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Judge Earns Second MVP

Wednesday, November 26th, 2025

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The Aaron Judge vs. Shohei Ohtani debate is one we no longer get to have when it comes to MLB MVP awards since Ohtani switched to the National League and both superstars are the default favorites for their league’s MVP award every season.  But in the DTBL, that competition is alive and well.  Both players had their typical otherworldly seasons in 2025, propelling them to winning the MVP award in each league once again.  Ohtani’s extra greatness of not only being one of the best two hitters in all of baseball is that he also happens to be one of the best pitchers too.  That doesn’t play into his DTBL value though where he is only allowed to impact the Moonshiners roster on one side each year.  So when comparing their hitting accomplishments only, MVP voters preferred Judge by a comfortable margin as he propelled the Mavericks to their second consecutive league title.  Aaron Judge is the 2025 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

What has been really incredible about the career arc of Judge is that he has maintained his status as the best power hitter in the game while becoming an even better all around hitter.  This season, he led the league with a .331 batting average.  Only five players in the entire league cleared the .300 benchmark, while Judge did so by 31 points.  His DTBL career batting average is now on the verge of going over .300 as well, currently sitting at .299.  Judge also set a career high in runs scored with 137, the second highest total in the league.  Amusingly, his league standing in those two categories was higher than in his bread and butter categories of home runs and runs batted in, where he was still among the top five.  He hit 53 homers and drove in 114.  This is the third time in the past four years that he has surpassed 50 home runs in a season.  For good measure, he also stole a dozen bases.  His 11.4 Batting PAR bested Ohtani and all others by more than a point.  He now holds three of the top eight single season Batting PAR totals since 2005.

The Mavericks blitzed the rest of the league in batting points, thanks in large part to Judge.  Even with Mike Trout on the downside of his career, they still have an incredibly loaded outfield, led by Judge and fellow MVP candidate Juan Soto.  Judge is probably the best free agent signing in DTBL history.  He went undrafted in 2017 when the Mavericks signed him a few weeks into the season.  They have been reaping the rewards ever since.  He won the Rookie of the Year award in 2017 and also finished third in the MVP vote that season.  This is the second time he has been named the DTBL Most Valuable Player.  The first time was in 2022, which was probably his best season to date.  That year, he broke the AL single season home run record with 62 while hitting .311 with 16 stolen bases.  The other season in the discussion for his best was last year when he hit .322 with 58 homers.  That would have been a MVP campaign almost any other year.  However, Ohtani had the first ever 50/50 season a year ago, relegating Judge to a second place finish in the MVP vote.

This year’s MVP vote was nearly the inverse of last year in the top two spots.  A year ago, Ohtani got 9 of 10 first place tallies with Judge receiving a single one.  This year, Judge garnered nine of the ten, with one second, to finish with 97 points.  Ohtani got the other first with eight seconds.  He was dropped to fourth on one ballot though, tallying 69 total points.  The Moonshiners superstar hit 55 home runs, but the stolen bases dropped considerably from a year ago, with “only” 20 swipes on the season.  This is the fourth time in the past five years that Ohtani has finished in the top five of the MVP vote.  Finishing third is Judge’s Mavericks teammate and former Yankees teammate Juan Soto.  Somewhat surprising considering his consistent dominance, this is Soto’s highest MVP finish to date.  His batting average took a bit of a step back from his career norms, but he more than made up for that by setting a career high with 43 home runs and obliterating his career high in stolen bases with 38.  Prior to this year, he had never stolen more than a dozen bases in a season.  Soto received the one second place vote that didn’t go to Ohtani or Judge and was no lower than fourth on any of the ten ballots.  That computes to 42 points.  Probably the biggest debate during MLB award season was Judge vs. Cal Raleigh for AL MVP.  Raleigh led the league with 60 home runs, becoming the fifth different player in DTBL history to ever reach the 60 mark.  What made that even more incredible is that he did so while catching 121 games at an elite defensive level.  Obviously the defensive value isn’t relevant to fantasy baseball, but providing offensive numbers like that while occupying a traditionally weak positional slot is extremely valuable.  For years now, I have been playing around with a modified version of PAR that does include a positional adjustment.  Perhaps this winter would be a good time to implement such a change so we can get a better understanding of just how valuable Raleigh is compared to his catching counterparts.  He will have to settle for a fourth place finish in this year’s MVP vote though.  The Jackalope backstop received six third place votes and 35 total points.  Finishing in the fifth spot is another guy who is on the periphery of the MVP discussion basically every year.  Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez had his second straight 30/40 season.  He hit exactly 30 homers this year while stealing a career high 44 bases.  This is the fifth time in his career that he has finished in the top five for the MVP award, yet he has never been higher than fourth place.  He appeared on eight of the ten ballots, all in the fourth and fifth place slots, for 14 voting points.

Click here to view the full voting results.

So the Moonshiners weren’t quite able to sweep the 2025 DTBL awards.  It is the second straight year they have taken two of the three though.  All three of the awards went to players on teams who finished in the top two spots in the standings.  Thanks to everyone for taking the time to vote a few weeks ago and apologies on being so tardy in actually announcing the winners.  Now we turn our eyes to the 2025 season.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Mavericks | No Comments »

Skubal Wins Cy Young Again

Tuesday, November 25th, 2025

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With the infusion of three DTBL rookie pitchers who immediately became stars, the pool of players who were serious contenders for the Cy Young award became even deeper. However, those guys still have some work to do to topple the gold standard in the league today. Moonshiners lefty Tarik Skubal rode a truly dominant 2024 season to a unanimous Cy Young selection. In his follow up campaign, he nearly replicated his ’24 numbers, making him the man to beat again for this award. While it was not unanimous this time thanks to his new teammate, Tarik Skubal is the 2025 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

