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Predictably Unpredictable

Tuesday, March 16th, 2021

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There is no blueprint for how to approach a fantasy baseball draft following a 60 game, pandemic affected season.  How much weight do you put in players’ performances in such a short sample size?  Is it safe to ignore the poor numbers of a veteran player with a long track record of success?  How do you judge a rookie who made his MLB debut after not being able to play in real minor league games for almost a full year?  Can the breakout stars of 2020 be trusted to repeat their performances over the long haul of a full season?  And finally, how do you judge the players who actually contracted and recovered from COVID-19?  Nobody knows the right answers to any of these questions.  And based on the results of the first round of the 2021 DTBL Draft, it would seem there were many different answers among the league’s members.

Going into this draft, I had absolutely no idea what to expect.  Unlike most years, there were hardly any sure-fire first round selections.  Partly because I was the owner of the second pick, I didn’t even bother trying to compile a top ten list like I normally do.  But if I had, I think I can safely say I would have been wrong on close to half of the names.  And outside of the first two picks, I’m not sure I would have correctly pegged any other players with the teams that selected them.  Besides the general unpredictability, the other abnormal theme of the first round was the number of non-DTBL rookies selected.  Four players were chosen who have previous experience on DTBL rosters.  I have complete draft records dating back to 2005.  In the previous 16 years, no more than three non-rookies were selected in any year.  While unusual, this was not terribly surprising since there just wasn’t a lot of time for newcomers to make their mark during the 2020 MLB season.

The one pick in this draft that was definitely not surprising was the first one.  The Komodos selected White Sox young star outfielder Luis Robert.  The five tool phenom hit the ground running with an incredible first month of his big league career, during which he wasn’t only one of the best rookies in the game, but one of the top players as well.  But even Robert comes with some question marks as he really struggled down the stretch, seeing his batting average fall to .233.  He was still just one steal away from a double/double HR/SB season, which would have been more like 25/25 stretched out to a full campaign.  With his power and speed, Robert is a legitimate 40/40 candidate down the road.  HR and SB were already two of the Komodos better categories, so he could help boost them among the top teams in the league in those areas.

The second pick is another player with well above average power and decent speed as well.  The Kings boosted their extremely disappointing offense from a year ago with the selection of outfielder Randy Arozarena.  Arozerana became a breakout star in October, almost singlehandedly leading the Rays offense on the way to the World Series.  While he did seemingly come out of nowhere, he actually started mashing soon after being activated from the COVID-19 list in late August.  He slugged seven homers in September before adding  an incredible 10 more in the Postseason.  Even though he made his MLB debut in 2019, Arozarena actually remains MLB rookie eligible this year since he missed so much time in 2020 recovering from the virus.  For the Kings sake, hopefully he kept up his now famous pushup regimen this offseason.  If so, he could help the Kings rebound from a shockingly disappointing 2020.

With the third pick in the draft, we had a quick throwback to last year’s draft that featured four sons of former DTBL players selected in the first 15 picks.  The Choppers selected third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, 28 years after his father Brian, also a third baseman, played for the Choppers in the inaugural season of the DTBL of 1993.  The elder Hayes played four seasons in this league.  Ke’Bryan figures to stick around much longer.  Known mostly for his slick fielding as a prospect, Hayes burst onto the scene with a .376 average and five home runs in 85 big league at bats.  He has an advanced bat and runs well too, so there is serious five category potential here.  This marks the fourth straight year that the Choppers have selected an infielder with their first pick.  Hayes will join last year’s pick of Pete Alonso to form a strong corner duo for years to come.

So after three picks, this first round didn’t look too dissimilar from previous years.  But things started to change at four.  The Demigods selected veteran outfielder J.D. Martinez, who they had just cut from their roster last month.  I suppose this could be chalked up as a case of seller’s remorse.  Martinez struggled badly a year ago, but this came on the heels of three straight seasons of hitting at least .300 with 35+ home runs and 100+ RBI.  While he’s no youngster at 33, it seems likely that his ’20 campaign was an outlier and a product of a weird season.  Had the Demigods not picked him, some other team surely would have done so relatively early.  The surprise here is that it was the team that just cut him that made the pick.  If you ignore that fact though, Martinez makes all the sense in the world for a Demigods squad that has more than enough talent to contend and could really use his proven bat in the lineup.

The Cougars followed by selecting another non-DTBL rookie.  But this one was more of a technicality as starting pitcher Corbin Burnes is at a completely different place now than he was when the Choppers took a late flier on him as a relief pitcher in 2019.  Burnes fell out of the league last year, but now returns as a starter with huge upside.  He started nine of the 12 games he appeared in last season and put up some impressive numbers.  He had a 2.11 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 88 strikeouts in 60 innings.  This is the second straight year the Cougars have used the fifth overall pick on a starting pitcher who had fallen off the league roster the previous year.  Worked out pretty well with Lucas Giolito.  Those two should help the Cougars improve upon a rotation which somewhat held them back from being contenders a year ago.

Jo Adell entered 2020 as one of the top prospects in baseball, but probably not quite ready for the majors.  The lack of a minor league season probably prevented him from that last bit of development time he could have used before making his debut.  Instead, he was thrown into the fire with the Angels for a bulk of the season.  It did not go well.  He hit just .161 and struck out in over 40% of his plate appearances.  He is flying under the radar this spring, in large part because he lost rookie eligibility and is thus not being discussed in prospect rankings.  But he is still very much a coveted prospect with great power and speed tools.  If he can improve the hit tool, he has a chance to be a star.  He will likely start this season in the minors though.  But that did not prevent the Mavericks from selecting him with the sixth pick.  This is a luxury the Mavericks could afford with their absolutely loaded roster, particularly in the outfield.  They don’t really need anything from Adell to be a contender this season.  But the enormous upside was too much to pass up.

The next pick was another player with an uncertain role this season.  The Beanballers selected Dodgers pitcher Dustin May with the sixth pick.  May is also not a DTBL rookie.  He was picked in the sixth round by the Mavericks last year.  But not having a firm grasp on a rotation spot heading into the season made him expendable.  The Beanballers were willing to gamble on the talent.  Even if he isn’t able to crack the Dodgers rotation to start the season, it would be surprising if he didn’t get plenty of opportunities sooner than later.  May did start 10 games a year ago and had an excellent 2.57 ERA and 1.09 WHIP.  If he can improve on his strikeout rate, he has top of the rotation potential.  The Beanballers could definitely use a big season from him this year as they bide their time before Noah Syndergaard returns from Tommy John surgery.

With the eighth pick, the Moonshiners went a more traditional route, taking a rookie who made a strong impression in his debut.  Orioles outfielder Ryan Mountcastle put up numbers very similar to Hayes.  He hit .333 with five home runs in 140 plate appearances.  Mountcastle was a consistently strong hitter in the Orioles farm system for five full years before he finally got his opportunity in the big leagues last season.  He was the fifth outfielder selected in the first round.  Mountcastle should help shore up a Moonshiners offense that was below average a year ago and an outfield that should be much improved with Kyle Tucker quietly becoming a fantasy star and Shohei Ohtani returning to the offensive side of things this year.

Next, the Jackalope selected shortstop Dansby Swanson, who has had a very interesting four year DTBL career.  This is the fourth time he has been drafted, by four different teams.  He has never spent consecutive seasons on the same roster.  Originally a second round pick of the Naturals in 2017, this was his first time as a first rounder.  Swanson is coming off a career year in which he hit 10 homers with 35 RBI in a shortened season.  He was a solid contributor to the championship winning Darkhorses, but was squeezed out with their deep roster.  The Jackalope were happy to add him to their infield, which was mildly disappointing a year ago.  Their offense will feature six of their former first round picks this season.  Even a minor improvement to that offense should put them in strong contention for a title.

Finally, the defending champion Darkhorses closed out the first round by selecting another young slugger who made the most of the shortened season, but also enters 2021 with a somewhat unsettled role.  First baseman Dominic Smith was the final pick of the first round.  Smith made his MLB debut in 2017, but is still just 25 years old.  Last season, he hit .316 with 10 home runs and 42 RBI.  With Pete Alonso firmly entrenched at first base for the Mets and the designated hitter not being in play in the NL this year, Smith figures to see a bulk of his time in the outfield.  If he gets semi regular playing time, he could be a monster offensive force for a team that is already the best team in the league with the bats.  Immediately following the selection of Smith, eight of the Darkhorses ten hitters were players who hit double digit home runs a year ago.  And that doesn’t even include Alex Bregman, who is only a year removed from hitting 40.  This is a truly scary offense.

