Archive for November, 2011

Kemp Named DTBL MVP

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Demigods outfielder Matt Kemp

Earlier today, the Baseball Writers Association of America did what they normally do and awarded the National League MVP to the best player from one of the best teams rather than giving it to a player on a mediocre team with possibly the better overall statistics.  Meanwhile, DTBL members did what they normally do and voted stats over team placement.  Champion Jackalope outfielder Ryan Braun won the NL MVP, but Demigods outfielder Matt Kemp is the 2011 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

In 2011, Matt Kemp was the textbook definition of a five category star.  He was among the league leaders in all five categories.  He led the league with 126 runs batted in.  His .324 batting average ranked seventh, 39 home runs was third, fourth in runs scored with 115 and was third in stolen bases with 40.  He was only one home run shy of reaching the esteemed 40/40 Club (home runs and stolen bases).

Probably the most under-reported story line of the ’11 season was Kemp’s attempt to become the first MLB triple crown winner in 44 years.  I’m not sure exactly why that was the case.  It was probably a combination of the Dodgers irrelevance, the thrilling late season playoff races, and my own personal theory:  the advancement of sabermetrics in baseball.  The three triple crown categories just don’t hold the same significance they once did, especially batting average.  Whatever the reason, Kemp wound up falling a little short as Braun edged him out for the NL batting title.  He was not particularly close to winning the DTBL triple crown though with several AL batters, in addition to Braun, having higher averages.

The Demigods were one of the league’s pleasant surprises this year, jumping from last place in 2010 to a fifth place finish.  In particular, their offense was light years better than last year’s squad.  They finished with 43 batting points, which was second behind only the Naturals.  Kemp was clearly the main reason for that.  He led the team in all five categories (tied with Ichiro in stolen bases).  A first round pick back in 2008, Kemp has been a significant fixture in the Demigods’ lineup the last four seasons.  But he easily exceeded career highs in every category this year.

The MVP voting was very interesting.  Even though there were a lot of compelling candidates, Kemp won the award fairly easily.  He received eight first place votes, one second and one fourth, for a total of 90 points.  NL MVP Braun came in second with a single first place vote and 63 points.  Kemp and Braun were the only two players to appear on all ten ballots.  Finishing third was Darkhorses outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury with 47 points.  Then there was a bit of a gap.  Choppers outfielder Curtis Granderson came in fourth.  He received the final first place vote, but only appeared on half the ballots and accumulated 20 points.  Naturals first baseman Miguel Cabrera came in fifth, and finally, Rookie of the Year winner and Choppers outfielder Jose Bautista finished sixth.

Click here to view the full voting results.

As alluded to earlier, DTBL MVP usually seems to take on a different meaning than AL and NL MVP.  The baseball writers clearly put a premium on the success (or lack there of) of a player’s team.  However, team success rarely seems to matter in the DTBL vote.  This is very apparent by the opposite results of the NL MVP and DTBL MVP votes, despite the fact that Braun played for the DTBL Champions.  Personally, I think it makes sense for the DTBL award to be all about the stats.  After all, that’s what fantasy baseball is all about.  Meanwhile, another MLB MVP debate popped up with Justin Verlander winning the AL MVP.  Obviously, that debate doesn’t occur in this league since we don’t make pitchers eligible for the MVP award.  It’s actually kind of interesting because pitchers are really more valuable in fantasy baseball than they are in the real game since they account for exactly half of the league’s points, despite fewer pitchers than batters appearing on active rosters at any given time.  An argument could be made that the DTBL Cy Young winner is really more valuable than the DTBL MVP in most seasons.  But the main reason why I don’t make pitchers eligible for the MVP is because they have their own award.  Perhaps the MVP should be called something else to stop this debate (the Babe Ruth Award?).  Anyway, I digress…. I just found these MVP discussions to be especially interesting this year.

Roster cuts will be due very soon, so you might want to start figuring out who you are going to keep.  In the mean time, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Demigods | 2 Comments »

Full Agreement: Verlander Wins Cy

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Kings pitcher Justin Verlander

It was a great year for pitchers as a whole, but one hurler was head and shoulders above the rest.  In the least surprising news of the off-season, Kevin’s Kings ace Justin Verlander has unanimously won the 2011 DTBL Cy Young Award, to go along with the American League Cy Young Award which he unanimously won earlier this week.

2011 was an amazing, record-setting year for Verlander.  He got off to a hot start, highlighted by his second career no-hitter against Toronto in May.  He continued to win games start after start and finished the season with 24 victories, tying the DTBL single season record.  John Smoltz won 24 games for the Cougars back in 1996 and Randy Johnson equaled that mark for the Kings in 2002.  Since that ’02 season, no pitcher had won more than 22 games in a season.  In addition to wins, Verlander also led the league in WHIP at 0.920 and 250 strike outs.  That WHIP ratio comes in as the sixth lowest single season value in DTBL history.  His 2.40 ERA was pretty good too.

Verlander was almost solely responsible for the Kings tying for the second most pitching points in the league.  Only one other King won more than 10 games (Max Scherzer), yet the team wound up leading the league in that category.  Verlander accounted for almost 20% of the team’s strike outs as well.  The Kings picked Verlander in the third round of the 2009 draft after he had spent two seasons with the Demigods.  The Demigods let him go after a very disappointing season in 2008.  In his three seasons with the Kings, he has won at least 18 games in each campaign.  In fact, he has reached that 18 win mark in four of his five DTBL seasons.  He’ll need just 13 wins next year to reach 100 for his career.  It has been an impressive early career for Verlander, but 2011 was by far his best year yet.

