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Someone Old, Someone New

Saturday, May 4th, 2019

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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.

Posted in Awards, Kings, Komodos | Comments Off

2018: Year of Mookie

Tuesday, November 20th, 2018

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In 2016, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Kris Bryant) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award and Kings outfielder Mookie Betts won the Most Valuable Player award.  This year, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Blake Snell) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award, and… yes, you have figured out where this is going.  History has repeated itself.  Perhaps no offensive player in league history has been more solely responsible for his team winning a championship than Betts was this season.  Mookie Betts is the 2018 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

For the first time in his young, but highly productive career, Mookie Betts joined the 30/30 club this season.  He notched career highs in both home runs (32) and stolen bases (30).  Those numbers alone put him in pretty elite company, but his league leading .346 average took things to another level.  Only one player in league history has had a higher average while joining the 30/30 club.  Larry Walker’s insane 1997 season featured a .366/49/33 line.  Oh, Betts also led the league in runs scored with 129.  Somewhat surprisingly, he was not on top of the Batting PAR leaderboard.  His 11.3 was awfully impressive, but was topped by Christian Yelich’s 11.6.  As an entire team, the championship winning Kings accumulated 22.2 Batting PAR.  So yes, Betts was responsible for more than half of that!  No other Kings hitter reached 5 PAR. Not a bad year for him: AL MVP, World Series champion, DTBL MVP and DTBL champion.

The Kings drafted Betts with the fifth pick in the 2015 draft.  Two of the players taken ahead of him:  Corey Dickerson and Jorge Soler (sorry, Mike).  So far, Betts has won the MVP in half of his DTBL seasons, taking home the honor in 2016 as well.  His numbers from this season were slightly better in most categories, except RBIs, the only category where he didn’t set a career high.  In addition to joining the 30/30 single season club, he also reached the 100/100 HR/SB club for his career this season, now sitting at 105/100 with an average of .303.  He is the only player in the league with 100 homers and stolen bases since 2015.  And only Mike Trout can top Betts’ career PAR of 34.7 since ’15.  There is no question that Betts has established himself as one of the best all around players in the game.

Despite the gaudy numbers, this award did not come easily for Betts.  As mentioned, he didn’t lead the league in PAR, so it is unsurprising that he wasn’t the clear choice for this award either.  But he did receive a majority of the first place votes:  seven to be exact.  Interestingly, one person did not have him on the ballot.  He compiled 82 points, besting the runner-up by nine.  Finishing second was the PAR leader, Darkhorses outfielder Christian Yelich.  Yelich was insanely hot over the last two months of the season, easily claiming the NL MVP award.  Like Betts, he was a strong five category player, beating Betts in home runs and RBIs, but falling a bit behind in average, runs and steals.  Yelich was the only player who appeared on all ten ballots.  But he received just one first place vote, along with nine seconds, leaving him a bit short of Betts.  While those two were the clear leaders, several others received strong consideration as well.  Betts’ Red Sox teammate and Demigods outfielder J.D. Martinez hit .330 with 46 home runs.  Martinez got a first place vote and earned 42 points to finish third.  Right behind him was Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez, who proved his breakout ’17 season was no fluke.  Ramirez actually looked like the favorite to win this award before struggling a bit down the stretch.  He also received a first place vote and compiled 40 points.  His Indians teammate rounded out the top five.  Demigods shortstop Francisco Lindor had a pretty great five category performance as well, but was overshadowed a bit by the guys mentioned above.  Lindor made a majority of the ballots (six) and totaled 14 points.  Any of these five guys could have won this award with their numbers in a different season. Although he failed to make the top five for the second straight season, I think it is worth pointing out that Mavericks outfielder Mike Trout has now received MVP votes all seven years of his DTBL career.  Even his worst seasons are elite.

Click here to view the full voting results.

And that’s a wrap on the baseball award season.  Now it is time to start jumping into my offseason work.  There will be plenty of enhancements, but I’ve learned not to make any promises on what I will actually accomplished.  So stay tuned.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Kings | 1 Comment »

Scherzer Wins Another Cy Young

Sunday, November 18th, 2018

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On a year-to-year basis, you know exactly what you are going to get from Max Scherzer:  a sub 3.00 ERA, a sub 1.00 WHIP, 15-20 wins, over 200 innings and at least 250 strikeouts.  His stat lines from each of the past six seasons have been astonishingly similar.  But 2018 may have been his best season yet.  He failed to win his third consecutive National League Cy Young award due to the historically great season that Jacob deGrom had, but from a roto perspective, Scherzer’s year was better.  This is the fifth time in the past six years that Scherzer has finished in the top five of this league’s Cy Young vote and the second time he has come out on top.  Kings starting pitcher Max Scherzer is the 2018 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

It is hard to pick out Scherzer’s best career season, but I would make the case that 2018 is the new leader.  He posted the highest PAR of his career, a league leading 14.0.  He easily set a career high in strikeouts, finishing at exactly 300.  (As an aside, I was in the park for his 300th strikeout.  It was a pretty cool moment in an otherwise extremely disappointing Nationals season.)  He is the sixth different pitcher to record a 300 strikeout season in DTBL history.  Among qualified pitchers, his 2.53 ERA ranked seventh and his 0.911 WHP was third best.  Three other pitchers were ahead of his 18 wins.  In addition to PAR and strikeouts, he also led the league in innings pitched with 220 2/3.