It is quite remarkable how similar Skubal’s 2024 and 2025 seasons were. This year, he led the league with a miniscule 0.89 WHIP and finished second with a 2.21 ERA and 241 strikeouts. All three of those numbers were slight improvements over a year ago. His 14.3 Pitching PAR also led the league, but was down a hair from ’24 mainly because his win total dropped from 18 to 13 this year. Skubal continues to be an enormous outlier in baseball with his ability to strike out hitters without sacrificing control. He only walked 33 batters, the lowest total in the league among qualified pitchers. His 7.3 K/BB ratio was nearly two points higher than the next best pitcher. In the years for which PAR has been calculated (2005-present), Skubal is just the third pitcher to accumulate 14+ Pitching PAR in consecutive seasons, joining Clayton Kershaw (2014-15) and Justin Verlander (2018-19). Nobody has ever done it three straight years, so that is something for him to shoot for in 2026.

Skubal’s path to the Moonshiners has been well documented at this point. His two years with the team have transformed them into one of the league’s top staffs after a few years of inconsistency. The back to back years of first round selections of Skubal and then Garrett Crochet have set them up to dominate the pitching categories for years to come. The Moonshiners ran away from the field in strikeouts this year, whiffing 132 more hitters than any other team. They trailed only the Darkhorses in total pitching points this season on their way to their second consecutive second place finish. Presumably, they will be able to focus their attention on the offense in next year’s draft unless another pitching gem falls to them again.

Skubal did not quite repeat as a unanimous selection for the Cy Young award. He received nine of ten first place votes, plus a second, for 97 out of a possible 100 voting points. The only first place vote he didn’t receive went to his Moonshiners teammate Crochet. The 2025 DTBL Rookie of the Year probably would have doubled up with the Cy Young award as well if Skubal didn’t exist. Crochet led the league in strikeouts and was just 1/2 point behind Skubal in PAR. In addition to the single first place vote, Crochet also garnered seven second place tallies and a pair of thirds for a total of 69 points. This is the first time teammates have finished 1-2 in Cy Young voting since Choppers hurlers Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer topped the 2020 vote. Behind them is another DTBL rookie, Cougars fireballer Paul Skenes. It is kind of shocking that a pitcher with a league leading ERA under 2 (1.97) would not receive a single first place vote for Cy Young. However, the competition for this award was incredibly stiff. Skenes got a pair of second place votes and seven thirds to comfortably finish third with 52 points. This year’s National League Cy Young winner figures to have plenty of future opportunities to win the award in the DTBL. There was a bit of a gap after those top three. The fourth place finisher is one of this season’s breakout stars. Choppers righty Bryan Woo emerged as the ace of a loaded Mariners staff. The sixth round pick from ’24 has already soared past expectations for a mid-round selection. He appeared on eight of ten ballots and finished with 21 points. Rounding out the top five is veteran righty Nathan Eovaldi, who wasn’t even on an active roster until May. The Diamond Dogs picked him up a quarter of the way into the season and all he did was shove. His 1.73 ERA easily would have led the league, except he was 20 innings shy of qualifying due to his late start. He still managed to accumulate 11 Pitching PAR in 3/4 of a season. Eovaldi accumulated eight total points in this vote. The depth of pitching in the league was quite impressive this year as many others outside of the top five had strong cases as well. In total, 11 different pitchers received at least one vote.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Two awards down, two awards won by the Moonshiners.  With Shohei Ohtani looming, can they make it three for three with tomorrow’s Most Valuable Player announcement?  The reigning MVP has some pretty stiff competition to win the award again this year.

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Crochet Sparkles in Delayed Debut

Monday, November 24th, 2025

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2025 was the year of the DTBL rookie pitcher.  Three of them were selected in the first round of the draft, including the first overall pick.  And all three of those pitchers had monster debut seasons in this league.  Paul Skenes lived up to the hype and then some as the first pick of the draft by the Cougars.  Yoshinobu Yamamoto was probably the biggest steal of the draft with the last pick of the first round by the defending champion Mavericks.  One pick before him, the Moonshiners selected Garrett Crochet who was on a DTBL roster three years ago, but did not make an appearance on an active roster, preserving his rookie eligibility.  Three years later, the hard throwing southpaw is the 2025 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

Crochet took one of the more unique paths to winning the DTBL Rookie of the Year award you will ever see.  He made his MLB debut with the White Sox in the covid shortened 2020 season just three months after being drafted and having never pitched in a minor league game because of the pandemic.  He then spent the 2021 season in the bullpen for the Sox before being added to the DTBL roster as a relief pitcher in 2022.  The Jackalope selected him in the seventh round in ’22.  Unfortunately, he blew out his elbow that spring not long after being drafted and missed the entire season following Tommy John surgery.  When he returned to action, he was nothing more than a mid-leverage reliever for the Sox until they took a chance and moved him into the rotation in 2024.  That was a smashing success, despite playing for one of the worst teams in baseball history.  Following that season, he was traded to Boston and reinstated to the DTBL roster as a starting pitcher.  4 1/2 years after making his MLB debut, the Moonshiners selected him with the ninth pick in the 2025 Draft.

As well as Crochet’s first go-round as a starting pitcher went in 2024, his follow up campaign in Boston was even better.  He led the league with 255 strikeouts, the second highest total ever by a Moonshiner, trailing only Kerry Wood in 2003.  He finished second in the league with 18 wins and was also among the league’s best in ERA (2.59) and WHIP (1.03).  Perhaps most impressively, he threw the second most innings of any pitcher in the league with 205, almost 60 more than his previous career high the year prior.  His 13.7 Pitching PAR trailed only his fellow left handed Moonshiners teammate Tarik Skubal.  Skubal and Crochet give the Moonshiners an embarrassment of riches in their rotation as probably the two best southpaws in the game right now.  They were largely responsible for keeping the Moonshiners in the championship race until the end, finishing in second place when it was all said and done.  Both of those guys will be among the top contenders for the Cy Young award as well.