Half of the first round picks were outfielders and another could move there a year from now.  Meanwhile, only two pitchers were selected in the first ten picks.  This was despite much more league roster shuffling among hurlers than hitters.  It will be interesting to see which strategies pay off following a very unusual 2020.

Posted in Beanballers, Choppers, Cougars, Darkhorses, Demigods, Draft, Jackalope, Kings, Komodos, Mavericks, Moonshiners | No Comments »

Bieber Bests Choppers Teammate

Friday, November 20th, 2020

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When it came to elite pitchers, the Choppers had the market cornered in 2020.  This was an unexpected development, particularly after they lost their long time ace Chris Sale to Tommy John surgery back in the spring.  However, Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer more than picked up the slack.  They were the two most dominant pitchers in the league this season, which earned them the American League and National League Cy Young awards, which were announced last week.  While both pitchers had remarkable seasons, Bieber was the clear standout pitcher of 2020.  And because of that, he is the 2020 DTBL Cy Young award winner.

This race was basically a runaway right from the start.  Bieber put the league on notice with a scoreless, 14 strikeout performance on Opening Day.  In his second start, the strikeout total fell all they way to 13, but he pitched another eight scoreless innings.  He pitched a dozen times this season, never striking out fewer than eight hitters and without ever allowing more than three runs.  There was not one single dud in his entire season.  The end result was an absurd 1.63 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, eight wins and 122 strikeouts.  He led all qualified pitchers in ERA, wins and strikeouts.  The ERA is the third lowest single season total among qualified pitchers in league history.  Of course, that requires several caveats due to the shortened season, but it is noteworthy nonetheless.  His 7.7 PAR was nearly a point and a half higher than Bauer, the next closest pitcher.  That put him on pace to top Justin Verlander’s record 17.5 PAR last year over the course of a full season.  But again, caveats apply.  No matter how you slice it, Bieber was clearly the best pitcher in baseball in 2020.

This ends a lengthy streak of well established stars winning this award.  Bieber is just 25 years old and figures to be at the very beginning of his prime.  The Choppers selected him in the third round of the 2019 Draft.  His rookie season was quite impressive.  He led the Choppers in most pitching categories last year too.  He won 15 games with a 3.28 ERA and 259 strikeouts.  That earned him third place in a loaded Rookie of the Year race.  Bieber also finished in sixth place for the Cy Young a year ago.  This year, he took his game to a new level, and in doing so, helped the Choppers improve their pitching output by a dozen points.  Bieber didn’t do it alone though.  Trevor Bauer finished second in the league in PAR and Brandon Woodruff had an impressive rookie campaign as well.  If Sale is able to come back healthy next year, the Choppers will have an envious rotation anchoring their squad.  My records only contain complete award data since 2005, so I’m not 100% certain about this, but I believe Bieber is the first Choppers pitcher to win the Cy Young award in at least 20 years.  Greg Maddux and Mike Mussina are the only other Choppers who may have won this award previously (I’m almost certain Maddux did at least once).  The Bieber/Bauer duo does bring back memories of the Choppers dominant staffs of the ’90s that featured Maddux and Mussina.  Perhaps they can help lead the team to their first championship since that era sometime soon.

Believe it or not, Bieber wasn’t a unanimous selection for this award.  He received top billing on nine of the ten ballots, but was placed second on the other.  Still, that’s a pretty impressive 97 total points, well clear of his Choppers teammate.  Bauer was overshadowed by Bieber, but he had fairly similar numbers across the board.  His WHIP was a league best 0.80 and he recorded exactly 100 strikeouts, one of only three pitchers to do so this year.  Bauer was a pretty clear second choice, finishing with seven second place votes and 64 total points.  There was actually a third pitcher who had ridiculous numbers that would have put him in line to win this award in a normal season, and that is Moonshiners veteran Yu Darvish.  Darvish was just slightly behind Bieber and Bauer in every category.  It was his best season since his DTBL Rookie of the Year campaign in 2013.  After falling on some tough times, he is now fully healthy and among the game’s best pitchers again.  Darvish had one second place vote and seven thirds to finish with 45 points.  His Japanese countrymate Kenta Maeda finished fourth.  Maeda had his best DTBL season, highlighted by his 2.70 ERA and a miniscule 0.75 WHIP.  He was probably the most surprising name among the Cy Young contenders this year after spending several years flipping between the rotation and bullpen for the Dodgers.  He proved himself to be an elite starter for the Twins.  Maeda received 20 total points.  Finishing fifth was the consensus favorite for this award heading into the season, Jackalope ace Gerrit Cole.  Cole’s first season in the Bronx was a little bumpy.  But when it was all said and done, he still had a pretty impressive campaign.  It is hard to feel disappointed with a 2.84 ERA and sub 1.0 WHIP.  But the bar has been set awfully high for Cole after signing that massive deal with the Yankees last winter.  Cole received a second place vote and 17 total points.  Normally I stop the rundown after the top five, but I feel like I have to mention the guy who finished sixth since he was the only person to receive a first place vote besides Bieber.  Mavericks star lefty Clayton Kershaw had a nice bounce-back season in 2020, and apparently it impressed someone enough to give him a first place tally.  It was the only vote he received, however.

Click here to view the full voting results.

Fernando Tatis and Shane Bieber were unsurprising recipients of the year’s first two awards.  The final award, Most Valuable Player, figures to be a much more competitive vote.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to guarantee it.  I have tentatively planned on announcing that winner next Monday, November 23.

Posted in Awards, Choppers | No Comments »

One Month Down, One to Go

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020

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If it feels like the 2020 baseball season just started, well, that’s basically true.  However, we’re also more than half way through the abbreviated 60 game slate.  I think we all entered this season ready to expect the unexpected, and that is pretty much what we have gotten.  Critical injuries, particularly to pitchers, have decimated rosters.  Multiple MLB teams have had week’s worth of games wiped out due to positive COVID-19 tests.  Seven inning doubleheaders and wacky extra inning rules have become a common occurrence.  The season has also had its good moments though, like the breakout of a new wave of stars, including the ones who will be covered below.

One thing I was expecting from this shortened season was chaos at the top of the standings.  But that really hasn’t proven to be the case… at least not yet.  The Darkhorses have been in first or second place every day of the season since the opening weekend and have held the top spot for almost two straight weeks now.  So, as has become an annual tradition, the Darkhorses are right in the thick of the race as we head into September.  But that’s about the only thing this season has in common with recent years.  No longer are the Kings their chief competition.  In fact, the Kings are one of probably three teams that have little to no shot at winning the title this year.  Their house of cards tumbled quickly when Justin Verlander was lost to an arm injury in the first week of the season.  The wildly underachieving Jackalope offense and Komodos pitching staff have left them as the other two teams with little hope for a championship season.  But everybody else should feel like they still have a shot.  The Cougars, Moonshiners and Demigods are having breakout years.  The Mavericks have overcome some tough pitching losses to remain in the thick of things.  The Beanballers have bounced back from a very slow start to get back into the conversation.  And the Choppers have amazingly had the best pitching staff in the league despite losing Chris Sale for the season this past spring.  The Darkhorses would seem to be the favorites, not only because of their current lead, but also because they are pretty healthy at the moment.  Of course, that could change in a hurry.

This will probably be the one and only Players of the Month article this season since I don’t usually bother with such things after September.  Usually following the first month of the season in April, the awards are based on stats accumulated in March in addition to April.  But this time, I elected not to include the July stats since there was over a week’s worth of games played in that month, compared to typically just a few days in March.  That said, the winners would have been the same even if I had included the July stats.  But the statlines below are August only.  As usual, these are completely based on highest PAR for the week and month.

Here are the award winners for July and August of 2020.

