{"id":1183,"date":"2018-08-06T20:36:39","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T03:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2018-08-06T20:45:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T03:45:59","slug":"four-dtbl-legends-enshrined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1183","title":{"rendered":"Four DTBL Legends Enshrined"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"U7QcJyoYSwRLuTEtlN_Fvg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1008561820\" target=\"_blank\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\nwindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'U7QcJyoYSwRLuTEtlN_Fvg',sig:'5Vl7mbwf2f_Q98GusnVRdVcFf9Zv0SVBWu7gCWsfxwQ=',w:'594px',h:'312px',items:'1008561820',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nOne of the cool things about the longevity of this league is that now most of the newly inducted members in the Baseball Hall of Fame are players who accumulated most of their Hall of Fame credentials as members of DTBL teams.\u00a0 This has been the case for a while, but some year&#8217;s classes carry more significance to this league than others.\u00a0 The 2018 class featured four of the best players in our league&#8217;s history:\u00a0 Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome.\u00a0 Also inducted were Alan Trammell and Jack Morris.\u00a0 Trammell played until 1996, but was never on a DTBL major league roster.\u00a0 Morris had a brief, unimpressive stint with the Gators in the league&#8217;s inaugural season.\u00a0 But here is a synopsis of the DTBL careers of the big four who were inducted in Cooperstown the last week of July.<\/p>\n<p>Vladimir Guerrero was originally drafted by the expansion Angels in 1998 and was a member of that team for their only season of existence.\u00a0 He then returned to the draft pool the following year and somehow fell all the way to the Choppers with the 8th pick of the 1999 draft.\u00a0 Needless to say, that pick worked out pretty well for them.\u00a0 He spent the remaining 13 seasons of his DTBL career with the Choppers, winning a\u00a0championship in his first season with them\u00a0(1999).\u00a0 Guerrero ranks sixth in DTBL history with a .319 average and is in the top 10 in RBI as well (1,415).\u00a0 His name is littered all over the Choppers franchise leaderboard:\u00a0 second in average (.319), RBI (1,306) and runs (1,130), third in home runs (390) and sixth in stolen bases (165).\u00a0 Not everyone recalls his base stealing prowess.\u00a0 There are 16 DTBL players with 400 home runs (Adrian Beltre just recently joined this group).\u00a0 Of those 16 guys, only Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield have more than Guerrero&#8217;s 176 career steals.\u00a0 Vlad was as consistent of a hitter as the league has ever seen.\u00a0 In his first nine seasons, he hit over .300 with 30+ homers and 100+ RBI in all but one year (2003).\u00a0 In seasons in which he qualified for the batting title (400 at bats) his *worst* batting average was .300 in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>In the history of baseball, only one pitcher has recorded more saves than Trevor Hoffman (Mariano Rivera).\u00a0 The same is true of DTBL history.\u00a0 His 560 saves is 136 more than any pitcher not named Rivera, so he figures to hold onto the second spot for quite some time to come.\u00a0 Unlike the other three players covered here, Hoffman doesn&#8217;t have an obvious choice of team cap to wear on his fictional DTBL Hall of Fame plaque.\u00a0 He spent time with six different franchises.\u00a0 His longest tenures were five seasons with two different teams:\u00a0 Panthers (1997-2001) and Moonshiners (2004-2008).\u00a0 He started his career with the Kings (1995-1997), spent two stints with the Darkhorses (2002-2003, 2009) and split his final season (2010) with the Mavericks and Naturals.\u00a0 He is the Moonshiners franchise leader in saves (202) and ranks third on the Panthers list (191).\u00a0 Hoffman recorded at least 30 saves every year from 1995 through 2008, except for an injury marred 2003.\u00a0 In addition to the gaudy save totals, he also struck out 948 batters, which ranks fourth among pitchers who spent their entire careers in the bullpen.\u00a0 His 2.78 career ERA ranks fourth among all pitchers.\u00a0 He was a member of two DTBL championship winning teams, near the end of his career:\u00a0 the 2009 Darkhorses and 2010 Naturals.<\/p>\n<p>Chipper Jones was a slugging third baseman in an era when that wasn&#8217;t really a thing.\u00a0 It is basically him and Adrian Beltre at the top of all of the DTBL third baseman hitting rankings.\u00a0 Most of his best seasons were spent as a member of the Jackalope.\u00a0 He started his career with the Tidal Wave and was with them for both of their years of existence.\u00a0 Then he joined another expansion team, the Jackalope, as their first pick in 1998.\u00a0 He was released by the Jackalope after a decent 2006 season and added a couple more solid years with the Darkhorses in 2007 through 2009.\u00a0 His final three seasons saw him bounce from the Cougars to the Mavericks and then back to the Darkhorses.\u00a0 It was the Jackalope years that really made him a Hall of Fame player though.\u00a0 With them, he hit .310 with 276 home runs, 874 RBI and 868 runs, all four\u00a0totals\u00a0rank in the top four of Jackalope history.\u00a0 His career numbers also put him in elite company:\u00a0 .308, 411 HR, 1,422 RBI, 1,414 runs.\u00a0 The only other members of the .300\/400\/1,400\/1,400 club are Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and Albert Pujols.\u00a0 While Jones&#8217; best seasons were with the Jackalope, his championship winning years came with the Darkhorses.\u00a0 He was a member of the Darkhorses for the first three of their four consecutive titles (2007-2009).\u00a0 He was a teammate of Hoffman&#8217;s on that 2009 squad.