Archive for October, 2012

Close Only Counts In…

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Mavericks outfielder Jason Heyward

When a season ends like this year’s DTBL campaign did, there is always going to be a lot of second guessing.  One move here or there.  One umpiring or official scorer decision gone bad.  One unlucky bounce of the ball could have been the difference between a league championship and also-ran status for four different teams.  The Naturals won the DTBL Championship, but four other teams came oh so close.  Here’s a look back at 2012 for the Kings, Mavericks, Moonshiners and Jackalope.

While a second place finish is always a little disappointing, it was a step in the right direction for the Kings.  This was their highest finish since 2007 and only the second time they were a legitimate title contender since their reign of championships ended in 2003.  Like the champion Naturals, the Kings went through a bit of a transformation this season, albeit in the opposite direction.  Previously a pitching dominated team, this year they led the league in batting points and failed to win the league primarily due to a disappointing pitching staff.  Their starting pitching was a mess most of the season with Justin Verlander being the only consistent performer.  A second half surge, led by Max Scherzer, nearly won the league for them though.  The offense was solid all season, but faded a bit due to a poor second half by Carlos Beltran and a late season injury to Carlos Gonzalez.  Robinson Cano was the steady hand throughout.  The Kings are going to have some very difficult roster decisions to make because they may have more keeper-worthy players than any other team.  In this year’s draft, we saw a bunch of ex-Demigods picked in the early rounds.  That could be the Kings next year.

For my money, the most interesting team in the league in 2012 was the Mavericks.  Their youth movement finally paid off in a big way.  Although they expected to be at least one more year away from being a serious contender, one move in particular shifted that time table way up.  What might some day go down as the biggest coup in league history, the Mavericks were able to steal Mike Trout in the second round of this year’s draft.  As I’ve mentioned before, I thought it was a huge reach at that point of the draft, but boy was I wrong.  Trout finished third in the league in hitting at .330, easily led the league in runs scored (128) and stolen bases (48) and hit 30 home runs.  He did all of this despite not making his DTBL debut until May.  He almost won the league for the Mavericks, though he did have some help.  Edwin Encarnacion, Adam Jones and Jason Heyward were some of the huge breakout stars for this club.  The pitching staff took a hit when Stephen Strasburg was shut down in September and they had no free agent signings remaining to replace him.  But Clayton Kershaw had another great season.  The Strasburg/Kerhsaw/Trout combination makes this one scary team for the foreseeable future.  Following two disappointing seasons, 2012 was just the beginning of the Mavericks resurgence.

The Moonshiners may have been the team that suffered the most disappointment in the final week of the season.  Early in the week, they appeared to be well positioned to win their first DTBL title.  But they wound up settling for fourth place, albeit just a point and a half out of first.  That is actually down a spot from their third place finish in 2011, though 2012 was clearly a better season for them.  They were the league’s most balanced team; the only team to finish with 30+ batting and pitching points.  They were third in the league in both sub-sets.  While they lacked huge seasons from anyone, especially on the offensive side of things, they had incredible depth.  Prince Fielder and David Wright led the offense.  Jared Weaver was probably their top pitcher over the course of the full season, but the key free agent signing of R.A. Dickey was also one of the biggest moves of the year.  Although the fourth place finish was disappointing, it may have been just as well that the Moonshiners finished a half point behind the Kings and Mavericks because they will now have the opportunity to pick before those two clubs in the draft.  One of the steadiest teams in the league, it seems like it will only be a matter of time before the Moonshiners break through with their first title.

Finally, we have the defending champions.  Dropping from first to fifth is obviously a huge disappointment for the Jackalope, but it wasn’t necessarily all that surprising.  Rarely are teams able to catch all the breaks two years in a row.  While the ’11 Jackalope cruised to the title thanks to an unbeatable pitching staff and virtually no significant injuries, the ’12 squad wasn’t so lucky.  They still managed to lead the league in pitching points, but the rotation led by Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee and Ian Kennedy just wasn’t as dominating as a year ago.  Lee was especially unlucky, not winning his first game until June despite pretty decent peripheral numbers.  But the real problem was the offense.  Ryan Howard missed the first half of the season and wasn’t particularly effective after he returned.  Several of their youngsters had disappointing seasons.  Albert Pujols wasn’t even close to his usual elite self.  The two bright spots were Ryan Braun and Giancarlo Stanton.  The rest of the offense is going to need some work in the offseason.  But expect the pitching to bounce back next year, which should keep them in the hunt once again.