The Kings acquired Scherzer in a trade with the Jackalope back in 2010.  That trade continues to pay dividends for the Kings, who have now won three championships with Scherzer on the roster.  This is the second time that he has won both a DTBL Championship and the Cy Young award in the same season, repeating what he accomplished in 2016.  The Kings won the title this year mainly on the strength of three players:  Scherzer, Mookie Betts and Justin Verlander.  While Scherzer faced stiff competition for this league-wide award, you could make a decent case that he wasn’t even the best pitcher on the Kings staff as his and Verlander’s numbers were nearly identical across the board.  Scherzer won a couple more games and had ten more strikeouts, but Verlander had the slight edge in ERA and WHIP.  They combined for 27.0 Pitching PAR, which was an incredible 75% of the team’s total Pitching PAR of 36.1.  Needless to say, the Kings would not have been champions without either of these guys.

As expected, the Cy Young vote was kind of all over the place as there were a whole bunch of players who made compelling cases.  Scherzer did win by a decent margin, but was far from unanimous.  He received seven first place votes, two seconds and a third for a point total of 89.  He was the only pitcher to appear on all ten ballots.  Finishing second was Cougars lefty, and 2018 DTBL Rookie of the Year, Blake Snell.  Snell received nine votes, including two firsts and two seconds, for 53 points.  The league’s win leader had quite a rookie campaign and now adds a second place finish for the Cy Young to his resume.  Verlander finished right behind Snell.  He was the third and final player to receive a first place vote (one) and had a pair of second place votes as well.  Like Snell, he appeared on nine of ten ballots and totaled 42 points.  Coming in fourth was the most interesting case of the year, Darkhorses ace Jacob deGrom.  I think most people would agree that deGrom was the best pitcher in baseball this season, compiling a ridiculous 1.70 ERA, which was the fourth best mark in league history.  But wins do matter in fantasy baseball and he only had 10 of them.  He received a second place vote and racked up 32 points.  Those four were well ahead of the rest, but several other pitchers received strong consideration as well.  Moonshiners reliever Edwin Diaz only received three votes, but two of them were second place nods, so he finished fifth in the voting with 15 points.  Diaz appeared to be well on his way to breaking the league’s single season save record.  But his pace slowed a bit down the stretch and he finished with 57 saves, falling five short of Francisco Rodriguez’s total ten years ago.  57 did put him in the second spot on the single season saves list though.

Click here to view the full voting results.

On Tuesday, I plan to announce the third and final award:  Most Valuable Player.  Like the Cy Young, there appear to be plenty of strong contenders for MVP, so expect to see a similar scattering of votes.  Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Posted in Awards, Kings | Comments Off

Snell Snags Rookie Honor

Friday, November 16th, 2018

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2018 was a strong year for first year DTBL pitchers, particularly ones that were not near the top of most teams’ draft lists.  But one stood out among the rest.  Blake Snell overcame his modest draft stock and his status on a MLB team that was at the forefront of “bullpenning” to become a front line starting pitcher.  The Rays lefty won the American League Cy Young award earlier this week and will have a shot at winning that same award in the DTBL as well.  The Cougars managed to turn their tenth round draft pick into the top rookie in the league this season.  By unanimous decision, Blake Snell is the 2018 DTBL Rookie of the Year.

Snell’s 2018 campaign is on the short list of greatest rookie pitching campaigns in DTBL history.  He led the entire league with 21 wins, trailed only Jacob deGrom in ERA (1.89) and finished in the top five in WHIP (0.974) as well.  He also struck out 221 hitters in just 180 2/3 innings pitched.  He posted a 12.6 PAR, ranking third among all pitchers and just 1.4 points behind the league leader.  The only past rookie with very similar numbers across the board was Jake Arrieta who won both the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young in 2015.  But Arrieta was a 29 year old veteran at that time.  Snell is just 25 and figures to have a lot more peak seasons ahead of him.  Will Snell repeat Arrieta’s feat of the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young double?  Stay tuned.  He has a chance.

The Cougars absolutely stole Snell in the 10th round of this year’s draft.  97 players, including 22 starting pitchers, were selected ahead of Snell.  This is the second straight year that the Rookie of the Year award has gone to a player overlooked by almost everybody.  Aaron Judge won the award after going undrafted a year ago.  The Cougars now have two of the past three winners of this award, joining Kris Bryant who took home the honor in 2016.  Snell was easily their best pitcher this season, helping make up for disappointing and injury riddled seasons from their previous staff aces Madison Bumgarner and Chris Archer.  If Bumgarner can return to form next year, the Cougars could have a very strong top of the rotation with Bumgarner, Snell and another nice draft pick, sixth rounder Jameson Taillon.

While this was a pretty strong rookie class, particularly in the pitching ranks, Snell was the easy choice for this award.  He received all ten first place votes, the third unanimous winner of the award in the past four years.  Coming in second was a player who was actually playing for his second DTBL team, Jackalope fireballer Luis Severino.  Severino was draft by the Naturals back in 2016, but did not make an appearance on their major league roster, preserving his rookie eligibility.  He had a dominant season, striking out 220 with 19 wins, which also rank quite highly on the all-time rookie lists.  But the overall numbers weren’t quite at Snell’s level.  Severino appeared on all ten ballots, receiving six second place votes to finish with 60 points.  Just behind him was the best rookie hitter, Choppers second baseman Whit Merrifield.  Merrifield was picked right after Severino in the draft as well, fourth overall.  He posted a somewhat quiet 6.8 PAR season on the strength of a .304 average and a league leading 45 steals.  Merrifield was the third and final player to appear on all ten ballots, including four second place votes for a point total of 52.  There was a pretty big drop-off in the voting after those three.  Coming next, in a tie for fourth place were Naturals pitcher Mike Clevinger and Mavericks second baseman Ozzie Albies.  Clevinger was actually drafted even later than Snell, in the eleventh round.  He joined his Indians teammate Carlos Carrasco as the Naturals best pitchers this season.  Meanwhile, Albies turned in a nice rookie campaign, rewarding the Mavericks for selecting him with the last pick of the first round.  Clevinger and Albies each received a single third place vote on their way to compiling 12 total points.

