DTBL News

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In 2016, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Kris Bryant) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award and Kings outfielder Mookie Betts won the Most Valuable Player award.  This year, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Blake Snell) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award, and… yes, you have figured out where this is going.  History has repeated itself.  Perhaps no offensive player in league history has been more solely responsible for his team winning a championship than Betts was this season.  Mookie Betts is the 2018 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

For the first time in his young, but highly productive career, Mookie Betts joined the 30/30 club this season.  He notched career highs in both home runs (32) and stolen bases (30).  Those numbers alone put him in pretty elite company, but his league leading .346 average took things to another level.  Only one player in league history has had a higher average while joining the 30/30 club.  Larry Walker’s insane 1997 season featured a .366/49/33 line.  Oh, Betts also led the league in runs scored with 129.  Somewhat surprisingly, he was not on top of the Batting PAR leaderboard.  His 11.3 was awfully impressive, but was topped by Christian Yelich’s 11.6.  As an entire team, the championship winning Kings accumulated 22.2 Batting PAR.  So yes, Betts was responsible for more than half of that!  No other Kings hitter reached 5 PAR. Not a bad year for him: AL MVP, World Series champion, DTBL MVP and DTBL champion.

The Kings drafted Betts with the fifth pick in the 2015 draft.  Two of the players taken ahead of him:  Corey Dickerson and Jorge Soler (sorry, Mike).  So far, Betts has won the MVP in half of his DTBL seasons, taking home the honor in 2016 as well.  His numbers from this season were slightly better in most categories, except RBIs, the only category where he didn’t set a career high.  In addition to joining the 30/30 single season club, he also reached the 100/100 HR/SB club for his career this season, now sitting at 105/100 with an average of .303.  He is the only player in the league with 100 homers and stolen bases since 2015.  And only Mike Trout can top Betts’ career PAR of 34.7 since ’15.  There is no question that Betts has established himself as one of the best all around players in the game.

Despite the gaudy numbers, this award did not come easily for Betts.  As mentioned, he didn’t lead the league in PAR, so it is unsurprising that he wasn’t the clear choice for this award either.  But he did receive a majority of the first place votes:  seven to be exact.  Interestingly, one person did not have him on the ballot.  He compiled 82 points, besting the runner-up by nine.  Finishing second was the PAR leader, Darkhorses outfielder Christian Yelich.  Yelich was insanely hot over the last two months of the season, easily claiming the NL MVP award.  Like Betts, he was a strong five category player, beating Betts in home runs and RBIs, but falling a bit behind in average, runs and steals.  Yelich was the only player who appeared on all ten ballots.  But he received just one first place vote, along with nine seconds, leaving him a bit short of Betts.  While those two were the clear leaders, several others received strong consideration as well.  Betts’ Red Sox teammate and Demigods outfielder J.D. Martinez hit .330 with 46 home runs.  Martinez got a first place vote and earned 42 points to finish third.  Right behind him was Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez, who proved his breakout ’17 season was no fluke.  Ramirez actually looked like the favorite to win this award before struggling a bit down the stretch.  He also received a first place vote and compiled 40 points.  His Indians teammate rounded out the top five.  Demigods shortstop Francisco Lindor had a pretty great five category performance as well, but was overshadowed a bit by the guys mentioned above.  Lindor made a majority of the ballots (six) and totaled 14 points.  Any of these five guys could have won this award with their numbers in a different season. Although he failed to make the top five for the second straight season, I think it is worth pointing out that Mavericks outfielder Mike Trout has now received MVP votes all seven years of his DTBL career.  Even his worst seasons are elite.

Click here to view the full voting results.

And that’s a wrap on the baseball award season.  Now it is time to start jumping into my offseason work.  There will be plenty of enhancements, but I’ve learned not to make any promises on what I will actually accomplished.  So stay tuned.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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On a year-to-year basis, you know exactly what you are going to get from Max Scherzer:  a sub 3.00 ERA, a sub 1.00 WHIP, 15-20 wins, over 200 innings and at least 250 strikeouts.  His stat lines from each of the past six seasons have been astonishingly similar.  But 2018 may have been his best season yet.  He failed to win his third consecutive National League Cy Young award due to the historically great season that Jacob deGrom had, but from a roto perspective, Scherzer’s year was better.  This is the fifth time in the past six years that Scherzer has finished in the top five of this league’s Cy Young vote and the second time he has come out on top.  Kings starting pitcher Max Scherzer is the 2018 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

It is hard to pick out Scherzer’s best career season, but I would make the case that 2018 is the new leader.  He posted the highest PAR of his career, a league leading 14.0.  He easily set a career high in strikeouts, finishing at exactly 300.  (As an aside, I was in the park for his 300th strikeout.  It was a pretty cool moment in an otherwise extremely disappointing Nationals season.)  He is the sixth different pitcher to record a 300 strikeout season in DTBL history.  Among qualified pitchers, his 2.53 ERA ranked seventh and his 0.911 WHP was third best.  Three other pitchers were ahead of his 18 wins.  In addition to PAR and strikeouts, he also led the league in innings pitched with 220 2/3.

The Kings acquired Scherzer in a trade with the Jackalope back in 2010.  That trade continues to pay dividends for the Kings, who have now won three championships with Scherzer on the roster.  This is the second time that he has won both a DTBL Championship and the Cy Young award in the same season, repeating what he accomplished in 2016.  The Kings won the title this year mainly on the strength of three players:  Scherzer, Mookie Betts and Justin Verlander.  While Scherzer faced stiff competition for this league-wide award, you could make a decent case that he wasn’t even the best pitcher on the Kings staff as his and Verlander’s numbers were nearly identical across the board.  Scherzer won a couple more games and had ten more strikeouts, but Verlander had the slight edge in ERA and WHIP.  They combined for 27.0 Pitching PAR, which was an incredible 75% of the team’s total Pitching PAR of 36.1.  Needless to say, the Kings would not have been champions without either of these guys.

As expected, the Cy Young vote was kind of all over the place as there were a whole bunch of players who made compelling cases.  Scherzer did win by a decent margin, but was far from unanimous.  He received seven first place votes, two seconds and a third for a point total of 89.  He was the only pitcher to appear on all ten ballots.  Finishing second was Cougars lefty, and 2018 DTBL Rookie of the Year, Blake Snell.  Snell received nine votes, including two firsts and two seconds, for 53 points.  The league’s win leader had quite a rookie campaign and now adds a second place finish for the Cy Young to his resume.  Verlander finished right behind Snell.  He was the third and final player to receive a first place vote (one) and had a pair of second place votes as well.  Like Snell, he appeared on nine of ten ballots and totaled 42 points.  Coming in fourth was the most interesting case of the year, Darkhorses ace Jacob deGrom.  I think most people would agree that deGrom was the best pitcher in baseball this season, compiling a ridiculous 1.70 ERA, which was the fourth best mark in league history.  But wins do matter in fantasy baseball and he only had 10 of them.  He received a second place vote and racked up 32 points.  Those four were well ahead of the rest, but several other pitchers received strong consideration as well.  Moonshiners reliever Edwin Diaz only received three votes, but two of them were second place nods, so he finished fifth in the voting with 15 points.  Diaz appeared to be well on his way to breaking the league’s single season save record.  But his pace slowed a bit down the stretch and he finished with 57 saves, falling five short of Francisco Rodriguez’s total ten years ago.  57 did put him in the second spot on the single season saves list though.

Click here to view the full voting results.

On Tuesday, I plan to announce the third and final award:  Most Valuable Player.  Like the Cy Young, there appear to be plenty of strong contenders for MVP, so expect to see a similar scattering of votes.  Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.