The Rookie of the Year vote always figured to be a tight race between Crochet and Skenes, in particular.  Crochet had a slight edge over Skenes in PAR, primarily thanks to his advantage in wins and strikeouts.  However, it remained to be seen if some might give Skenes the nod due to his superior ratios, and maybe some would hold Crochet’s rookie eligibility technicality against him.  Not many did.  Crochet garnered eight of the ten first place votes plus a pair of seconds to finish with 94 points.  Skenes received the other two first place votes and eight seconds for a total of 76 points.  So this pair was 1-2 on all ten ballots.  The Cougars young ace led the league with a 1.97 ERA in his DTBL debut, while also accumulating a WHIP under 1 (0.95) and 216 strikeouts.  The NL Cy Young award winner should be a candidate for that award in this league too, however it probably doesn’t bode well for him relative to Crochet with the results of this ROY vote.  The third place finisher was the other part of the trio of first round pitchers in this year’s draft.  Yamamoto was a big reason why the Mavericks were able to win their second straight DTBL title.  He was one of three Mavericks pitchers to put up a 10+ Pitching PAR season.  That was all before becoming the Dodgers World Series hero.  With Clayton Kershaw now gone, Yamamoto figures to fill his void as the Dodgers star in the Mavericks rotation for years to come.  He received seven third place votes and was the only player besides Crochet and Skenes to appear on all ten ballots, finishing with 40 points.  The top finishing position player is Jackalope outfielder Jackson Chourio, picked second in the draft.  Chourio led all DTBL rookies with 5.1 Batting PAR, while showcasing power and speed with a matching 21 in the home run and stolen base columns.  He garnered three third place votes and 31 total points.  Rounding out the top five is another first round pick from this year’s draft, Komodos outfielder James Wood.  Wood looked like a strong candidate to win this award around mid-season.  However, he had a rough second half, marred by contact issues.  It should still go down as a very successful debut for the 23 year old slugger.  He led all rookies with 31 homers.  His 17 voting points put him fifth in this tally.  So half of the players drafted in the first round in March wound up finishing in the top five of the DTBL Rookie of the Year vote.  A lot of teams are no doubt happy with their selections not only for what they provided this year, but their bright futures as well.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Sorry I am a bit tardy with these award announcements.  I wanted to get it started last weekend, but ultimately decided to hold it for this week when I have considerably more free time.  I intend to announce the Cy Young award winner tomorrow and then the Most Valuable Player on Wednesday.  The Cy Young race figures to involve several of the names mentioned in this article.  We’ll see who came out on top soon.

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Ohtani Creates 50/50 Club

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

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Normally, when you put up a statline of a .322 batting average with 58 home runs and 144 runs batted in, you would be a shoe-in for the league’s Most Valuable Player award. But this year, that was not nearly enough for Aaron Judge to win his second DTBL MVP award. Bobby Witt and Jose Ramirez also had seasons that would have won them the award in many other years. In 2024, however, there was another player who had a truly historic season. Shohei Ohtani became the first member of the 50/50 Club. Prior to this year, no DTBL player with at least 50 home runs had stolen as many as 25 bases. Ohtani more than doubled that, finishing with 59 steals to go along with his 54 home runs. The Moonshiners versatile slugger is the 2024 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

Ohtani filled up the league leaderboard this season. His .310 average ranked fifth. He led the league with 144 runs scored. The 54 home runs, 59 stolen bases and 130 runs batted in all ranked second. His 16.4 Batting PAR lapped the field and ranks second in all calculated seasons since 2005, trailing only Ronald Acuna Jr’s MVP winning campaign from last year. In both Acuna and Ohtani’s situations, the stolen base component of PAR has been wildly inflated the past two seasons since steals have exploded across the league since the introduction of the pitch clock and other rules changes in 2023. However, by any reasonable measure, they were still two of the best seasons this league has ever seen. Ohtani and Judge became the 25th and 26th players in league history to hit the 50 home run plateau. Before Ohtani this year, the highest stolen base total among that group was Alex Rodriguez with just 24 in 2007. On the other side of the equation, there have been 51 players to steal at least 50 bases in a season. The only other player to pair that with more than 30 home runs was Acuna last year. Truly unprecedented stuff from Ohtani this year. I guess he took full advantage of his year off from pitching after his second major elbow surgery last fall.

When the Moonshiners drafted Ohtani with the fourth pick in the 2019 Draft, what his future would hold in this league was a very open question. While they opted to use him as a hitter in 2019, most believed his future was brightest on the mound. To date, he has only pitched in one fateful game for the Moonshiners before being shut down from pitching for the remainder of the shortened 2020 season. Since then, he has been a mainstay in the Moonshiners lineup and would appear to have far more value at that spot moving forward as well. He has been a DTBL All-Star the past four seasons. 2021 had been the best season of his career prior to this one. In that season, he slugged 46 home runs with 26 steals, but with a much more pedestrian .257 batting average. It earned him a second place finish in that year’s MVP vote, behind his Moonshiners teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. This year, Ohtani and Guerrero once again teamed up to lead a much improved Moonshiners offense. They finished a distant second place to the Mavericks in the overall standings, which was a nice bounce back after a disappointing 2023. As an aside, that 2019 DTBL Draft is looking like an all-timer in this league’s history. Ohtani fell to the fourth pick, but two of the players chosen ahead of him are no slouches either: Acuna and Juan Soto.