Click here to view the full voting results.

The tentative schedule for the announcements of the other two awards are Sunday for Cy Young and next Tuesday for Most Valuable Player.  Neither of those awards figure to be as lopsided in the voting as this one was, so be sure to check out those results.  I know there were a few technical glitches in the voting this year, so I apologize for that.  Hopefully cleaning up the voting process will be one of many enhancements I make this offseason.

Posted in Awards, Cougars | Comments Off

Kings, Darkhorses Vie For Title

Thursday, September 27th, 2018

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As usual, I have gotten lazy with my DTBL News articles as the season has worn on.  I thought about skipping this one altogether, but decided it would be good to get a least some of the following out of the way before the season ends.  Scroll to the bottom of the article if you have been waiting weeks to find out who the best players of August were, as we near the end of September.  But first, a brief look at what is in store for the final weekend of the season.

The Kings have been in first place all but four days this season.  The only time they were lower than second place was the day after Opening Day.  They held a share of the lead every single day from April 18 through September 16.  And yet, with just three full days remaining on the calendar, they are hardly a sure thing to win their seventh DTBL Championship.  They dominated the league for the first three months, but faded badly in July and especially August.  It was not a huge surprise when the Darkhorses finally caught them a couple weeks ago.  But the Kings picked a good time to get hot again as their offense has had its best stretch in several months over the past week or so.  With one weekend to go, the Kings lead over the Darkhorses is four points.  That is, by no means, a safe lead.

The final week began with the Kings leading the Darkhorses by 1 1/2 points.  The Demigods were just five back and the Choppers were in striking distance as well, seven points behind.  But since then, the Kings have picked up 3 1/2 points and have increased their lead over all of the challengers.  I think it is safe to say that the Choppers and Demigods are probably out of it now, barring something miraculous.  But the Darkhorses have several paths to claiming the title.

The categories that present the best opportunities for the Darkhorses to pick up points are batting average, ERA and maybe home runs.  If Jacob deGrom were slated to pitch one more time, I might have thrown strikeouts in there too.  But realistically, 71-72 points is probably the Darkhorses’ ceiling.  In other words, they are going to need a little help as the Kings sit at 73 points.  But the Kings could very easily spit back some points they’ve gained this week.  They are very vulnerable in home runs, RBIs and ERA.  The game I will have my eye on will be Jon Gray facing a resurgent Nationals offense at Coors Field on Saturday night.  If Gray were to get lit up, a loss of an ERA point would be very possible for the Kings.  On the flip side, the Kings have some suddenly hot power hitters, like David Dahl and A.J. Pollock.  The Darkhorses will be rooting for a power outage from the Kings this weekend.

Keep in mind that our league does count stats from tie-breaker games.  There is a very good chance that at least one tie-breaker will be required to settle the National League playoff races.  So this thing may not be over on Sunday.  However, no roster moves will be processed before Monday, so the current active rosters will remain in effect until the season is officially over.  If the championship remains up for grabs on Monday, I’ll be live blogging the action.

Now it is time to play catch-up on all of the weekly and monthly awards I missed.  Since I’m so late with these, I’m not going to bother with write-ups.  But here are the weekly award winners from August and September (so far).

Batters of the Week:

Week 19 (7/30 – 8/5) – Matt Carpenter, Choppers
Week 20 (8/6 – 8/12) – J.D. Martinez, Demigods
Week 21 (8/13 – 8/19) – Justin Turner, Darkhorses
Week 22 (8/20 – 8/26) – Javier Baez, Mavericks
Week 23 (8/27 – 9/2) – Christian Yelich, Darkhorses
Week 24 (9/3 – 9/9) – Trevor Story, Cougars
Week 25 (9/10 – 9/16) – Whit Merrifield, Choppers
Week 26 (9/17 – 9/23) – Tommy Pham, Cougars

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 19 (7/30 – 8/5) – Jon Gray, Kings
Week 20 (8/6 – 8/12) – Trevor Bauer, Choppers
Week 21 (8/13 – 8/19) – Jacob deGrom, Darkhorses
Week 22 (8/20 – 8/26) – Kevin Gausman, Kings
Week 23 (8/27 – 9/2) – Corey Kluber, Demigods
Week 24 (9/3 – 9/9) – Robbie Ray, Moonshiners
Week 25 (9/10 – 9/16) – Justin Verlander, Kings
Week 26 (9/17 – 9/23) – Hyun-Jin Ryu, Choppers

And now, here are the Batter and Pitcher of the Month from August 2018.

Batter of the Month:

Matt Carpenter, Choppers
J.D. Martinez, Demigods
.373 AVG, 7 HR, 25 RBI, 24 R, 2 SB, 2.69 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Jacob deGrom, Darkhorses
1.24 ERA, 0.985 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 60 K, 3.29 PAR

FYI, Carpenter Martinez just barely edged out the Darkhorses’ Christian Yelich, who is probably a strong contender for this award again in September.  Speaking of guys who are strong contenders for September honors, deGrom’s unbelievable ’18 season was finally rewarded in August.

