Moose, Mo and More

August 7th, 2019 by Kevin

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A few times in recent years, I have taken the opportunity to write about the DTBL careers of a set of players recently inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  Well, I think I might as well go ahead and make it an annual tradition for my July recap article.  Our league has reached a level of longevity such that virtually every player inducted into the Hall had a significant impact on this league as well.

On July 21, six players were honored in Cooperstown, New York.  All six are DTBL alums and at least three would be sure fire Hall-of-Famers in this league as well, if such a thing existed.  The six honorees were:  Harold Baines, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera and Lee Smith.  Here is a review of their DTBL careers, going in alphabetical order.

Harold Baines was one of the more controversial selections in recent years, chosen by the Veterans Committee after never receiving much support during his time on the Baseball Writers Association ballot.  Personally, I find arguments over players who *are* selected to be tiresome.  More time should be spent arguing about players who are left out rather than trying to diminish those selected.  Baines was an excellent player, and a personal favorite of mine.  That said, he was probably the least accomplished DTBL player of this group with his prime years coming well before this league started.  He was drafted by the Gators in the inaugural draft of 1993 and spent five seasons with them as their primary designated hitter and was a member of their 1995 championship team.  He then spent his final two seasons as a part time player on a couple expansion teams:  the Angels in 1998 and the Moonshiners inaugural season of 1999.  Baines hit at least .290 in every season except his last one.  All told, he compiled an impressive .303 career batting average with 81 home runs.

The late Roy Halladay was a major part of the modern pitching evolution of the late 2000s and early 2010s when power pitchers started to rule the day.  He spent his entire DTBL career with the Jackalope and litters their career leaderboard.  His run from 2008 to 2011 was just about as good as it gets over a four year span.  In every one of those years, he struck out over 200 with ERAs below 3.00 and at least 17 wins.  He won the DTBL Cy Young Award in 2010 and finished third in 2008 and 2011.  On three occasions, he won 20+ games (2003, 2008, 2010).  In his 12 year career, he racked up 177 victories, which ranks 10th in league history and third among players who debuted after 2000, behind Justin Verlander and C.C. Sabathia.  Halladay is the Jackalope franchise career leader in wins and innings pitched and trails only Felix Hernandez in strikeouts.  His 75.8 Pitching PAR also leads the way, by a margin that will only increase when I get around to calculating the numbers from his first three seasons.  The Jackalope selected Halladay in the fourth round of the 2002 Draft.  I would say that pick worked out pretty well for them.  He was a critical piece of their first championship squad in 2011.

As designated hitters go, nobody has ever been as good for as long as Edgar Martinez.  Interestingly enough though, he actually got his start in this league as a third baseman for three years, even though DH was an official position in our league in those days.  While he could certainly hit for power, his carrying tool was his ability to hit for average.  His career mark of .316 ranks ninth in league history.  But he hit over .320 for six consecutive seasons from 1995 through 2000.  Martinez debuted for the Kings in 1993 and then played for the expansion Metros in 1994 before settling in with the Cougars for the remainder of his career (1995 through 2004).  Unfortunately, my transaction records are a little scattered from the 90s, so I don’t recall exactly how he made those team jumps.  I do know that the Cougars must have cut him loose after his typically solid 1998 season though because they then reacquired him with their first round pick in 1999.  I think expansion draft rules that year may have played a part.  But anyway, the Cougars managed to hang onto him and he continued to hit for them for years to come.  He won a DTBL Championship with the Cougars in 1996.  He is their career batting average leader at .317.  For his DTBL career, Martinez also hit 239 home runs with 956 RBI.  He topped 100 RBI in five different seasons.  There have been few pure hitters better than Edgar Martinez in the past quarter century.

Justin Verlander needs just two more wins to reach 200 for his DTBL career.  When he does that, he will become just the fifth player in league history to reach that mark.  The other four are now all Hall-of-Famers, thanks to the recent induction of Mike Mussina.  Had I not just looked it up, I don’t think I would have remembered or guessed that Mussina finished his career just one win shy of the league’s all time leader, Greg Maddux.  Mussina won 239 games despite never compiling 20 in a single season.  He won exactly 20 for the first and only time in his final season of 2008, but was an in-season free agent signing by the Moonshiners that year and only compiled 16 wins for them.  But he posted double digit wins in an impressive 15 of 16 DTBL seasons.  In addition to all the wins, he also ranks fifth in league history with 2,576 strikeouts and pitched more innings than every pitcher not named Maddux.  They are the only two to record over 3,000 DTBL innings.  Mussina was drafted by the Kings in 1993 and spent two seasons with them before being part of one of the league’s first blockbuster trades during the 1995 Draft.  Unfortunately, as covered earlier, my transaction records from those days are rather lacking, so I don’t have the complete details.  But I do recall it being a huge deal.  Anyway, it certainly worked out for the Choppers who retained his services for the next 13 seasons.  He and Greg Maddux top pretty much all of the Choppers career pitching numbers.  That duo were a big reason why the Choppers won league titles in 1997 and 1999.  While he might not be at the top of your mind when you think of the all-time great pitchers, he should be.  Mike Mussina was one of the best pitchers in DTBL history.