Batters of the Week:

Week 1 (7/23 – 7/26) – Nelson Cruz, Komodos
Week 2 (7/27 – 8/2) – Aaron Judge, Mavericks
Week 3 (8/3 – 8/9) – Fernando Tatis, Demigods
Week 4 (8/10 – 8/16) – Juan Soto, Mavericks
Week 5 (8/17 – 8/23) – Jose Abreu, Cougars
Week 6 (8/24 – 8/30) – Manny Machado, Mavericks

Pitchers of the Week:

Week 1 (7/23 – 7/26) – Shane Bieber, Choppers
Week 2 (7/27 – 8/2) – Shane Bieber, Choppers
Week 3 (8/3 – 8/9) – Frankie Montas, Kings
Week 4 (8/10 – 8/16) – Aaron Nola, Demigods
Week 5 (8/17 – 8/23) – Yu Darvish, Moonshiners
Week 6 (8/24 – 8/30) – Lucas Giolito, Cougars

Half of the Batter of the Week honors so far this season have gone to Mavericks hitters, and three different ones at that, displaying the depth of that roster.  While the game may be shifting younger and younger, particularly among position players, a few veterans are still going strong including 40 year old Nelson Cruz and 33 year old Jose Abreu, who is having his best season since his rookie campaign so far.  Due to the way pitching starts are scattered, it is extremely difficult for someone to win Pitcher of the Week two weeks in a row, but that’s exactly what Shane Bieber did to start the season.  Two of the three pitchers selected in the first round of the draft in March (Lucas Giolito and Frankie Montas) won weekly honors.  Giolito did so on the strength of the season’s first no-hitter.  Two players have really stood head and shoulders above their peers so far this season.  And they happen to be the Batter and Pitcher of the Month for August.

Batter of the Month:

Fernando Tatis, Demigods
.313 AVG, 11 HR, 24 RBI, 31 R, 4 SB, 3.10 PAR

Pitcher of the Month:

Shane Bieber, Choppers
1.63 ERA, 0.905 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 57 K, 3.80 PAR

Fernando Tatis Jr. has almost single-handedly turned the Demigods from a historically weak team a year ago, the worst in franchise history, to a championship contender this season.  The first overall pick in the draft has lived up to the hype and then some.  He currently leads the league in PAR (by more than a full point), home runs, runs batted in and runs scored.  He is also hitting over .300 and has seven steals.  Ronald Acuna’s rookie season last year was among the best this league has ever seen, but Tatis is one-upping him this year, albeit he won’t come close to Acuna’s counting stat numbers due to the abbreviated season.  At the moment, Tatis would almost certainly win not only Rookie of the Year, but Most Valuable Player as well.  The Demigods do have some ground to make up as they remain slightly below average in batting points, but Tatis could certainly continue to push them up the standings.  Tatis won this award going away, but Mookie Betts and Jose Abreu were the closest competition.

What is amazing about those Shane Bieber August numbers above is that they don’t even include his first two starts of the season, which earned him weekly honors.  As mentioned above, the Choppers lead the league in pitching points despite not having the services of Chris Sale.  Bieber is the reason why.  He already has a two point lead in Pitching PAR with a ridiculous 1.20 ERA and a league leading 84 strikeouts in just 52 2/3 innings pitched.  Bieber is following up an impressive rookie season with an even better sophomore campaign.  The Choppers do have a tall hill to climb to get into the title chase due to a scuffling offense.  If they can improve upon that though, Bieber and the pitching staff are primed to keep them in the hunt.  Because two of Bieber’s best starts came in July, this particular award wasn’t a runaway.  Pitchers from opposite sides of Chicago, Moonshiners’ Yu Darvish and Cougars’ Lucas Giolito, came in second and third.

Posted in Awards, Choppers, Demigods | No Comments »

2020 Season Preview: Part I

Monday, July 20th, 2020

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We are now just days away from the start of the 2020 baseball season.  It has been nearly four long months since the season was originally scheduled to start and a whole lot has changed since.  From a DTBL perspective, we are about to start the most unpredictable season in league history.  For the first time since 1995, the league’s third season, the MLB regular season won’t be a full 162 games.  The ’94-’95 labor stoppage brought the ’94 season to a halt just past the 110 game mark for most teams and the ’95 season started late and featured 144 games per team.  2020 is going to be a whole different ballgame though, with just 60 regular season games scheduled per team.  I wouldn’t rule out any team from winning the league over such a short time frame.  And the margins within the statistical categories will be so small that teams will still be shifting several points on a nearly daily basis as the season draws to a close.

Last year, we reached the 60 game mark around June 4.  At that time, the Darkhorses were in first place, with the Kings 1 1/2 points behind.  While those two teams did go on to finish in the top two spots, what is most interesting about the standings from that date is that six teams were within 10 points of first place and still would have been very much alive for the championship if the season had ended at that time.  Expect that to happen this year as well.  A majority of the teams will be very much alive in the closing weeks of the season.

Besides the compact schedule, there are a bunch of other reasons why this figures to be the most unpredictable season in league history.  First, there is the very real and scary prospect of players continuing to contract COVID-19.  Hopefully the threat of that will be somewhat mitigated by the rigorous testing regime they are going through, but it would not be surprising to see many key players lose a significant chunk of their season if they test positive.  And then there are the players who have already opted out of playing this season and others could continue to do so as the season progresses.  Finally, with such a short ramp up period leading into the season, it wouldn’t be surprising to see injury rates increase this year as well.

So how do you go about predicting what is going to happen in such an unpredictable season?  Well, I’m going to stick to my usual method of previewing the season using projected stats and standings based on FanGraph’s Depth Charts projections, which combine ZiPS and Steamer projections and adjust for expected playing time.  I initially grabbed these projections back in early March and computed the standings after the draft was completed.  But it didn’t make sense to base my season projections on 162 game numbers, so I redid everything last week.  In the final article of this series, I will display the projected standings from both sets of numbers.  They are fairly similar, which makes sense since most players’ projections haven’t changed other than reducing their counting stat totals to about 37% of the original numbers.  But there are some players who now no longer have projections, including those who have suffered season ending injuries or opted out of the season in the past several months.

There are too many grains of salt to count with these projections.  So I’m really just using this as a basis to go over each team and remind you who is on each roster, and perhaps using the projections to form a general impression of each team’s strengths and weaknesses.  I stand by my comment above that I believe any of the ten teams could win the league this year.  But somebody has to be last in the projections.  Here are the two teams slated to finish in the bottom spots in the standings, who are both attempting to overcome huge blows to their pitching staffs.

Ben’s Beanballers

Category – Projected Rank (2019 Rank)

  • Batting Average – 5th (4th)
  • Home Runs – 8th (7th)
  • Runs Batted In – 6th (7th)
  • Runs Scored – 8th (6th)
  • Stolen Bases - 1st (2nd)
  • Earned Run Average – 9th (3rd)
  • WHIP Ratio – 10th (4th)
  • Wins – 10th (2nd)
  • Saves – 9th (2nd-T)
  • Strike Outs – 10th (4th)
  • Total Batting Points – 5th (4th-T)
  • Total Pitching Points – 10th (2nd)
  • Total Points – 10th (3rd)

Summary:

The league newcomers are projected to finish last in their inaugural campaign.  That would be a disappointing result considering the roster they inherited from the Naturals finished in third place last year.  But this is not the same team by any stretch.  No team has been hit harder by roster losses since March than the Beanballers.  First, staff ace Noah Syndergaard was lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery.  And then one of the players who would have been counted on to pick up the slack, David Price, opted out of playing this season.  Price is the most fantasy relevant player to opt out so far.  That’s two huge losses to a pitching staff that had the second most points in the league in 2019, but is projected to have the fewest this year.  Without Syndergaard and Price, the Beanballers are going to need huge seasons from their remaining pitchers, most notably Mike Clevinger and Hyun-Jin Ryu.  The back of the rotation could be a problem though.  One wild card could be Carlos Martinez, who is expected to move into the Cardinals rotation and could provide a nice spark from a RP slot.  The bullpen does not figure to rack up many saves though.  Only Josh Hader enters the season as a likely closer.  While the pitching staff will need to significantly overachieve for the Beanballers to compete, the offense is more than capable.  Third baseman Nolan Arenado and shortstop Trea Turner have the best projections, but this is a deep group.  First round draft pick Bo Bichette adds another exciting option to their infield.  The outfield isn’t quite as impressive, but if one of last year’s biggest surprises, Jorge Soler, has another big year, the Beanballers figure to be in decent shape there too.  The one area where the Naturals are clearly among the league’s top teams is speed.  Turner, Bichette and Victor Robles lead a group that should be near the top of the stolen bases category.  For the Beanballers sake, hopefully the early roster casualties won’t continue to mount.  There is more than enough talent on this team to make this an exciting maiden voyage for the Beanballers.