It should be an exciting final weekend, both in the DTBL and MLB.  May the best teams win!

TWO YEARS LATER EDIT:  When going through these articles to retroactively populate the honors table with past monthly award winners, I discovered I completely botched this one.  J.D. Martinez was the actual Player of the Month for August 2018.  My spreadsheet of monthly stats clearly states that, and I verified that the stat line above matches what Martinez produced in 8/18, not Carpenter.  I do not know how I got this wrong.

Posted in Awards, Darkhorses, Demigods, Kings | 1 Comment »

Four DTBL Legends Enshrined

Monday, August 6th, 2018

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One of the cool things about the longevity of this league is that now most of the newly inducted members in the Baseball Hall of Fame are players who accumulated most of their Hall of Fame credentials as members of DTBL teams.  This has been the case for a while, but some year’s classes carry more significance to this league than others.  The 2018 class featured four of the best players in our league’s history:  Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome.  Also inducted were Alan Trammell and Jack Morris.  Trammell played until 1996, but was never on a DTBL major league roster.  Morris had a brief, unimpressive stint with the Gators in the league’s inaugural season.  But here is a synopsis of the DTBL careers of the big four who were inducted in Cooperstown the last week of July.

Vladimir Guerrero was originally drafted by the expansion Angels in 1998 and was a member of that team for their only season of existence.  He then returned to the draft pool the following year and somehow fell all the way to the Choppers with the 8th pick of the 1999 draft.  Needless to say, that pick worked out pretty well for them.  He spent the remaining 13 seasons of his DTBL career with the Choppers, winning a championship in his first season with them (1999).  Guerrero ranks sixth in DTBL history with a .319 average and is in the top 10 in RBI as well (1,415).  His name is littered all over the Choppers franchise leaderboard:  second in average (.319), RBI (1,306) and runs (1,130), third in home runs (390) and sixth in stolen bases (165).  Not everyone recalls his base stealing prowess.  There are 16 DTBL players with 400 home runs (Adrian Beltre just recently joined this group).  Of those 16 guys, only Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield have more than Guerrero’s 176 career steals.  Vlad was as consistent of a hitter as the league has ever seen.  In his first nine seasons, he hit over .300 with 30+ homers and 100+ RBI in all but one year (2003).  In seasons in which he qualified for the batting title (400 at bats) his *worst* batting average was .300 in 2010.

In the history of baseball, only one pitcher has recorded more saves than Trevor Hoffman (Mariano Rivera).  The same is true of DTBL history.  His 560 saves is 136 more than any pitcher not named Rivera, so he figures to hold onto the second spot for quite some time to come.  Unlike the other three players covered here, Hoffman doesn’t have an obvious choice of team cap to wear on his fictional DTBL Hall of Fame plaque.  He spent time with six different franchises.  His longest tenures were five seasons with two different teams:  Panthers (1997-2001) and Moonshiners (2004-2008).  He started his career with the Kings (1995-1997), spent two stints with the Darkhorses (2002-2003, 2009) and split his final season (2010) with the Mavericks and Naturals.  He is the Moonshiners franchise leader in saves (202) and ranks third on the Panthers list (191).  Hoffman recorded at least 30 saves every year from 1995 through 2008, except for an injury marred 2003.  In addition to the gaudy save totals, he also struck out 948 batters, which ranks fourth among pitchers who spent their entire careers in the bullpen.  His 2.78 career ERA ranks fourth among all pitchers.  He was a member of two DTBL championship winning teams, near the end of his career:  the 2009 Darkhorses and 2010 Naturals.

Chipper Jones was a slugging third baseman in an era when that wasn’t really a thing.  It is basically him and Adrian Beltre at the top of all of the DTBL third baseman hitting rankings.  Most of his best seasons were spent as a member of the Jackalope.  He started his career with the Tidal Wave and was with them for both of their years of existence.  Then he joined another expansion team, the Jackalope, as their first pick in 1998.  He was released by the Jackalope after a decent 2006 season and added a couple more solid years with the Darkhorses in 2007 through 2009.  His final three seasons saw him bounce from the Cougars to the Mavericks and then back to the Darkhorses.  It was the Jackalope years that really made him a Hall of Fame player though.  With them, he hit .310 with 276 home runs, 874 RBI and 868 runs, all four totals rank in the top four of Jackalope history.  His career numbers also put him in elite company:  .308, 411 HR, 1,422 RBI, 1,414 runs.  The only other members of the .300/400/1,400/1,400 club are Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and Albert Pujols.  While Jones’ best seasons were with the Jackalope, his championship winning years came with the Darkhorses.  He was a member of the Darkhorses for the first three of their four consecutive titles (2007-2009).  He was a teammate of Hoffman’s on that 2009 squad.

