With the Jackalope running away with the title, that left nine other teams who weren’t particularly close to earning the big prize. In fact, only one other team finished the year closer to first place than last place, in terms of points. The Mavericks finished in second place, 19 points behind the Jackalope. Meanwhile, the Darkhorses came in third, but were considerably closer to the last place Kings than the Jackalope. The other seven teams weren’t even in the same area code. We’ll start the season recap of the non-championship teams by focusing on the Mavericks and Darkhorses, the only other teams who weren’t in danger of finishing dead last in the closing days of the season.
The Mavericks entered the season as the favorites, mostly on the strength of their insanely talented pitching staff. Not surprisingly, they did indeed lead the league in pitching points. They set a league record for team strikeouts, becoming the first staff to exceed 1,400 whiffs (1,415). They also led the league in WHIP (1.08) and had a sub-3.00 ERA (2.98), only the 8th team in league history to do that. So they basically met all pitching expectations. Unfortunately for them, the Jackalope were almost as good, finishing with just three fewer pitching points. That separation wasn’t nearly enough to cover for a Mavericks offense which wound up being a disappointment.
Despite starting the season a little slow, by his standards, Clayton Kershaw wound up having another amazing season. He became the first DTBL pitcher to record 300+ strikeouts since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling way back in 2002. He was actually the only member of the Mavericks’ staff to finish in the top 10 in K’s, which is pretty hard to believe for a record breaking team. Kershaw didn’t do it all by himself though. Matt Harvey’s return from Tommy John surgery was a huge success. Stephen Strasburg and Carlos Martinez were very good too, when healthy. But the main reason for the Mavericks’ lofty strikeout total was their bullpen. Dellin Betances, Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller all recorded 95+ K’s, which is quite an achievement for one reliever on a team, much less three.
The Mavericks did not get the offensive output they needed to be a true contender this year. Mike Trout was his usual MVP caliber self. Manny Machado and Lorenzo Cain had a huge breakout years. But that is pretty much the extent of Mavericks hitters who exceeded expectations. Five of their regular players recorded negative PARs. They just weren’t deep enough offensively to seriously threaten the Jackalope. Second place is still a very solid finish though. This is the third time the Mavericks have been the runners-up in the past four seasons. And their roster is still extremely young and talented, so it seems they will continue to compete for the championship in upcoming years.
If there is one team besides the Jackalope who should be very happy with their 2015 season, it would be the Darkhorses. After finishing in the bottom half of the league for four straight years, they vaulted all the way to a third place finish this year. No, they weren’t particularly close to winning the league. But they clearly had a better season than all of the teams below them and appear to be headed in the right direction. In terms of the 2015 results, they were sort of the reverse of the Mavericks. They had one of the league’s best offenses but didn’t have enough pitching to contend.
The Darkhorses accumulated 40 batting points, trailing only the Jackalope and nine points clear of all other teams. They led the league in batting average and finished in the top three in home runs, RBI and runs. Bryce Harper emerged as quite possibly the best player in the league, finishing in top three in average, home runs and runs. Edwin Encarnacion, Todd Frazier and Xander Bogaerts were solid contributors too. George Spring justified the Darkhorses’ selection of him with the third overall pick having a very good DTBL rookie year despite missing significant time due to injury.
The Darhorses’ second round pick was pretty good too. Jacob deGrom immediately became the staff ace and joined the ranks of the top pitchers in the league. But besides him, they didn’t get truly great numbers out of any other pitchers. Lance Lynn and James Shields had decent years. Julio Teheran was a disappointment and Michael Pineda couldn’t stay healthy. The bullpen was a two man show with Brad Boxberger and Luke Gregerson racking up saves, but with little to no support from the rest of the pen. Again, a very good year for the Darkhorses, but they were a couple pitchers away from being a serious title contender.
Despite falling well short of the top, there were plenty of positives for the Mavericks and Darkhorses. The other seven teams were kind of a mess, so I’ll review all of them at the same time in my final season recap article next week.