Archive for November, 2013

Cabrera Named MVP Again

Monday, November 18th, 2013

Naturals third baseman Miguel Cabrera

For the second straight year, the American League MVP vote caused a lively debate about the meaning of “value” and the use of new advanced stats to determine said value.  The end result, both years, was a MVP win for old school stat champion Miguel Cabrera over sabermetrician darling Mike Trout.  The debate was/is slightly different when it comes to fantasy baseball since fielding value is meaningless and base running only matters in terms of stolen bases and runs scored.  Trout received strong consideration for the DTBL MVP award last year, falling a little short.  But this year, he wasn’t even the second choice.  This wasn’t terribly surprising since almost the only reason why Trout was deemed more valuable than Cabrera by some is because the gap between the two players on defense was so enormous.  Again, fielding doesn’t matter in fantasy baseball, so for the second straight year, Naturals third baseman Miguel Cabrera is the DTBL Most Valuable Player.

Had the 2013 season ended in August, even sabermetricians would have been on board with a Cabrera AL MVP, despite his defensive flaws.  But multiple injuries plagued him through the final month or so of the season, making him a shell of the player he had been up to that point.  A healthy Cabrera is simply the best hitter in baseball right now.  Although he did not threaten to win the triple crown this year like he did in the AL in 2012 (and came close in the DTBL as well), he still finished at or near the top of the league in four of the five offensive categories.  The one category he led, batting average, was the category that kept him from winning the DTBL triple crown last year.  Cabrera hit a robust .348, 25 points higher than any other player.  He hit 44 home runs and drove in 137 runs, bested by only Chris Davis in each category.  He finished third in the league with 103 runs scored.  Had he been healthy down the stretch, a .350/50/150 season was within reach.  But it is hard not to be impressed with his actual numbers.

Cabrera has replaced Albert Pujols as the safest bet in baseball to put up obscene numbers year in and year out.  He has hit .320 or better in eight of his ten DTBL seasons, all with the Naturals.  Only once did he fail to hit 30 home runs (2006) and he has NEVER had a DTBL season with fewer than 100 RBI.  So basically, the worst season of his career was still better than what all but a handful of players did this year.  It bodes well for a team’s offense when they can pencil in a likely .320, 40, 130 from their best player every year.  Although the Naturals were unable to defend their title this year, Cabrera was obviously not the reason.

The MVP vote was very interesting.  Cabrera won fairly comfortably, but he was not close to being a unanimous selection.  He was first on seven ballots, second on two and third on one for a total of 89 points.  Cougars outfielder Chris Davis had a huge breakout year, slugging 53 home runs and also leading the league in RBI.  He wound up leading the way among a pack of three players who fell a little short of winning the award.  Davis received two first place votes and four seconds, but was inexplicably left off one ballot.  However, it didn’t cost him first runner up status as he finished with 59 points.  Another breakout star, Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt finished third.  He accumulated 48 points, just barely edging out Trout’s 46.  Trout did receive one first place vote, but otherwise wasn’t strongly considered.  Like Davis, he was also surprisingly left off a ballot.  Finally, the biggest oddity of the vote was the fifth place finisher.  Not that he didn’t deserve to finish fifth, but it is strange to see the most consensus in the vote to be for a player finishing fifth.  Eight out of the ten voters believed Mavericks outfielder Adam Jones was the fifth most valuable player in the league.  Sure enough, he came in fifth with eight points.  Also interesting was NL MVP Andrew McCutchen receiving just two votes, putting him seventh.

Click here to view the full MVP voting results.

Thanks to everyone for getting your ballots submitted so quickly.  With that, we are now ready for winter.  Since most people seemed to prefer the late roster cut deadline we implemented last year, I think we will keep it that way permanently.  So the no-trade period will continue until after roster cuts are made in early February.  If you have ideas for 2014 rule changes, feel free to send them my way or get a discussion going on the message board (although site traffic will probably be very light the next few months).

