Archive for October, 2015

Best of the Rest

Saturday, October 24th, 2015


With the Jackalope running away with the title, that left nine other teams who weren’t particularly close to earning the big prize. In fact, only one other team finished the year closer to first place than last place, in terms of points. The Mavericks finished in second place, 19 points behind the Jackalope. Meanwhile, the Darkhorses came in third, but were considerably closer to the last place Kings than the Jackalope. The other seven teams weren’t even in the same area code. We’ll start the season recap of the non-championship teams by focusing on the Mavericks and Darkhorses, the only other teams who weren’t in danger of finishing dead last in the closing days of the season.

The Mavericks entered the season as the favorites, mostly on the strength of their insanely talented pitching staff. Not surprisingly, they did indeed lead the league in pitching points. They set a league record for team strikeouts, becoming the first staff to exceed 1,400 whiffs (1,415). They also led the league in WHIP (1.08) and had a sub-3.00 ERA (2.98), only the 8th team in league history to do that. So they basically met all pitching expectations. Unfortunately for them, the Jackalope were almost as good, finishing with just three fewer pitching points. That separation wasn’t nearly enough to cover for a Mavericks offense which wound up being a disappointment.

Despite starting the season a little slow, by his standards, Clayton Kershaw wound up having another amazing season.  He became the first DTBL pitcher to record 300+ strikeouts since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling way back in 2002.  He was actually the only member of the Mavericks’ staff to finish in the top 10 in K’s, which is pretty hard to believe for a record breaking team.  Kershaw didn’t do it all by himself though.  Matt Harvey’s return from Tommy John surgery was a huge success.  Stephen Strasburg and Carlos Martinez were very good too, when healthy.  But the main reason for the Mavericks’ lofty strikeout total was their bullpen.  Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller all recorded 95+ K’s, which is quite an achievement for one reliever on a team, much less three.

The Mavericks did not get the offensive output they needed to be a true contender this year.  Mike Trout was his usual MVP caliber self.  Manny Machado and Lorenzo Cain had a huge breakout years.  But that is pretty much the extent of Mavericks hitters who exceeded expectations.  Five of their regular players recorded negative PARs.  They just weren’t deep enough offensively to seriously threaten the Jackalope.  Second place is still a very solid finish though.  This is the third time the Mavericks have been the runners-up in the past four seasons.  And their roster is still extremely young and talented, so it seems they will continue to compete for the championship in upcoming years.

If there is one team besides the Jackalope who should be very happy with their 2015 season, it would be the Darkhorses.  After finishing in the bottom half of the league for four straight years, they vaulted all the way to a third place finish this year.  No, they weren’t particularly close to winning the league.  But they clearly had a better season than all of the teams below them and appear to be headed in the right direction.  In terms of the 2015 results, they were sort of the reverse of the Mavericks.  They had one of the league’s best offenses but didn’t have enough pitching to contend.

The Darkhorses accumulated 40 batting points, trailing only the Jackalope and nine points clear of all other teams.  They led the league in batting average and finished in the top three in home runs, RBI and runs.  Bryce Harper emerged as quite possibly the best player in the league, finishing in top three in average, home runs and runs.  Edwin Encarnacion, Todd Frazier and Xander Bogaerts were solid contributors too.  George Spring justified the Darkhorses’ selection of him with the third overall pick having a very good DTBL rookie year despite missing significant time due to injury.

The Darhorses’ second round pick was pretty good too.  Jacob deGrom immediately became the staff ace and joined the ranks of the top pitchers in the league.  But besides him, they didn’t get truly great numbers out of any other pitchers.  Lance Lynn and James Shields had decent years.  Julio Teheran was a disappointment and Michael Pineda couldn’t stay healthy.  The bullpen was a two man show with Brad Boxberger and Luke Gregerson racking up saves, but with little to no support from the rest of the pen.  Again, a very good year for the Darkhorses, but they were a couple pitchers away from being a serious title contender.

Despite falling well short of the top, there were plenty of positives for the Mavericks and Darkhorses.  The other seven teams were kind of a mess, so I’ll review all of them at the same time in my final season recap article next week.

