Archive for November, 2021

Guerrero Named MVP

Wednesday, November 24th, 2021

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On an individual player level, 2021 will be remembered as the year of Shohei Ohtani.  The two-way player did what had previously been thought to be impossible:  dominated the league as both a hitter and a pitcher.  He was unanimously selected as the American League Most Valuable Player.  However, in this league, he was not able to accumulate stats for the Moonshiners as both a hitter and a pitcher, making his MVP case not nearly as clear cut, yet still very much in the discussion.  In the end though, he was edged out by his Moonshiners teammate.  After a somewhat disappointing DTBL rookie campaign, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lived up to the hype and then some this year.  He is the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player.  Amazingly, this is now consecutive seasons in which the award has been won by the son of a former DTBL star.  Last year, Fernando Tatis Jr. shared the award with Jose Abreu.  Maybe Bo Bichette or Cavan Biggio will make it three in a row in 2022.

In last year’s abbreviated season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit nine homers with a .262 average.  Not a terrible season, but not what the Moonshiners were hoping for when they drafted him sixth overall in the loaded 2020 draft.  This season, he put it all together and became the best hitter in the league.  He hit 48 home runs, tied with Salvador Perez for most in the DTBL.  He also led the league in run scored (123), finished third in batting average (.311) and fourth in runs batted in (111).  His 9.50 batting PAR also topped all hitters.  The Moonshiners have been looking for a star hitter to lead their offense for a while.  Now it seems they have at least three such players, with Ohtani and Rafael Devers joining Guerrero.  The Moonshiners easily led the league in batting points thanks to those three.

When sitting down to write this article, the first thing that popped into my mind was whether or not Vladimir Guerrero Sr. and Jr. have become the first father and son to win DTBL MVP awards.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to this right now because I only have complete awards results since 2005.  Senior’s best seasons were before that.  While he had many MVP caliber seasons, I am quite certain he was edged out by others in most of those campaigns, which came during the height of the steroid era.  If we were to retroactively vote on who should have won the award each of those years, I suspect he would fare much better now.  The one year when I think he *might* have won DTBL MVP was 2004.  In the near future, I will try to dig through some data on old computers and hard drives that I still have in my possession to see if I can figure this out.  I may come back and edit this article if I find this information.  In the meantime, while I’m not certain if Vlad Sr. ever won a MVP in this league, I think it is safe to say the Guerreros now have the best peak seasons of any father and son duo in DTBL history.

Not surprisingly, the vote was very close.  Guerrero received six of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds.  Mysteriously, he was left entirely off one ballot.  Perhaps it was an oversight.  It did not wind up costing him though as he finished with 74 points.  His Moonshiners teammate Shohei Ohtani was the runner-up.  Ohtani had a remarkable season, even when you exclude his pitching prowess.  The Moonshiners made a tough, but ultimately wise decision to use him as a hitter this year.  All he did was slug 46 homers and steal 26 bases, with a 8.9 PAR that only trailed Guerrero by a little more than a half point.  Clearly he would have won the MVP in this league as well if his pitching numbers counted.  He received two first place votes along with five second place tallies.  He was the only player to appear on every MVP ballot, garnering 65 points.  Finishing third was last year’s co-MVP Fernando Tatis Jr.  The Demigods shortstop had another incredible season with 41 home runs and 25 stolen bases.  Injuries were the only thing that prevented him from keeping up with Guerrero and Ohtani.  He received one second and four third place votes for 34 total points.  Not far behind him was Beanballers shortstop Trea Turner.  One of the most underrated players in the game, Turner blew away his career high in homers with 28 and also stole 32 bases.  This is his second straight top 4 MVP finish and he is yet to have a non-elite season in the DTBL.  He received the lone first place vote that didn’t go to Guerrero or Ohtani and finished with 27 points.  Rounding out the top five is yet another son of a former DTBL star and another Beanballers shortstop.  Bo Bichette had nearly identical numbers as Turner, with a few more RBI and runs and a lower batting average.  He finished just two points behind Turner in this vote, with 25.  So that makes three sons of former DTBL sluggers in the top five of this year’s MVP vote.  Tatis, Guerrero and Bichette were drafted first, sixth and eighth respectively in the 2020 Draft, which is already looking like one for the ages.  That first round also featured Lucas Giolito, Pete Alonso and Yordan Alvarez.