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Kershaw Narrowly Wins Cy Young

Friday, November 15th, 2013

Mavericks pitcher Clayton Kershaw

The 2013 AL and NL Cy Young awards were no-brainers.  Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw stood out among their peers in their respective leagues.  Both had outstanding, career-best seasons.  The Kings’ Scherzer had the advantage over Kershaw in wins and strikeouts, while Kershaw led the way in ERA and WHIP.  In a very tight vote, Mavericks lefty Clayton Kershaw is the 2013 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

Kershaw is just the fifth starting pitcher in DTBL history to post a sub-2.00 ERA in a single season.  Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez accomplished that feat twice while Kevin Brown and Roger Clemens did it once each.  Kershaw’s 1.83 ERA was the lowest total the league has seen since Pedro in 2000 and is the fifth lowest mark ever.  Needless to say, he obliterated the rest of the league in that category this season, more than 8/10 of a run better than any other pitcher.  He easily led the league in WHIP too, at 0.915.  Both totals are Mavericks single season records.  What kept the Cy Young race tight was the fact that he “only” won 16 games, but even that was fifth best in the league.  His 232 strikeouts trailed only Yu Darvish and Scherzer.

This is Kershaw’s first DTBL Cy Young award, but he came very close each of the last two years.  A sixth round pick of the Mavericks in 2009, Kershaw burst into the upper echelon of pitchers in his second season in the league in 2010.  This was his fourth consecutive season with an ERA under 3, a WHIP below 1.2, at least a dozen wins and over 200 strikeouts.  Putting up those numbers once is pretty impressive, but doing it four years in a row puts him among the elite pitchers in league history.  Prior to this year, his previous best season was in 2011 when he set career highs in wins (21) and strikeouts (248) while posting a sub 1.0 WHIP.  With numbers like that, he would have won the Cy Young most seasons, but finished second to Justin Verlander that year.  He followed it up with a third place finish a year ago.  But now the award is his.

Kershaw was the ace of the league’s best pitching staff this year.  The Mavericks blew away the rest of the league with their 46 pitching points.  Kershaw was obviously a big part of that, as he has been for several years now.  He is the Mavericks franchise career leader in ERA and WHIP, but still has a ways to go to catch Johan Santana in wins and strikeouts.  Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg and Matt Harvey give the Mavericks quite a core to lead their rotation for years to come.

The Cy Young vote was extremely close, perhaps indicating a split between those who value wins and those who don’t (as much).  Kershaw received six of the ten first place votes and was placed second on the other four ballots, for a total of 88 points.  Scherzer, who led the league with 21 wins, received the other four first place votes and tallied 80 total points.  Nine of the ten ballots had Kershaw and Scherzer in the top two spots.  The only other player to receive a second place vote was Rookie of the Year winner Yu Davish.  The Demigods ace finished third in the vote with 44 points and appeared third on six of the ballots.  Cougars veteran Adam Wainwright received a bulk of the fourth place votes and did indeed finish fourth in the voting with 29 points.  All of these four pitcher appeared on at least nine ballots.  The fifth place votes were much more diverse.  Choppers closer Craig Kimbrel rounded out the top five with ten points.  You could put together a pretty impressive list of pitchers who didn’t even receive a single vote, which is a pretty good indication of just how many pitchers had stellar 2013 seasons.

Click here to view the full Cy Young voting results.

Check back on Monday night to see who will win the 2013 DTBL Most Valuable Player award.  Will it be Cabrera vs. Trout, Round 2, or will Chris Davis crash the party?

Darvish Wins ROY

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

Demigods pitcher Yu Darvish

Continuing a recent trend, a large number of pitchers were exceptionally dominant in the 2013 baseball season.  Among DTBL newcomers, pitchers ruled the season as well.  In coming up with the 20 finalists for the Rookie of the Year award, I usually try to include a few more hitters than pitchers since they occupy a larger number of roster spots.  However, that simply wasn’t possible this year with so many great rookie pitchers in the league.  One of them clearly stood out among the rest though.  Demigods pitcher Yu Darvish is the 2013 Rookie of the Year.