The MVP vote largely came down to how much weight people put into the Batting PAR stat, as Ohtani blew away the competition there. But as I have stated a few times, stolen bases are overvalued in that figure right now. So there was a decent case to be made for other players as well, most notably Mavericks slugger Aaron Judge. In the end, Ohtani received nine of the ten first place votes and ranked second on the other ballot for a total of 97 points. Meanwhile, Judge’s historic season in its own right that led to him winning the American League MVP placed him second in this vote. His votes were scattered all over the place though: one first, six seconds, two thirds and a fourth for 65 total points. He will have to wait for another year to win his second league MVP. While Ohtani entered a class of his own in the power/speed departments, Bobby Witt Jr and Jose Ramirez were in pretty impressive territory as well, with both joining the 30/30 Club. Witt, the Mavericks young superstar shortstop, won the batting title with a .332 average to go along with his 32 homers and 31 steals. He and Judge combined to form one of the most impressive offensive teammate partnerships this league has ever seen, and were a major reason why the Mavericks absolutely dominated the league in batting points. Witt received a pair of second place votes and 42 total points. Finishing right behind him is Komodos third baseman Ramirez. Ramirez continues to be the most consistently dominant offensive player in the league. He has hit a minimum of 20 home runs with 20 stolen bases in every season of his DTBL career except for the pandemic shortened 2020 and his rookie year of 2017 when he came up three steals short. This season, he had arguably the best season of his career, tying his career high with 39 home runs and setting a new personal high with 41 steals. Ramirez has been so consistent that he is often overlooked come MVP time. This is the fourth time he has finished in fourth place for the award, and never higher than that. He received one second place vote and 40 total points. There was a pretty big drop-off after those four. Diamond Dogs Rookie of the Year winning Elly De La Cruz rounds out the top five. His impressive rookie campaign earned him fifth place votes on eight of the ten ballots.

Click here to view the full voting results.

That brings an end to the 2024 DTBL awards announcements.  I do still owe Marc an article to document his dominant championship season, so I intend to do that sometime soon.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

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Skubal Claims Cy Young

Sunday, November 24th, 2024

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As mentioned in the Rookie of the Year article, the 2024 DTBL Draft class was not particularly loaded with can’t miss rookies and prospects.  But Elly De La Cruz wasn’t the only near certain superstar taken in the first round.  The Moonshiners went down a somewhat unconventional path by using the third overall pick on a non-DTBL rookie.  Tarik Skubal debuted for the Kings in 2022 and was having a solid first season in the league before an elbow injury led him to Tommy John surgery, missing the final two months of that season.  Since he was likely to miss most of 2023 as well, he was then removed from the league roster for that campaign.  An impressive return late in ’23 made him a highly coveted player entering this season.  The Moonshiners decision to grab him early paid off in a big way.  Tarik Skubal is the unanimous choice as the 2024 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

While Skubal had significant prospect pedigree leading up to his MLB debut with the Tigers in 2020, his first couple seasons in the big leagues were fairly pedestrian.  It wasn’t until the fateful 2022 campaign that he really started to put things together.  With a hat tip to modern medical advancements, he has returned from Tommy John surgery as an even better pitcher than he was pre-surgery.  He was the most dominant pitcher in baseball in 2024, by a comfortable margin.  The Moonshiners southpaw led all pitchers with 228 strikeouts, 18 wins and 14.8 Pitching PAR.  His 2.39 ERA ranked second, just .01 point behind Chris Sale.  His 0.92 WHIP was also second in the league, trailing only Logan Gilbert among qualified pitchers.  Few pitchers in recent years have combined such impressive strikeout and walk rates.  Skubal struck out over 30% of the batters he faced while walking fewer than 5%, for a very impressive 6.5 K/BB ratio.

Skubal was drafted by the Kings in the eighth round  of the 2022 draft.  While not initially expected to be a core piece of that Kings rotation, he did wind up throwing 95 very quality innings for them before succumbing to an elbow injury.  Despite his very successful debut season, the Kings did not seriously consider keeping him since he was expected to miss most of the 2023 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery.  Perhaps a questionable decision in retrospect, but he was completely dropped from the league roster for that ’23 campaign anyway.  What is not questionable was the Moonshiners decision to pick him in this year’s draft.  He immediately revitalized a pitching staff that struggled to defend their league championship the year prior.  The Moonshiners finished with 37.5 pitching points, their most since 2020.  That figure ranked second in the league this year, with Skubal leading the team in all relevant categories and having more than double the Pitching PAR total of all his teammates.

Not that he was undeserving of the honor, but it was a tad surprising that Skubal won this award unanimously since there were several other pitchers who had elite seasons.  The top two competitors were a pair of National League pitchers who fought for that league’s Cy Young honor.  We had a slightly different voting result in this league though.  Kings veteran Zack Wheeler had the best season of his impressive career.  He had nearly identical numbers to Skubal in every category except with a slightly worse ERA and WHIP and two fewer wins.  While Skubal received all ten of the first place votes, Wheeler got six of the second place nods and the other four were for third place, totaling 62 points.  Just behind him is Mavericks southpaw Chris Sale, who edged out Wheeler for the NL Cy Young award.  This season, Sale reestablished himself as one of the best pitchers in the league, leading the league with a 2.38 ERA.  While the Mavericks offense stole all the headlines, it was Sale who led the pitching staff to a convincing league championship.  Sale received four second place votes and a total of 56 points, six behind Wheeler.  It is his highest Cy Young finish since placing second in 2017.  As usual, starting pitchers were the favorites among Cy Young voters, but this was truly the year of the reliever.  Choppers closer Emmanuel Clase had one of the best seasons for a reliever in league history.  His 47 saves with an 0.61 ERA and 0.66 WHIP were truly dominant numbers.  His 10.8 Pitching PAR was the best for a reliever in years that have been calculated to date (since 2005).  If a relief pitcher was ever to win the Cy Young award again, this probably would have been the year.  Instead, Clase did not receive any first or second place votes.  His 21 total points comfortably ranked fourth though.  Rounding out the top five is another Choppers pitcher, righty Logan Gibert.  Gilbert led the DTBL with 208 innings pitched and an 0.89 WHIP.  While not really his fault, the fact that he only recorded nine wins probably sabotaged his chances of winning this award.  He has had three straight seasons of elite pitching for the Choppers.  He received 14 points in the Cy Young vote. Interestingly, there were nine players who received Cy Young votes, the same as last year. But not one player on that list was among the group from last year. Complete turnaround among the top pitchers in the league.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Two unanimous decisions for the DTBL awards so far.  For MVP, there is a clear favorite as well except there were a couple guys who had historically strong seasons, so we’ll see who comes out on top.  Look for the MVP announcement sometime in the next couple days.