Year of the Jackalope

Wednesday, October 7th, 2015


When discussing the greatest teams in DTBL history, a few clubs usually make the short list: 1994 Cougars, 2000 Kings, 2007 or 2008 Darkhorses. What makes those championship squads stick out is the way in which they dominated the competition, winning the league by double digit points in each case. Well, there is a new team to add to the conversation. Prior to this year, the largest margin of victory in league history was 14 points by the ’94 Cougars. In the 10-team era, the record was 13 by the ’00 Kings. In 2015, the Jackalope blew away those marks finishing with 85 points, 19 clear of the next closest team. Jay’s Jackalope are the 2015 Dream Team Baseball League Champions!

On the last day of April, the Jackalope claimed the top spot in the standings for the first time this year.  They dropped to second a few times in early May.  But then on May 16, they took over first place for good.  Before summer officially began, they had built a double digit lead and were never really challenged again.  The Mavericks made a nice run in the middle of the summer to briefly cut the lead to single digits, however, it was back to a 20+ margin before you knew it.

It wasn’t just the season-long domination that made the Jackalope the talk of the league the entire year.  It started in March when they made several franchise altering trades to completely revamp their roster.  At the time, those deals appeared to signal a desire to rebuild.  Teams who think they are on the verge of being a title contender don’t usually trade away several of their best players.  But the Jackalope did just that.  Gone were Felix Hernandez, Aroldis Chapman, Albert Pujols and Yasiel Puig.  Other than Puig, those lost pieces were quite productive for their new teams.  But the Jackalope survived just fine without them.  In came Gerrit Cole, Josh Donaldson, Adam Jones and Anthony Rendon.  Even an injury plagued season from Rendon couldn’t turn those deals sour.  Donaldson was arguably the best player in the league.  Cole elevated his game to become one of the best pitchers around.

In addition to the trades, one other key March move paved the way for what was to come.  In a first round dominated by young sluggers, the Jackalope zigged while those ahead of them zagged and selected the first pitcher of the draft with the sixth overall pick.  That draft pick:  Jake Arrieta.  All Arrieta would go on to do is lead the league in wins (22) and pitching PAR (16.32) while compiling one of the best second halves of any pitcher in league history.

The pitching staff, led by Arrieta, Cole and Sonny Gray, wound up accumulating 40 pitching points, just three behind the Mavericks who were expected to have a historically strong pitching staff (and more-or-less did).  But the Jackalope were almost as good.  The bullpen was stellar as well, with Mark Melancon leading the league with 51 saves, just four shy of the league’s single-season record.  Wade Davis had as much of a positive impact as any non-full time closer could.

While their pitching was very good, it was the offense that won the league for the Jackalope.  They led the way with 45 batting points (out of a possible 50).  They finished in the top four of all five offensive categories and were tops in RBI and runs scored.  In addition to having the league’s top finisher in pitching PAR, they also had the top two in batting PAR.  Donaldson and Paul Goldschmidt finished essentially tied at the top with 8.45 marks.  That should set up a very interesting MVP vote with those two among the leading candidates.  Donaldson proved his ’14 campaign was no fluke, beating all of his previous year’s hitting stats by wide margins.  He led the league in runs (122), finished second in RBI (123) and fifth in home runs (41).  But Goldschmidt may have had even better numbers across the board, with a .322 average, 33 HR, 110 RBI, 100 R and a sneaky 21 stolen bases.  The last players to match/exceed those numbers in all five categories were Ryan Braun and Matt Kemp in 2011.

Donaldson and Goldschmidt weren’t the only shining stars for the Jackalope offense.  Giancarlo Stanton also looked like a MVP candidate in the first half.  But a broken wrist wound up costing him the entire second half of the season.  Most teams would not have been able to overcome such a significant injury to a top player.  In fact, the Jackalope suffered a bunch of injuries to key players.  But they had a whole stable of other solid contributors to keep them going strong:  Eric Hosmer, D.J. LeMahieu, Brett Gardner, Adam Jones and a rejuvenated Ryan Braun to name a few.

