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In 2016, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Kris Bryant) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award and Kings outfielder Mookie Betts won the Most Valuable Player award. This year, the Kings won the DTBL Championship, a Cougars player (Blake Snell) won Rookie of the Year, Kings pitcher Max Scherzer won the Cy Young award, and… yes, you have figured out where this is going. History has repeated itself. Perhaps no offensive player in league history has been more solely responsible for his team winning a championship than Betts was this season. Mookie Betts is the 2018 DTBL Most Valuable Player.
For the first time in his young, but highly productive career, Mookie Betts joined the 30/30 club this season. He notched career highs in both home runs (32) and stolen bases (30). Those numbers alone put him in pretty elite company, but his league leading .346 average took things to another level. Only one player in league history has had a higher average while joining the 30/30 club. Larry Walker’s insane 1997 season featured a .366/49/33 line. Oh, Betts also led the league in runs scored with 129. Somewhat surprisingly, he was not on top of the Batting PAR leaderboard. His 11.3 was awfully impressive, but was topped by Christian Yelich’s 11.6. As an entire team, the championship winning Kings accumulated 22.2 Batting PAR. So yes, Betts was responsible for more than half of that! No other Kings hitter reached 5 PAR. Not a bad year for him: AL MVP, World Series champion, DTBL MVP and DTBL champion.
The Kings drafted Betts with the fifth pick in the 2015 draft. Two of the players taken ahead of him: Corey Dickerson and Jorge Soler (sorry, Mike). So far, Betts has won the MVP in half of his DTBL seasons, taking home the honor in 2016 as well. His numbers from this season were slightly better in most categories, except RBIs, the only category where he didn’t set a career high. In addition to joining the 30/30 single season club, he also reached the 100/100 HR/SB club for his career this season, now sitting at 105/100 with an average of .303. He is the only player in the league with 100 homers and stolen bases since 2015. And only Mike Trout can top Betts’ career PAR of 34.7 since ’15. There is no question that Betts has established himself as one of the best all around players in the game.
Despite the gaudy numbers, this award did not come easily for Betts. As mentioned, he didn’t lead the league in PAR, so it is unsurprising that he wasn’t the clear choice for this award either. But he did receive a majority of the first place votes: seven to be exact. Interestingly, one person did not have him on the ballot. He compiled 82 points, besting the runner-up by nine. Finishing second was the PAR leader, Darkhorses outfielder Christian Yelich. Yelich was insanely hot over the last two months of the season, easily claiming the NL MVP award. Like Betts, he was a strong five category player, beating Betts in home runs and RBIs, but falling a bit behind in average, runs and steals. Yelich was the only player who appeared on all ten ballots. But he received just one first place vote, along with nine seconds, leaving him a bit short of Betts. While those two were the clear leaders, several others received strong consideration as well. Betts’ Red Sox teammate and Demigods outfielder J.D. Martinez hit .330 with 46 home runs. Martinez got a first place vote and earned 42 points to finish third. Right behind him was Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez, who proved his breakout ’17 season was no fluke. Ramirez actually looked like the favorite to win this award before struggling a bit down the stretch. He also received a first place vote and compiled 40 points. His Indians teammate rounded out the top five. Demigods shortstop Francisco Lindor had a pretty great five category performance as well, but was overshadowed a bit by the guys mentioned above. Lindor made a majority of the ballots (six) and totaled 14 points. Any of these five guys could have won this award with their numbers in a different season. Although he failed to make the top five for the second straight season, I think it is worth pointing out that Mavericks outfielder Mike Trout has now received MVP votes all seven years of his DTBL career. Even his worst seasons are elite.
Click here to view the full voting results.
And that’s a wrap on the baseball award season. Now it is time to start jumping into my offseason work. There will be plenty of enhancements, but I’ve learned not to make any promises on what I will actually accomplished. So stay tuned. Happy Thanksgiving!
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2018: Year of Mookie « DTBL News