Welcome to a new monthly feature: the naming of a Batter and Pitcher of the Month. For some quick clarification, this is not the same thing as Mike’s monthly DTBL Awards outlook, which he has generously volunteered to do again this year. Those articles focus on cumulative performances of players throughout the season on the leading candidates for the three post-season awards. Look for his post-April review in the next couple days. Instead, this new feature is based solely on the stats accumulated in the month being reviewed. The Batter and Pitcher of the Month will be objectively selected as the players who accumulated the highest PAR for the month. I’m not going to write much about the award winners, especially this month, since Mike will probably cover the same guys in his article.
In the near future, I’ll be posting a new page on the site which will list all of the yearly, monthly and weekly award winners. These honors will also eventually show up on the player pages. Behind the scenes, I’ve already been capturing Batter/Pitcher of the Week winners each week. Again, these winners are the players who accumulate the highest PAR during the week. Basically, they are the players who show up on the main page under “Week’s Best” after the Monday morning update. I’m not going to take the time to write articles for the weekly awards, but plan to do so for the monthly winners. FYI, here are the players who have won the Batter and Pitcher of the Week so far this year:
Batters of the Week:
Week 1 – Adrian Gonzalez, Darkhorses
Week 2 – Nelson Cruz, Gators
Week 3 – Mark Teixeira, Cougars
Pitchers of the Week:
Week 1 – Sonny Gray, Jackalope
Week 2 – Jacob deGrom, Darkhorses
Week 3 – Jake Arrieta, Jackalope
Interesting enough, none of those players were the winners of the monthly awards. Here are the award winners for April 2015.
Batter of the Month:
Paul Goldschmidt, Jackalope
.338 AVG, 5 HR, 20 RBI, 18 R, 5 SB, 1.65 PAR
Pitcher of the Month:
Felix Hernandez, Moonshiners
1.82 ERA, 0.808 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 36 K, 2.89 PAR
It was a very tight race among the hitters. Goldschmidt barely edged out Adrian Gonzalez, Nelson Cruz and Jose Altuve. His combination of power and speed (5 HR, 5 SB) proved to be the difference. There were a whole bunch of pitchers who had great Aprils. Chris Archer was right there with Hernandez, with Gerrit Cole and Johnny Cueto not far behind.