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De La Cruz Cruises To ROY Win

Wednesday, November 20th, 2024

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The 2024 DTBL Draft class did not have the same hype as the group from the year prior.  Nor did it prove to have as many immediate impact players taken in the first round as there were in the 2023 Draft.  But that wasn’t because of the player picked first.  The Diamond Dogs owned that first pick for the third straight year.  They had a fairly straightforward choice to make, with the only problem being that they were already loaded at the shortstop position.  After making a pre draft trade to open up a spot, the no brainer decision to select Elly De La Cruz was made.  And for the second straight year, it seems they may have gotten themselves a franchise building player in the process.  Elly De La Cruz is the unanimous selection for the 2024 DTBL Rookie of the Year award.

De La Cruz smashed onto the big league scene in 2023 and immediately became a fantasy stud, hitting 13 home runs with 35 stolen bases in 98 games.  Just a modest improvement over those numbers would have made him an exceptionally valuable fantasy player.  Instead, he nearly doubled both of those figures.  He hit 25 homers with a gaudy 67 stolen bases.  He also scored 101 runs and improved his batting average to a respectable .259 figure.  His league leading 67 steals were the eighth most in league history and second most among rookies, trailing only Scott Podsednik’s 70 steals for the Moonshiners in 2004.  Kenny Lofton also stole 70 in 1993, but every player was technically a DTBL rookie in the league’s inaugural season.  The only DTBL player to ever top both De La Cruz’s HR and SB figures in a single season was Ronald Acuna Jr just last season.  His 9.7 Batting PAR (which was actually 11.0 before last week’s adjustment) topped all rookie hitters by almost three points.  In a normal year, with the numbers he accumulated, he’d be a likely pick for the Most Valuable Player award as well.  But he’ll have some stiff competition for that honor this year.

De La Cruz is the kind of player who pretty much guarantees that the Diamond Dogs will always be competitive in the steals category no matter what, allowing them to focus on other categories for future acquisitions.  In year one, he lifted them from dead last in stolen bases in 2023 to fourth place this season.  Overall, he was the driving force behind them improving from 22.5 batting points to 33.5 and an extremely respectable fifth place finish in the final standings.  Largely because of him, the Diamond Dogs streak of first overall picks will end in 2025, unless they were to trade for the top spot.  Their shortstop trio of De La Cruz, Oneil Cruz and Trea Turner combined for an incredible 18 Batting PAR.  Oneil Cruz switched to the outfield too late in the season to be making a DTBL position switch in ’25, so the Dogs figure to run it back with the same trio in the infield again next year.  De La Cruz is the first Diamond Dogs player to win any of the three major DTBL individual player awards.

Before I get to the vote results, a quick thanks to Mike for immediately brining to my attention that I completely botched the initial Rookie of the Year ballot.  Somehow, De La Cruz wasn’t on it!  In my initial compilation of the list, I had picked out the top candidate from each team and then worked down from there.  For reasons I can’t explain, I actually overlooked De La Cruz at first and had Jake Burger as the Dogs’ top candidate.  Fortunately, Mike pointed this out before anyone had submitted a ballot so I didn’t need to issue a re-vote.  De La Cruz was indeed the unanimous selection, topping all ten ballots.  Second place was extremely tight.  Mavericks’ outfielder Jarren Duran edged out Kings’ starting pitcher Bryce Miller by one point.  Duran and Miller were two of the biggest steals of the draft, selected in the fourth and fifth rounds respectively.  Duran was a major cog in the Mavericks all time great offense and championship winning roster.  He was quite the power/speed force in his own right with 21 homers and 34 steals.  Miller was part of a rejuvenated Kings rotation, leading all rookies in the Pitching PAR at 8.9.  Miller actually received a majority of the second place votes (6), but was bested in the overall tally by Duran who got three seconds and six thirds to finish with 54 points.  Following Miller is another Kings starting pitcher, Cole Ragans.  The southpaw was a second round selection, but the first pick made by the Kings in this year’s draft.  He didn’t receive any votes higher than third place, but joined De La Cruz and Duran as the three players who were on all ten ballots.  Ragans finished with 30 points.  Rounding out the top five is perhaps this year’s most surprising breakout star, Cougars outfielder Brent Rooker.  Rooker not only went undrafted, but remained a free agent until mid-May when the Cougars finally snatched him up.  He still managed to hit 29 homers in 3/4 of a season.  Rooker picked up a second place vote which accounted for a bulk of his 12 points to place fifth.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Thanks to everybody for getting your ballots in.  I’ll be announcing the Cy Young award winner later this week, with the Most Valuable Player announcement mostly likely coming sometime next week.  There are certainly a ton of deserving players for each of those awards, but with clear favorites as well.  Will either of them be unanimous too?  Find out soon!

