Naturals first baseman Miguel Cabrera
In the two decades this league has existed, we’ve had our fair share of exciting finishes to DTBL seasons, but nothing quite like this year. The final week of the 2012 season featured five teams within at least two points of first place at some point in the week. In fact, if you count incremental progress within each date, most of the five found themselves in first place at some point. For a brief moment on Wednesday night, it looked like we may have been headed to an absurd three way tie for the league championship. However, when the dust settled, only one team came out on top. Congratulations to Nick’s Naturals, the 2012 Dream Team Baseball League Champions!
As usual, I intend to write about the league champion with a full recap of how they earned the title. But that is going to have to wait until next week. Tonight, I want to focus on the absurdity of the title race, describe just how things went down on the final night, and describe just how close we were to the most unlikely result in any fantasy league I have ever been a part of.
As the summer progressed, it seemed quite likely that we were headed towards an exciting finish. At no point in the season had any team run away from the pack; at least not for more than a few days at a time. The lead constantly changed hands. Seven teams looked like legitimate title contenders. The Cougars and Choppers faded a bit in July and August, setting up a five team race to the finish. With exactly one week to go, here is how the top five looked:
- Moonshiners, 73.5 points
- Kings, 72.5 (-1)
- Naturals, 67 (-6.5)
- Jackalope, 66.5 (-7)
- Mavericks, 65 (-8.5)
It was fairly noteworthy that the top two teams had separated themselves from the others by more than five points, because that was rarely the case in September. But it was clear when analyzing the standings that more change was likely to come. There was also a great deal of uncertainty heading into the final transaction deadline. Would the teams who had already clinched MLB playoff spots rest their starters? Skip spots in the rotation? Or even completely shut down some guys? This was particularly troubling for teams worried about getting as many starts from their starting pitchers as possible. The Moonshiners appeared to be in very good shape, not only because they held the top spot, but they had most of their starting pitchers slated to start twice in the final week. Meanwhile, the Kings were dealing with several nagging injuries to their outfielders and uncertainty about Max Scherzer’s availability in the final week. The other three challengers were just trying to hang on.
Three days later, the Moonshiners lead grew to four points. The four challengers were all within a point of each other, but needed to make up ground quickly. By the next morning (Monday), the lead was down to 1 1/2 points and the sprint to the finish was on. On the second to last day of the season, the Moonshiners lost the lead completely as the Kings and Naturals moved into a tie for first entering the final day. The Moonshiners slipped to 1 1/2 points back. The Jackalope’s dream of a repeat seemed unlikely, 3 1/2 points behind. And finally, the Mavericks looked to be in big trouble, 5 1/2 points off the pace. But the Mavericks had one thing going for them that the other challengers did not: multiple starting pitchers scheduled to take the mound, including their ace, Clayton Kershaw. Actually, that’s not quite true. The Moonshiners were also supposed to get three starts on the final day of the season. However, the Brewers elected to scratch Yovani Gallardo and the Angels pulled Jered Weaver after just one inning. This essentially ended the Moonshiners hopes of gaining a point in strike outs and decreased their movement possibilities in ERA and WHIP.
I won’t rehash all of the events of the final day, as most of them can be found in my live blog from yesterday. But one part of the story must be repeated. During the 10 o’clock hour, I was frantically updating my spreadsheet with all of the stats from the completed 7 p.m. games as well as most of the stats from the last batch of games. At one point, I calculated a three way tie for first place. Had the season ended at that instant, the Kings, Mavericks and Naturals would have shared the title. But some later shifts in RBI and saves moved the Naturals back into the final position they claimed.
The three way tie scenario was actually a lot closer to happening than I realized last night. The WHIP category was the craziest to follow on the last day. Only three of the league’s ten teams ended the day where they started in that category. The margins between most of the teams were miniscule, but especially between the Gators and Naturals. When it was all said and done, the Naturals edged out the Gators for second place in WHIP by two ten-thousandths of a point. To put that in perspective, had any Naturals pitcher finished the season with one more base runner allowed via hit or walk, the Gators would have finished ahead of them and we would be talking about three co-champions. I bet I wouldn’t have to try very hard to find a questionable scoring decision somewhere over the course of the season where a Naturals pitcher benefited from an error rather than a hit. But that’s not to say the Naturals got lucky. In fact, they were well positioned to gain points in a whole host of other categories. They were one offensive hit away from passing the Kings in batting average, for example. I only illustrate this to show you just how ridiculously close this race was.
Of the ten categories, all but two of them saw points change hands during the final day. This is incredibly unusual at the six month mark of the season, especially in high value counting categories like RBI and runs. Based on what we saw yesterday, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that we would have had four or five different leaders if the season had extended a few more days, just as we saw the lead change hands several times over the final weeks. But the season has to end sometime, and the Naturals were fortunate enough to come out on top.
I’m sure all four of the teams who came up just short have been thinking about decisions they made that may have cost them a title. With the way things ended up, it wouldn’t be very hard to point to a single transaction each team made (or could have made, but didn’t), which would have shifted the standings in their favor. But such is life when a season ends as this one did. There is always next year for the rest of us!
What is it with the finishes in Naturals championship seasons? They earned their third DTBL title this year, and the two most recent ones have come in the two craziest finishes in league history. Of course, the other season I speak of was 2010 when they shared the title with the Darkhorses. It certainly makes their 3 1/2 point victory in 2005 look like a cakewalk.
Look for a full review of the Naturals championship season next week, as well as a glimpse at the other contenders who fell just short.