Darvish was the shining light in an otherwise dim rotation.  The Demigods finished last in the league in pitching points.  Everyone but Darvish should be blamed for that.  Darvish led the entire league in strikeouts (277), finished fourth in ERA (2.83) and eighth in WHIP (1.07).  He won 13 games.  His strikeout total destroyed the Demigods single season franchise record, which was previously held by Cole Hamels (216).  277 is the most strikeouts a DTBL pitcher has recorded since Randy Johnson had 290 in 2004.  I haven’t 100% confirmed this, but I believe it is also a league rookie record.

It was a pretty easy choice for the Demigods when they picked Darvish with the fourth overall pick in this year’s draft.  He was the second pitcher taken, immediately after Kris Medlen.  He wound up being the most productive player out of the first round class by a fairly comfortable margin.  While he was not able to turn around the Demigods pitching staff by himself, he certainly gives them a solid piece to build around next year.

Darvish received nine out of the ten first place votes.  He also received one second place vote, making him the only player to appear on all ten ballots.  He finished with 97 points, making him a clear cut winner of the Rookie of the Year award.  Pitchers dominated the vote, finishing in the top three spots.  The Mavericks’ young fireballer Matt Harvey came in second place with five second place votes and 46 total points.  An elbow injury derailed his season in late August, effectively handing the award to Darvish.  Harvey probably would have been the favorite to win this award had he stayed healthy.  Both Darvish and Harvey figure to get some love in the Cy Young vote as well.  Finishing in third place with 38 points was the Gators’ Hisashi Iwakuma.  Perhaps the biggest surprise on this list, the 7th round pick Iwakuma was among the league leaders in ERA and WHIP.  Next, we finally have a hitter.  Gators shortstop Jean Segura received the one first place vote that didn’t go to Darvish.  He notched 32 points to finish fourth.  Segura was the Gators 8th round pick.  So with consecutive picks in the second half of the draft, the Gators managed to pick two of the top four rookies of the year.  Finally, rounding out the top five is Mavericks third baseman Manny Machado.  Machado and Harvey gave the Mavericks their own pair of rookie sensations.

Click here to view the full Rookie of the Year voting results.

The schedule for the announcement of the other two awards is not firm, but I plan to announce the Cy Young award winner either tomorrow or Friday, with the Most Valuable Player award announcement coming next Monday.

Not That Bad

Monday, November 4th, 2013

Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt

The DTBL season ended more than a month ago, so now seems like the perfect time to finish part 3 of my 2013 season review.  The first part was a recap of the Kings’ championship season.  Part two covered the other teams who were title contenders through most of the season.  Finally, we have the other six teams who were never really in the race.  This isn’t to say that 2013 was a terrible year for all of them, just that there was a fairly noticeable gap between the top four and these six most of the year.  While a few of these teams were surely disappointed in how their season went, none of them were truly awful.  The Jackalope finished in last place, but their 35.5 points was the second highest total for a last place team in league history.  So, while none of these teams were particularly close to competing for the title this season, it is also fair to say that none of them need major reconstruction to be right in the thick of the race next year.

Of these six squads, the team that is probably most satisfied with their 2013 season is the Cougars.  They finished in fifth place, making this the first time they have finished in the top half of the league since 2004.  A much improved offense complemented an already strong pitching staff.  The main reason for the offensive surge was Chris Davis.  The second round steal led the league in home runs (53) and RBI (138).  He figures to get strong consideration in the upcoming MVP vote.  Madison Bumgarner and Adam Wainwright helped the Cougars finish second in ERA.

