{"id":1164,"date":"2018-06-17T19:38:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T02:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2018-06-17T19:38:06","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T02:38:06","slug":"pair-of-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1164","title":{"rendered":"Pair of Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id='v2gI4FO4Q0lX6svSQnsbpQ' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/961776166' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'v2gI4FO4Q0lX6svSQnsbpQ',sig:'1SjHUrIlYSKBqLX7_C05IP-sAvBL42xtk97hwUvxJAY=',w:'594px',h:'414px',items:'961776166',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><br \/>\nJune is more than half over, so I suppose I should probably get around to announcing the DTBL May award winners.\u00a0 Sorry for the ridiculous tardiness of this article.\u00a0 There are a couple of reasons for the delay though.\u00a0 First, I forgot to run my script to capture the monthly stats on the first of the month, so I had to come up with a slightly different way of computing the numbers for May.\u00a0 But that didn&#8217;t take too long to do.\u00a0 The main reason for the delay is because I&#8217;ve spent most of the past couple weeks watching and celebrating the Washington Capitals Stanley Cup championship.\u00a0 As you may know, we don&#8217;t get an opportunity to celebrate sports championships very often here in the nation&#8217;s capital.\u00a0 The Caps victory came at the expense of the Vegas Golden Knights, so I became accustomed to reading article headlines that were plays on gambling terms.\u00a0 So, why not one more here?<\/p>\n<p>Not a whole lot has changed since last month&#8217;s article.\u00a0 The Kings are sill in control at the top of the standings.\u00a0 However, things started to look a little dicey for them a few weeks ago when a whole bunch of their outfielders got hurt at the same time.\u00a0 They seem to have weathered that storm though, as they still hold a comfortable lead.\u00a0 The Darkhorses and Demigods have been putting together solid seasons as well and currently sit in second and third places.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Mavericks have been absolutely decimated by pitching injuries, turning what has been their strength for many years into a considerable weakness.\u00a0 They currently have the fewest pitching points in the league.<\/p>\n<p>The Kings have been chugging along thanks to spectacular numbers from some of their biggest stars.\u00a0 In April, Kings ace Max Scherzer won Pitcher of the Month honors and still leads the league in pitching PAR well into the season&#8217;s third month.\u00a0 But it is a teammate of his who was the league&#8217;s best pitcher in May.\u00a0 And another teammate topped the May batting PAR leaderboard.\u00a0 But before we get to that, here were the weekly award winners in May.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 6 (4\/30 &#8211; 5\/6) &#8211; Eddie Rosario, Komodos<br \/>\nWeek 7 (5\/7 &#8211; 5\/13) &#8211; Scooter Gennett, Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 8 (5\/14 &#8211; 5\/20) &#8211; Brandon Belt, Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 9 (5\/21 &#8211; 5\/27) &#8211; Jose Altuve, Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 10 (5\/28 &#8211; 6\/3) &#8211; Edwin Encarnacion, Darkhorses<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 6 (4\/30 &#8211; 5\/6) &#8211; Gerrit Cole, Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 7 (5\/7 &#8211; 5\/13) &#8211; Dallas Keuchel, Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 8 (5\/14 &#8211; 5\/20) &#8211; Lance McCullers, Kings<br \/>\nWeek 9 (5\/21 &#8211; 5\/27) &#8211; J.A. Happ, Komodos<br \/>\nWeek 10 (5\/28 &#8211; 6\/3) &#8211; Michael Wacha, Kings<\/p>\n<p>Well, that list of pitchers is pretty interesting for a couple reasons.\u00a0 First, if you couldn&#8217;t tell, May was a pretty good month for Astros pitchers.\u00a0 Three of them won weekly honors (Cole, Keuchel, McCullers), yet their pitcher who had the best month is not one of those three!\u00a0 Secondly, if you couldn&#8217;t tell, May was a pretty good month for Kings pitchers.\u00a0 Two of them won weekly honors (McCullers, Wacha), yet their pitcher who had the best month is not one of those two!\u00a0 Yes, I&#8217;m talking about the same pitcher in both cases.\u00a0 Here are the DTBL monthly award winners for May 2018.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mookie Betts, Kings<br \/>\n.372 AVG, 9 HR, 19 RBI, 23 R, 10 SB, 3.65 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Justin Verlander, Kings<br \/>\n0.86 ERA, 0.696 WHIP, 3 W, 0 SV, 50 K, 3.67 PAR<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/tiny\/JoKpz\">Using Baseball-Reference&#8217;s Play Index<\/a>, I was only able to find two other monthly stat totals in DTBL history that were comparable to Betts&#8217; five category stat line:\u00a0 Mike Trout in July of 2012 and Ryan Klesko in May of 2001.\u00a0 Had I tightened my search criteria to Betts&#8217; exact stat line, he would have been the only result.\u00a0 So Mookie had one of the best five category months in league history.\u00a0 Unfortunately for him, he suffered an injury to his side at the beginning of June which shelved him for a bit, but he is back at it now and trails only Mike Trout in batting PAR for the season.\u00a0 It is still relatively early, but right now, it looks like a two person race between those two for MVP honors.\u00a0 A pair of Indians were Betts&#8217; closest competition for this monthly award, however.\u00a0 Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez and Demigods shortstop Francisco Lindor also had great months of May.<\/p>\n<p>Verlander saw a bunch of Astros and Kings teammates win weekly honors in May, but he was clearly the league&#8217;s best pitcher in the month.\u00a0 The modest win total (3) was all that kept him from blowing away everyone else for this award.\u00a0 The Naturals&#8217; James Paxton and the Kings&#8217; Max Scherzer were in striking distance.\u00a0 Scherzer and Verlander sit first and second in the league in pitching PAR, which goes a long way towards explaining why the Kings are crushing the rest of the league in pitching points.\u00a0 They currently have at least a share of the lead in all five pitching categories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images June is more than half over, so I suppose I should probably get around to announcing the DTBL May award winners.\u00a0 Sorry for the ridiculous tardiness of this article.\u00a0 There are a couple of reasons for the delay though.\u00a0 First, I forgot to run my script to capture the monthly stats [&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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","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=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}