league in batting points thanks to those three.

When sitting down to write this article, the first thing that popped into my mind was whether or not Vladimir Guerrero Sr. and Jr. have become the first father and son to win DTBL MVP awards.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to this right now because I only have complete awards results since 2005.  Senior’s best seasons were before that.  While he had many MVP caliber seasons, I am quite certain he was edged out by others in most of those campaigns, which came during the height of the steroid era.  If we were to retroactively vote on who should have won the award each of those years, I suspect he would fare much better now.  The one year when I think he *might* have won DTBL MVP was 2004.  In the near future, I will try to dig through some data on old computers and hard drives that I still have in my possession to see if I can figure this out.  I may come back and edit this article if I find this information.  In the meantime, while I’m not certain if Vlad Sr. ever won a MVP in this league, I think it is safe to say the Guerreros now have the best peak seasons of any father and son duo in DTBL history.

Not surprisingly, the vote was very close.  Guerrero received six of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds.  Mysteriously, he was left entirely off one ballot.  Perhaps it was an oversight.  It did not wind up costing him though as he finished with 74 points.  His Moonshiners teammate Shohei Ohtani was the runner-up.  Ohtani had a remarkable season, even when you exclude his pitching prowess.  The Moonshiners made a tough, but ultimately wise decision to use him as a hitter this year.  All he did was slug 46 homers and steal 26 bases, with a 8.9 PAR that only trailed Guerrero by a little more than a half point.  Clearly he would have won the MVP in this league as well if his pitching numbers counted.  He received two first place votes along with five second place tallies.  He was the only player to appear on every MVP ballot, garnering 65 points.  Finishing third was last year’s co-MVP Fernando Tatis Jr.  The Demigods shortstop had another incredible season with 41 home runs and 25 stolen bases.  Injuries were the only thing that prevented him from keeping up with Guerrero and Ohtani.  He received one second and four third place votes for 34 total points.  Not far behind him was Beanballers shortstop Trea Turner.  One of the most underrated players in the game, Turner blew away his career high in homers with 28 and also stole 32 bases.  This is his second straight top 4 MVP finish and he is yet to have a non-elite season in the DTBL.  He received the lone first place vote that didn’t go to Guerrero or Ohtani and finished with 27 points.  Rounding out the top five is yet another son of a former DTBL star and another Beanballers shortstop.  Bo Bichette had nearly identical numbers as Turner, with a few more RBI and runs and a lower batting average.  He finished just two points behind Turner in this vote, with 25.  So that makes three sons of former DTBL sluggers in the top five of this year’s MVP vote.  Tatis, Guerrero and Bichette were drafted first, sixth and eighth respectively in the 2020 Draft, which is already looking like one for the ages.  That first round also featured Lucas Giolito, Pete Alonso and Yordan Alvarez.

Click here to view the full voting results.

That wraps up our 2021 DTBL awards announcements.  Since I was extremely lazy with the blogging this year, I do intend to play some catch-up this winter with some items I neglected to cover earlier in the year, including a season recap detailing the Kings ninth championship campaign.  In the meantime, thank you to everyone for another fun season.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Moonshiners | No Comments »

Scherzer Wins Third Cy Young

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021

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The Kings roller coaster ride of a past decade that continually fluctuates between championship and bottom feeder seasons peaked again in 2021 with them winning their ninth DTBL Championship.  While the Kings themselves have been anything but consistent over the years, one thing has not changed.  Max Scherzer has remained one of the best pitchers in baseball.  In 2021, there were a lot of great pitching performances, especially among those who played for National League teams.  In what wound up being almost the polar opposite of the NL Cy Young vote, Max Scherzer is the 2021 DTBL Cy Young award winner, earning the honor for the third time in his career.

While the final numbers were right where they usually are, it was not exactly a normal season for Scherzer.  As a free agent to be, he was traded from the struggling Nationals to the Dodgers and immediately became a critical piece for the defending World Series champions who lost Clayton Kershaw to injury and Trevor Bauer to administrative leave.  Scherzer wasn’t completely healthy himself this season, limiting him to 173 innings, far fewer than his usual workhorse load.  But he made those innings count with a career best 2.49 ERA and 0.86 WHIP.  That WHIP is the sixth lowest by a qualified pitcher in league history.  He won 14 games and struck out 231 batters, both of which put him fourth in the league this season.  His 11.92 pitching PAR led the league, barely edging out his Dodgers teammate Walker Buehler.