Charlie’s Thunder Choppers

Category – Projected Rank (2019 Rank)

  • Batting Average – 4th (7th)
  • Home Runs – 9th (9th)
  • Runs Batted In – 10th (9th)
  • Runs Scored – 10th (9th)
  • Stolen Bases – 8th (9th)
  • Earned Run Average – 7th (9th)
  • WHIP Ratio – 7th (6th)
  • Wins – 9th (7th)
  • Saves – 1st (4th)
  • Strike Outs – 7th (3rd)
  • Total Batting Points – 10th (10th)
  • Total Pitching Points – 7th (6th)
  • Total Points - 9th (9th)

Summary:

The Choppers offense struggled mightily a year ago, which was largely why they fell all the way to ninth place, their worst finish in over a decade.  In the recently completed DTBL 2020 Sim, the Choppers actually led the league in runs scored.  But here we are with a projection for them to finish last in runs, RBI and total batting points.  Second overall draft pick Pete Alonso might be their best offensive player from day one.  There are a bunch of other guys who remain as question marks due to health entering this season.  Will Andrew McCutchen bounce back from his knee injury last year?  Will Anthony Rizzo’s back cause him to miss time?  Willie Calhoun and Lourdes Gurriel are also dealing with injuries at the moment and D.J. LeMahieu just returned from a positive COVID-19 test.  Things don’t look great for this offense entering the season, but hopefully this is just a short term blip.  On paper, the pitching staff looks much better.  But like the Beanballers, they are going to have to go through this season without their best pitcher.  Chris Sale succumbed to Tommy John surgery in March and won’t be available until sometime in 2021.  They do have some interesting alternatives though.  First, Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer return to anchor the staff.  Second round draft pick Brandon Woodruff has a chance to be the best of the bunch.  And they took a late flier on intriguing rookie Mitch Keller.  The strength of the entire roster is the bullpen.  They are projected to lead the league in saves, with four guys slated to pick up a bulk of the opportunities for their MLB clubs:  Ken Giles, Craig Kimbrel, Joe Jimenez and Brandon Kintzler.  Despite these fairly bleak projections, I think the Choppers could be one of the teams that benefits the most from the shortened season, assuming the early health issues to their hitters don’t linger.  This is largely a veteran squad that could be uniquely qualified to handle whatever is thrown at them this year, more so than a team full of youngsters.  Also, the loss of Chris Sale is less catastrophic in a shortened season than it would have been over six months.

Posted in Beanballers, Choppers | No Comments »

A Family Affair

Tuesday, March 10th, 2020

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Trivia time!  What do Fernando Tatis, Vladimir Guerrero, Dante Bichette and Craig Biggio all have in common?  If you guessed that they all hit at least .290 with 15+ home runs for their respective DTBL teams in 1999, you are correct!  Oh, and they also all have sons who were selected in the first 15 picks of the 2020 DTBL Draft.  This league has been around long enough that we had already seen a few sons of former DTBL players become second generation league members.  But in the previous instances, the fathers only had a cup of coffee in this league at the tail end of their careers.  This four-some is different.  All four compiled multiple strong seasons in the league and all but Tatis were among the league’s best players in its first 10-15 years.

Interestingly, it is the least accomplished father of those four whose son enters the league with the highest acclaim.  The Demigods selected the do-it-all shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. with the first pick in the draft.  Tatis hit .317 with 22 homers and 16 stolen bases in a MLB rookie campaign that was cut short by injury.  Provided he has a full year of solid health in 2020, it isn’t unreasonable to think he could be the second straight #1 draft pick to post a 30/30 season in his DTBL rookie year.  The Demigods will turn to Tatis to help put their miserable 2019 behind them.  Keep in mind that prior to last year, this is a team that finished in the top half of the standings in five straight seasons.  Tatis has the talent to lift them back up to their recent historic norms.

While Tatis was spectacular last year, he probably wouldn’t have won the NL Rookie of the Year award even if he had stayed healthy.  Not with Pete Alonso breaking the MLB all-time rookie record for home runs.  Alonso slugged 53 homers, which would have led the DTBL by four had he been in the league a year ago.  His 120 RBIs would have been fourth best in the league.  He was worthy of the second overall pick in the draft on his own merit, but he also happens to be an ideal fit for the Choppers who finished next to last in home runs and RBIs and dead last in total batting points a year ago.  This is the third straight year the Choppers have used their first pick on an infielder.  Alonso figures to have the biggest impact of them all.

The Komodos made it consecutive 2019 MLB Rookie of the Year winners when they selected Astros outfielder/DH Yordan Alvarez with the third pick.  Alvarez crashed the AL rookie party that was supposed to be all about a couple guys that will be covered below.  He hit .317 with 27 home runs and 78 RBIs despite not making his debut until June.  Had he been in the majors from the jump like Alonso, perhaps he too could have challenged the rookie home run record.  Alvarez is currently sidelined with a knee issue.  But assuming that doesn’t keep him out of action too long, he figures to be one of the league’s top sluggers.  He will join Cody Bellinger, Joey Gallo, Nelson Cruz and Jose Ramirez to form what could be a sneaky great Komodos offense.

Sneaky great is also an appropriate way of describing Keston Hiura’s young MLB career.  The Jackalope tabbed the Brewers second baseman with the fourth pick.  In 84 games, Hiura managed to hit .303 with 19 homers and nine stolen bases.  Extrapolate those numbers out to a full season and you could have the makings of a stud at a very weak offensive position.  The Jackalope have had one of the league’s best infields for a while now, but Hiura injects it with a needed shot of youth.  The spring is not off to a great start from a health perspective for the Jackalope.  Hiura could help cure much of what ails them, however.

Only one player selected in the first round won’t be making his DTBL debut this season.  Lucas Giolito was signed as a free agent by the Mavericks late in the 2017 season and was subsequently released prior to 2018, when the Mavericks picked him up again in the seventh round of the draft.  But he was released again by the Mavericks that May and had such a poor season that he got dropped from the league last year.  2019 Giolito was basically a brand new pitcher, making the All-Star team and compiling a Cy Young campaign resume.  The pitcher the Cougars drafted with the fifth pick this year really doesn’t resemble the one who pitched for the Mavericks.  In ’19, Giolito posted a 3.41 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, won 14 games and struck out an impressive 228 batters in 177 innings.  The Cougars pitching staff prevented them from being serious contenders a year ago.  Giolito could help change that.

A year ago, it seemed like a near certainty that I would be writing about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. being the first player taken in the 2020 draft.  Not that some of these other guys weren’t highly touted prospects, but Guerrero was at a different level.  His MLB debut became a must-see event, unlike any player I can recall since Bryce Harper.  That incredible, and probably unfair, level of hype made his 2019 season seem a little underwhelming.  He hit .272 with “only” 15 homers.  Here’s another number that is equally relevant though:  21.  That’s the age Guerrero will turn next week.  What Ronald Acuna and Juan Soto have done in their teens/very early 20s just isn’t normal.  Struggling to get your footing in the big leagues like Guerrero did *is* normal.  I have it on good authority that the Moonshiners were shocked and thrilled to grab him with the sixth pick in this draft.  If Vladito does in fact reach his potential, we’ll all look back on this pick and wonder how it came to be.

The Mavericks were also probably quite surprised about the availability of their first round pick.  They selected slugging outfielder Eloy Jimenez with the seventh pick.  Much of what I wrote about Guerrero applies to Jimenez as well, although he is a little older and did wind up posting pretty solid numbers thanks to a strong finish to the 2019 season.  31 home runs and 79 RBIs are impressive totals for a rookie and could be viewed as the floor of what to expect from here on out.  He seems a good bet to improve on the .267 average too.  Assuming good health, the Mavericks outfield is absolutely ridiculous.  Mike Trout, Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, Nick Castellanos and now Jimenez.  The rest of the roster ain’t too shabby either.

