Someone Old, Someone New

May 4th, 2019 by Kevin

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Five weeks into the 2019 season, it is apparent that we will not have a repeat of 2018 in the DTBL where a single team dominated the league nearly from start to finish.  The Jackalope broke out to an early lead in the first couple weeks of the season, but since then, first place has been a revolving door.  The month of April ended with the Jackalope on top, but five other teams were within nine points of the lead.  It has been a rough start to the season for the Demigods and a couple other teams need to pick it up. But for the most part, everybody is well positioned as we move into May.

On a macro level, the early season trends in baseball have been fewer hits (lower batting averages), more strikeouts and a lot more home runs.  The current league batting average of .260 would break last season’s low water mark of .262.  But overall, offense is up, with the league ERA soaring to 3.89, which is higher than any full season league ERA since 2006.  The league WHIP is up as well.  So while pitchers are allowing fewer hits, they are actually surrendering more base runners due to a spike in walks.

As you might expect with some of these extreme statistical increases, several individual players are off to record breaking paces as well.  Komodos outfielder Cody Bellinger and Darkhorses outfielder Christian Yelich each slugged 14 home runs in March/April.  That ties a league record for most home runs in the first month of the season, matching Albert Pujols in 2006 and Alex Rodriguez in 2007.  Bellinger’s 37 RBI are an April record and his 32 runs also ties the record.  Spoiler alert, Bellinger will be mentioned again below.  Jackalope pitcher Gerrit Cole struck out 65 batters in the first month, which also ties a league record set by Curt Schilling in April of 1998.

Again this year, I’m going to write monthly posts like this one, recapping the weekly and monthly award winners.  Here are the batters and pitchers of the week for the first five weeks of the 2019 season.

Batters of the Week:

Week 1 (3/20 – 3/31) – Cody Bellinger, Komodos
Week 2 (4/1 – 4/7) – Anthony Rendon, Jackalope
Week 3 (4/8 – 4/14) – Austin Meadows, Demigods
Week 4 (4/15 – 4/21) – Christian Yelich, Darkhorses
Week 5 (4/22 – 4/28) – Luke Voit, Naturals

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 1 (3/20 – 3/31) – Jose Berrios, Darkhorses
Week 2 (4/1 – 4/7) – Mike Clevinger, Naturals
Week 3 (4/8 – 4/14) – Blake Snell, Cougars
Week 4 (4/15 – 4/21) – James Paxton, Naturals
Week 5 (4/22 – 4/28) – J.A. Happ, Komodos

Unfortunately, April was a rough month from an injury perspective for players who were off to hot starts.  Exactly half of the players listed above wound up hitting the injured list shortly after earning their weekly honor.  Rendon and Meadows would have been in the conversation for Batter of the Month if not for their injuries.  Bellinger and Yelich, on the other hand, have remained healthy and are off to historically fast starts.  But only one of them can win the month’s top honor.  That goes to…

Batter of the Month:

Cody Bellinger, Komodos
.431 AVG, 14 HR, 37 RBI, 32 R, 5 SB, 4.64 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Justin Verlander, Kings
2.45 ERA, 0.864 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 53 K, 3.31 PAR

An old guy and a (relative) newcomer.  23 year old Cody Bellinger not only had arguably the best month of April in league history, but on the short list for best months at any point of the season.  He is only the fourth player to ever hit 14+ homers with an average over .400 for an entire month (or a month and 4 days, in this case).  The others were Juan Gonzalez in July of 1996, Albert Belle in July of 1998 and Barry Bonds in September/October of 2001.  But Bellinger had a higher average than all of them, scored the most runs of the foursome and easily stole the most bases.  I don’t have monthly PAR calculations going back that far, but I would guess Bellinger’s was the best in league history.  While his rookie campaign of ’18 was slightly disappointing for the Komodos, it appears they are getting everything they could have hoped for out of him this season.  It was unfortunate for Yelich to not have won this award because his numbers were insane as well.  Moonshiners shortstop Tim Anderson came in third.

Justin Verlander’s late career resurgence has continued into his age 36 season.  Last year’s third place finisher in the Cy Young vote has started this season on top of the Pitching PAR leaderboard.  His 0.86 WHIP led all starting pitchers in March/April.  With 53 strikeouts in 44 innings, he’s also maintaining an impressive strikeout ratio.  He is currently keeping the Kings pitching staff afloat, as no other starting pitcher on the team has a PAR over 1.  Verlander last won this monthly honor last June.  This award could have gone to a bunch of different pitchers.  Verlander barely edged out the Jackalope duo of Tyler Glasnow and Luis Castillo and Choppers righty Trevor Bauer.

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