Finally, we have Jim Thome, one of the most feared sluggers of the past quarter century.  Thome ranks fourth on the DTBL career list in home runs (546) and fifth in runs batted in (1,492).  No current member of the Baseball Hall of Fame has accumulated more DTBL home runs or RBI than Thome.  He is one of the few sluggers at the top of those lists without any PED taint.  He spent his entire DTBL career with just two teams.  Thome was originally a member of the Kings, but is best remembered as a member of the Choppers, who acquired him in the second round of the 1999 draft.  Yes, the Choppers selected Hall of Famers in the first two rounds of that ’99 draft.  He spent 11 seasons with the Choppers (1999-2009), which was surrounded by a pair of stints with the Kings (1995-1998, 2010).  With the Choppers, he amassed 401 home runs, bested only by Sammy Sosa.  His 1,094 RBI and 976 runs both rank fourth in Choppers history.  Thome hit at least 40 home runs in six different seasons.  Probably the best season of his career came in 2002 when he slugged a career high 52 homers with a .304 average.  From 1999 through 2003, he hit at least 30 home runs with 100+ RBI and runs each year.  His lone DTBL championship came in his first season with the Choppers, 1999, when he was a teammate of Guerrero’s.  Coincidentally, all four of these new Hall-of-Famers were members of either the 1999 Choppers or 2009 Darkhorses.

Congratulations to four of the greatest players in DTBL history:  Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome!

Now here are the weekly and monthly award winners for July 2018.

Batters of the Week:

Week 15 (7/2 – 7/8) – Yulieski Gurriel, Demigods
Week 16 (7/9 – 7/15) – Jose Ramirez, Komodos
Week 17 (7/16 – 7/22) – Matt Carpenter, Choppers
Week 18 (7/23 – 7/29) – Jonathan Schoop, Mavericks

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 15 (7/2 – 7/8) – Dallas Keuchel, Moonshiners
Week 16 (7/9 – 7/15) – Aaron Nola, Demigods
Week 17 (7/16 – 7/22) – Zack Greinke, Moonshiners
Week 18 (7/23 – 7/29) – Rick Porcello, Cougars

Compiling the information above exposed a bit of a flaw in my code that captures the Batter and Pitcher of the Week winners each week.  In two instances, the above players were not the ones I captured.  Instead, I had players who weren’t on an active DTBL roster at the time.  This has happened before, but I don’t recall seeing two instances of it in the same month.  I should probably take some time to fix this.  Anyway, because I don’t store weekly PAR numbers beyond the top batter and pitcher, I had to take a guess at who should have won these awards.  So it is quite possible that Yulieski Gurriel and Rick Porcello were not the rightful winners in their respective weeks.  What is certain is the accuracy of the monthly PAR totals for July.  Here are the players of the month.

Batter of the Month:

Jose Ramirez, Komodos
.322 AVG, 8 HR, 25 RBI, 21 R, 11 SB, 3.55 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Zack Greinke, Moonshiners
1.60 ERA, 0.891 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 35 K, 2.61 PAR

When I see eye-popping numbers in all five categories, I often will run a Baseball Reference Play Index search to see if any other players in DTBL history have matched or exceeded all of the monthly numbers compiled by the batter or pitcher of the month.  In this case, Jose Ramirez’s July, I found no results.  So, prior to July, no DTBL player had ever hit .322+ with 8+ home runs, 25+ RBI, 21+ runs and 11+ stolen bases in a single month.  These numbers were especially impressive coming in July with the All-Star break taking away a couple additional games played.  Ramirez is currently leading the DTBL in Batting PAR and home runs.  He is second in stolen bases and not far behind the leaders in RBI and runs either.  The Komodos third baseman has a strong case for MVP if he continues to be a five category force.  Ramirez won this award in a landslide, but finishing second was his Indians teammate Francisco Lindor.

Zack Grienke is quietly compiling another great season to add to his impressive career resume.  When discussing the top pitchers of the game today, Greinke is rarely mentioned.  But he is posting a sub 3.00 ERA with a dozen wins and more than a strikeout per inning.  In July, Greinke tied for the league lead with four wins while compiling a 1.60 ERA and 0.89 WHIP.  With the recently added 2005 PAR numbers, Greinke’s entire career PAR has been calculated.  Since 2005, only three other pitchers (Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer) have exceeded his 79.0 PAR.  Greinke just barely edged out Chris Sale for this monthly honor.

Posted in Awards, Choppers, Jackalope, Komodos, Moonshiners | No Comments »

Mid-Season Mash-up

Monday, July 9th, 2018

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We’ve moved into the second half of the baseball season.  There is a lot going on right now, so I’m going to breeze through several topics in this post.  Thanks to everyone for voting for this year’s All-Stars.  The managers for this year’s All-Star Game, Marc and Nick, have been tasked with breaking a few ties and selecting the final players for their respective rosters.  Soon after they do that, I will announce the 2018 DTBL All-Star rosters.  This year will mark the 25th annual DTBL All-Star Game.  As you may recall, there was no All-Star Game in the first DTBL season.  But some representation of the Mid-Summer Classic has been played every year since.

Speaking of 25th Anniversaries, we are just about a month away from the DTBL 25th Anniversary party in Chicago.  In case you didn’t pay attention to any of the email traffic from previous months, many of us will be meeting up for the Indians @ White Sox game on Saturday, August 11.  I’ve already obtained tickets for everyone who previously said they would be able to make it.  But even if that doesn’t include you, you are more than welcome to join us!  I bought a couple extra tickets and can easily obtain more, if necessary.  We are going to have a small tailgate outside the stadium, but will be heading into the park relatively early to make sure we get the Jim Thome bobbleheads that they are giving away that evening.  Please contact me if you would like more information.  Looking forward to it!