The Beanballers first official selection as a member of the DTBL was another flashy young shortstop who is the son of a former DTBL player, Bo Bichette.  Bichette has the fewest big league games under his belt of this first round group, but he made his short stint in the big leagues count.  In just 46 games, he hit .311 with 11 homers.  While not directly fantasy relevant, he also had 18 doubles.  So the extra base power appears to be legit.  With a new league member, it is hard to predict what the draft strategy might be.  In this case, it looks like the Beanballers went with the best young talent available, because shortstop was not a position of need with Trea Turner and Amed Rosario already on the roster.  You can’t go wrong with a middle infielder with huge upside though.  Bichette joins a roster with plenty of talent, so it will be interesting to see how the Beanballers do on their maiden voyage.

Seven of the first eight selections were hitters.  We finally saw a rookie pitcher go off the board when the Darkhorses selected Chris Paddack at #9.  While still at the very beginning of his career, Paddack already has an advanced repertoire, which he used to compile some gaudy numbers in 2019.  His sub 1.00 WHIP and 3.33 ERA were pretty incredible for a first season in the majors.  This selection made all the sense in the world for the Darkhorses, who have fallen a little short of the champion Kings the past two seasons because they didn’t have quite enough pitching.  Paddack will join Jacob deGrom, Patrick Corbin and Jose Berrios in a rotation that seems quite capable of closing that gap and claiming their first DTBL title in 10 years.

The Kings probably would have drafted any of the nine players selected ahead of them if they had fallen to the last slot in the first round.  Instead, they settled for a pitcher with very intriguing stuff, but also one who missed half of the 2019 campaign with a PED suspension.  Athletics hurler Frankie Montas was the final pick of the first round of the 2020 DTBL Draft.  Before the suspension, Montas was electric.  He struck out more than a batter per inning with a 2.63 ERA and 1.12 WHIP.  While starting pitching has been the Kings strength in their recent championship runs, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer aren’t getting any younger.  So they will turn to Montas as a potential ace in waiting.  In the meantime, he will join those guys in a rather formidable rotation.

A quick note on one second round selection referenced up top:  the Cougars selected second baseman Cavan Biggio with the 15th overall pick.  This connection is intriguing since Cavan’s father Craig was also a second baseman on the first two Cougars championship squads and was an all-time great for both the Cougars and Choppers.

After a bit of a slow start, we’ve hit our stride the past few days and are now on a great pace.  We should have plenty of time between the conclusion of the draft and Opening Day.  Keep up the good work!

Posted in Beanballers, Choppers, Cougars, Darkhorses, Demigods, Draft, Jackalope, Kings, Komodos, Mavericks, Moonshiners | 2 Comments »

DTBL Best of the Decade

Tuesday, December 31st, 2019

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The 2010s marked a decisive change from the first decade of this millennium in the DTBL.  The previous decade saw two teams dominate the landscape with the Kings opening it up with four straight titles from 2000-2003 and the Darkhorses doing the same from 2007-2010.  This decade, half of the franchises won at least one championship and only the 2019 Kings were able to successfully defend a title.  The 2010s started with arguably the craziest season in league history as the Darkhorses and Naturals became the first co-champions.  Two years later, the Naturals were involved in another epic finish as they just barely edged out three other teams to win another title.  The second half of the decade belonged to the Kings, as they have now won three of the past four championships.

As we enter a new decade, it is time to take a look back at the past 10 years in the DTBL.  Here are some of the best teams and players of the 2010s.

Franchise of the Decade:  Kevin’s Kings

It was a bit of a roller coaster ride for the Kings in the 2010s.  In 2013, they were able to put an end to their ten year title drought, barely edging out the Mavericks for the fifth championship in franchise history.  The remainder of the decade was pretty crazy for them.  Three times, they finished in the bottom half of the standings, including a dreadful last place finish in 2015 and a ninth place finish in 2017.  But they somehow managed to turn each of those poor years into a championship run the following year.  All told, they won four championships in the decade, the most of any franchise.  They weren’t the most consistent franchise, but titles are what matter most and nobody had more of them than the Kings.  The clear second choice for this honor would be the Naturals who won three titles, all coming in the same years the Giants won the World Series (2010, 2012, 2014).

Team of the Decade:  2015 Jay’s Jackalope

The Jackalope made their championships count.  Both of their title winning seasons were among the most impressive this league has ever seen.  It is difficult to compare teams from different seasons since so much of fantasy success is relative to the competition.  So simply going with the team with the most standings points doesn’t necessarily make them better than title winning teams from other years.  What sets apart the 2015 Jackalope, and their 2011 squad too for that matter, was the manner in which they dominated the rest of the league.  They won the league by a record breaking 19 points over the Mavericks.  The Jackalope offense was led by MVP winner Josh Donaldson and runner-up Paul Goldschmidt.  Meanwhile, Jake Arrieta led the pitching staff and won both the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, giving the Jackalope a clean sweep of the three major awards.  The year started with the Jackalope making some major March trades, dealing away franchise icons Albert Pujols, Felix Hernandez and Zack Greinke.  But in return, they acquired Josh Donaldson, Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon, all of whom continue to reap benefits for them today.  It was one of the most impressive roster shake-ups we’ve ever seen.  Honorable mention in this category could go to a bunch of different teams.  Certainly the 2011 Jackalope who also won the league by double digits, the 2014 Naturals who set the record for most total points (89), the 2019 Kings who successfully defended their title with a much stronger season in the follow-up, and the 2017 Mavericks who finally cashed in a championship to go along with their historically dominant pitching staff for much of the decade.

Player of the Decade:  Mike Trout, Mavericks (2012-2019)

This was about as easy of a decision as you will find.  Mike Trout has been in the DTBL for eight seasons now.  In all eight seasons he has made the All-Star team and received MVP votes.  Shockingly, he only has one MVP award to his name so far.  But he has finished in the top five of that vote six times, including each of his first five seasons.  He also won the Rookie of the Year award in 2012.  In the 2010s, he led all DTBL players in PAR (71.0) by more than 20 points.  His decade ranks in the five offensive categories:  .308 average (5th), 280 home runs (3rd), 736 runs batted in (14th), 882 runs scored (1st), 195 stolen bases (7th).  Keep in mind that many players had a two year head start over him in the counting categories.  In 2015, his worst season according to PAR, he hit .299 with 41 home runs.  A second round pick by the Mavericks in 2012, Trout holds the franchise career record in homers, runs and stolen bases and is second in RBI.  Nobody else really garnered any consideration for this honor, but let’s just say Paul Goldschmidt was the runner-up.

Pitcher of the Decade:  Clayton Kershaw, Mavericks (2010-2019)

This was a pretty easy choice too, and yes, it is another Maverick.  In the 2010s, Clayton Kershaw won a pair of Cy Young awards, finished in the top four for that award seven straight years and made seven DTBL All-Star teams.  His numbers during the four year stretch of 2013-2016 were downright silly, posting ERAs below 2.00 in three of those years.  He won the Cy Young in 2013 and 2014 with ERAs of 1.83 and 1.77.  He posted a double digit PAR for seven straight seasons (2011-2017).  For the decade, his 2.30 ERA and 0.961 WHIP were easily the best among qualified starting pitchers.  His 154 wins ranked third as did his 2,131 strikeouts.  Somehow, the Mavericks nabbed him in the sixth round of the 2009 draft.  He is the franchise leader among starting pitchers in every relevant category.  Two other pitchers had similarly great decades:  the Kings veteran duo of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.  But unlike those two, Kershaw was an elite performer for the entire decade.  Scherzer didn’t really reach that level until 2013 and Verlander had some down years in the middle of the decade.

 

Now let’s move onto the All-Decade players.  I’ve selected 46 players and split them into first and second teams.  Unlike the honors I’ve bestowed above, these selections were mostly objective.  I went with the players who accumulated the highest PAR in the decade, with exceptions at two positions:  catcher and relief pitcher.  Because even some above average performers at those positions have trouble accumulating positive PAR, I didn’t want to ding players for longevity in which some negative PAR years may have dragged their total down.  Also, I didn’t want to reward a few closers who have had just a couple great years, enough to put them near the top of the PAR leaderboard.  So I looked at the full set of numbers to make my decisions at those two positions.  For players who changed positions throughout the course of the decade, they were classified at whichever position they appeared in the most seasons.  Without further ado, here are 46 of the best players from the 2010s.

