Naturals pitcher David Price
A year ago, the Naturals had a mediocre pitching staff and wound up finishing 10 1/2 points behind the champions. This year, that staff suddenly turned into one of the league’s best and the Naturals won their third DTBL Championship. They had a roster full of pitchers who had great seasons, but one player clearly led the way: David Price. In a result that turned out to be almost identical to the AL Cy Young race, Price just barely edged out Justin Verlander to win the 2012 DTBL Cy Young award.
In his young career, Price has established himself as one of the most dominating pitchers in the game. Few can match his raw stuff, especially from the left side. He has been able to produce stellar numbers despite pitching in the grueling AL East. 2012 was his best season yet though. He finished just a hair behind Clayton Kerhaw with the league’s second best ERA at 2.56. He was second in wins as well, reaching the 20 win mark for the first time in his career. His 1.10 WHIP was the fourth lowest in the league and he struck out 205. The wins, ERA and WHIP numbers were career bests.
A second round pick of the Naturals in 2009, Price has had four quality seasons with the club in a stretch where they have never finished lower than third place. He has now been a member of two DTBL Championship teams: 2010 and 2012, which also happened to be his personal best seasons to date. Currently 27 years old, I’m sure he has quite a few more good years in him. Along with Zack Greinke and Matt Cain, the Naturals don’t expect to have any trouble remaining near the top of the points table in the near future, particularly on the pitching side.
As mentioned up top, this was an incredibly close vote. Verlander just barely missed winning his second straight Cy Young award. The Kings ace led the league in strike outs and had nearly identical ERA and WHIP numbers to Price (slight edge to Price in ERA and Verlander in WHIP). What probably made the difference though was the three extra wins for Price. Verlander finished with 17 victories. Price received five of the ten first place votes, compared to three for Verlander. However, Verlander almost made up for that difference with his five second place votes to just one for Price. Neither were placed lower than third on any ballot though. In the end, Price eked out the prize with 77 points, two ahead of Verlander.
Those weren’t the only two players who received serious consideration for this award. Another lefty, Clayton Kershaw of the Mavericks also received a pair of first place votes. Kershaw led the league in ERA and WHIP and was second in strike outs. But his downfall was just 14 wins. While baseball people are willing to overlook low win totals in these days of advanced statistics, they can’t really be ignored in fantasy baseball since that category counts just as much as any other. Kershaw was completely left off three ballots, but racked up 35 points to finish third in the vote. Meanwhile, the Cougars Gio Gonzalez rode his league leading 21 wins to 30 points and a fourth place finish. Rounding out the top five is Craig Kimbrel who earned 23 points as the highest finishing relief pitcher. The Choppers closer had one of the most dominating seasons you will ever see from a relief pitcher, but had little chance of winning this award with so many strong starters in the field. Not included in this top five are several other pitchers who had incredible seasons: Matt Cain, Johnny Cueto and R.A. Dickey, to name a few. In the case of Dickey, the NL Cy Young winner probably would have had a good shot at this award in the DTBL too had he been on a roster at the beginning of the season. Cain will console himself with his MLB and DTBL championship rings.
Click here to view the full details of the incredibly close vote. Had any of the ten voters moved Verlander up a spot, or pushed Price down a level, we would have had a different winner.
Check back on Friday evening when the Trout/Cabrera MVP debate will be settled once and for all…. or will Ryan Braun crash the party?