On Sunday afternoon, the National Baseball Hall of Fame enshrined six new members: a trio of all-time great players and three legendary managers. The three players, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas were all elected into the Hall in their first year of eligibility. And the three managers, Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre are almost indisputably the three most accomplished skippers of the past 30 years. The full class has been lauded as one of the greatest induction classes of all time. What makes this class noteworthy for our league is that the three players are probably the first full class of inductees who would all be certain DTBL Hall of Famers as well, if such a thing existed. Although Glavine, Maddux and Thomas made their MLB debuts prior to the formation of this league, the primes of their careers took place while on DTBL rosters.
The connection between Maddux and Glavine is obvious as long time teammates in Atlanta. But it’s Glavine and Thomas who spent many years as teammates in the DTBL with the Kings. Thomas and Maddux also have close ties in DTBL lore as both were first round draft picks in the inaugural DTBL Draft, making them the first official players for their respective franchises. The Choppers picked Maddux with the second selection in that 1993 draft, following the Gators’ pick of Kirby Puckett. So Maddux was the league’s first selected pitcher. Two picks later, the Kings drafted the slugging first baseman Thomas. As 13 year-olds at the time, Charlie and I may have let our personal fandoms of Maddux and Thomas sway our decisions, but neither of us would ever regret those picks. In the seventh round of that same draft, the Kings grabbed Glavine. He and Thomas would be Kings teammates for the first seven years of the DTBL.
Tom Glavine probably has the weakest DTBL Hall of Fame case (again, if there actually was such a thing) of these three. However, he is one of only four players to record 200 wins in this league. He won a total of 204 games for the Kings, Gators and Darkhorses. He won 13+ games 10 times, a feat only accomplished more often by two other pitchers (Maddux and Mike Mussina). Nobody has more 20 win seasons. He did that three times (1993, 1998, 2000 – 4 others also have 3 20+ win seasons). Glavine’s career ERA of 3.46 and WHIP of 1.317 may not seem terribly impressive by 2014 standards, but keep in mind that he was still going strong in the steroid era of the late 90′s and early 00′s. His 1,724 career strikeouts isn’t quite enough to put him in the top 10 all-time. When it comes to the Kings franchise record book, he’s #2 behind Randy Johnson in wins (115) and third in ERA (3.22) and strikeouts (1,048).
Glavine spent the first seven years of the DTBL with the Kings before being traded to the Gators late in the 1999 season for J.D. Drew. 15 years later, that sounds like an awful trade for the Kings, but it actually worked out quite well for both sides. Drew wound up being a key contributor for the Kings first three championship teams while Glavine arguably recorded the best season of his career for the Gators in 2000 as he won 21 games. He remained with the Gators until the end of the 2003 season. The Kings reacquired him the following year as a free agent. Finally, the Darkhorses also signed him as a free agent for the twilight of his career. In his final DTBL season of 2007, he won his first and only league title with the Darkhorses.
There is a reasonable case to be made that Greg Maddux is the greatest pitcher in league history. He’s certainly on the very short list. He holds the league record for most wins with 240. Only three retired starting pitchers have better career ERAs and WHIPs compared to Maddux’s 3.00 and 1.095. But those numbers are slightly inflated because of mediocre numbers late in his career. Nobody can match Maddux’s prime (well, maybe some guys in today’s pitching dominated game, but certainly not in Maddux’s era). Even though he wasn’t thought of as a strikeout pitcher, only five have a higher career total in that category. He is the Choppers career leader in wins and is basically tied with current Choppers’ ace Chris Sale in ERA and WHIP. Only Mussina struck out more hitters while a member of the Choppers.
The numbers Maddux posted in 1994 and 1995 were easily the two best consecutive seasons by a pitcher in league history and, alone, were the two lowest individual ERA seasons in the books. He had a preposterous 1.56 ERA in the strike-shortened 1994 season and followed that up with an absurd 1.63 ERA in 1995. Oh, and his WHIP was under 0.9 both of those years as well. Maddux won at least 15 games for 12 consecutive seasons, all with the Choppers. That will be a tall order for anyone else to ever reproduce. After 13 remarkable seasons with the Choppers, they finally released him after the 2005 season. He had mediocre stints with the Naturals, Mavericks and Darkhorses (twice) to close out his remarkable career. He was a member of four DTBL championship teams (’97 and ’99 Choppers, ’07 and ’08 Darkhorses). So he teamed up with his Hall of Fame buddy Glavine for that ’07 title, although neither were particularly key reasons why the Darkhorses won.
The career numbers of Frank Thomas speak volumes about what kind of a hitter he was. However, they were somewhat overshadowed by other players of his generation who would later become tarnished by connections to performance enhancing drugs. But never mind that. There still may not have been a better pure hitter in the 90′s than the Big Hurt. Thomas hit 412 home runs in his DTBL career, which ranks 10th all time. But more than half of the players ahead of him on that list have been tied to PEDs in one way or another. Along with the home runs, Thomas had a career average of .297 with 1,323 RBI and 1,045 runs scored. The full list of players with better career numbers in all four of those categories: Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Albert Pujols and Vladimir Guerrero. Thomas trails only the very tainted Alex Rodriguez in HR, RBI and R in Kings franchise history.
Thomas was a machine for the first five seasons of this league. Each year, he hit over .300 with at least 35 HR and 100+ RBI and runs. He even managed to reach those numbers in the strike shortened 1994 season. He hit over .340 in three different seasons. It wasn’t until very late in his career when the averages started to fall, bringing his career mark just below .300. Unfortunately, a series of injuries in the second decade of his career really kept him from putting up numbers to rival anyone who has ever played the game. But the Kings kept him on their roster for 13 incredible seasons. He was a member of all four of the Kings four-peat championships (2000-2003). He had a brief stint on the Mavericks roster in early 2006, but never recorded any playing time with them. He did play for the Jackalope later that season. Finally, the Kings picked him back up for his final two DTBL seasons.
Unfortunately, my historical records on awards and such from the early years of this league are a little disjointed. So I don’t have an easy way of telling you about some of the honors these three players received during their DTBL careers. However, I know for a fact that Thomas was the league MVP at least once and Maddux won several Cy Young awards. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill in these blanks at some point, because this information is available somewhere on old hard drives and printed newsletters.
Finally, I want to wrap this up by mentioning a little bit about another Hall of Famer. Sadly, the great Tony Gwynn passed away last month at the much too young age of 54. Unlike the three players I just chronicled, the prime of Gwynn’s career was a little before this league started. However, he also holds a special place in DTBL history. He is the league’s all-time leading hitter (in terms of batting average) with an amazing .357 mark. That is almost 30 points higher than any other player this league has ever seen and it is hard to imagine anyone ever breaking this record. Despite that, Gwynn was not always an automatic starter for all of his teams in this league and bounced around to six different teams in nine years. Of course, part of that was simply circumstances. He wound up playing on three teams that folded while he was on the roster (Troopers, Titans and Panthers). He played for the Gators in his first two DTBL seasons, followed by two years with the Choppers. Despite ridiculous batting averages every season, he wasn’t a sure starter back in those days. Because there were so few teams in the league, it was hard for some teams to dedicate a spot for a guy with below average power. Had he put up those same numbers today, he’d be one of the most valuable players in the league. But as it stands, he just wasn’t able to accumulate enough stats to appear in the record books for anything other than batting average. His ability to get hits and avoid strikeouts may never be seen again in a player. Guys who are thought of as good contact hitters today will still strike out more often the next two months than Gwynn did most full seasons. He was a legendary hitter and will truly be missed by the baseball community.