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We’ve moved into the second half of the baseball season. There is a lot going on right now, so I’m going to breeze through several topics in this post. Thanks to everyone for voting for this year’s All-Stars. The managers for this year’s All-Star Game, Marc and Nick, have been tasked with breaking a few ties and selecting the final players for their respective rosters. Soon after they do that, I will announce the 2018 DTBL All-Star rosters. This year will mark the 25th annual DTBL All-Star Game. As you may recall, there was no All-Star Game in the first DTBL season. But some representation of the Mid-Summer Classic has been played every year since.
Speaking of 25th Anniversaries, we are just about a month away from the DTBL 25th Anniversary party in Chicago. In case you didn’t pay attention to any of the email traffic from previous months, many of us will be meeting up for the Indians @ White Sox game on Saturday, August 11. I’ve already obtained tickets for everyone who previously said they would be able to make it. But even if that doesn’t include you, you are more than welcome to join us! I bought a couple extra tickets and can easily obtain more, if necessary. We are going to have a small tailgate outside the stadium, but will be heading into the park relatively early to make sure we get the Jim Thome bobbleheads that they are giving away that evening. Please contact me if you would like more information. Looking forward to it!
Somewhere around that 25th Anniversary gathering, probably soon after, I am going to be announcing an all-time DTBL team. It will be my version of the 25 greatest players in league history. Since I prefer to make mostly objective selections, I’m working on a statistical formula to determine this roster. It will be somewhat based on PAR, but not exclusively. However, to that end, I’m hoping to get as many seasons as possible of PAR numbers completed in the next month. Just this past week, I added numbers for 2006. A few takeaways from these numbers. First, Johan Santana was very much deserving of the Cy Young award he won unanimously that season. The Mavericks’ lefty accumulated a 14.27 PAR, which was nearly five points higher than the next closest pitcher. It marks as the highest pre-2010 single season Pitching PAR I’ve calculated so far. Among hitters, there was far less separation at the top of the 2006 PAR leaderboard. Albert Pujols was first at 9.16, but Jose Reyes, Alfonso Soriano and Ryan Howard were all within a point. Howard edged out Pujols in the MVP vote that year, perhaps because of his gaudy 58 home runs, which had been the league’s single season record among non-PED suspected players until Giancarlo Stanton hit 59 homers last year. Reyes’ 19 home runs in ’06 is the most for any DTBL player with at least 60 steals as well.
I am going to try go get PAR numbers completed back to 2003 in the next month. The reason why 2003 will be my stopping point is because I don’t have complete transaction records readily accessible prior to that, which are necessary for me to calculate the number of weeks each player was on a major league roster. This is the big pain point in completing these PAR calculations.
On to the weekly and monthly award winners for June 2018.
Batters of the Week:
Week 11 (6/4 – 6/10) – Paul Goldschmidt, Jackalope
Week 12 (6/11 – 6/17) – Evan Gattis, Kings
Week 13 (6/18 – 6/24) – Nolan Arenado, Naturals
Week 14 (6/25 – 7/1) – Alex Bregman, Darkhorses
Pitchers of the Week:
Week 11 (6/4 – 6/10) – Corey Kluber, Demigods
Week 12 (6/11 – 6/17) – Luis Severino, Jackalope
Week 13 (6/18 – 6/24) – Trevor Bauer, Choppers
Week 14 (6/25 – 7/1) – Blake Snell, Cougars
Semi-spoiler alert: you are going to see almost all of the names above when the DTBL All-Star rosters are announced this week. These guys not only had great weeks at some point in June, but are putting up All-Star caliber numbers through the first half of the season. We had a little more team diversity for these honors in June as only the Jackalope had multiple players earn weekly honors.
Batter of the Month:
Alex Bregman, Darkhorses
.306 AVG, 11 HR, 30 RBI, 24 R, 1 SB, 3.00 PAR
Pitcher of the Month:
Chris Sale, Choppers
1.76 ERA, 0.756 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 60 K, 3.43 PAR
Half way through his second DTBL season, Bregman has already almost matched his rookie season numbers. In fact, he has already set a career high in home runs with 17. 11 of those came in his scorching month of June. He tied for the league lead in both home runs and RBI in June. The Darkhorses third baseman appears primed to receive his first DTBL All-Star invitation. Bregman narrowly won this award over Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt who had very similar numbers across the board. Komodos outfielders Nelson Cruz and Eddie Rosario were in the conversation as well.
Sale will almost certainly receive his seventh straight All-Star nod this week. If so, he will have been a DTBL All-Star in every season since becoming a full time starting pitcher for the White Sox in 2012. He was at the peak of his powers in June, striking out 60 batters in just 41 innings. He is one of four pitchers who have already accumulated over 8 PAR this season, barely beyond the half-way point in the season. Sale was a comfortable winner of this award, but amazingly, the top three contenders were all Choppers, the other two being Trevor Bauer and Jon Lester. Jackalope Luis Severino wasn’t too far back either.