{"id":1069,"date":"2017-06-03T08:34:50","date_gmt":"2017-06-03T15:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2017-06-03T08:34:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-03T15:34:50","slug":"trout-injury-dampens-mood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1069","title":{"rendered":"Trout Injury Dampens Mood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/522497170?et=KUiPjwVkTVVioZmZvhpKgw&amp;tld=com&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=nlnnDQucHn2yPnZb-BFdgO75pMU3tVAXhz_D86mICgI=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"416\" height=\"277\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nYou never want to see any player lose significant time due to injury, but especially not the elite players who make the game so fun to watch. \u00a0So when Mike Trout hit the disabled list earlier this week with a torn ligament in his thumb that figures to sideline him for a couple months, the whole baseball world took a hit. \u00a0Obviously, there are ramifications in this league as well. \u00a0The Mavericks have held a small but consistent lead almost the entire season so far. \u00a0But that will be put to the test in a big way in the upcoming months. \u00a0Can a team that was already mediocre offensively tread water long enough until Trout returns?<\/p>\n<p>The list of teams that figure to benefit from this opportunity is long. \u00a0In fact, at the 1\/3 mark of the season schedule, all ten teams are legitimately still in the race. \u00a0Even before Trout went down, the Mavericks weren&#8217;t blowing away the competition. \u00a0And no team has completely tanked to this point either. \u00a0Due to an issue with my stats source, the stats haven&#8217;t been updated through Friday&#8217;s games yet, so I&#8217;m writing this looking at the numbers through Thursday. \u00a0At that time, the Mavs held a slim 1\/2 point lead on the Naturals and just a point ahead of the Moonshiners as well. \u00a0Meanwhile, even the last place Choppers were only 20.5 points behind. \u00a0Making up that much ground in four months is certainly doable.<\/p>\n<p>The month of May saw 1,060 home runs hit across MLB, the second highest single month total in history. \u00a0Yet, shockingly, the DTBL Batter of the Month went to a guy who hit one measly homer. \u00a0But first, here are the guys who won the weekly honors in May.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 5 (5\/1 &#8211; 5\/7) &#8211; Billy Hamilton, Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 6 (5\/8 &#8211; 5\/14) &#8211; Mookie Betts,\u00a0Kings<br \/>\nWeek 7 (5\/15 &#8211; 5\/21) &#8211; Corey Dickerson,\u00a0Gators<br \/>\nWeek 8 (5\/22 &#8211; 5\/28) &#8211; Charlie Blackmon,\u00a0Cougars<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 5 (5\/1 &#8211; 5\/7) &#8211; Chris Sale,\u00a0Choppers<br \/>\nWeek 6 (5\/8 &#8211; 5\/14) &#8211; Zack Greinke,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 7 (5\/15 &#8211; 5\/21) &#8211; Stephen Strasburg,\u00a0Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 8 (5\/22 &#8211; 5\/28) &#8211; Lance McCullers,\u00a0Kings<\/p>\n<p>No big surprises on the pitching list as some of the best pitchers in baseball were at the top of their games in May. \u00a0Even though pretty much all of the players listed above were strong contenders for Pitcher of the Month, the award went to someone else. \u00a0With the exception of Hamilton, the weekly award winners were certainly part of the huge power surge in May. \u00a0But as I hinted at earlier, it wasn&#8217;t a gaudy home run total that clinched the Batter of the Month honor. \u00a0Here are the players of the month for May 2017:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Billy Hamilton, Mavericks<br \/>\n.288 AVG, 1 HR, 14 RBI, 27 R, 18 SB, 3.10 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Max Scherzer, Kings<br \/>\n2.27 ERA, 0.824 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 60 K, 3.19 PAR<\/p>\n<p>Safe to say Hamilton had the green light in May. \u00a0He stole 18 bases, which was six more than any other player. \u00a0He currently leads the league in steals with 28, which is twice the total of the next highest player! \u00a0He is on pace to blow past the DTBL single season stolen base record which is held by Jose Reyes who stole 78 bags in 2007. \u00a0Nobody has reached the 60 plateau since 2011, which Hamilton seems close to a lock to achieve, barring injury. \u00a0The rest of the offensive numbers were solid in May for Hamilton too. \u00a0It will be important for him to keep up the respectable hitting numbers while keeping the Mavericks offense afloat without Trout. \u00a0The race for this award wasn&#8217;t as close as you might have thought, but the runner-up was Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.<\/p>\n<p>I had to do a double-take when I saw Scherzer atop the May pitching PAR leaderboard. \u00a0He had a couple very poor outings in the month, by his standards, including a game I saw in person in Atlanta in which his velocity was down and his command was off. \u00a0Yet he rebounded in a big way, striking out 24 batters in his final two starts of the month, one which was a complete game and another that was one out shy of that. \u00a0In total, he led the league with 60 strikeouts in the month. \u00a0He just barely won this award, edging out Kings teammate Lance McCullers and the Darkhorses&#8217; Carlos Martinez. \u00a0This is the second time in three years that Scherzer has won this award in the month of May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You never want to see any player lose significant time due to injury, but especially not the elite players who make the game so fun to watch. \u00a0So when Mike Trout hit the disabled list earlier this week with a torn ligament in his thumb that figures to sideline him for a couple months, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-kings","category-mavericks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","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=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1072,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions\/1072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}