Another team that made great strides this year would be the Darkhorses.  As many assumed they would, they managed to bounce back from the 2012 season from hell when everything that could possibly have gone wrong did.  Luck still wasn’t completely on their side as they had to fight through a bunch of key injuries, especially early.  But finishing sixth a year after coming in last is obviously a big step in the right direction.  They more than doubled their ’12 point total as well.  Bryce Harper had a nice rookie year for the Darkhorses, but they expect even bigger things from him next year.  Keeping Hanley Ramirez healthy for an entire season will be key as well.  On the pitching side of things, it is still a bit of a work in progress, but Matt Moore and Mike Minor had solid years.

Following two teams who made big improvements this year was a team that went in the opposite direction.  The Moonshiners finished in fourth place a year ago, but were just a 1.5 points away from winning their first title.  Obviously, they had hoped to compete for the title again this year, but it wasn’t to be.  They finished in a disappointing seventh place.  Other than the surprising A.J. Burnett, all of the Moonshiners pitchers failed to meet expectations.  Well, Jered Weaver was pretty good too, but didn’t put up the kind of numbers they needed from a staff ace.  On offense, the roster actually looks pretty good, but they lacked any one player having an especially huge season.  This is really a hard team to diagnose.  They don’t look like a seventh place team.  But they are lacking that star player to take them to the next level.

The Demigods took a small step backwards this season, dropping one spot to eighth place.  Their weakness is obvious:  pitching.  They finished with just eight pitching points, the lowest total in the league.  This was a surprising result considering their first round pick, Yu Darvish, turned out to be one of the best pitchers in the league.  But the rest of the rotation was a mess and they finished the season without a closer on the roster.  The amazing thing about the Demigods is that they finished in eighth despite having the second most batting points in the league.  They got solid years out of almost all of their offensive players, led by newcomer Carlos Gomez and veterans Evan Longoria and David Ortiz.  If they can just figure out their pitching problems, they are not far from being a contender.

I’m not sure anyone is ever pleased about finishing in ninth place, but the Gators were really a much improved team over their ’12 squad which also finished ninth.  Through the draft and trades, they were able to significantly improve their weak offense and have plenty of good, young talent moving forward.  Second overall draft pick Yoenis Cespedes suffered through a bit of a MLB sophomore slump, but still put up strong fantasy numbers.  But the real steals for the Gators were a pair of shortstops:  Jean Segura (8th round) and Andrelton Simmons (4th round).  Their in-season trade to acquire Starling Marte is looking pretty solid too.  The Gators pitching staff, previously their strength, was a bit of a disappointment though.  Staff ace C.C. Sabathia had one of the worst seasons of his career.  If they can get him to bounce back next year, this will be a very dangerous team.

Finally, we have the Jackalope.  To be blunt, this season was a train wreck for them.  Just two years removed from a league championship and a year after being in the title race until the last day of the season, the Jackalope hit rock bottom this year, finishing dead last.  The offense was atrocious and the pitching staff, the league’s best the previous three years, was largely disappointing as well.  It’s not too hard to figure out why their offense struggled so much.  They were without their two best players for a good portion of the season.  Ryan Braun fought through injuries before finally serving his PED suspension.  And Albert Pujols was simply not himself at any point this season, eventually causing him to miss the last couple months of the year.  The Jackalope finished a distant last place in batting points, despite getting a breakout season from Paul Goldschmidt.  He was pretty much the lone bright spot though.  Just like the Darkhorses a year ago, it is hard to imagine this team staying down at the bottom very long though.  They have way too much talent for that.  Plus, they are going to have the first pick in an absolutely loaded draft next spring….

… Which leads me to my final thought.  All six of these teams are going to be able to add potential superstars with their first round picks next year.  I’m not going to name names, but look no further than the top MLB Rookie of the Year contenders to get an idea of what kind of talent is coming.  If those picks pan out, I won’t be writing about these teams in the “non-contenders” recap next year.

Congrats to the Red Sox on their World Series title.  With that, the off-season is officially upon us.  The 2013 DTBL Awards ballot will be posted in the next couple of days with announcements of the winners coming over the next few weeks.