Somewhere around that 25th Anniversary gathering, probably soon after, I am going to be announcing an all-time DTBL team.  It will be my version of the 25 greatest players in league history.  Since I prefer to make mostly objective selections, I’m working on a statistical formula to determine this roster.  It will be somewhat based on PAR, but not exclusively.  However, to that end, I’m hoping to get as many seasons as possible of PAR numbers completed in the next month.  Just this past week, I added numbers for 2006.  A few takeaways from these numbers.  First, Johan Santana was very much deserving of the Cy Young award he won unanimously that season.  The Mavericks’ lefty accumulated a 14.27 PAR, which was nearly five points higher than the next closest pitcher.  It marks as the highest pre-2010 single season Pitching PAR I’ve calculated so far.  Among hitters, there was far less separation at the top of the 2006 PAR leaderboard.  Albert Pujols was first at 9.16, but Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano and Ryan Howard were all within a point.  Howard edged out Pujols in the MVP vote that year, perhaps because of his gaudy 58 home runs, which had been the league’s single season record among non-PED suspected players until Giancarlo Stanton hit 59 homers last year.  Reyes’ 19 home runs in ’06 is the most for any DTBL player with at least 60 steals as well.

I am going to try go get PAR numbers completed back to 2003 in the next month.  The reason why 2003 will be my stopping point is because I don’t have complete transaction records readily accessible prior to that, which are necessary for me to calculate the number of weeks each player was on a major league roster.  This is the big pain point in completing these PAR calculations.

On to the weekly and monthly award winners for June 2018.

Batters of the Week:

Week 11 (6/4 – 6/10) – Paul Goldschmidt, Jackalope
Week 12 (6/11 – 6/17) – Evan Gattis, Kings
Week 13 (6/18 – 6/24) – Nolan Arenado, Naturals
Week 14 (6/25 – 7/1) – Alex Bregman, Darkhorses

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 11 (6/4 – 6/10) – Corey Kluber, Demigods
Week 12 (6/11 – 6/17) – Luis Severino, Jackalope
Week 13 (6/18 – 6/24) – Trevor Bauer, Choppers
Week 14 (6/25 – 7/1) – Blake Snell, Cougars

Semi-spoiler alert:  you are going to see almost all of the names above when the DTBL All-Star rosters are announced this week.  These guys not only had great weeks at some point in June, but are putting up All-Star caliber numbers through the first half of the season.  We had a little more team diversity for these honors in June as only the Jackalope had multiple players earn weekly honors.

Batter of the Month:

Alex Bregman, Darkhorses
.306 AVG, 11 HR, 30 RBI, 24 R, 1 SB, 3.00 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Chris Sale, Choppers
1.76 ERA, 0.756 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 60 K, 3.43 PAR

Half way through his second DTBL season, Bregman has already almost matched his rookie season numbers.  In fact, he has already set a career high in home runs with 17.  11 of those came in his scorching month of June.  He tied for the league lead in both home runs and RBI in June.  The Darkhorses third baseman appears primed to receive his first DTBL All-Star invitation.  Bregman narrowly won this award over Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt who had very similar numbers across the board.  Komodos outfielders Nelson Cruz and Eddie Rosario were in the conversation as well.

Sale will almost certainly receive his seventh straight All-Star nod this week.  If so, he will have been a DTBL All-Star in every season since becoming a full time starting pitcher for the White Sox in 2012.  He was at the peak of his powers in June, striking out 60 batters in just 41 innings.  He is one of four pitchers who have already accumulated over 8 PAR this season, barely beyond the half-way point in the season.  Sale was a comfortable winner of this award, but amazingly, the top three contenders were all Choppers, the other two being Trevor Bauer and Jon Lester.  Jackalope Luis Severino wasn’t too far back either.

Posted in Awards, Choppers, Darkhorses | No Comments »

Pair of Kings

Sunday, June 17th, 2018

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June is more than half over, so I suppose I should probably get around to announcing the DTBL May award winners.  Sorry for the ridiculous tardiness of this article.  There are a couple of reasons for the delay though.  First, I forgot to run my script to capture the monthly stats on the first of the month, so I had to come up with a slightly different way of computing the numbers for May.  But that didn’t take too long to do.  The main reason for the delay is because I’ve spent most of the past couple weeks watching and celebrating the Washington Capitals Stanley Cup championship.  As you may know, we don’t get an opportunity to celebrate sports championships very often here in the nation’s capital.  The Caps victory came at the expense of the Vegas Golden Knights, so I became accustomed to reading article headlines that were plays on gambling terms.  So, why not one more here?

Not a whole lot has changed since last month’s article.  The Kings are sill in control at the top of the standings.  However, things started to look a little dicey for them a few weeks ago when a whole bunch of their outfielders got hurt at the same time.  They seem to have weathered that storm though, as they still hold a comfortable lead.  The Darkhorses and Demigods have been putting together solid seasons as well and currently sit in second and third places.  Meanwhile, the Mavericks have been absolutely decimated by pitching injuries, turning what has been their strength for many years into a considerable weakness.  They currently have the fewest pitching points in the league.

The Kings have been chugging along thanks to spectacular numbers from some of their biggest stars.  In April, Kings ace Max Scherzer won Pitcher of the Month honors and still leads the league in pitching PAR well into the season’s third month.  But it is a teammate of his who was the league’s best pitcher in May.  And another teammate topped the May batting PAR leaderboard.  But before we get to that, here were the weekly award winners in May.