This was the sixth time in the past nine years that Scherzer accumulated a double digit PAR.  He is now just 3 PAR behind his former Kings teammate Justin Verlander for second place on the DTBL career pitching PAR list (caveat:  only includes 2005-present).  It is hard to say where this Scherzer season stacks up compared to the best of his career.  Probably behind his other two DTBL Cy Young campaigns though.  He struck out 300 while winning the award in 2018 and won 20 games in 2016.  The Kings have now won the title in all three of his Cy Young seasons.  In fact, in the Kings five championship seasons in the past decade (2013, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021), Scherzer has finished first or second in the Cy Young vote in all but one.  And in that one exception (2019), his Kings teammate Verlander won the award instead.  With Verlander no longer around, Scherzer is the only player to have been on all five of those championship squads.  It is safe to say they would not have won many, if any, of them without him.

There were four standout pitchers in the DTBL this season.  As it turns out, all four played for National League teams.  So it is interesting to compare how the voting results played out for the DTBL and NL Cy Young awards.  The order in which those four finished was almost exactly the opposite in the two races.  In the NL, the award was won by Corbin Burnes with Zack Wheeler finishing second, Scherzer third and Walker Buehler fourth.  Here’s how the DTBL vote shook out.  Scherzer received seven of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds to finish with 84 points.  The runner-up was Komodos’ ace Buehler.  The Dodgers righty was just barely edged out by Scherzer in PAR, WHIP and strike outs, but Buehler had the slight edge in ERA and wins.  He received the other two first place votes, five seconds and two thirds for 65 points.  While it was the Scherzer/Verlander duo leading the way in recent championship seasons for the Kings, this year it was Wheeler replacing Verlander.  Wheeler had a career year, leading the league with 247 strikeouts.  He received one second and six third place votes for 43 points, joining Scherzer and Buehler as the trio who appeared on every ballot.  Finishing fourth was the NL Cy Young award winner Burnes.  The Cougars first round draft pick this year had a sparkling 2.43 ERA and 0.94 WHIP.  One of the talking points post NL Cy Young announcement was that Burnes threw 45 fewer innings than Wheeler.  As for this league’s vote, he threw just six fewer innings than Scherzer.  A majority of the votes he received were for the fourth slot and he totaled 27 points.  There was a huge dropoff after those four.  Finishing fifth was the Cougars’ Kevin Gausman with four points.  Interestingly, eight out of the top nine finishers played for NL teams.  The only exception was a relief pitcher, Liam Hendriks.  The top finishing AL starting pitcher was Gerrit Cole, who came in tenth.  Of course, AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray wasn’t even on the league roster this year.

Click here to view the full voting results.

One more award to come.  It’s the big one.  Who will be named the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player?  Come back tomorrow to find out!

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Peralta Nabs Rookie Honor

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

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For as long as this league has existed, teams have employed the strategy of using real life starting pitchers who qualify as relievers in relief pitcher slots to attempt to gain an advantage in the wins and strikeout categories.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.  There is usually a price to be paid in the ERA and WHIP categories when an additional, sometimes marginal starting pitcher is utilized.  But when that extra starter is an All-Star caliber pitcher, the calculus changes quite dramatically and it becomes a huge boon to a pitching staff.  The Demigods took a chance on Freddy Peralta in the eighth round of this spring’s draft, and boy did it pay off.  He is the 2021 DTBL Rookie of the Year.  This is the second straight year the award has been won by a Demigod, following Fernando Tatis Jr. a year ago.