This is the second DTBL title for the Jackalope.  The first came back in 2011.  They had been slowly building towards that title, assembling a pitching staff the likes of which the league had not seen before.  I would say this 2015 championship was far more surprising.  Since the ’11 title, they had finished in the middle of the pack a couple times and came in dead last just two years ago.  The only other last to first turnaround that can compare would be the Darkhorses, who made the shocking jump in consecutive years (2006-2007).  The Jackalope join the Choppers, Gators and Mavericks as two time champs, leaving no teams with just a single title.

There will be time to review what went wrong for the rest of the league another day.  Truthfully, it didn’t matter.  The Jackalope were going to win the league this year regardless.  I’ll start my reviews of the rest of the league next week.  In the meantime, enjoy the start of the MLB post-season.  Congrats to Jay on a well earned title and thanks to everyone else for another fun season.

Players of the Month: September

Friday, October 2nd, 2015


We have reached the final weekend of the 2015 DTBL season! No, this hasn’t been the most thrilling pennant race we’ve ever witnessed. Yes, the Jackalope are going to cruise to their second league title in a matter of days. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything worth watching in the season’s final weekend. For one thing, there is a heck of a race brewing on the other end of the standings. The Kings have found themselves in last place for most of the past few weeks, but their “lead” to get the first pick in next year’s draft is hardly safe. The Gators and Cougars are just a point ahead and seven of the league’s ten teams are within seven points of the bottom of the standings! Many years, teams would probably rather finish dead last than just a few spots higher. But with next year’s draft shaping up to possibly be the most loaded draft this league has ever seen, all ten teams should have an opportunity at picking up blue-chip young stars in the first round. But enough talk about the race to the bottom…

With just four days of October games on the schedule, it probably would have made sense to save my last monthly awards article until after the season. But I figure I might as well get this out of the way now so I can focus on showering the Jackalope with praise next week. So here are the September Batter and Pitcher of the Month, with only stats in the month of September counting towards the award rankings.

Batters of the Week:

Week 22 (8/31 – 9/6) – Nolan Arenado, Naturals
Week 23 (9/7 – 9/13) – Yoenis Cespedes, Gators
Week 24 (9/14 – 9/20) – Bryce Harper, Darkhorses
Week 25 (9/21 – 9/27) – Starling Marte, Gators

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 22 (8/31 – 9/6) – Dallas Keuchel, Moonshiners
Week 23 (9/7 – 9/13) – Masahiro Tanaka, Choppers
Week 24 (9/14 – 9/20) – Stephen Strasburg, Mavericks
Week 25 (9/21 – 9/27) – Jake Arrieta, Jackalope

A little more variety in terms of players and teams in the weekly awards for September. Interesting that Harper and Strasburg were the winners in the same week while their Nationals season was flushed down the drain. The monthly award winners are a second time honoree and a guy who has just missed the past few months. Here are the players of the month for September:

Batter of the Month:

Nolan Arenado, Naturals
.339 AVG, 11 HR, 32 RBI, 19 R, 1 SB, 2.53 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Clayton Kershaw, Mavericks
1.84 ERA, 0.818 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 58 K, 4.29 PAR

Also the league’s best player in June, Arenado is the first/only player to win two monthly awards this year. His league leading 11 homers and 32 RBI in September have moved him into the MVP discussion. He leads the league in RBI and is in the top five in home runs and PAR. He won the award by a comfortable margin, but Shin-Soo Choo and Bryce Harper were his closest competition.

After a bit of a slow start, by his standards, Kershaw is finishing the year in his usual form: as one of the best pitchers on the planet. His five wins and 58 strikeouts led the way in September. He easily leads the league in strikeouts for the season, and needs just six strikeouts on Sunday to become the first to reach 300 in a season since Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in 2002. Despite those absurd numbers, he just barely won this award over last month’s winner, Jake Arrieta. It will be a fascinating Cy Young race between those two and Kerhaw’s Dodger teammate Zack Greinke… not to mention several others having incredible years.

Enjoy the final weekend and early congrats to Jay!