Moonshiners pitcher Jered Weaver
My timing isn’t very good with this post as Jered Weaver picked up his first loss of the season tonight. However, this doesn’t change the fact that he had a truly remarkable April and is the primary reason why the Moonshiners find themselves in first place one month into the 2011 season.
Weaver finished the month with a perfect 6-0 record, winning all six of his starts. He compiled a 0.99 ERA, 0.788 WHIP and 49 strike outs, all very impressive numbers. Shockingly, none of these marks were good enough to lead the league, except wins, but I’ll get to that in a bit. His six wins are two more than any other pitcher has accumulated though.
The Moonshiners acquired Weaver from the Jackalope during the first round of the draft in exchange for their first round pick. As we all knew at the time, Weaver was exactly what the Moonshiners needed: a true ace. However, I don’t think anyone expected him to come out of the gates quite this strong. He has helped lead the Moonshiners to a top two ranking in every pitching category except saves (4th). Combined with the league’s best offense to date, the Moonshiners find themselves 13 points ahead of the pack with a very impressive 87 points.
Trading Weaver hasn’t really killed the Jackalope as you much as you might think though. They still have arguably three of the top five pitchers in the league and are right behind the Moonshiners in total pitching points. If their offense, specifically Albert Pujols, picks it up a bit, the second place Jackalope will be right on the Moonshiners’ heals. Ryan Braun has carried their offense so far, with a league leading ten home runs and a .356 batting average. Braun would probably get my vote for Offensive Player of the Month. One other candidate for that title would be Darkhorses outfielder Andre Ethier. Just a couple minutes ago, he recorded a RBI single to extend his hitting streak to 28 games. Going into tonight, he led the league with a .378 average, just a few points ahead of his Dodger teammate Matt Kemp.
Weaver wasn’t the only pitcher who compiled ridiculous statistics in April. Amazingly, Gators pitcher Josh Johnson has him beat in both ERA and WHIP. Johnson has a 0.88 ERA and 0.707 WHIP. Some bad luck has kept his win total at just three though. Johnson has carried the Gators to the third most pitching points in the league, however a putrid offense has kept them near the bottom of the league standings. The third pitcher who deserves special mention is Weaver’s Moonshiners and Angels teammate Dan Haren. Haren has a 1.23 ERA and a 0.750 WHIP with four wins. At one point, Weaver and Haren combined for eight wins in eight starts.
There is one other big news item tonight. Mariano Rivera became the DTBL’s all-time saves leader with the save he picked up against the Tigers this evening. This is deserving of a separate blog post though, so I will go into more detail about Rivera later this week.