Jackalope outfielder Ryan Braun
Two bold moves in March may have changed the course of history for one franchise. Over the past several seasons, Jay’s Jackalope have had the league’s best starting pitching staff. If you put together a list of the top ten starting pitchers over the past three years, the list would probably contain all five primary starters from the ’09-’10 Jackalope. However, a below-average offense kept them from being a serious championship contender in those seasons. So the Jackalope decided to do something about that. Two premier starting pitchers were traded away for one of the game’s biggest sluggers and a coveted draft pick which turned into another young slugger. These two moves, along with a couple other sly draft picks, directly led to a near perfect season. Jay’s Jackalope are the 2011 Dream Team Baseball League Champions.
Entering the 2011 season, the Jackalope were the longest tenured DTBL franchise without a championship. They entered the league as an expansion team in 1998 and had some immediate success, finishing a very respectable sixth. Since then, no franchise has had more ups and downs than this one. In 2002, they finished in second place, but fell all the way to ninth the following season and tenth the year after that. They made it back up to second again in 2006, but plummeted to last place again the next year. It has been a steady climb to the top since then. Last season, they finished in third place, but were just three points behind the co-champions. In retrospect, the disaster of ’07 may have been the turning point for the franchise. It allowed them to draft Ryan Braun with the first pick of the 2008 draft, giving them a second legitimate star on offense to compliment Albert Pujols. Hunter Pence was their second pick in ’08 too, a draft which, by the way, Jay did not take part in due to an overseas deployment. So a little bit of credit is also due to my friend Jeff who filled in for Jay in both the ’08 and ’10 drafts.
While it was that 2008 draft which got things moving in the right direction, it was the two moves made this past March that turned the Jackalope into champions. In the middle of the first round of the 2011 DTBL Draft, the Jackalope made two enormous trades within minutes of each other. First, they dealt stud starting pitcher, and eventual Cy Young candidate, Jered Weaver and a fifth round pick to the Moonshiners for the sixth overall pick in the draft. This trade came to be when a young slugging outfielder named Mike Stanton happened to slip through the first five picks of the draft. The Jackalope immediately used the acquired pick to grab Stanton, giving them a much needed power boost. But they were hardly done improving their team in that area. They traded another one of their elite pitchers, Zack Greinke, to the Naturals for a proven power source in first baseman Ryan Howard. These two trades should go down as two of the best win/win trades this league has ever seen, but I’ll get to that some more when I review the Moonshiners and Naturals seasons. These three teams all managed to improve themselves, and the result was a top three finish for each.
With two newly created holes in the rotation, the Jackalope had little concern because the staff still figured to be as good as any in the league considering Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez were still around. But someone had to fill those two open slots, and boy did the Jackalope hit home runs with those selections. They picked three starting pitchers in the draft, and all three wound up being major contributors. Steady Shaun Marcum was the third round selection and stuck with the Jackalope rotation all season. Then they picked Jhoulys Chacin in the sixth round. Chacin proceeded to have an All-Star caliber first half. But the biggest steal of the 2011 DTBL Draft came when the Jackalope selected Ian Kennedy in the eleventh round. This NL Cy Young candidate won 21 games, but amazingly, the Jackalope had nowhere to put him for the first half of the season, so only 11 of those wins were recorded to his Jackalope stat line.
Despite trading away Weaver and Greinke, the Jackalope somehow wound up with a better rotation in 2011 than the incredible crew from 2010. They set a new DTBL record with a team total of 49 pitching points. They finished in first place in every pitching category except wins, which they probably would have won as well had the Kings not been working with an extra starting pitcher in a RP slot. So obviously it wasn’t just the starting pitching that was good. The bullpen led the league in saves, thanks mostly to John Axford and Heath Bell. Even Ryan Madson (10th round pick) added an unexpected 32 saves. Axford’s 46 saves were the second most in the league. It is hard to pick the best starting pitcher for the Jackalope since they were all so good. Halladay was second in the league in ERA at 2.35, and won 19 games (3rd in league). Lee was right behind Halladay in ERA (2.40), but had more strike outs (238, 3rd in league).
It didn’t take much of an offense to ride along with that pitching staff for a title run, and honestly the Jackalope offense wasn’t spectacular. They finished with 32 batting points, good for fourth in the league. But that was a big step up from the past few years and was the Jackalope’s highest total since ’08. The key to winning the title was to have a respectable offense, instead of one of the league’s worst like they were in ’09 and ’10. They finished in the middle of the pack in every offensive category except stolen bases, which they finished on top. As usual, the Jackalope offense was led by Pujols, but it was actually a bit of a down year by his standards. He failed to drive in 100 for the first time in his career (98 DTBL RBIs). He hit .300 with a team high 37 home runs, despite missing time with a broken wrist. Actually, the offense was really led by Braun who had a MVP caliber season. Braun hit .332 and made it to the 30/30 club with 33 home runs and stolen bases. He drove in 111 and scored 109 times. In addition to those two, the two players acquired via the March trades (Stanton and Howard) hit 30+ home runs as well (33 for Howard, 34 for Stanton). Meanwhile, the Jackalope’s other first round pick, outfielder Michael Bourn, paid dividends too, leading the league with 61 stolen bases. Basically, every draft pick the Jackalope made this year turned to gold.
It was pretty smooth sailing for the Jackalope. After the usual April/May fluctuation of the standings, the Jackalope had a firm grasp on first place by Memorial Day and never gave it up. The Naturals made a nice run in August, at one time closing the gap to 1/2 point. But the Jackalope remained steady in September while the Naturals went on a bit of a slide. The Jackalope finished the season with 81 points and a 10 1/2 point margin of victory. It was the largest margin of victory since 2008, and quite a contrast from 2010 when the top four teams finished within five points of each other. There were a lot of tight races further down the standings, but I will get to that in my next article.
As mentioned, this was the first DTBL championship for the Jackalope, leaving the Moonshiners and Demigods as the only active franchises without a title. It ended an amazing four year title run for the Darkhorses, who remain tied with the Kings for the most championships.
This was part one of what will be a three part review of the 2011 season. In part two, which will hopefully come later this weekend, I will recap the season for the other nine franchises, covering what went right and what went wrong for each. Finally, next week, I will delve into the numbers to show what a truly remarkable, and record breaking, season this was. All year, I have been writing about what a pitching dominated season this has been. But I want to gather some numbers to prove it. Here is a bit of a preview.
Congratulations, Jay!