 

First Team All-Decade

C – Victor Martinez (Naturals ’10-’15, Mavericks ’16, Kings ’17):  .301 AVG, 115 HR, 504 RBI, 389 R, 5 SB, 10.8 PAR

C – Buster Posey (Demigods ’11-’19):  .302 AVG, 118 HR, 590 RBI, 521 R, 23 SB, 4.8 PAR

1B – Paul Goldschmidt (Jackalope ’12-’19):  .294 AVG, 235 HR, 781 RBI, 778 R, 123 SB, 51.0 PAR

2B – Jose Altuve (Demigods ’12-’19):  .316 AVG, 125 HR, 514 RBI, 693 R, 240 SB, 43.0 PAR

3B – Nolan Arenado (Naturals ’14-’19):  .298 AVG, 215 HR, 677 RBI, 574 R, 13 SB, 42.2 PAR

SS – Francisco Lindor (Demigods ’16-’19):  .284 AVG, 115 HR, 327 RBI, 423 R, 81 SB, 28.3 PAR

1B/3B – Miguel Cabrera (Naturals ’10-’18, Mavericks ’19):  .317 AVG, 265 HR, 928 RBI, 783 R, 14 SB, 43.2 PAR

2B/SS – Robinson Cano (Kings ’10-’19):  .302 AVG, 227 HR, 851 RBI, 791 R, 34 SB, 38.4 PAR

OF – Mike Trout (Mavericks ’12-’19):  .308 AVG, 280 HR, 736 RBI, 882 R, 195 SB, 71.0 PAR

OF – Nelson Cruz (Mavericks ’10-’11, Gators ’12-’17, Komodos ’18-’19):  .283 AVG, 338 HR, 941 RBI, 761 R, 49 SB, 47.6 PAR

OF – Mookie Betts (Kings ’15-’19):  .302 AVG, 134 HR, 447 RBI, 575 R, 116 SB, 41.3 PAR

OF – Andrew McCutchen (Naturals ’10-’17, Choppers ’18-’19):  .286 AVG, 219 HR, 763 RBI, 864 R, 165 SB, 40.7 PAR

OF – Ryan Braun (Jackalope ’10-’19):  .295 AVG, 236 HR, 796 RBI, 753 R, 164 SB, 40.3 PAR

DH – Edwin Encarnacion (Jackalope ’10, Naturals ’11, Mavericks ’12-’14, Darkhorses ’15-’19):  .265 AVG, 307 HR, 883 RBI, 752 R, 39 SB, 42.3 PAR

SP – Clayton Kershaw (Mavericks ’10-’19):  2.30 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, 154 W, 0 SV, 2,131 K, 112.6 PAR

SP – Max Scherzer (Jackalope ’10, Kings ’10-’19):  3.07 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 155 W, 0 SV, 2,348 K, 98.3 PAR

SP – Justin Verlander (Kings ’10-’19):  3.10 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 159 W, 0 SV, 2,210 K, 95.5 PAR

SP – Zack Greinke (Jackalope ’10, Naturals ’11-’14, Moonshiners ’15-’19):  3.21 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 152 W, 0 SV, 1,852 K, 75.1 PAR

SP – Chris Sale (Naturals ’11, Choppers ’12-’19):  3.05 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 102 W, 6 SV, 1,907 K, 68.9 PAR

RP – Craig Kimbrel (Choppers ’11-’19):  2.14 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 27 W, 344 SV, 855 K, 34.6 PAR

RP – Kenley Jansen (Mavericks ’11-’19):  2.35 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 29 W, 295 SV, 827 K, 32.1 PAR

RP – Aroldis Chapman (Mavericks ’11, ’15-’17, Jackalope ’12-’14, Komodos ’18-’19):  2.28 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 27 W, 271 SV, 796 K, 27.2 PAR

RP – Jonathan Papelbon (Kings ’10-’15, Jackalope ’15-’16):  2.86 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 27 W, 217 SV, 462 K, 8.8 PAR

 

Second Team All-Decade

C – Yadier Molina (Choppers ’10-’16, Cougars ’17-’19):  .289 AVG, 120 HR, 645 RBI, 500 R, 53 SB, -0.1 PAR

C – J.T. Realmuto (Darkhorses ’16-’19):  .282 AVG, 73 HR, 266 RBI, 290 R, 32 SB, 5.6 PAR

1B – Joey Votto (Naturals ’10-’19):  .306 AVG, 229 HR, 745 RBI, 825 R, 66 SB, 38.2 PAR

2B – Ian Kinsler (Moonshiners ’10-’16, Jackalope ’17-’18):  .268 AVG, 163 HR, 609 RBI, 835 R, 148 SB, 28.5 PAR

3B – Adrian Beltre (Choppers ’10-’18):  .307 AVG, 226 HR, 781 RBI, 691 R, 10 SB, 34.9 PAR

SS – Trea Turner (Naturals ’16-’19):  .292 AVG, 60 HR, 199 RBI, 306 R, 145 SB, 28.1 PAR

1B/3B – Freddie Freeman (Demigods ’12-’19):  .296 AVG, 199 HR, 698 RBI, 699 R, 39 SB, 36.2 PAR

2B/SS – Brian Dozier (Moonshiners ’14-’19):  .245 AVG, 157 HR, 437 RBI, 521 R, 77 SB, 22.2 PAR

OF – Charlie Blackmon (Cougars ’15-’19):  .309 AVG, 142 HR, 389 RBI, 561 R, 87 SB, 37.3 PAR

OF – Bryce Harper (Darkhorses ’13-’19):  .278 AVG, 197 HR, 576 RBI, 607 R, 70 SB, 35.1 PAR

OF – Christian Yelich (Darkhorses ’14-’19):  .304 AVG, 134 HR, 481 RBI, 550 R, 111 SB, 34.8 PAR

OF – Giancarlo Stanton (Jackalope ’11-’19):  .268 AVG, 278 HR, 701 RBI, 627 R, 36 SB, 34.4 PAR

OF – Carlos Gonzalez (Kings ’10-’17):  .293 AVG, 197 HR, 648 RBI, 638 R, 97 SB, 33.7 PAR

DH – Albert Pujols (Jackalope ’10-’14, Mavericks ’15, ’18, Choppers ’16-’17, Darkhorses ’18):  .272 AVG, 250 HR, 813 RBI, 630 R, 49 SB, 34.6 PAR

SP – David Price (Naturals ’10-’18, Komodos ’19):  3.29 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 134 W, 0 SV, 1,804 K, 62.4 PAR

SP – Madison Bumgarner (Cougars ’11-’19):  3.16 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 111 W, 0 SV, 1,664 K, 59.9 PAR

SP – Felix Hernandez (Jackalope ’10-’14, ’18, Moonshiners ’15-’17):  3.20 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 104 W, 0 SV, 1,595 K, 52.1 PAR

SP – Jon Lester (Naturals ’10-’12, Choppers ’13-’19):  3.56 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 144 W, 0 SV, 1,773 K, 51.0 PAR

SP – Corey Kluber (Demigods ’14-’19):  2.94 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 83 W, 0 SV, 1,238 K, 50.9 PAR

RP – Francisco Rodriguez (Moonshiners ’10-’11, Mavericks ’12, Naturals ’14, Kings ’15-’17):  3.22 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 23 W, 181 SV, 407 K, 7.0 PAR

RP – Greg Holland (Gators ’12-’13, Naturals ’13-’17, Komodos ’18, Mavericks ’19):  3.06 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 14 W, 198 SV, 428 K, 4.5 PAR

RP – David Robertson (Cougars ’12-’19):  2.93 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 31 W, 127 SV, 515 K, 8.1 PAR

RP – Roberto Osuna (Moonshiners ’16-’19):  2.80 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 13 W, 134 SV, 270 K, 13.8 PAR

 

I thought about writing a short blurb for each player above, but decided that would take far too much time.  Here are a couple links to leaderboards for the decade, for your perusal:

Batters

Pitchers

Feel free to chime in below if you feel some player(s) were snubbed.  What an amazing decade it was in the DTBL.  Here’s to the 2020s being just as great.  Happy New Year!