Peralta struck out 195 batters, which was almost twice as many as any other DTBL reliever recorded and was a single season league record for a pitcher occupying a reliever slot, just surpassing Chris Sale’s breakout season of 2012 in which he pitched almost 50 more innings than Peralta did this year.  Peralta won 10 games, which may not seem especially impressive, but in today’s suppressed starting pitcher win environment, it was another nice bump for the Demigods.  The last DTBL reliever to win more games than that was Josh Collmenter in 2014.  The real risk of using starters as relievers is the damage they could do to ERA and WHIP.  But Peralta was elite in those categories as well, posting a 2.81 ERA and 0.97 WHIP.  In total, he accumulated 6.85 PAR to lead the Demigods staff.  Usually, its a bad sign if a reliver leads a team in pitching PAR.  But in this case, Peralta was a legitimate ace.  That PAR total was tops among DTBL rookies as well.  I do not have complete awards records prior to 2005. But in the years since, Peralta is the first DTBL designated relief pitcher to win Rookie of the Year.

It is probably safe to call the selection of Peralta in the eighth round a steal for the Demigods, even with him moving to a starting pitcher slot next year.  He was not enough to boost the Demigods into contention this year, but combining him with Max Fried, Aaron Nola and Joe Musgrove does give them a solid foundation on which to build.  The Demigods back-to-back Rookie of the Year winners, Peralta and Tatis, may have arrived with different pedigrees:  Tatis was the first overall pick in the draft while Peralta was taken 74th.  But both should be huge figures in the team’s future.

Peralta did have strong competition for this award.  Of the nine ballots cast, Peralta was the first choice on seven of them.  The other two ballots had him second, for a total of 84 points.  That gave him the award by a comfortable margin.  Finishing second was Beanballers hurler Chris Bassitt, who might have won this award had he not suffered a gruesome injury when he was hit in the face with a line drive in August and missed most of the remainder of the season.  Bassitt won 12 games with a 3.15 ERA.  He did not receive any first place votes, but was the consensus runner up with five second place votes and 48 total points.  Just behind him was Moonshiners outfielder Ryan Mountcastle who led all DTBL rookies with 33 home runs.  The Moonshiners first round selection received the two first place tallies that didn’t go to Peralta and appeared on all nine ballots for a 43 point total.  The third and final player to appear on every ballot was Kings outfielder Randy Arozarena.  The 2020 Postseason breakout star and 2021 American League Rookie of the Year validated his status as the second overall pick in the draft with a 20/20 season.  He had exactly 20 home runs and stolen bases.  Arozarena received one second place vote and a slew of third through fifths for 37 points.  Rounding out the top five is Mavericks starting pitcher Tyler Mahle.  He led DTBL rookies with 13 wins and 197 strikeouts.  He was a great find for the Mavericks in the sixth round and helped save a staff ravaged by injuries.  Mahle tallied 14 points in finishing fifth.

Click here to view the full voting results.

After going months without posting a blog entry, I’m going to try to cram three in consecutive days.  The plan is to announce the Cy Young winner tomorrow and MVP on Wednesday.  Stay tuned!

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Abreu, Tatis Share MVP Award

Monday, November 23rd, 2020

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A sixty game regular season didn’t afford players much of an opportunity to distinguish themselves from their peers.  Plenty of players made the most of the shortened schedule and had tremendous seasons.  But how do you determine which player was most valuable over such a short time frame?  It would appear the voters for the 2020 DTBL Most Valuable Player award had many different thoughts on that.  In quite possibly the most competitive award vote in league history, not one player received even half of the available points.  Five different guys received a first place tally and four others were ranked in the top three on at least one ballot.  A group of four players finished within four points of each other at the top of the results table.  And finally, two players tied for the ultimate prize.  Cougars first baseman Jose Abreu and Demigods shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. are the 2020 DTBL Co-Most Valuable Players.

Jose Abreu has been a steady force for the Cougars since 2015.  But prior to this year, he had never received so much as a single MVP vote and has never been named a DTBL All-Star.  This year, however, he was clearly among the league’s elite hitters.  He led the league with 60 RBI.  His 19 home runs trailed only Luke Voit.  He also hit .317 with 43 runs.  The batting average was easily a career high for Abreu and the pace he set in those counting stats would have been personal bests as well.  Being among the leaders in runs batted in is nothing new for Abreu though.  He finished second with 123 a year ago and has had at least 90 RBI in every season but one, prior to this season.  Abreu’s 4.4 Batting PAR ranked fourth in the league, which is an unusually low ranking for a MVP.  But the margins were so small that distinguishing between players based on that stat alone didn’t make a lot of sense this year.  He was just 0.2 points behind the leader (Tatis).