Posted in Awards, Diamond Dogs | No Comments »

Acuna Slugs, Steals Way to MVP

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023

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The 2023 baseball season saw unprecedented change as a result of significant new rules:  a pitch clock, banning of the shift, limiting pickoff attempts and larger bases.  With the exception of the drastic decrease in average time of games, probably the most noticeable change this year was stolen bases coming back in style.  There were 1,652 stolen bases across the DTBL this season, an incredible 53% increase over a year ago and the highest league total since 1999.  In fact, we were just nine steals shy of this being a record breaking season for steals.  Almost every player with at least average speed increased their stolen base output this year.  But one player took that to an extreme while continuing to be one of the best hitters in the game.  Ronald Acuna Jr stole 73 bases while hitting 41 home runs, a pair of milestones no other player in DTBL history has ever come close to reaching.  In a unanimous decision, the Jackalope and Braves outfielder is the 2023 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

Acuna’s 73 stolen bases led the league by 19.  He is the first DTBL player to steal 70+ bases since Jacoby Ellsbury in 2009 and that 73 figure ranks third highest in league history, just five shy of the league record 78 by Jose Reyes in 2007.  Needless to say, his 41 home runs are the highest total ever among players with 70+ steals.  That mark was previously held by Kenny Lofton who hit 14 home runs with his 75 steals in 1996.  Even if you bump the HR/SB milestones down to 30/50, Acuna is still the first player in league history to reach those marks.  Oh, Acuna also hit .338, which put him second in line for the batting title, and led the league with 149 runs scored.  His 106 runs batted in, despite hitting leadoff all year, also put him in the top 10 of the league.  It was truly one of the best offensive seasons in league history.  By PAR, it currently ranks as the best season in all years that have been calculated (2005-present), by a wide margin.  His 19.0 Batting PAR blows away Aaron Judge’s previous high from last year at 12.2.  I should mention that this PAR total will likely be lowered when I get around to doing the post-season adjustment.  This is because stolen bases were drastically overrepresented in the PAR totals this year since the leaguewide total was so significantly higher compared to recent years.  That said, the adjustment isn’t going to cost him 6+ points, so this should remain the best Batting PAR individual season to date by a comfortable margin.  There is no question that Acuna had one of the best single season performances in DTBL history.

The Jackalope selected Acuna with the first pick in the 2019 Draft.  He immediately had one of the best rookie seasons in league history, hitting 41 homers with 37 stolen bases, earning him Rookie of the Year and runner up for MVP.  It was certainly a sign of what was to come for this five tool phenom.  Unfortunately, his ascendence was put on pause in 2021 when he tore his ACL halfway through the year and then missed the first month of the 2022 season as well.  In these abbreviated seasons, he did not flash the same type of power he had shown previously, but the speed was still there.  Then this season happened, leaving little doubt that he is now back to full strength and better than ever.  While not directly fantasy related, his ’23 stat that I found most impressive was his 11.4% strikeout rate.  He had been in 23%-30% range his entire career, and then suddenly cut that in half this year.  While the Jackalope finished a distant fifth place with Acuna, it would be scary to think how bad their offense would have been without him.  He joins Gerrit Cole for a Jackalope sweep of the non-rookie awards.  They’ll look for more contributions from the rest of the roster next year.

As expected, Acuna won this award unanimously, the second straight season in which the MVP winner received all of the first place votes after Judge did the same a year ago.  No other player even received half as many total points as Acuna’s perfect 100.  In fact, Acuna was the only player who even appeared on every ballot.  Five different players received second place votes, making it a tight race for all of the other finishing positions.  The runner-up is Demigods outfielder and Rookie of the Year winner Corbin Carroll.  The sparkplug to the Demigods championship winning offense, Carroll finished second in the league behind Acuna in both stolen bases (54) and Batting PAR (10.7).  If our league’s MVP vote mimicked real life where sports MVP awards often simply go to the best player on the best team, Carroll would have been the choice.  He received half of the second place votes and finished with 49 total points.  Third place will be shared by a pair of players who have things in common with Carroll.  The first being his Demigods teammate Freddie Freeman.  Freeman was another key cog for the championship squad.  The veteran first baseman hit .331 with 29 home runs and even stole 23 bases.  He received a pair of second place votes and three thirds to finish with 37 points.  The other player with 37 points is Mavericks shortstop Bobby Witt Jr, who shares Carroll’s status as a rookie with elite power and speed.  Witt stole 49 bases while hitting 30 home runs.  Very few players in league history have reached the HR/SB levels that all three of Acuna, Carroll and Witt hit this year.  Witt now had a third place MVP finish to go along with his third place ROY standing.  For MVP, he only received one second place tally, but four thirds allowed him to tie Freeman.  There is yet another tie for fifth place.  Moonshiners star Shohei Ohtani was the unanimous choice for AL MVP.  But in this league, his pitching prowess doesn’t increase his value, making his season slightly less significant while still incredibly impressive.  Ohtani hit .304 with 44 home runs and 20 stolen bases.  I hear he had a pretty good year on the mound as well.  Ohtani only appeared on three ballots, but did get a second place vote, pushing his total up to 15 points.  That ties him with yet another rookie, Diamond Dogs first overall draft pick, outfielder Julio Rodriguez.  Rodriguez’s DTBL career got off to a bit of a slow start.  He made up for it in the final months of the season though, accumulating 32 homers and 37 stolen bases.  Like Ohtani, he received a single second place vote, but with more down ballot support to also reach 15 points.  So that’s three DTBL rookies among the top six MVP vote getters.  The future is certainly bright.

Click here to view the full voting results.