The rest of the league has some work to do to catch these top five teams.  But history has shown that breakthrough seasons are likely again next year.  I will recap the disappointing 2012 season for the bottom five teams later this week.

Posted in Jackalope, Kings, Mavericks, Moonshiners | No Comments »

Naturals Grab Third Title

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Naturals pitcher David Price

The World Series is over and the DTBL season wrapped up almost a month ago, so I suppose it is about time I write about the Naturals title winning season.  Actually, I may have skipped this altogether, except I suddenly find myself with some unexpected free time thanks to Hurricane Sandy.  Hopefully I won’t lose power before I finish this…

Perhaps when it became obvious that we were headed for a chaotic sprint for the finish line, the Naturals should have been the clear favorite to finish first.  They have now come out on top of the two best finishes in league history and have never won the title by more than 3 1/2 points.  Their 2005 title now looks like a cakewalk as they bested the Moonshiners by 3 1/2.  Then in 2010, we had the unforgettable first place tie between the Naturals and Darkhorses, with two other teams within 5 points of first.  But the finishes to those seasons were nothing like 2012.  As I covered in the last article, five teams had a legitimate chance to win the championship heading into the final day of the season.  But in the end, Nick’s Naturals captured the 2012 Dream Team Baseball League Championship.

With their third DTBL title, the Naturals are now tied with the Cougars for the third most titles in league history, just one behind the Darkhorses and Kings.  Not bad for the league’s youngest franchise.  Since the Darkhorses four-peat, the Naturals have been the league’s most dominating team.  They have finished no lower than third place since 2009, including two titles and a second place finish in 2011.  Despite finishing a distant second to the Jackalope a year ago, they were absolutely considered one of the favorites headed into 2012.  But the manner in which they went about winning the title was not what most predicted.  Previously a hitting dominated team, it was the Naturals pitching staff that led them to the title.

In 2011, the Naturals finished 10 1/2 points behind the Jackalope, but it was a shaky pitching staff that kept them from making a serious title run.  They led the league with 45 batting points, but only earned a mediocre 25 1/2 pitching points.  That put them 23 1/2 pitching points behind the champion Jackalope, obviously too big of a margin to make up on offense.  But in 2012, it was almost the opposite situation.  The offense slipped to just 29 batting points, ranking fifth in the league.  A vastly improved pitching staff earned them 41 1/2 points, just 1/2 point behind the Jackalope for most in the league.  When put together, those numbers earned them a one point advantage over the Kings and Mavericks.

Although the offense was largely disappointing, one player in particular kept the team afloat:  Miguel Cabrera.  Cabrera famously won the first league triple crown since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.  He did not win the same honor in the DTBL though since Melky Cabrera, Buster Posey and Mike Trout bested him in batting average.  In case you were wondering about Melky Cabrera and Trout finishing ahead of him, our league uses 400 at bats as the minimum qualifying mark, so Cabrera was able to qualify despite the PED suspension and wound up winning the DTBL batting title.  Meanwhile, although he finished behind Miguel Cabrera in the AL batting title race, Trout finished just ahead of him in our league because the Mavericks did not have him active for his first week in the MLB this season.  But anyway, that does not take away from the impressive season by Miguel Cabrera.  He hit .330 and led the DTBL in home runs (44) and runs batted in (139).  Only Trout scored more runs than his 109.  Just like in the American League, it should be a fascinating race between him and Trout for the MVP award.

Cabrera was not the only standout offensive performer for the Naturals though.  Andrew McCutchen appears to have reached superstar status.  He joined the 30-20 club with 31 home runs and 20 stolen bases while hitting for a .327 average.  He also figures to garner some MVP consideration.  Chase Headley and Chris Davis were the biggest surprises on the roster, coming out of relative obscurity to have big seasons.  Both were very shrewd early season free agent signings by the Naturals.  Joey Votto was another player who was having a huge season, until a mid-season injury derailed him and he was never quite the same in the second half.

