Archive for September, 2020

Darkhorses Dash To Title

Tuesday, September 29th, 2020

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2020 was supposed to be the year of chaos and unpredictability in baseball and this league.  To some degree, the former was true with multiple MLB teams missing week’s worth of games due to COVID-19 positive tests and having September schedules filled with 7-inning double headers.  Season ending injuries and opt-outs were more prevalent than ever.  But unpredictability?  Nah, not in this league.  Our pre-season projections saw the Jackalope and Darkhorses as the clear favorites to win the title in an abbreviated 60-game season.  While other teams made some noise at times, ultimately it came down to those two teams in the season’s final days.  In the end, it was the Darkhorses exorcising recent demons of close second place finishes.  For the fifth time in franchise history and the first time in exactly a decade, David’s Darkhorses are the Dream Team Baseball League Champions.

As I wrote about in the mid-season article, one thing I was most definitely not expecting in 2020 was for one team to have a stranglehold on first place.  However, amazingly, the Darkhorses never fell below second place at any point of the season after the Opening Weekend.  And they were in first place following all but two days of the final five weeks.  But it did get a little scary for them as one of the days in which the Jackalope overtook them for the top spot was on the final weekend, with just two days remaining.  With extremely thin margins in almost all categories, the consistent excellence from the Darkhorses was truly remarkable.

The Darkhorses are a deep team with very few, if any, obvious weaknesses.  This type of roster is going to be a contender in almost any type of season.  But perhaps they were uniquely built for this particular season even more than one might have realized.  While they did not suffer the same injury and opt-out carnage of some other squads, their depth was certainly challenged.  James Paxton missed most of the season with an arm injury.  Lorenzo Cain opted out after the first week.  Matt Chapman hit the injured list in early September.  Alex Bregman had an injury riddled campaign as well.  What is really impressive is how they were able to overcome very little production from some of the guys who had been their most important players in recent years, most notably reigning MVP Christian Yelich who scuffled to the tune of a .205 average.

So who picked up the slack?  A whole bunch of guys.  The Darkhorses easily led the league in batting points for the third straight year.  Despite that, they did not have any player finish in the top 15 in Batting PAR.  It was a total team effort.  Bryce Harper led the way with 2.7 PAR, so yes, he finally gets his ring.  Dansby Swanson had the best season of his career so far.  Brandon Lowe may have been the steal of this year’s draft.  The third round pick should receive Rookie of the Year consideration.  Xander Bogaerts and J.T. Realmuto were their usual steady selves.  Mike Yastrzemski was a great early season free agent signing.  Despite the lack of any apparent MVP candidates, the Darkhorses unquestionably had the best offensive depth in the league, with positive contributions from all 14 batting spots.

The Darkhorses have had a great offense for quite some time now.  What had previously held them back a bit was their pitching staff.  Technically, they only improved by 1/2 pitching point from last year.  But relative to the rest of the league, that was enough to get the job done.  They tied for the fourth most pitching points.  As usual, Jacob deGrom carried the rotation.  Maybe even more so than usual, actually.  He was their only starting pitcher to earn more than 1.0 PAR (4.5).  Last year’s second choice starter Patrick Corbin was actually quite disappointing this year.  Jose Berrios was the only other starter besides deGrom who lived up to expectations.  This wasn’t really a championship caliber starting staff.  But boy did the bullpen make up for that.  Liam Hendriks, Brad Hand, Taylor Rogers and Mark Melancon made up what was by far the best bullpen in the league.  Hendriks and Hand were the Darkhorses next two most valuable pitchers after deGrom, and were first and second in the league in PAR among relievers.  Hand led the league in saves with 16.  Hendriks was second with 14.  The Darkhorses absolutely blew away the rest of the league in saves.  They had 48 of them.  The margin between them and the second best Moonshiners (23) was almost as large as the Moonshiners save total (25).  So yes, the Darkhorses had nearly twice as many saves as another other team.  These four relievers were paramount to the Darkhorses success in the other pitching categories as well.

This season culminates an impressive three year run for the Darkhorses in which they finished in the top two spots in the standings.  The last time a team had a similar run of excellence was the Naturals in 2010-12.  This is the Darkhorses first championship since 2010, which was the year they actually shared the title with the Naturals, and was the final season of the Darkhorses’ four-peat.  Their five titles is second only to the Kings.  If you were to split the DTBL history in half, the Darkhorses would probably earn the distinction of the league’s best franchise in the second half having won five of those 14 championships.

This has been a trying year for all of us.  But I am extremely grateful that MLB was able to successfully complete this season, and thus so were we.  Let’s hope we are able to return to some semblance of normalcy by the time the 2021 baseball season begins.  In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the Postseason, which will get started in a matter of hours.  Congrats to David on a well-deserved championship!  Thanks to everybody else for making this a very enjoyable and competitive season.

One Month Down, One to Go

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020

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If it feels like the 2020 baseball season just started, well, that’s basically true.  However, we’re also more than half way through the abbreviated 60 game slate.  I think we all entered this season ready to expect the unexpected, and that is pretty much what we have gotten.  Critical injuries, particularly to pitchers, have decimated rosters.  Multiple MLB teams have had week’s worth of games wiped out due to positive COVID-19 tests.  Seven inning doubleheaders and wacky extra inning rules have become a common occurrence.  The season has also had its good moments though, like the breakout of a new wave of stars, including the ones who will be covered below.