Click here to view the full voting results.

That wraps up our 2021 DTBL awards announcements.  Since I was extremely lazy with the blogging this year, I do intend to play some catch-up this winter with some items I neglected to cover earlier in the year, including a season recap detailing the Kings ninth championship campaign.  In the meantime, thank you to everyone for another fun season.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

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Scherzer Wins Third Cy Young

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021

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The Kings roller coaster ride of a past decade that continually fluctuates between championship and bottom feeder seasons peaked again in 2021 with them winning their ninth DTBL Championship.  While the Kings themselves have been anything but consistent over the years, one thing has not changed.  Max Scherzer has remained one of the best pitchers in baseball.  In 2021, there were a lot of great pitching performances, especially among those who played for National League teams.  In what wound up being almost the polar opposite of the NL Cy Young vote, Max Scherzer is the 2021 DTBL Cy Young award winner, earning the honor for the third time in his career.

While the final numbers were right where they usually are, it was not exactly a normal season for Scherzer.  As a free agent to be, he was traded from the struggling Nationals to the Dodgers and immediately became a critical piece for the defending World Series champions who lost Clayton Kershaw to injury and Trevor Bauer to administrative leave.  Scherzer wasn’t completely healthy himself this season, limiting him to 173 innings, far fewer than his usual workhorse load.  But he made those innings count with a career best 2.49 ERA and 0.86 WHIP.  That WHIP is the sixth lowest by a qualified pitcher in league history.  He won 14 games and struck out 231 batters, both of which put him fourth in the league this season.  His 11.92 pitching PAR led the league, barely edging out his Dodgers teammate Walker Buehler.

This was the sixth time in the past nine years that Scherzer accumulated a double digit PAR.  He is now just 3 PAR behind his former Kings teammate Justin Verlander for second place on the DTBL career pitching PAR list (caveat:  only includes 2005-present).  It is hard to say where this Scherzer season stacks up compared to the best of his career.  Probably behind his other two DTBL Cy Young campaigns though.  He struck out 300 while winning the award in 2018 and won 20 games in 2016.  The Kings have now won the title in all three of his Cy Young seasons.  In fact, in the Kings five championship seasons in the past decade (2013, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021), Scherzer has finished first or second in the Cy Young vote in all but one.  And in that one exception (2019), his Kings teammate Verlander won the award instead.  With Verlander no longer around, Scherzer is the only player to have been on all five of those championship squads.  It is safe to say they would not have won many, if any, of them without him.

There were four standout pitchers in the DTBL this season.  As it turns out, all four played for National League teams.  So it is interesting to compare how the voting results played out for the DTBL and NL Cy Young awards.  The order in which those four finished was almost exactly the opposite in the two races.  In the NL, the award was won by Corbin Burnes with Zack Wheeler finishing second, Scherzer third and Walker Buehler fourth.  Here’s how the DTBL vote shook out.  Scherzer received seven of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds to finish with 84 points.  The runner-up was Komodos’ ace Buehler.  The Dodgers righty was just barely edged out by Scherzer in PAR, WHIP and strike outs, but Buehler had the slight edge in ERA and wins.  He received the other two first place votes, five seconds and two thirds for 65 points.  While it was the Scherzer/Verlander duo leading the way in recent championship seasons for the Kings, this year it was Wheeler replacing Verlander.  Wheeler had a career year, leading the league with 247 strikeouts.  He received one second and six third place votes for 43 points, joining Scherzer and Buehler as the trio who appeared on every ballot.  Finishing fourth was the NL Cy Young award winner Burnes.  The Cougars first round draft pick this year had a sparkling 2.43 ERA and 0.94 WHIP.  One of the talking points post NL Cy Young announcement was that Burnes threw 45 fewer innings than Wheeler.  As for this league’s vote, he threw just six fewer innings than Scherzer.  A majority of the votes he received were for the fourth slot and he totaled 27 points.  There was a huge dropoff after those four.  Finishing fifth was the Cougars’ Kevin Gausman with four points.  Interestingly, eight out of the top nine finishers played for NL teams.  The only exception was a relief pitcher, Liam Hendriks.  The top finishing AL starting pitcher was Gerrit Cole, who came in tenth.  Of course, AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray wasn’t even on the league roster this year.