Posted in Choppers, Cougars, Darkhorses, Demigods, Gators, Jackalope, Kings, Komodos, Mavericks, Moonshiners, Naturals | No Comments »

Moose, Mo and More

Wednesday, August 7th, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On to the awards for July 2019.

Batters of the Week:

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

Pitchers of the Week:

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

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

Batter of the Month:

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

Pitcher of the Month:

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

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

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

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

Posted in Awards, Choppers, Cougars, Demigods, Jackalope, Mavericks | No Comments »

2019 Season Preview: Part II

Monday, March 25th, 2019

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The second part of this 2019 DTBL season preview series will examine three teams that are projected to finish with nearly identical point totals, within a single point of each other.  Two of the teams are slotted just a couple points ahead of the ninth place Cougars as well, so that means things are projected to be very tight in the bottom half of the standings.  The previous post covered a pair of teams that finished in the top half of the standings a year ago.  Meanwhile, this one covers two more teams in that situation.  So for those of you scoring at home, that means that four of the five teams that will be projected to finish in the top half of the standings were among the teams that finished in the bottom half a year ago.  And the lone team that is picked to remain in the bottom half would still consider this projection to be a pretty significant step forward.  So I guess what I’m getting at is that 2019 may look nothing like 2018 in the DTBL.  Here are the previews for the teams picked to finish in sixth and a tie for seventh places.

Charlie’s Thunder Choppers

Category – Projected Rank (2018 Rank)

  • Batting Average – 9th (4th)
  • Home Runs – 9th (9th)
  • Runs Batted In – 10th (8th)
  • Runs Scored - 10th (7th)
  • Stolen Bases – 6th (3rd)
  • Earned Run Average - 3rd (4th)
  • WHIP Ratio - 2nd (6th)
  • Wins - 1st (3rd)
  • Saves – 6th (2nd)
  • Strike Outs – 5th (4th)
  • Total Batting Points – 10th (7th)
  • Total Pitching Points - 2nd (3rd)
  • Total Points – 7th-T (4th)

Summary:

Last year marked the fifth time in six seasons that the Thunder Choppers finished in the top four of the league.  However, once again, they weren’t able to keep pace with the league champion.  Despite all of those high finishes, they’ve only come close to a title once in that stretch, finishing 2 1/2 points out in 2016.  It was a mediocre offense that held them back a year ago.  Unfortunately, these projections show that being an issue again this season as they are tabbed to record the fewest batting points in the league.  But there could be a little more upside this time around as they went heavier than usual on younger players with higher upsides in the draft.  Anthony Rizzo and Whit Merrifield have strong offensive projections, but none of their other hitters jump off the page.  New additions Miguel Andujar, Franmil Reyes and Willy Adames have intriguing potential though.  And let’s not forget returning outfielder Byron Buxton, who was the top prospect in all of baseball just a few years ago.  If he ever figures it out, he could be a fantasy superstar.  The pitching staff was very good last year, but could be even better in 2019.  Chris Sale is a perennial Cy Young contender.  Trevor Bauer had a huge breakout a year ago and is their clear #2 now.  Bauer’s Indians teammate Shane Bieber is the exciting new addition to the Choppers rotation.  The bullpen could be excellent as well, but Craig Kimbrel is going to need to sign with a MLB team sooner than later to solidify the group.  Otherwise, it will be Ken Giles and Jordan Hicks leading the way.  One fallback plan if Kimbrel never gets a job will be Corbin Burnes, who can continue the Choppers tradition of having a starting pitcher accumulating stats from a relief pitching slot, something these projections don’t really take into account.  A seventh place finish would be disappointing for the Choppers.  If their offense is better than prognosticated, they will likely finish in the top half of the standings once again.

David’s Darkhorses

Category – Projected Rank (2018 Rank)

  • Batting Average – 1st (2nd)
  • Home Runs – 6th (2nd)
  • Runs Batted In – 5th (1st)
  • Runs Scored - 1st (1st)
  • Stolen Bases – 8th (4th)
  • Earned Run Average - 8th (6th)
  • WHIP Ratio - 10th (4th)
  • Wins – 10th (9th)
  • Saves - 5th (8th)
  • Strike Outs – 7th (3rd)
  • Total Batting Points – 3rd (1st)
  • Total Pitching Points - 10th (7th)
  • Total Points – 7th-T (2nd)

Summary:

Of the four teams projected to drop from the top to bottom half of the league this season, the Darkhorses would be the biggest disappointment if this actually came to pass.  They put a serious scare into the Kings down the stretch last season before falling a little short.  Had the pitching staff been a little more productive, they would have won the league.  But they are now projected to have the worst pitching staff in the league.  The numbers are dragged down a bit by a couple of their surplus Braves starters who don’t figure to be regulars in the rotation though.  Speaking of Braves starters, they have four of them.  First round pick Mike Foltynewicz will be the key to ensuring they don’t have the worst staff in the league.  He will slot in behind Jacob deGrom, who once again should be one of the best pitchers in the league.  A little more win luck for him would be helpful as well.  The projections aren’t quite as optimistic about Patrick Corbin or Jose Berrios, but the talent is there for this to be a pretty good staff.  With Corey Knebel’s health a huge concern, they may have trouble racking up the saves.  Brad Hand is the only safe bet to be a significant save accumulator.  Meanwhile, the offense should remain one of the best in the league.  They have seven hitters projected for 3+ PAR, tied for the most in the league.  Those seven:  Alex Bregman, Matt Chapman, Daniel Murphy, Xander Boagarts, Bryce Harper, George Springer and Christian Yelich.  And that doesn’t even include J.T. Realmuto, who may be the best catcher in the league.  They could benefit from some positive home ballpark changes among those guys too, namely Harper, Realmuto and Murphy.  This is a very deep offensive unit.  Whether or not you believe the Darkhorses will compete for the title, or finish close to these projections instead largely depends on what you expect from their pitching staff.  If better than advertised, they will be a dangerous team once again.

Kat’s Komodos

Category – Projected Rank (2018 Rank)

  • Batting Average – 6th (7th)
  • Home Runs – 7th (5th)
  • Runs Batted In – 9th (5th)
  • Runs Scored – 4th (6th)
  • Stolen Bases - 1st (1st)
  • Earned Run Average - 10th (10th)
  • WHIP Ratio - 6th (10th)
  • Wins - 3rd (5th)
  • Saves - 8th (9th)
  • Strike Outs – 6th (8th)
  • Total Batting Points – 5th (4th)
  • Total Pitching Points - 6th-T (9th)
  • Total Points – 6th (9th)

Summary:

Finally, we come to our first team that did not finish in the top half of the standings last season.  But this projection also shows what would be a significant change in fortune for a Komodos squad that finished ninth a year ago.  Perhaps hidden a bit by the overall place of finish was just how solid of an offensive core this team has already assembled.  The 31 batting points they earned in 2018 was more than the Gators franchise they inherited had accumulated in any season since 2008.  Since their focus was almost exclusively on pitching in the early rounds of the draft, this is basically the same offensive team as a year ago, led by Jose Ramirez, Cody Bellinger and Starling Marte.  Two other guys who don’t receive a ton of attention when focusing on the best players in MLB, but who are fantasy studs are Nelson Cruz and Joey Gallo.  This team’s most glaring strength is their speed.  Marte, Ramirez, Dee Gordon and Mallex Smith should give the Komodos a great chance of winning the stolen base category once again.  The main reason for optimism that 2019 will be a huge step forward for this franchise is the seemingly improved pitching staff.  The second overall pick in the draft, Walker Buehler gives them a potential ace, which they simply did not have last year.  The rest of the rotation is filled with steady, solid veterans in David Price, J.A. Happ, Rich Hill and Jose Quintana.  At first glance, the bullpen doesn’t look great with only Aroldis Chapman and Kirby Yates entrenched as closers.  But Collin McHugh is another potential stat accumulator as a starter in a relief slot.  These projections show the Komodos improving to sixth in the league in pitching points and sixth overall.  Those would be massive improvements over a year ago.  There are plenty of reasons for the Komodos to be optimistic about their second season in the DTBL.