In some ways, the Naturals offense wasn’t really that huge of a disappointment when you consider what they had to overcome.  Injuries ruined most/all of the season for some of their key contributors from years past:  Troy Tulowitzki, Carl Crawford, Victor Martinez and a late season injury to Nick Markakis.  6th round pick Mat Gamel was lost extremely early in the season as well.  So the fact that the Naturals slipped up in batting points this season was not at all surprising.  Fortunately for them, they had a pitching staff to pick up the slack.

David Price, Matt Cain, Zack Greinke, Jordan Zimmermann and Jon Lester teamed up to create a starting rotation as good as anybody’s, except possibly the Jackalope.  In fact, those five were so steady that Homer Bailey found himself in the minors almost the entire season despite a huge breakout season for him too.  Lester’s season was slightly disappointing, but the other four were among the best pitchers in the league this year.  Price will probably be the team’s top Cy Young candidate.  He finished second in the league in wins (20) and ERA (2.56) and was also among the league leaders in WHIP (1.10) and strike outs (205).  Cain threw a perfect game in ’12 and led the Naturals in WHIP (1.04) while winning 16 games.  Greinke had another steady season, though he tailed off a bit after the trade to the American League.  And Zimmermann had a breakout year, posting an impressive 2.94 ERA.

The Naturals bullpen was a strength as well, finishing second in the league in saves despite finishing the season with just two closers.  Jason Motte and Chris Perez finished third and fifth respectively in the league in saves.  Jonathan Broxton contributed 27 saves as well, most of the coming before he was traded to Cincinnati.  It was a nice showing by a group that lost one of its key pieces in spring training, when Joakim Soria was lost to Tommy John surgery.

The 2012 season will be best remembered for the unbelievable championship race.  But when it was all said and done, the Naturals claimed a well deserved DTBL Championship.  Next year, they will attempt to tie for the most titles in league history, and there is no reason to think they won’t be one of the favorites to do just that.

Later this week, I will recap the season of the other title contenders and will then wrap things up with the teams that finished in the bottom half of the standings.  If I get another day off of work, perhaps that second article will come tomorrow.  Also look for the 2012 DTBL awards ballot to be posted later this week.  Those award winners will be announced in November.

Posted in Naturals | No Comments »

The Chaos Ends, Naturally

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

Naturals first baseman Miguel Cabrera

In the two decades this league has existed, we’ve had our fair share of exciting finishes to DTBL seasons, but nothing quite like this year.  The final week of the 2012 season featured five teams within at least two points of first place at some point in the week.  In fact, if you count incremental progress within each date, most of the five found themselves in first place at some point.  For a brief moment on Wednesday night, it looked like we may have been headed to an absurd three way tie for the league championship.  However, when the dust settled, only one team came out on top.  Congratulations to Nick’s Naturals, the 2012 Dream Team Baseball League Champions!

As usual, I intend to write about the league champion with a full recap of how they earned the title.  But that is going to have to wait until next week.  Tonight, I want to focus on the absurdity of the title race, describe just how things went down on the final night, and describe just how close we were to the most unlikely result in any fantasy league I have ever been a part of.

As the summer progressed, it seemed quite likely that we were headed towards an exciting finish.  At no point in the season had any team run away from the pack; at least not for more than a few days at a time.  The lead constantly changed hands.  Seven teams looked like legitimate title contenders.  The Cougars and Choppers faded a bit in July and August, setting up a five team race to the finish.  With exactly one week to go, here is how the top five looked:

  1. Moonshiners, 73.5 points
  2. Kings, 72.5 (-1)
  3. Naturals, 67 (-6.5)
  4. Jackalope, 66.5 (-7)
  5. Mavericks, 65 (-8.5)

It was fairly noteworthy that the top two teams had separated themselves from the others by more than five points, because that was rarely the case in September.  But it was clear when analyzing the standings that more change was likely to come.  There was also a great deal of uncertainty heading into the final transaction deadline.  Would the teams who had already clinched MLB playoff spots rest their starters?  Skip spots in the rotation?  Or even completely shut down some guys?  This was particularly troubling for teams worried about getting as many starts from their starting pitchers as possible.  The Moonshiners appeared to be in very good shape, not only because they held the top spot, but they had most of their starting pitchers slated to start twice in the final week.  Meanwhile, the Kings were dealing with several nagging injuries to their outfielders and uncertainty about Max Scherzer’s availability in the final week.  The other three challengers were just trying to hang on.