And with that, we have concluded DTBL awards season.  Hopefully soon, I’m going to get the post-season PAR update done.  I anticipate it is going to cause significant changes in the numbers across the board due to the wild statistical shifts that occurred this season.  It will probably be worth writing about at some point.  In the meantime, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

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Cole Reaches Pitching Apex

Monday, November 20th, 2023

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Gerrit Cole has been one of the best pitchers in baseball ever since making his big league debut in 2013.  The first overall pick in the 2011 MLB Draft has been anchoring rotations for the better part of a decade.  Yet the Cy Young award had eluded him, both in MLB and the DTBL.  Until this year.  Cole put up his usual exceptional numbers.  But this time he was actually rewarded for it.  The Jackalope and Yankees righty finally earned the American League Cy Young award in a unanimous decision.  In the DTBL, the competition was a little stiffer, but he came out on top there as well.  For the first time in his career, Gerrit Cole is the DTBL Cy Young award winner.

While Cole is known mostly as a power pitcher who can sometimes be victimized by home runs, inflating his ERA along the way, it was actually the ERA and WHIP numbers this year that ultimately set him apart from the field.  He was the only qualified pitcher to post a sub 1.0 WHIP (0.98) and his 2.63 ERA trailed only Blake Snell, who threw nearly 30 fewer innings.  While still an elite total, his 222 strikeouts only ranked fifth in the league.  Cole was one of just four pitchers to throw over 200 innings this season, further cementing his workhorse status.  He led all DTBL hurlers with 11.8 Pitching PAR.  Part of what pushed this Cole season to a higher level was his ability to keep the ball in the park more often.  After surrendering a league leading 33 home runs in 2022, he lowered that figure to a very respectable 20 in 2023, the first time his HR/9 was under 1.0 since 2018.  Perhaps the 32 year old Cole is gracefully transitioning to more of a finesse pitcher than he was earlier in his career.

Originally selected by the Mavericks with the ninth pick of the 2014 DTBL Draft, Cole spent one season with the Mavericks before being traded to the Jackalope in exchange for Aroldis Chapman prior to 2015.  He has been the Jackalope ace ever since.  Cole has topped 200 strikeouts six times and this was the fifth season in which he won at least 15 games for the Jackalope.  Assuming they keep him around, sometime early next season he should pass Felix Hernandez as the Jackalope career leader in strikeouts.  Including his season with the Mavericks, he passed the 2,000 career strikeout milestone in September.  While this was his first Cy Young winning campaign, it would be hard to make an argument for it being the finest season of his career.  That would have to be 2019 when he struck out 326 batters, the highest single season total for any DTBL pitcher not named Randy Johnson.  He also won 20 games with a 2.50 ERA and 0.90 WHIP that year.  Unfortunately for him, Justin Verlander also had an incredible season in ’19, bumping Cole to second in the Cy Young vote.  This is the sixth straight year that Cole has received Cy Young votes, and seventh time overall.  He is a six time DTBL All-Star, making the team every year since 2018, excluding the 2020 season when there was no game.  Cole is the first Jackalope Cy Young winner since Jake Arrieta in 2015.

Unlike the AL Cy Young vote, Cole did not win this one unanimously.  He was placed first or second on all 10 ballots though, making him the only player who can make that claim.  He received seven first place tallies and three seconds to secure 91 of the possible 100 total points.  Two other pitchers were within shouting distance of Cole.  Darkhorses rookie Spencer Strider, fresh off his second place finish in the Rookie of the Year vote, now has another runner-up finish.  Strider lapped the field with 281 strikeouts and also led all pitchers with 20 wins.  He had an impressive 1.09 WHIP as well.  What probably cost him this award was his good but not great 3.86 ERA, more than a run higher than Cole’s.  Strider received a pair of first place votes and three seconds.  His 66 total points were enough to put him in second place.  Just behind him is the NL Cy Young winner, Choppers lefty Blake Snell.  Snell finally regained the magic that earned him Rookie of the Year and a second place Cy Young finish in his DTBL rookie season with the Cougars in 2018.  This year, he led all qualified pitchers with a 2.25 ERA and was third in strikeouts with 234.  Snell received the final first place vote and four seconds for a total of 57 points.  Cole, Strider and Snell were the only pitchers to receive top two votes and to appear on every ballot, comfortably placing them ahead of the rest of the pack.  The fourth place finisher is the champion Demigods ace Zac Gallen.  Perhaps a bit under the radar prior to the Diamondbacks pennant winning run this fall, Gallen has been dominant for two straight seasons now.  This season, he set career highs with 222 strikeouts and 17 wins, finishing only behind Strider in the latter category.  Gallen received a pair of third place votes and 23 total points.  Rounding out the top five is Darkhorses reliever Felix Bautista.  In his DTBL debut season, he saved 33 games while striking out 110 in just 61 innings.  His 1.48 ERA was lowest among all pitchers who threw at least 60 innings this year.  Bautista appeared on seven ballots, accumulating 13 points.  So that’s an impressive fifth place finish for both Rookie of the Year and Cy Young for the dominant reliever, despite missing the final month of the season.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Two down, one to go.  Probably not a lot of suspense surrounding the Most Valuable Player award, but you will just have to wait a couple days for the official announcement.  Look for that on Wednesday.