Click here to view the full voting results.

One more award to come.  It’s the big one.  Who will be named the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player?  Come back tomorrow to find out!

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Peralta Nabs Rookie Honor

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

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For as long as this league has existed, teams have employed the strategy of using real life starting pitchers who qualify as relievers in relief pitcher slots to attempt to gain an advantage in the wins and strikeout categories.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.  There is usually a price to be paid in the ERA and WHIP categories when an additional, sometimes marginal starting pitcher is utilized.  But when that extra starter is an All-Star caliber pitcher, the calculus changes quite dramatically and it becomes a huge boon to a pitching staff.  The Demigods took a chance on Freddy Peralta in the eighth round of this spring’s draft, and boy did it pay off.  He is the 2021 DTBL Rookie of the Year.  This is the second straight year the award has been won by a Demigod, following Fernando Tatis Jr. a year ago.

Peralta struck out 195 batters, which was almost twice as many as any other DTBL reliever recorded and was a single season league record for a pitcher occupying a reliever slot, just surpassing Chris Sale’s breakout season of 2012 in which he pitched almost 50 more innings than Peralta did this year.  Peralta won 10 games, which may not seem especially impressive, but in today’s suppressed starting pitcher win environment, it was another nice bump for the Demigods.  The last DTBL reliever to win more games than that was Josh Collmenter in 2014.  The real risk of using starters as relievers is the damage they could do to ERA and WHIP.  But Peralta was elite in those categories as well, posting a 2.81 ERA and 0.97 WHIP.  In total, he accumulated 6.85 PAR to lead the Demigods staff.  Usually, its a bad sign if a reliver leads a team in pitching PAR.  But in this case, Peralta was a legitimate ace.  That PAR total was tops among DTBL rookies as well.  I do not have complete awards records prior to 2005. But in the years since, Peralta is the first DTBL designated relief pitcher to win Rookie of the Year.

It is probably safe to call the selection of Peralta in the eighth round a steal for the Demigods, even with him moving to a starting pitcher slot next year.  He was not enough to boost the Demigods into contention this year, but combining him with Max Fried, Aaron Nola and Joe Musgrove does give them a solid foundation on which to build.  The Demigods back-to-back Rookie of the Year winners, Peralta and Tatis, may have arrived with different pedigrees:  Tatis was the first overall pick in the draft while Peralta was taken 74th.  But both should be huge figures in the team’s future.

Peralta did have strong competition for this award.  Of the nine ballots cast, Peralta was the first choice on seven of them.  The other two ballots had him second, for a total of 84 points.  That gave him the award by a comfortable margin.  Finishing second was Beanballers hurler Chris Bassitt, who might have won this award had he not suffered a gruesome injury when he was hit in the face with a line drive in August and missed most of the remainder of the season.  Bassitt won 12 games with a 3.15 ERA.  He did not receive any first place votes, but was the consensus runner up with five second place votes and 48 total points.  Just behind him was Moonshiners outfielder Ryan Mountcastle who led all DTBL rookies with 33 home runs.  The Moonshiners first round selection received the two first place tallies that didn’t go to Peralta and appeared on all nine ballots for a 43 point total.  The third and final player to appear on every ballot was Kings outfielder Randy Arozarena.  The 2020 Postseason breakout star and 2021 American League Rookie of the Year validated his status as the second overall pick in the draft with a 20/20 season.  He had exactly 20 home runs and stolen bases.  Arozarena received one second place vote and a slew of third through fifths for 37 points.  Rounding out the top five is Mavericks starting pitcher Tyler Mahle.  He led DTBL rookies with 13 wins and 197 strikeouts.  He was a great find for the Mavericks in the sixth round and helped save a staff ravaged by injuries.  Mahle tallied 14 points in finishing fifth.

Click here to view the full voting results.

After going months without posting a blog entry, I’m going to try to cram three in consecutive days.  The plan is to announce the Cy Young winner tomorrow and MVP on Wednesday.  Stay tuned!

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