One thing I was expecting from this shortened season was chaos at the top of the standings.  But that really hasn’t proven to be the case… at least not yet.  The Darkhorses have been in first or second place every day of the season since the opening weekend and have held the top spot for almost two straight weeks now.  So, as has become an annual tradition, the Darkhorses are right in the thick of the race as we head into September.  But that’s about the only thing this season has in common with recent years.  No longer are the Kings their chief competition.  In fact, the Kings are one of probably three teams that have little to no shot at winning the title this year.  Their house of cards tumbled quickly when Justin Verlander was lost to an arm injury in the first week of the season.  The wildly underachieving Jackalope offense and Komodos pitching staff have left them as the other two teams with little hope for a championship season.  But everybody else should feel like they still have a shot.  The Cougars, Moonshiners and Demigods are having breakout years.  The Mavericks have overcome some tough pitching losses to remain in the thick of things.  The Beanballers have bounced back from a very slow start to get back into the conversation.  And the Choppers have amazingly had the best pitching staff in the league despite losing Chris Sale for the season this past spring.  The Darkhorses would seem to be the favorites, not only because of their current lead, but also because they are pretty healthy at the moment.  Of course, that could change in a hurry.

This will probably be the one and only Players of the Month article this season since I don’t usually bother with such things after September.  Usually following the first month of the season in April, the awards are based on stats accumulated in March in addition to April.  But this time, I elected not to include the July stats since there was over a week’s worth of games played in that month, compared to typically just a few days in March.  That said, the winners would have been the same even if I had included the July stats.  But the statlines below are August only.  As usual, these are completely based on highest PAR for the week and month.

Here are the award winners for July and August of 2020.

Batters of the Week:

Week 1 (7/23 – 7/26) – Nelson Cruz, Komodos
Week 2 (7/27 – 8/2) – Aaron Judge, Mavericks
Week 3 (8/3 – 8/9) – Fernando Tatis, Demigods
Week 4 (8/10 – 8/16) – Juan Soto, Mavericks
Week 5 (8/17 – 8/23) – Jose Abreu, Cougars
Week 6 (8/24 – 8/30) – Manny Machado, Mavericks

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 1 (7/23 – 7/26) – Shane Bieber, Choppers
Week 2 (7/27 – 8/2) – Shane Bieber, Choppers
Week 3 (8/3 – 8/9) – Frankie Montas, Kings
Week 4 (8/10 – 8/16) – Aaron Nola, Demigods
Week 5 (8/17 – 8/23) – Yu Darvish, Moonshiners
Week 6 (8/24 – 8/30) – Lucas Giolito, Cougars

Half of the Batter of the Week honors so far this season have gone to Mavericks hitters, and three different ones at that, displaying the depth of that roster.  While the game may be shifting younger and younger, particularly among position players, a few veterans are still going strong including 40 year old Nelson Cruz and 33 year old Jose Abreu, who is having his best season since his rookie campaign so far.  Due to the way pitching starts are scattered, it is extremely difficult for someone to win Pitcher of the Week two weeks in a row, but that’s exactly what Shane Bieber did to start the season.  Two of the three pitchers selected in the first round of the draft in March (Lucas Giolito and Frankie Montas) won weekly honors.  Giolito did so on the strength of the season’s first no-hitter.  Two players have really stood head and shoulders above their peers so far this season.  And they happen to be the Batter and Pitcher of the Month for August.

Batter of the Month:

Fernando Tatis, Demigods
.313 AVG, 11 HR, 24 RBI, 31 R, 4 SB, 3.10 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Shane Bieber, Choppers
1.63 ERA, 0.905 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 57 K, 3.80 PAR

Fernando Tatis Jr. has almost single-handedly turned the Demigods from a historically weak team a year ago, the worst in franchise history, to a championship contender this season.  The first overall pick in the draft has lived up to the hype and then some.  He currently leads the league in PAR (by more than a full point), home runs, runs batted in and runs scored.  He is also hitting over .300 and has seven steals.  Ronald Acuna’s rookie season last year was among the best this league has ever seen, but Tatis is one-upping him this year, albeit he won’t come close to Acuna’s counting stat numbers due to the abbreviated season.  At the moment, Tatis would almost certainly win not only Rookie of the Year, but Most Valuable Player as well.  The Demigods do have some ground to make up as they remain slightly below average in batting points, but Tatis could certainly continue to push them up the standings.  Tatis won this award going away, but Mookie Betts and Jose Abreu were the closest competition.

What is amazing about those Shane Bieber August numbers above is that they don’t even include his first two starts of the season, which earned him weekly honors.  As mentioned above, the Choppers lead the league in pitching points despite not having the services of Chris Sale.  Bieber is the reason why.  He already has a two point lead in Pitching PAR with a ridiculous 1.20 ERA and a league leading 84 strikeouts in just 52 2/3 innings pitched.  Bieber is following up an impressive rookie season with an even better sophomore campaign.  The Choppers do have a tall hill to climb to get into the title chase due to a scuffling offense.  If they can improve upon that though, Bieber and the pitching staff are primed to keep them in the hunt.  Because two of Bieber’s best starts came in July, this particular award wasn’t a runaway.  Pitchers from opposite sides of Chicago, Moonshiners’ Yu Darvish and Cougars’ Lucas Giolito, came in second and third.