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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.