Three days later, the Moonshiners lead grew to four points.  The four challengers were all within a point of each other, but needed to make up ground quickly.  By the next morning (Monday), the lead was down to 1 1/2 points and the sprint to the finish was on.  On the second to last day of the season, the Moonshiners lost the lead completely as the Kings and Naturals moved into a tie for first entering the final day.  The Moonshiners slipped to 1 1/2 points back.  The Jackalope’s dream of a repeat seemed unlikely, 3 1/2 points behind.  And finally, the Mavericks looked to be in big trouble, 5 1/2 points off the pace.  But the Mavericks had one thing going for them that the other challengers did not:  multiple starting pitchers scheduled to take the mound, including their ace, Clayton Kershaw.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  The Moonshiners were also supposed to get three starts on the final day of the season.  However, the Brewers elected to scratch Yovani Gallardo and the Angels pulled Jered Weaver after just one inning.  This essentially ended the Moonshiners hopes of gaining a point in strike outs and decreased their movement possibilities in ERA and WHIP.

I won’t rehash all of the events of the final day, as most of them can be found in my live blog from yesterday.  But one part of the story must be repeated.  During the 10 o’clock hour, I was frantically updating my spreadsheet with all of the stats from the completed 7 p.m. games as well as most of the stats from the last batch of games.  At one point, I calculated a three way tie for first place.  Had the season ended at that instant, the Kings, Mavericks and Naturals would have shared the title.  But some later shifts in RBI and saves moved the Naturals back into the final position they claimed.

The three way tie scenario was actually a lot closer to happening than I realized last night.  The WHIP category was the craziest to follow on the last day.  Only three of the league’s ten teams ended the day where they started in that category.  The margins between most of the teams were miniscule, but especially between the Gators and Naturals.  When it was all said and done, the Naturals edged out the Gators for second place in WHIP by two ten-thousandths of a point.  To put that in perspective, had any Naturals pitcher finished the season with one more base runner allowed via hit or walk, the Gators would have finished ahead of them and we would be talking about three co-champions.  I bet I wouldn’t have to try very hard to find a questionable scoring decision somewhere over the course of the season where a Naturals pitcher benefited from an error rather than a hit.  But that’s not to say the Naturals got lucky.  In fact, they were well positioned to gain points in a whole host of other categories.  They were one offensive hit away from passing the Kings in batting average, for example.  I only illustrate this to show you just how ridiculously close this race was.

Of the ten categories, all but two of them saw points change hands during the final day.  This is incredibly unusual at the six month mark of the season, especially in high value counting categories like RBI and runs.  Based on what we saw yesterday, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that we would have had four or five different leaders if the season had extended a few more days, just as we saw the lead change hands several times over the final weeks.  But the season has to end sometime, and the Naturals were fortunate enough to come out on top.

I’m sure all four of the teams who came up just short have been thinking about decisions they made that may have cost them a title.  With the way things ended up, it wouldn’t be very hard to point to a single transaction each team made (or could have made, but didn’t), which would have shifted the standings in their favor.  But such is life when a season ends as this one did.  There is always next year for the rest of us!

What is it with the finishes in Naturals championship seasons?  They earned their third DTBL title this year, and the two most recent ones have come in the two craziest finishes in league history.  Of course, the other season I speak of was 2010 when they shared the title with the Darkhorses.  It certainly makes their 3 1/2 point victory in 2005 look like a cakewalk.

Look for a full review of the Naturals championship season next week, as well as a glimpse at the other contenders who fell just short.