Batters of the Week:

Week 6 (4/30 – 5/6) – Eddie Rosario, Komodos
Week 7 (5/7 – 5/13) – Scooter Gennett, Demigods
Week 8 (5/14 – 5/20) – Brandon Belt, Mavericks
Week 9 (5/21 – 5/27) – Jose Altuve, Demigods
Week 10 (5/28 – 6/3) – Edwin Encarnacion, Darkhorses

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 6 (4/30 – 5/6) – Gerrit Cole, Jackalope
Week 7 (5/7 – 5/13) – Dallas Keuchel, Moonshiners
Week 8 (5/14 – 5/20) – Lance McCullers, Kings
Week 9 (5/21 – 5/27) – J.A. Happ, Komodos
Week 10 (5/28 – 6/3) – Michael Wacha, Kings

Well, that list of pitchers is pretty interesting for a couple reasons.  First, if you couldn’t tell, May was a pretty good month for Astros pitchers.  Three of them won weekly honors (Cole, Keuchel, McCullers), yet their pitcher who had the best month is not one of those three!  Secondly, if you couldn’t tell, May was a pretty good month for Kings pitchers.  Two of them won weekly honors (McCullers, Wacha), yet their pitcher who had the best month is not one of those two!  Yes, I’m talking about the same pitcher in both cases.  Here are the DTBL monthly award winners for May 2018.

Batter of the Month:

Mookie Betts, Kings
.372 AVG, 9 HR, 19 RBI, 23 R, 10 SB, 3.65 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Justin Verlander, Kings
0.86 ERA, 0.696 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 50 K, 3.67 PAR

Using Baseball-Reference’s Play Index, I was only able to find two other monthly stat totals in DTBL history that were comparable to Betts’ five category stat line:  Mike Trout in July of 2012 and Ryan Klesko in May of 2001.  Had I tightened my search criteria to Betts’ exact stat line, he would have been the only result.  So Mookie had one of the best five category months in league history.  Unfortunately for him, he suffered an injury to his side at the beginning of June which shelved him for a bit, but he is back at it now and trails only Mike Trout in batting PAR for the season.  It is still relatively early, but right now, it looks like a two person race between those two for MVP honors.  A pair of Indians were Betts’ closest competition for this monthly award, however.  Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez and Demigods shortstop Francisco Lindor also had great months of May.

Verlander saw a bunch of Astros and Kings teammates win weekly honors in May, but he was clearly the league’s best pitcher in the month.  The modest win total (3) was all that kept him from blowing away everyone else for this award.  The Naturals’ James Paxton and the Kings’ Max Scherzer were in striking distance.  Scherzer and Verlander sit first and second in the league in pitching PAR, which goes a long way towards explaining why the Kings are crushing the rest of the league in pitching points.  They currently have at least a share of the lead in all five pitching categories.

Posted in Awards, Kings | No Comments »

Contact Problems

Saturday, May 5th, 2018

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The first month of the 2018 baseball season is in the books. Early indications are that the recent surge of the three true outcomes (home runs, walks, strikeouts) is far from over. Perhaps most troubling is that MLB saw more strikeouts than hits in the first month of the season. That had never previously happened over a full month in the history of baseball. In our league, I don’t keep track of hitters’ strikeouts, so I am not certain if that was the case for DTBL hitters. But it definitely was for pitchers. Through Friday’s games, DTBL pitchers have recorded 2,663 strikeouts compared to 2,059 hits allowed. To be clear, DTBL pitchers recording more strikeouts than hits allowed isn’t new. It has happened over each of the past six full seasons. But the current K/H ratio of 1.29 would blow away last year’s record high of 1.14. Because home run rates are still historically high, overall scoring in baseball is only slightly down from the last couple years and still higher than it was a few years back. But the current DTBL league batting average of .259 is eight points lower than the league’s record full-season low of .267 (2015). Average tends to rise as the weather warms up though, so I’m not going to read into that too much. The big takeaway from the first month numbers is clearly the rise in strikeouts and drop in hits. Fewer balls in play tends to make for a less interesting game. So let’s hope this trend doesn’t continue much longer.

In the DTBL, March/April was dominated by the Kings, who are looking to bounce back from an awful 2017 season.  They finished April with a double digit lead.  They held onto first place most of the month.  The Darkhorses and Mavericks are in pretty good shape as well.  Interestingly, it is the Mavericks’ usually reliable pitching staff that has kept them from leading the league in the early stages of the season.

As for the players, the leaderboards are topped by a lot of familiar names with a bunch of impressive rookies mixed in as well.  Below are the Players of the Week and Players of the Month for March/April.  Please note that the games from March were included in determining the April Player of the Month awards.  Also, there is going to be one extra set of weekly award winners as I did separate that season opening weekend (Thursday through Sunday) into its own week.

Batters of the Week:

Week 1 (3/29 – 4/1) – Adam Eaton, Kings
Week 2 (4/2 – 4/8) – Didi Gregorius, Jackalope
Week 3 (4/9 – 4/15) – Paul Goldschmidt, Jackalope
Week 4 (4/16 – 4/22) – Manny Machado, Mavericks
Week 5 (4/23 – 4/29) – Gary Sanchez, Jackalope

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 1 (3/29 – 4/1) – Jose Berrios, Darkhorses
Week 2 (4/2 – 4/8) – Jameson Taillon, Cougars
Week 3 (4/9 – 4/15) – Max Scherzer, Kings
Week 4 (4/16 – 4/22) – Patrick Corbin, Darkhorses
Week 5 (4/23 – 4/29) – Masahiro Tanaka, Choppers

It was a good month for Jackalope hitters as three of them won weekly honors.  It was an up-and-down month for several of the players listed above, particularly the pitchers.  But at least two of them were strong throughout the month and are recipients of the Player of the Month awards.  As a reminder, these are not subjective choices on my part.  These are the players who accumulated the highest batting and pitching PAR for the month.  Again, “month” isn’t entirely accurate in this case as the last few days of March were included as well.  Here are the award winners for April 2018.

