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Kings third baseman Ryan Zimmerman and shortstop Ian Desmond

For the third time in four years, the league championship was determined by one point or fewer.  Despite a second half fade which saw a double digit lead evaporate, the Kings held on for dear life and edged out the Mavericks by a single point.  Kevin’s Kings are the 2013 Dream Team Baseball League champions.

With their fifth championship, the Kings can now claim more titles than any other franchise.  But this one was a long time coming.  After winning four straight titles from 2000 through 2003, the Kings have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride, bottoming out in last place in 2009.  But in the years since then, they have built a solid foundation which eventually led to this title.  A year ago, they came up just short, missing the title by the same one point margin that they won by this year.  But in the year of the tenth anniversary of their last title, the Kings are champions once again.

For a good portion of the season, it appeared the Kings might win the league running away.  They held a double digit point lead for a good portion of the summer.  Their starting pitching was awesome in the first half, and the offense was even better.  The Kings had a league high eight players on the All-Star team (two more than any other team).  But their fortunes changed significantly in late July, and especially August.  Part of this was due to the finger injury suffered by their best all around player, Carlos Gonzalez.  Gonzalez suffered the injury in early July and wound up missing a majority of the second half of the season.  The Kings actually coughed up their lead to the Mavericks for a couple days in the last week of August.  But fortunately for them, they caught a hot streak in early September to regain positive momentum.  However, in the final week or so, they started coughing up points with their struggling pitching staff and had to hold on for the one point victory.  Had the season been another week longer, this might be a completely different article.

The Kings offense was the primary reason why they won the league.  They led the way with 43.5 batting points, which was 9.5 more than any other team earned.  They were a well rounded offensive squad, finishing in the top three in the league in all five categories.  In addition to Gonzalez’s first half contributions, the other top offensive performers were all Kings veterans:  Robinson Cano, Jay Bruce, Carlos Beltran, Ian Desmond and Ryan Zimmerman.  Zimmerman’s contributions were especially important because his September surge carried an otherwise lackluster offense.  But the other mentioned players were solid all year.  The Kings also had a very impressive catching duo of Wilin Rosario and Jonathan LuCroy, giving them an edge on pretty much every other team at that position.  It was truly a team effort because not one Kings player came near the league lead in any offensive category.  Bruce (109 RBI) was the only player to finish in the top five of a category.

Even though the offense was better than the pitching, the improvement of the Kings pitching staff was a major reason why they won the league.  Their offense was nearly identical to 2012, but the pitchers improved by nine points, finishing third in the league with 34.5 points.  The rotation was led by the Tigers trio of Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez.  Verlander has been the Kings ace for several years, but this year he was a distant third behind his two Tigers teammates.  Scherzer is their top Cy Young candidate, leading the league with 21 wins, third in WHIP (0.97) and second in strike outs (240).  He was probably the best non-Mavericks pitcher in the league.  But Sanchez actually led the staff in ERA (2.59).  To complement those three, the Kings made a key mid-season signing with Ricky Nolasco just before he was traded to the Dodgers.  Nolasco chipped in seven key wins as the rest of the staff was struggling.  Jake Peavy was his usual solid self in the rotation too.  The bullpen turned into a bit of a disaster, finishing ninth in saves due to injuries to former closer J.J. Putz and mid-season saves leader Jason Grilli.  Fortunately for them, the leaky pen didn’t come back to haunt them.

It is interesting to examine how this team was built.  Usually, championship squads are able to win largely because of some great draft picks they made prior to the season.  But that simply wasn’t the case for this Kings team.  In fact, they had a rather poor draft in March.  They made a historically bad trade in dealing their first round pick to the Mavericks for Ike Davis, who was a horrific bust.  The Mavericks used that pick to select Manny Machado.  If the Mavericks had won the league over the Kings, that trade would have gone down in infamy for the Kings.  Although they did acquire some nice role players in the draft, almost all of their key contributors were the 16 players who they retained from a year ago.  This speaks to the depth the team has built in recent years.  In fact, they used two of their draft picks to reacquire players who didn’t quite make that 16 player cut in the winter (Jonathan LuCroy and Michael Morse).  The solid core of players the Kings have assembled finally paid off with a title.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll review the 2013 season for the other nine teams.  If this government shutdown lasts a while, I may finish them all this week!  I’m looking forward to the MLB playoffs, featuring a whole bunch of small-market, low payroll teams.  It should be fun to watch.  Thanks to everyone for another very fun year.  21 seasons in the book!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 1st, 2013 at 8:45 am and is filed under Kings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.