Posted in Choppers, Darkhorses, Komodos | Comments Off

Acuna, Soto Highlight Round One

Saturday, March 9th, 2019

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The first round of the DTBL Draft almost always features a crop of young up-and-coming stars.  But this year’s group is especially notable for their youth.  Eight of the ten players selected in the first round are under 25 years old, including the first seven picks of the draft.  And two players, Ronald Acuna and Juan Soto, are among the most accomplished players at their age to ever enter the league.  Acuna and Soto just turned 21 and 20 respectively over the offseason.  All ten first round selections are DTBL rookies.  A trade of two marquee players also highlighted an excellent start to the 2019 DTBL Draft.

For the second straight year, the reigning National League Rookie of the Year was the first pick of the draft.  Ronald Acuna joins the Jackalope coming off a stellar rookie campaign.  He hit .293 with 26 home runs and 16 stolen bases, flashing all of his plus tools.  The Braves outfielder became a star almost immediately upon promotion and helped lead his team to an unexpected division championship.  He could help the Jackalope make a similar jump in the standings this year.  The Jackalope offense was especially disappointing a year ago, but the pieces are still there to be one of the best teams in the league.  Acuna was a pretty clear choice here.

Last year, the Komodos took a young Dodgers star with the first pick of the draft (Cody Bellinger).  This year, they took another young Dodgers star with the second pick.  Walker Buehler should give a significant boost to a pitching staff that really struggled a year ago.  Buehler was pretty clearly the best pitcher available in this draft.  In 137 big league innings, he struck out 151 while posting an impressive 2.62 ERA and 0.96 WHIP.  That ERA is a full point lower than any Komodos starting pitcher posted in ’18, when they finished dead last in the league in that category, by a healthy margin.  Buehler will immediately become the Komodos best pitcher.

Juan Soto has already put himself in rarefied air based on his accomplishments in the big leagues as a teenager.  Nobody was expecting Soto to reach the majors for another year or two, but a series of injuries to Nationals outfielders caused them to bring him up last May. He was an immediate success and made it impossible to send him back down.  He was so good in his rookie campaign that the Nationals decided to only make a halfhearted attempt to retain Bryce Harper this winter.  Soto hit .292 with 22 homers in just 414 at bats.  The Naturals selected him with the third pick and he could have joined his Nationals teammate Victor Robles to form an exciting young duo for the Naturals as well.  But Soto was immediately traded to the Mavericks in a blockbuster swap of outfielders.  In return, the Naturals acquired Andrew Benintendi.  These are two of the best outfielders in the game, so this is quite a swap.  Benintendi is more established and is a little more well-rounded, offering a stolen base threat as well.  But Soto has a nearly unlimited upside in the power categories.  It will be very interesting to compare these players as their careers progress.  For the Mavericks, an outfield of Soto, Mike Trout and Aaron Judge is pretty darn scary.  But the Naturals have no shortage of young star hitters either.

With the fourth pick, the Moonshiners selected this year’s most interesting player, two-way star Shohei Ohtani.  Coming over from Japan, Ohtani was expected to be an immediate star on the mound, but many questioned if he would really be able to hit big league pitching.  In fact, some thought if he truly wanted to be a two-way player, he may need some time in the minors.  Well, turns out he can hit major league pitching.  He hit .285 with 22 home runs in just 326 at bats.  An injury limited him to just 51 innings on the mound, where he struck out 63 with a 3.31 ERA.  Unfortunately, he needed Tommy John surgery and will not pitch in 2019.  He does intend to hit, but probably won’t see action in a big league game until May.  The Moonshiners have all sorts of options with Ohtani.  First, they can use him at 1B or OF this year since he didn’t play a non-pitching field position last year.  And looking forward, they will have the option to use him as either a pitcher or hitter next year, assuming he is a keeper.  The sky is the limit with this pick, but the Moonshiners probably won’t get their money’s worth until next year and beyond.

The Mavericks aren’t used to picking in the first half of the first round, at least not with their own pick.  Last year was the first time they finished in the bottom half of the standings since 2011.  They took advantage of the rare positioning to acquire two of the top five players selected in this draft.  In addition to the trade for Soto, they selected pitcher Jack Flaherty with the fifth pick.  The Mavericks have an absolutely loaded offense, but the once undisputed top pitching staff in the league was anything but that a year ago.  Injuries destroyed the staff and caused them to finish dead last in pitching points.  Flaherty is the first step to try to rebuild that group.  Overshadowed a bit by the players already mentioned above, he had a rather dominant rookie campaign as well.  182 strikeouts in 151 innings is great for any pitcher, much less a 22 year old rookie.  The Cardinals hurler also had a strong 3.34 ERA and 1.11 WHIP.  He should provide stability for this revamped staff.

The Cougars have had a pretty good recent track record of selecting hitters in the first round.  Second baseman Gleyber Torres is the next in line.  The Cougars will likely open the season with their offensive lineup featuring their past five first round picks.  Torres is younger than all of his predecessors though at the time of joining the squad.  He hit .271 with 24 home runs during his age 21 rookie season.  That combination of ability and age should make him a fixture on the Cougars roster for a very long time.  The Yankees have a lot of options in their infield this year, but one thing is certain.  Torres will be playing virtually every day, whether it be at second base or shortstop.

Speaking of impressive young Yankees infielders, another one was selected with the seventh pick, with the Choppers taking third baseman Miguel Andujar.  Andujar hit .297 with 27 homers and 92 RBI, to finish second in the American League Rookie of the Year vote, behind Ohtani.  The only knock on him is his glove, but that matters not at all in fantasy.  The Choppers will look to Andujar to replace team legend and future Hall-of-Famer Adrian Beltre, who retired over the winter.  If Andujar can provide a spark to the Choppers offense, they could have a chance of ending their 20 year title drought.

For the second straight year, the Demigods took the old guy of the first round.  But in this case, it is still a league rookie.  Jesus Aguilar started the 2018 season as a bench player for the Brewers.  But the first baseman immediately showed off his incredible power, quickly earned a starting job, and then made the NL All-Star team.  He slugged 35 homers with 108 runs batted in.  He did cool off a bit in the second half of the season, with only 11 of those homers coming after the All-Star break.  Outside of maybe Acuna and Soto, he was probably the safest bet for power in this draft.  The Demigods finished eighth in home runs last year, the biggest weakness for an otherwise strong offensive team.

The Darkhorses selected Braves pitcher Mike Foltynewicz with the eighth pick, making this the first time since 2015 that more than two pitchers were taken in the first round.  Foltynewicz had a breakout season a year ago, which earned him an All-Star appearance.  He struck out 202 hitters in 183 innings with a sparkling 2.85 ERA and 1.08 WHIP.  His previous best ERA season was 4.31, so ’18 saw quite a dramatic improvement.  While he has spent parts of five seasons in the majors, he is still just 27 years old.  The Darkhorses barely missed winning the championship last year, with a mediocre pitching staff holding them back.  Foltynewicz could be exactly what they need to get over the hump.

Sitting with the last pick in the first round, the Kings believed there was one player remaining who was clearly the best available, but he was at a position in which they were already well stacked.  So instead, they swung a trade with the Jackalope to move up a spot to grab that player.  The Kings received the Jackalope 2nd round pick (11th overall) along with a swap of 4th round slots.  The Jackalope then took Royals shortstop Adalberto Mondesi to close out the first round.  Mondesi is a rare breed in that he is an elite base stealer, but also has surprising power.  He managed to steal 32 bases and hit 14 home runs despite not making his big league season debut until late June.  While he’s unlikely to maintain a pace like that for a full season, he still could be an above average contributor to the power categories while potentially leading the league in steals.  Once considered an elite prospect, Mondesi had slipped under the radar a bit before his 2018 breakout.  Slight spoiler alert for my upcoming season preview articles, but you definitely won’t see the Jackalope projected to finish last again.  They managed to acquire the two players with the highest projected PAR in the entire draft pool.  So the Jackalope started and finished the first round with a bang.  Meanwhile, the Kings selected starting pitcher Zack Wheeler with that pick they acquired from the Jackalope, the first pick of the second round.

Thanks to all of you for the excellent pace to the first half of this draft.  At this rate, we’ll be done with plenty of time to spare before the Japan openers.  Let’s keep up the good work!

Posted in Choppers, Cougars, Darkhorses, Demigods, Draft, Jackalope, Kings, Komodos, Mavericks, Moonshiners, Naturals | No Comments »

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.

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