Mariano Rivera was the first player to ever be unanimously selected for the Hall of Fame.  His case for enshrinement was pretty impeccable.  Obviously, that would be true of his DTBL career as well.  His 643 career saves is an incredible 83 more than any other pitcher has accumulated.  I doubt anyone will come close to that total anytime soon.  He topped 30 saves in 15 of his 17 seasons, with injuries cutting short the two seasons in which he failed to reach that total.  Even in his final season of 2013, he managed to rack up 44 saves.  His career high save total came in 2004 with 53 and he reached 50 in 2001 as well.  But it wasn’t just the saves.  His 2.02 ERA and 0.973 WHIP are both easily the lowest in league history among pitchers with at least 800 innings pitched.  He had so many seasons with a sub 2.00 ERA and 40+ saves that it is basically impossible to pick a career best season.  486 of Rivera’s saves came with the Cougars who drafted him in the first round of 1997, coming right off the heals of their third championship in four years.  He remained with the Cougars all the way until 2009, when they traded him to the Mavericks for Mike Lowell, not the best trade the Cougars have ever made.  Rivera had a productive season and a half for the Mavericks before he was traded again during the 2011 Draft to the Choppers in exchange for a second round pick which would become Starlin Castro.  Rivera’s final two seasons were with the Choppers where he continued to be one of the best relievers in baseball.  Oddly enough, Rivera never won a DTBL Championship while winning five World Series titles with the Yankees.  Mariano Rivera rode one pitch, a nasty cutter, to a Hall of Fame career.  He is the greatest relief pitcher in MLB and DTBL history.

Finally, we have Lee Smith, the third former Thunder Chopper of this class.  Like Baines, he was selected by the Veterans Committee and compiled most of his Hall of Fame numbers before this league started.  That said, his DTBL career was short, but productive.  He was an inaugural DTBL Draft selection of the Choppers in 1993.  He saved 114 games for the Choppers in 1993 through 1995, which still puts him fourth in franchise history in that category.  His 33 saves in the strike shortened 1994 season led the league.  Through the first three seasons of this league’s history, Smith held the all-time saves lead.  Obviously that didn’t hold up very long though as he didn’t record a save in his final DTBL season of 1996.  While he bounced around a whole bunch of MLB teams in the latter stages of his career, he did not pitch for any DTBL team besides the Choppers.  One of the original fireballing closers, Lee Smith is a worthy Hall of Famer.

On to the awards for July 2019.

Batters of the Week:

Week 15 (7/1 – 7/7) – Yulieski Gurriel, Demigods
Week 16 (7/11 – 7/14) – Josh Donaldson, Jackalope
Week 17 (7/15 – 7/21) – Ronald Acuna, Jackalope
Week 18 (7/22 – 7/28) – Nelson Cruz, Komodos
Week 19 (7/29 – 8/4) – Starling Marte, Komodos

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 15 (7/1 – 7/7) – Aaron Nola, Demigods
Week 16 (7/11 – 7/14) – Mike Soroka, Mavericks
Week 17 (7/15 – 7/21) – Clayton Kershaw, Mavericks
Week 18 (7/22 – 7/28) – Stephen Strasburg, Mavericks
Week 19 (7/29 – 8/4) – Justin Verlander, Kings

July was a good month for Braves players and Mavericks pitchers, as three of each won weekly awards.  Braves and Jackalope teammates Josh Donaldson and Ronald Acuna took the Batter of the Week honors surrounding the All-Star break.  Two other DTBL teammates won the award the following couple weeks as Komodos sluggers Nelson Cruz and Starling Marte finished the month with a bang.  The Mavericks pitching staff has been heating up as of late.  60% of their rotation claimed a weekly honor in July with Mike Soroka, Clayton Kershaw and Stephen Strasburg all continuing to pitch extremely well.  Two of the players listed above parlayed their strong weeks into a full month of excellence in July.

Batter of the Month:

Yulieski Gurriel, Demigods
.398 AVG, 12 HR, 31 RBI, 18 R, 0 SB, 3.26 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Stephen Strasburg, Mavericks
1.14 ERA, 0.916 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 44 K, 3.21 PAR

Yulieski Gurriel has been a solid big league hitter for some time now.  But one thing that has kept him from being discussed among the elite players in the game is a relative lack of power at a position where big home run totals are expected.  Entering this season, his career high for homers was 18 in 2017.  Entering July, he was on his typically pedestrian pace with just eight dingers.  But then he went and hit 12 in a span of 18 games and has already smashed his career high mark.  In addition to the dozen July home runs, he also came just short of hitting .400 for the month (.398).  Despite those gaudy numbers, he won this award by the slimmest of margins over Moonshiners third baseman Rafael Devers, who has basically been on fire for three straight months now.  Nobody else was close to Gurriel or Devers.

It is genarally a good sign for a pitcher when he allows fewer earned runs than he knocks in at the plate in any given game.  In July, Stephen Strasburg pulled that trick for the entire month!  He surrendered just four earned runs while compiling a 1.14 ERA and added six RBIs to help his own cause while at the plate.  Strasburg continues the trend of veteran pitchers winning this monthly pitching honor.  But at 31 years old, he is actually the youngest pitcher to win this award in 2019.  He was a comfortable winner, but two other pitchers who had a great run in July were Astros righties Justin Verlander (Kings) and Gerrit Cole (Jackalope).  With the addition of Zack Greinke to their rotation, it would appear the Astros are well armed for another World Series run.

A reminder that the DTBL trade deadline is coming up next week:  Thursday, August 15.  Trades must be accepted by both parties by midnight on the 15th, even though trades consummated between the 12th and 15th won’t be processed until the following Monday.

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