Posted in Jackalope, Kings, Mavericks, Moonshiners, Naturals | No Comments »

Live Blog: Season Finale

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

Mavericks pitcher Clayton Kershaw

After sending the email to the group list last night, I realized that it can be difficult to fully describe what is going on with just 140 characters at a time, so I’ve decided to start a running blog post to summarize the championship race this evening.  I will continue to tweet updates as well, but feel free to keep refreshing this post to see my updates throughout the night.

With one day remaining on the schedule, we have five teams within three points of first place.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  There are points to be gained or lost in almost every category.  I will let you know every change as close to real-time as possible, via Twitter, and with occasional updates here.

Time for me to get caught up on the afternoon games.  There were some very interesting developments, but it remains to be seen if there were any changes to the standings.  I’ll have an update shortly.  Stay tuned!

7:50 pm

Well, I’ve finished updating things through the completed afternoon games.  Thanks to a rough outing by Jonathan Papelbon, the Kings dropped a point in ERA, falling behind the Choppers.  Meanwhile, the Jackalope also fell one further down as the Choppers passed them in WHIP.  Plenty of categories tightened as well.  The Kings picked up two home runs (Zimmerman and Morse) and are now just one behind the Mavericks for the league lead.  However, the standings are now as follows:  Naturals (71 points), Moonshiners (70), Kings and Mavericks tied (69), Jackalope (67).  Not looking good for the defending champs.  Now I’ll work on updating the games in progress.

8:40 pm

Okay, trying to keep this “live” is virtually impossible, but one thing is starting to become clear.  It appears the Naturals will win the 2012 DTBL Championship.  They now lead the league with 72 1/2 points.  The Mavericks have moved up to 2nd place, but are 3 points back.  Moonshiners have dropped to 3rd (69).  Kings and Jackalope are 4th and 5th respectively, and are leaking points all over the place.  Still way too many close categories to call this thing, but not looking good for anyone other than the Naturals.

9:00 pm

Did they really have to schedule this Presidential Debate on the last night of the MLB season?  Don’t they know there are fantasy league titles on the line tonight?  May not be many updates from me for a while…  Still looking good for the Naturals, though Robinson Cano’s big night has pushed the Kings into the league lead in HR and has them back into 2nd place overall.  2 1/2 point lead for the Naturals though.

10:51 pm

Way too many changes since my last update to list, but we have a major development.  I now have the Kings, Mavericks and Naturals in a three way tie for first at 69.5 points, with the Moonshiners 1/2 point back and the Jackalope 2 points behind the leader.  The main reasons for the change:  great start by Clayton Kershaw gave the Mavericks a boost, especially since another Mavericks pitcher (Ryan Vogelsong) also had a good outing in that same game.  Robinson Cano went 4 for 4 with a pair of home runs, boosting the Kings in HR and batting average.   Finally, I have the Naturals and Jackalope tied in RBIs now, which also cost the Naturals 1/2 point.  Needless to say, it is way too close to call right now.

11:11 pm

Jason Motte’s save puts the Naturals back into the lead.  Ironically, it was another Naturals pitcher that helped set up the save opportunity.  Jonathan Broxton gave up a run and took the loss.  He didn’t cost the Naturals in the WHIP category, yet.  They are thousandths of a point ahead of the Gators at the moment, according to my calculations.  Kings, Mavericks and Moonshiners are all within a point, so a change in any category could tip the title in a different direction.

11:47 pm

The 2012 season is now over.  I have compiled all of today’s results.  The gap between teams in almost every category is so small that I do not trust my final results and sort of wish I hadn’t chosen to do this “live” updating because the chances I have it wrong are quite high.  Anyway, according to my numbers the 2012 DTBL Champions are Nick’s Naturals!

The Naturals have 70 1/2 points.  The Kings and Mavericks tied for second place, just one point behind.  The Moonshiners fell to fourth place with 69 points and the Jackalope came in 5th with 67.

I urge you to check in again tomorrow morning around 8:15 a.m. EDT when I will post the official results.  This could be a “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment, but if not, congratulations Nick!

Posted in Jackalope, Kings, Mavericks, Moonshiners, Naturals | No Comments »