Abreu was selected by the Cougars with the first overall pick in the 2015 Draft.  By first overall pick standards, perhaps his career had been a slight disappointment prior to this year.  But he’s hardly been a bust.  He finished fourth for the Rookie of the Year award in 2015, following a strong first season.  His best full season was probably last year when he .284 with 33 homers and 123 RBI and a career high 5.4 PAR.  He almost certainly would have blown past that figure this year though with a full schedule.  He’s now finished with at least 4.0 PAR in four of his six DTBL seasons.  Abreu was a major reason why the Cougars finished second in the league in batting points.

In case you didn’t get a chance to read the Rookie of the Year article, here is a quick recap of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s season.  The first overall selection in this year’s draft lived up to the hype and then some.  Tatis led the league with 4.6 Batting PAR.  He hit .277 with 17 home runs and 11 stolen bases.  Only five players had more steals and only two hit more home runs than Tatis.  Nobody exceeded his total in both of those categories.  He also led the league with 50 runs scored.

While many players have come close in recent years, including Ronald Acuna last year, Tatis is the first player to win both the DTBL Rookie of the Year and DTBL Most Valuable Player in the same season since Ryan Howard in 2006.  Jake Arrieta had been the last person to win a pair of the three major awards, taking the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year in 2015.  While Tatis’ resume is quite impressive, he wasn’t a lock to be the top finishing Demigod in this vote.  First baseman Freddie Freeman also garnered strong support.  Tatis and Freeman were the primary reasons why the Demigods had the league’s most improved offense in 2020.

As a White Sox fan, I’m reluctant to even mention this, but Tatis and Abreu very easily could have been teammates.  However, the Sox dealt Tatis to San Diego for Big Game James Shields in 2016.  Oops.  I don’t think this is the first time that we have had co-MVPs.  In fact, I have a faint recollection of this happening in one of the league’s first couple seasons.  Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, my records are lacking on awards voting from the first decade of the league’s existence.  This data is likely sitting on an old hard drive that I still posses, so maybe I can fill in the blanks later.

The voting for this award was all over the map.  Abreu received the most first place votes with four, but didn’t garner any second or third place tallies and was entirely left off one ballot.  He accumulated a total of 49 points, which was matched by Tatis, but in a different fashion.  Tatis received three first place votes along with a pair of seconds.  But he was also left off two ballots.  Perhaps the top stealth candidate for this award was the guy who finished third.  Beanballers shortstop Trea Turner was not among the players strongly considered for the National League MVP award.  He was an extremely valuable fantasy player, however, racking up impressive totals in all five offensive categories.  Turner hit .335 with a dozen homers and a dozen stolen bases.  He scored 46 runs and knocked in 41.  His 4.4 Batting PAR was a smidge ahead of Abreu.  Turner only received one first place vote, but was the top choice for runner-up with three seconds.  He finished with 47 points, just two behind Abreu and Tatis.  Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez was also just a flipped vote here or there away from winning this award.  Ramirez actually had nearly identical numbers to Tatis across the board, but with a slightly higher .292 average.  Ramirez received a single first place vote, two seconds and three thirds.  He finished with 45 points, just four behind the winners.  But wait, there was one more player who had a reasonable shot at being the MVP.  Demigods first baseman Freddie Freeman didn’t receive any first place votes, but was another popular choice on ballots.  He appeared on eight ballots for a total of 32 points.  Those were the five who appeared on a majority of ballots.  Kings outfielder Mookie Betts also received a first place nod as one of the three total votes given to him.  To add to the chaos of these results is another fascinating fact.  The champion Darkhorses easily led the league in batting points.  However, not one of their players were among the eleven players who received MVP votes.  Finally, this is the first time in Mike Trout’s illustrious career that he has not received a MVP vote.

Click here to view the full voting results.

And with that, official business for the 2020 DTBL season is complete.  It’s been a trying year for everybody.  I hope this league was a fun distraction for you at times this summer.  Let’s all hope for a return to normalcy in 2021.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Cougars, Demigods | No Comments »

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