Batter of the Month:

Didi Gregorius, Jackalope
.327 AVG, 10 HR, 30 RBI, 24 R, 2 SB, 2.55 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Max Scherzer, Kings
1.62 ERA, 0.821 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 57 K, 3.69 PAR

Didi Gregorius had the unenviable task of replacing a legend at shortstop for the Yankees.  But since taking over for Derek Jeter in 2016, he has been nothing short of spectacular.  This year, it seems he may be reaching a new level though.  He finished April with 10 home runs.  His career high is 25, which he recorded last season.  The Jackalope nabbed Gregorius in the fourth round last year and have been rewarded handsomely ever since.  Gregorius edged out A.J. Pollock for this award.  Five of the top nine finishers were Mavericks, led by first round pick Ozzie Albies.

Pitcher of the Month awards are nothing new for Max Scherzer.  This is the third time he has won it since I officially started tracking this in 2016:  (June ’16, May ’17).  At this point, I think it is safe to say that Scherzer is the most consistently dominant pitcher in baseball.  The two time reigning NL Cy Young award winner is the early leader for that award again this season.  His closest competition for this monthly award was his Kings teammate, Justin Verlander.  Corey Kluber and Gerrit Cole had tremendous opening months as well.

Posted in Awards, Jackalope, Kings | No Comments »

Stanton Slugs Way to MVP

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017

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2017 will be remembered as the year of the non-steroid enhanced home run.  A record number of homers were hit in MLB this season and the most in the DTBL since 2000.  29 DTBL players hit at least 30 round-trippers and 70 players hit at least 20.  Despite this proliferation of homers, one player managed to separate himself from the pack.  Jackalope outfielder Giancarlo Stanton slugged 59 homers, 10 more than any other player.  That is the largest gap between the top two home run hitters in DTBL history (tying Albert Belle in 1995).  In a crowded field of strong candidates, Stanton has come out on top as the 2017 DTBL Most Valuable Player.

Yesterday, I adjusted the 2017 PAR numbers to be based on a five year set of stats including the recently completed season.  In doing so, most hitters saw their PAR take a slight drop, particularly power hitters.  Stanton was no exception.  His PAR dropped from 12.1 to 11.7, which cost him the top spot on the PAR leaderboard since 2009.  Mookie Betts’ 2016 total of 11.72 edged Stanton by one tenth of a point.  Stanton did lead the league in that category in 2017 though, in addition to soaring past the field in home runs and also leading the way in RBI (132).  His 123 runs trailed only Charlie Blackmon.  Even his .281 batting average was quite impressive for such a prodigious slugger.  While Stanton has been a force ever since he made it to the majors, this was easily his best season yet.

The Jackalope drafted Stanton with the sixth overall pick of the 2011 draft.  He has been their most consistent power hitter ever since.  In his seven DTBL seasons, he has hit at least 20 home runs in each one.  Only injuries have been able to slow him down on occasion.  2017 was clearly his best season to date, but 2014 was pretty darn good as well when he finished second in the MVP race.  This year marked his fourth All-Star appearance.  He was a major contributor to both of the Jackalope’s championships (2011 and 2015).    This was a disappointing season for the Jackalope, but that was mostly because of the pitching staff.  Stanton helped them easily lead the league in home runs with 364, the highest team total since 2003.  Stanton and Jackalope teammate Paul Goldschmidt formed the most fearsome duo in the league this season.

Stanton clearly had a MVP caliber season, but he was not alone.  He received half of the first place votes and appeared on all ten ballots, but in scattered positions.  In total, he accumulated 77 points, winning this award by 19 over Cougars outfielder Charlie Blackmon.  Blackmon was no doubt a benefactor of the Coors effect, but his numbers across the board were legitimately spectacular, leading the league in runs (137) while hitting .331 with 37 homers, 104 RBI and 14 stolen bases.  He received a pair of first place votes and was the only player besides Stanton to make it on every ballot.  Finishing third was the DTBL Rookie of the Year, Mavericks outfielder Aaron Judge.  Stanton was the only DTBL player to hit more home runs than Judge this year.  Judge received one first place vote and 46 total points.  Interestingly enough, that allowed him to edge out American League MVP Jose Altuve by a single point.  With a AL MVP and World Series championship under his belt, Altuve is now receiving proper recognition as one of the best players in the sport.  This is the third time in four years that he has finished in the top four of the MVP race.  He won the league batting title, hitting .346 with 24 home runs and 32 stolen bases.  The Demigods second baseman received a pair of first place votes, but was edged out by Judge because he received just one second place tally.  The top four finishers all received first place votes and made strong arguments to win this award.  But so did the guy who finished fifth, Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.  Goldschmidt accumulated 18 points.  It is definitely worth checking out the voting results.  There was a clear lack of consensus on where each player should finish.

Click here to view the full voting results.

As mentioned above, yesterday, I completed the end-of-season PAR adjustments for the 2017 figures.  I’m also in the process of adding PAR numbers for the 2008 season, which means we will have ten full seasons worth of data for that stat very soon.  I have a lot planned for this winter, including a revamp of the transaction processing portions of the web site.  So if you have any suggestions on improvements, please let me know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Awards, Jackalope | No Comments »

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