{"id":1005,"date":"2016-09-05T10:13:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T17:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2016-11-21T11:05:02","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T18:05:02","slug":"kings-lead-widens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1005","title":{"rendered":"Kings Lead Widens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/589306636?et=12AGW1DzRu9lc_i2HYfgnw&#038;viewMoreLink=on&#038;sig=ToiI3_uS5ialpbAsmfO4r4HWEBF8wsobSWmyaw_UD5k=&#038;caption=true\" width=\"399\" height=\"269\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"display:inline-block;\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe Kings have been in first place for a majority of the season, but things were getting a little too close for comfort in early August as the Mavericks and Demigods were in hot pursuit. \u00a0They even briefly surrendered the top spot. \u00a0But in the last few weeks, they have built up a more comfortable lead once again. \u00a0As September hit, the lead was up to 9 \u00a01\/2 points, though that has dropped down to 6 1\/2 as of today. \u00a0The race is far from over, but the Kings are definitely in the driver&#8217;s seat.<\/p>\n<p>It has pretty much been a three team race since the All-Star break. \u00a0A month ago, the Demigods may have actually been the presumed favorite just because the Kings and Mavericks were fighting through some serious injury problems. \u00a0This is still a major problem for the Mavericks, who haven&#8217;t been able to field a full, healthy rotation since June. \u00a0The Kings injuries were mostly on the offensive side as they seemed to suffer a new ailment every day in late July. \u00a0But things have been patched up recently and they continue to field the league&#8217;s best offense.<\/p>\n<p>At first glance, the Kings simply don&#8217;t seem to have a championship caliber pitching staff. \u00a0But two of their long time aces have really stepped up of late: \u00a0Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. \u00a0Those two guys have led the Kings into the top half of the league in pitching points, which seemed like an unreachable goal as recently as a month ago. \u00a0The Kings are still dead last in ERA, yet are in the top three of every other pitching category, which is a little strange to say the least. \u00a0But this pitching resurgence has pushed the Kings back up to the 80 point mark in the standings. \u00a0If they can hold onto that, they should be able to finish off the improbable worst to first turnaround.<\/p>\n<p>This race is far from over though. \u00a0The Kings are extremely vulnerable in a whole bunch of categories, especially on the pitching side. \u00a0The Demigods are the closest competition at the moment. \u00a0All year, they have looked like the most balanced team, and as mentioned earlier, some might have considered them the favorite when the Kings and Mavericks were losing players left and right. \u00a0The Demigods have possibly been the healthiest team in the league. \u00a0But now they need to go on a run to get back into the race for their first championship.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the team most worth watching in the final month is the Mavericks. \u00a0In some ways, it is quite remarkable that they are still in this race despite losing basically their entire rotation for significant portions of the season. \u00a0But the band is going to start coming back together this week as Stephen Strasburg and Clayton Kershaw are expected to make their returns from the disabled list. \u00a0It shouldn&#8217;t take long for the Mavericks to gain points in pitching categories with those two back in the lineup.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the Choppers and Darkhorses aren&#8217;t completely eliminated yet, but will need to get hot in a hurry to get back in the race. \u00a0Four weeks to go. \u00a0Will the Kings become the DTBL&#8217;s first six time champion? \u00a0Here are the award winners for August\u00a02016.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 18 (8\/1 &#8211; 8\/7) &#8211; Brandon Phillips, Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 19 (8\/8 &#8211; 8\/14) &#8211; Charlie Blackmon,\u00a0Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 20 (8\/15 &#8211; 8\/21) &#8211; Kris Bryant,\u00a0Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 21 (8\/22 &#8211; 8\/28) &#8211;\u00a0Josh Donaldson, Jackalope<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 18 (8\/1 &#8211; 8\/7) &#8211; Kyle Hendricks,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 19 (8\/8 &#8211; 8\/14) &#8211; Rick Porcello,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\nWeek 20 (8\/15 &#8211; 8\/21) &#8211;\u00a0Ian Kennedy, Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 21 (8\/22 &#8211; 8\/28) &#8211;\u00a0David Price, Naturals<\/p>\n<p>It was a weirdly strong month for players on the non-contending teams. \u00a0Not one of the weekly awards went to a player on one of the top four teams. \u00a0The last place Cougars had three different hitters and a pitcher take home weekly honors. \u00a0This carried over to the monthly awards as well, which were won by teammates from a non-contender. \u00a0Here are the DTBL monthly award winners for August 2016:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Brian Dozier,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\n.302 AVG, 13 HR, 27 RBI, 27 R, 3 SB, 3.23 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kyle Hendricks,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\n1.28 ERA, 0.780 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 36 K, 3.36 PAR<\/p>\n<p>The month of August saw the Moonshiners creep up the standings a little bit, no longer in serious danger of finishing dead last for the first time in franchise history. \u00a0The August surge was largely due to the month&#8217;s top two players: \u00a0Brian Dozier and Kyle Hendricks. \u00a0Dozier is having a career year, already surpassing his previous season highs in home runs and RBI. \u00a0In August, he led the league in home runs with 13 and was near the top in RBI and runs, with 27 apiece. \u00a0The Moonshiners offense has been carried most of the season by their two second basemen, Dozier and Ian Kinsler. \u00a0A whole host of other hitters challenged for the monthly award, with Nolan Arenado as the closest competition.<\/p>\n<p>In an absolutely loaded rookie class, one player has gone largely overlooked, until now. \u00a0Kyle Hendricks has been the most surprising star of the Cubs magical season, making a run at Jake Arrieta for the title of ace of the staff. \u00a0He has unquestionably been the ace of the Moonshiners staff, a rotation containing former Cy Young winners Felix Hernandez, Zack Greinke and Dallas Keuchel. \u00a0Hendricks was the pretty clear winner of the August honor, but Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello had great months as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kings have been in first place for a majority of the season, but things were getting a little too close for comfort in early August as the Mavericks and Demigods were in hot pursuit. \u00a0They even briefly surrendered the top spot. \u00a0But in the last few weeks, they have built up a more comfortable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,12,9,3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-demigods","category-kings","category-mavericks","category-moonshiners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}