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have Jim Thome, one of the most feared sluggers of the past quarter century.\u00a0 Thome ranks fourth on the DTBL career list in home runs (546) and fifth in runs batted in (1,492).\u00a0 No current member of the Baseball Hall of Fame has accumulated more DTBL home runs or RBI than Thome.\u00a0 He is one of the few sluggers at the top of those lists without any PED taint.\u00a0 He spent his entire DTBL career with just two teams.\u00a0 Thome was originally a member of the Kings, but is best remembered as a member of the Choppers, who acquired him in the second round of the 1999 draft.\u00a0 Yes, the Choppers selected Hall of Famers in the first two rounds of that &#8217;99 draft.\u00a0 He spent 11 seasons with the Choppers (1999-2009), which was surrounded by a pair of stints with the Kings (1995-1998, 2010).\u00a0 With the Choppers, he amassed 401 home runs, bested only by Sammy Sosa.\u00a0 His 1,094 RBI and 976 runs both rank fourth in Choppers history.\u00a0 Thome hit at least 40 home runs in six different seasons.\u00a0 Probably the best season of his career came in 2002 when he slugged a career high 52 homers with a .304 average.\u00a0 From 1999 through 2003, he hit at least 30 home runs with 100+ RBI and runs each year.\u00a0 His lone DTBL championship came in his first season with the Choppers, 1999, when he was a teammate of Guerrero&#8217;s.\u00a0 Coincidentally, all four of these new Hall-of-Famers were members of either the 1999 Choppers or 2009 Darkhorses.<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations to four of the greatest players in DTBL history:\u00a0 Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome!<\/p>\n<p>Now here are the\u00a0weekly and monthly award winners for July 2018.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 15 (7\/2 &#8211; 7\/8) &#8211; Yulieski Gurriel, Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 16 (7\/9 &#8211; 7\/15) &#8211; Jose Ramirez, Komodos<br \/>\nWeek 17 (7\/16 &#8211; 7\/22) &#8211; Matt Carpenter,\u00a0Choppers<br \/>\nWeek 18 (7\/23 &#8211; 7\/29) &#8211; Jonathan Schoop,\u00a0Mavericks<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 15 (7\/2 &#8211; 7\/8) &#8211; Dallas Keuchel,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 16 (7\/9 &#8211; 7\/15) &#8211; Aaron Nola,\u00a0Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 17 (7\/16 &#8211; 7\/22) &#8211; Zack Greinke,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 18 (7\/23 &#8211; 7\/29) &#8211; Rick Porcello, Cougars<\/p>\n<p>Compiling the information above exposed a bit of a flaw in my code that captures the Batter and Pitcher of the Week winners each week.\u00a0 In two instances, the above players were not the ones I captured.\u00a0 Instead, I had players who weren&#8217;t on an active DTBL roster at the time.\u00a0 This has happened before, but I don&#8217;t recall seeing two instances of it in the same month.\u00a0 I should probably take some time to fix this.\u00a0 Anyway, because I don&#8217;t store weekly PAR numbers beyond the top batter and pitcher, I had to take a guess at who should have won these awards.\u00a0 So it is quite possible that Yulieski Gurriel and Rick Porcello were not the rightful winners in their respective weeks.\u00a0 What is certain is the accuracy of the monthly PAR totals for July.\u00a0 Here are the players of the month.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jose Ramirez,\u00a0Komodos<br \/>\n.322 AVG, 8 HR, 25 RBI, 21 R, 11 SB, 3.55 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Zack Greinke,\u00a0Moonshiners<br \/>\n1.60 ERA, 0.891 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 35 K, 2.61 PAR<\/p>\n<p>When I see eye-popping numbers in all five categories, I often will run a Baseball Reference Play Index search to see if any other players in DTBL history have matched or exceeded all of the monthly numbers compiled by the batter or pitcher of the month.\u00a0 In this case, Jose Ramirez&#8217;s July, I found no results.\u00a0 So, prior to July, no DTBL player had ever hit .322+ with 8+ home runs, 25+ RBI, 21+ runs and 11+ stolen bases in a single month.\u00a0 These numbers were especially impressive coming in July with the All-Star break taking away a couple additional games played.\u00a0 Ramirez is currently leading the DTBL in Batting PAR and home runs.\u00a0 He is second in stolen bases and not far behind the leaders in RBI and runs either.\u00a0 The Komodos third baseman has a strong case for MVP if he continues to be a five category force.\u00a0 Ramirez won this award in a landslide, but finishing second was his Indians teammate Francisco Lindor.<\/p>\n<p>Zack Grienke is quietly compiling another great season to add to his impressive career resume.\u00a0 When discussing the top pitchers of the game today, Greinke is rarely mentioned.\u00a0 But he is posting a sub 3.00 ERA with a dozen wins and more than a strikeout per inning.\u00a0 In July, Greinke tied for the league lead with four wins while compiling a 1.60 ERA and 0.89 WHIP.\u00a0 With the recently added 2005 PAR numbers, Greinke&#8217;s entire career PAR has been calculated.\u00a0 Since 2005, only three other pitchers (Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer) have exceeded his 79.0 PAR.\u00a0 Greinke just barely edged out Chris Sale for this monthly honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images One of the cool things about the longevity of this league is that now most of the newly inducted members in the Baseball Hall of Fame are players who accumulated most of their Hall of Fame credentials as members of DTBL teams.\u00a0 This has been the case for a while, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,6,31,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-choppers","category-jackalope","category-komodos","category-moonshiners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","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=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}