The Cy Young voting results were not surprising, but very interesting none-the-less.  Unanimous decisions for awards are fairly common, but rarely do you see complete agreement in both of the top two spots.  Verlander received all ten of the first place votes for the maximum 100 points, while the young Mavericks lefty Clayton Kershaw received all ten of the second place votes for 70 total points.  Kershaw, the National League Cy Young winner, won 21 games and was right with Verlander in the other categories.  Kershaw had the league’s best ERA at 2.28 and finished second to Verlander in wins, WHIP (0.977) and strike outs (248).  These two were clearly the best two pitchers in the league in 2011.  Although not quite unanimous, Roy Halladay was the clear choice for third place.  He earned eight third place votes with the other two going to his Jackalope and Phillies teammate Cliff Lee.  Halladay earned 46 points.  Lee finished fourth in the vote with 26 points.  There was a bit of a gap following the pair of Jackalope.  Former Jackalope, current Moonshiner Jered Weaver finished fifth with eight points.  Halladay, Lee and Weaver had numbers which would have made them likely Cy  Young winners in many seasons, but not this one.

Click here to view the full 2011 DTBL Cy Young voting results.

I’m going to take this time to mention that I never got around to writing that third piece of my season recap, which was supposed to be a statistical look at how much pitchers dominated the 2011 season.  Hopefully, I’ll take the time at some point this winter to delve into this, because after glancing at some of the numbers, it is quite apparent that pitching has never been better than it was this year (in the DTBL, that is).  All of the players mentioned above played a huge part in this.

The final award, the Most Valuable Player, will be named next Tuesday.  There are plenty of strong candidates for that award as well.

Posted in Awards, Kings | No Comments »

A Veteran Wins DTBL ROY

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Choppers outfielder Jose Bautista

Going into this year’s draft, the 2011 DTBL rookie class was not highly touted.  To make matters worse, several of the top youngsters picked in that draft proceeded to have very disappointing and/or injury-plagued seasons.  However, the rookie class turned out to be rather deep with a bunch of players taken after the first round easily exceeding expectations.  In the end, it was a “veteran” who won the 2011 DTBL Rookie of the Year Award.  The honor went to Choppers outfielder Jose Bautista.

2011 was Jose Bautista’s eighth MLB season, but the first season in which he appeared on a DTBL roster, making him eligible for this award.  From 2004-2009, Bautista was little more than a platoon/role player in the outfield and at third base with virtually no fantasy value.  But in 2010, he broke out in a big way, slugging 54 home runs with 124 RBIs.  Those numbers immediately made him one of the most sought after players in this year’s draft.  The Choppers felt very fortunate to pick him up with the fourth pick in the draft.  Although he entered this season with many wondering if 2010 was a fluke, he did not disappoint.  He hit 43 home runs with 103 RBIs and 105 runs scored.  His .302 batting average surpassed his previous single season high by more than 40 points.  So while ’10 was his true breakout season, ’11 was the year he became a complete hitter and a legitimate superstar.  He managed to lead the DTBL in home runs in his very first season.  Finishing the season at age 30 made Bautista a very unusual “rookie”, but he is not the oldest DTBL ROY winner.  I believe that distinction belongs to Andres Galarraga who won the league’s first Rookie of the Year Award in 1994 at the age of 33.

Bautista was a huge part of a vastly improved Choppers squad.  Although they finished the season in sixth place, the Choppers were in the hunt until the final month of the season and were much more competitive than they have been in recent years.  That is largely due to the significant power boost provided by Bautista and Curtis Granderson.  The slugging duo finished first and second in the league in home runs.  Both figure to be strong candidates for the MVP Award, which will be announced next week.  The Choppers finished in the top half of the league in all five offensive categories, a year after finishing in the bottom half in all except batting average.

The depth of this year’s rookie class is very apparent after taking a glance at the award’s voting results.  American League Rookie of the Year Jeremy Hellickson was on the DTBL ballot as well, but did not receive a single vote.  Bautista won the award by garnering 7 of the 10 first place votes and a total of 87 points.  The runner up was Bautista’s Choppers teammate, relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel.  Kimbrel saved 46 games with a 2.10 ERA, 1.039 WHIP and an extremely impressive 127 strike outs.  He was named the National League Rookie of the Year earlier this week.  Kimbrel was a third round pick by the Choppers.  Since they traded away their second round pick, all the Choppers first two picks wound up doing was finish first and second in the DTBL ROY vote.  Kimbrel received the other three first place votes and accumulated 75 points.  Another closer came in third, the Jackalope’s John Axford, who matched Kimbrel’s 46 save total.  The only pitcher with more saves than these two DTBL rookies was Jose Valverde.  Axford received enough votes to get 37 points.  His Jackalope teammate, slugging outfielder Mike Stanton, finished fourth.  Stanton’s 34 home runs gave the champions just the kind of power threat they needed.  Just like the Choppers, the Jackalope struck gold in the first couple rounds of the draft.  Stanton was a first round selection and Axford was picked in the second round.  Rounding out the top five was yet another closer, the Moonshiners’ Drew Storen.  Storen saved 43 games.  The Kimbrel/Axford/Storen combination is about as good of a set of rookie closers as you will ever see.

Click here to see the full voting results.

The 2011 Cy Young Award winner will be announced this Friday and the DTBL Most Valuable Player will be named next Tuesday, November 22.

Posted in Awards, Choppers | No Comments »