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Carroll Leads Elite Group

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

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Entering the 2023 DTBL Draft back in March, many believed this was going to be one of the stronger rookie classes in recent memory.  Eight months later, that belief has been pretty much validated.  Three of the league’s top five finishers in Batting PAR this season were DTBL rookies.  Two of the top five in Pitching PAR as well, including a relief pitcher whose cohorts rarely sniff the top of that leaderboard.  All five of those rookies figure to be top contenders not only for this Rookie of the Year award, but Most Valuable Player and Cy Young as well.  If these players continue to perform at this level, this could go down as the best rookie class in league history.  Only one could win the league’s top rookie honor though.  As quite possibly the primary reason why the Demigods were able to win their first ever DTBL Championship, it is not a surprise that outfielder Corbin Carroll is the 2023 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

Following a short stint in the big leagues to close out the 2022 season, Carroll retained his MLB rookie eligibility and entered this season as the NL Rookie of the Year favorite, an award he would go on to win handily.  Known for his speed and modest power, Carroll exceeded almost all reasonable expectations for his first full season.  He swiped 54 bases, ranking second in the league behind Ronald Acuna.  He hit .285 with 25 home runs, 76 runs batted in and 116 runs scored.  As mentioned in the Demigods’ championship article, Acuna and Carroll became just the second and third players in DTBL history to steal 50+ bases with 25+ home runs in a single season.  The other was Hanley Ramirez in 2007 with the Mavericks in what happened to be his DTBL rookie season as well (he also won ROY that year).  While stolen bases absolutely exploded across the league this season, Carroll still stood well above most of his peers in that regard.

The Demigods managed to land a franchise altering talent with the eighth pick of the draft.  That’s not to say that many of the teams who picked ahead of them are kicking themselves for their selections, because most of the players picked ahead of Carroll had outstanding seasons in their own right.  But Carroll was the perfect fit for a Demigods squad that needed an offensive boost.  He led the team in Batting PAR and stolen bases, accounting for about a quarter of the team’s totals in both of those categories.  No chance the Demigods would have finished anywhere near second place in stolen bases without him, and he helped them considerably in the other four offensive categories as well.  Carroll was a welcomed addition to a team that has had pretty much the same high caliber infield mix for quite some time, but had been a bit short on impact outfielders.  Along with teammate Freddie Freeman, Carroll should receive serious consideration for Most Valuable Player as well.

The Rookie of the Year vote was quite interesting.  All ten ballots had the same five players on them.  There were plenty of other players who did not receive a single vote that would have been serious contenders most other years: American League Rookie of the Year winner Gunnar Henderson and his Orioles teammate Adley Rutschman, just to name two.  So while the ballots were consistent on the five players chosen, they were wildly different on which of the five received which vote.  Carroll was the convincing top choice, receiving six first place votes and three seconds for a total of 86 points.  The only other player to receive multiple first place tallies was Darkhorses pitcher Spencer Strider.  Strider led the league with 281 strikeouts, beating every other pitcher by more than 40 whiffs.  He also led the league with 20 wins, three more than the next best.  He received a pair of first place votes for this award, along with two seconds and five thirds, for a total of 62 points.  Right behind him is Mavericks shortstop Bobby Witt Jr, who actually had very similar numbers to Carroll.  Witt had five more homers (30) than Carroll and five fewer stolen bases (49).  Not sure we’ve ever simultaneously had a pair of rookies who packed so much punch with their elite stolen base totals.  Witt got one first place vote, three seconds and four thirds, finishing with 57 points.  The fourth and final player to receive a first place vote is Diamond Dogs outfielder Julio Rodriguez.  The first overall pick in the draft had a season that would have made him a lock for this award most years.  Rodriguez led all rookies with 32 home runs while stealing 37 bases as well.  He and Witt are the first rookies to join the 30/30 club since Acuna did it in 2019.  In this vote, Rodriguez was hurt by receiving just three top three votes:  one first and a pair of seconds.  That gave him a total of 43 points.  Finally, the fifth player who appeared on every ballot is Darkhorses reliever Felix Bautista.  The Mountain had one of the most dominant reliever seasons of all time, not just among rookies.  He saved 33 games while accumulated 110 strikeouts in just 61 innings, with a 1.48 ERA.  Unfortunately, he succumbed to an elbow injury in late August and will likely miss most, if not all, of the 2024 season.  Bautista only received fourth and fifth place votes, placing him fifth with 12 points.

Click here to view the full voting results.

The tentative schedule for announcing the other two awards is next Monday, November 20th for Cy Young and Wednesday the 22nd for Most Valuable Player.  Expect to see all five of these Rookie of the Year vote receivers in the mix for one of those awards as well.

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Judgement Day Finally Arrives

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

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Well, my lack of ambition when it comes to writing has struck again. We are so far removed from awards season that most of the marquee free agents have already found homes before I ever got around to finishing the DTBL awards announcements. With apologies to Aaron Judge, who had truly one of the best seasons in DTBL history and deserves a comprehensive write-up, I’m going to mail this one in to get it over with. I’m sure to the surprise of absolutely no one, Mavericks outfielder Aaron Judge is the unanimous selection for the 2022 DTBL Most Valuable Player award.

As you all know, Judge’s 62 home run season broke Roger Maris’ American League home run record. In this league, that ranks seventh all time behind Barry Bonds’ MLB record 73 in 2001, a pair of Mark McGwire seasons, and three for Sammy Sosa. Besides the obvious PED suspicions surrounding those three specific players, Judge’s season also stands out based on the leaguewide environment in which he was competing. All six of those single season home run figures ahead of Judge’s took place from 1998 through 2001, which we now know was the peak of the steroid era. This season, Judge hit 16 more home runs than any other player while also hitting .311, 131 RBIs, 133 runs scored and even 16 stolen bases. His 12.2 Batting PAR was more than double the next highest player this year and is the highest in any season I’ve calculated (2005-present). While there have been some other players who have had seasons with comparable or better raw batting stats, factoring in the current hitting environment in baseball makes this Judge season one of, if not the, best in league history.

It would have been fishy if Judge had not won this award unanimously. Sure enough, he received all nine first place votes. Trea Turner came in second, his second straight top four finish. Paul Goldschmidt came in third, followed by Jose Ramirez and Pete Alonso rounding out the top five.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Sorry again for not giving Judge the full due he deserved. We’ll see if I can get back in a writing flow next year.

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