{"id":1198,"date":"2018-10-13T07:37:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T14:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2018-10-13T07:37:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T14:37:59","slug":"kings-enter-seventh-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1198","title":{"rendered":"Kings Enter Seventh Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id='5Kq_CGE5SWlOZBhY4FaoXQ' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1036866708' 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:'5Kq_CGE5SWlOZBhY4FaoXQ',sig:'JEMHE-E_0rBBfP9LjrP_CoTR7WVCTJ-DjhtGQlDp8Og=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1036866708',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><br \/>\nThe past seven seasons have been a roller coaster ride for the Kings.\u00a0 During that span, they have reached the top of the summit multiple times and the depths of the valley as well, with little in between.\u00a0 Two seasons ago, they made the improbable jump to winning a league championship just a year removed from finishing dead last.\u00a0 Last year, they dropped all the way down to ninth place.\u00a0 But this season, they pulled off another improbable rebound, winning the championship for a record extending seventh time.\u00a0 Kevin&#8217;s Kings are the 2018 Dream Team Baseball League Champions.<\/p>\n<p>At the halfway mark of the season, it looked like a forgone conclusion that the Kings would win the league.\u00a0 They had a double digit advantage through most of the first half.\u00a0 But then they started to cool off in July and August, briefly losing the lead in early September.\u00a0 Fortunately for them, the bats caught fire in mid-September, just in time to hold off an impressive charge by the Darkhorses.\u00a0 There was still some doubt heading into the final days of the season, but in the end, the Kings held on to win by 2 1\/2 points.\u00a0 The Demigods\u00a0and Choppers also finished in shouting distance, 9 and 12 1\/2 points back respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Mookie Betts, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were three of the best players in baseball this season.\u00a0 That is almost indisputable.\u00a0 Having the three of them put together those amazing seasons for the same team would obviously make you think that team was pretty good.\u00a0 In this case, those three were almost the only reasons why the Kings won the league.\u00a0 The Kings probably had more players who failed to meet expectations, due to injuries or poor performances, than those who exceeded expectations.\u00a0 But Betts, Scherzer and Verlander were so good that it didn&#8217;t matter.<\/p>\n<p>Betts finished the season with 11.3 PAR and would have led the league if not for a red hot stretch run by Christian Yelich.\u00a0 His 2018 was almost identical to his 2016 campaign, which produced a MVP award and also another championship for the Kings.\u00a0 Betts joined the 30\/30 club for the first time this year, reaching career highs in home runs (32) and stolen bases (30).\u00a0 He also won the batting title, hitting .346, and tied Francisco Lindor for the league lead in runs scored with 129.\u00a0 It was an all-around great season for Betts who will be a strong contender to win his second MVP award.<\/p>\n<p>Scherzer and Verlander have been leading the Kings pitching staff for many years.\u00a0 They are both former Cy Young award winners and have each had several elite seasons in the past.\u00a0 But this was easily their best combined campaign as Kings teammates.\u00a0 They finished first and second in the league in pitching PAR (14.0 for Scherzer, 13.0 for Verlander) and had very similar stat lines across the board.\u00a0 Scherzer:\u00a0 2.53 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 18 wins, 300 strikeouts.\u00a0 Verlander:\u00a0 2.52 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 16 wins, 290 strikeouts.\u00a0 Here are their league ranks in those four categories:\u00a0 ERA &#8211; 6th\/7th, WHIP &#8211; 2nd\/3rd, W &#8211; 4th\/9th, K &#8211; 1st\/2nd.\u00a0 Scherzer joins Chris Sale and Clayton Kershaw as the only pitchers to reach 300 strikeouts since 2002.\u00a0 Verlander smashed his career high in that category as well and had his best overall season since winning the Cy Young in 2011 with one of the all-time great pitching seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Hardly any other Kings players are even worth mentioning beyond those three.\u00a0 Rhys Hoskins, the second overall pick in this year&#8217;s draft, had a solid rookie campaign.\u00a0 But he was the only Kings position player besides Betts to top 4 PAR.\u00a0 Second round pick Matt Olson was decent as well.\u00a0 A.J. Pollock was solid when healthy, but once again missed significant time due to injuries.\u00a0 Betts was the only Kings player to finish in the top 10 of any offensive category.\u00a0 He was almost literally a one man show with the bat.\u00a0 This is the second straight year that a team has won the league with just 29 batting points.\u00a0 But unlike the star-studded &#8217;17 Mavericks, the Kings got to that number on the back of just one superstar.<\/p>\n<p>The pitching staff was a little more well-rounded, leading the league with 43 1\/2 pitching points.\u00a0 But again, Scherzer and Verlander were responsible for most of that.\u00a0 The rest of the rotation was a revolving door of guys who were okay, but not great.\u00a0 Lance McCullers and Eduardo Rodriguez were having nice seasons before they got hurt.\u00a0 Kevin Gausman proved to be a solid pickup in the second half.\u00a0 The bullpen was rock solid in the first half of the year, but was decimated by injuries and ineffectiveness down the stretch.\u00a0 Sean Doolittle was easily their best reliever over the course of the season, but even he missed a couple months with a foot injury.<\/p>\n<p>So how exactly did the Kings win the league with so few great performances?\u00a0 Well, to be honest, they got a little lucky.\u00a0 The league as a whole was not terribly strong this season.\u00a0 I may cover this in another season recap article, but the league-wide PAR was below 400 for the first time in any season I&#8217;ve calculated to date.\u00a0 Granted, that should go up when I do the off-season update to incorporate 2018 numbers into the calculations.\u00a0 There are several reasons why this number was so low.\u00a0 But it does shine some light on how the Kings were able to win with less than spectacular numbers across the board.\u00a0 I believe the Kings dominant first half played a significant role as well, potentially leading other teams to feel like they were out of the race by the start of summer.\u00a0 Had a couple teams been more aggressive in those summer months, the Kings could have been in big trouble down the stretch.\u00a0 This will not go down as one of the all-time great championship teams.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 Championship pennants fly forever.\u00a0 And now the Kings have seven of them.\u00a0 No other team has won more than four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images The past seven seasons have been a roller coaster ride for the Kings.\u00a0 During that span, they have reached the top of the summit multiple times and the depths of the valley as well, with little in between.\u00a0 Two seasons ago, they made the improbable jump to winning a league championship [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","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=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}