{"id":1249,"date":"2019-05-04T09:32:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T16:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2022-01-11T08:49:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T15:49:05","slug":"someone-old-someone-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"Someone Old, Someone New"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"NGttdqfuTi9wX3eBkviyiA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1144272227\" 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:'NGttdqfuTi9wX3eBkviyiA',sig:'o68N6FXkQjI1ro4ICmeRAQFjwNWMGFcSrGP23Zlzm9A=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1144272227',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nFive weeks into the 2019 season, it is apparent that we will not have a repeat of 2018 in the DTBL where a single team dominated the league nearly from start to finish.\u00a0 The Jackalope broke out to an early lead in the first couple weeks of the season, but since then, first place has been a revolving door.\u00a0 The month of April ended with the Jackalope on top, but five other teams were within nine points of the lead.\u00a0 It has been a rough start to the season for the Demigods and a couple other teams need to pick it up. But for the most part, everybody is well positioned as we move into May.<\/p>\n<p>On a macro level, the early season trends in baseball have been fewer hits (lower batting averages), more strikeouts and a lot more home runs.\u00a0 The current league batting average of .260 would break last season&#8217;s low water mark of .262.\u00a0 But overall, offense is up, with the league ERA soaring to 3.89, which is higher than any full season league ERA since 2006.\u00a0 The league WHIP is up as well.\u00a0 So while pitchers are allowing fewer hits, they are actually surrendering more base runners due to a spike in walks.<\/p>\n<p>As you might expect with some of these extreme statistical increases, several individual players are off to record breaking paces as well.\u00a0 Komodos outfielder Cody Bellinger and Darkhorses outfielder Christian Yelich each slugged 14 home runs in March\/April.\u00a0 That ties a league record for most home runs in the first month of the season, matching Albert Pujols in 2006 and Alex Rodriguez in 2007.\u00a0 Bellinger&#8217;s 37 RBI are an April record and his 32 runs also ties the record.\u00a0 Spoiler alert, Bellinger will be mentioned again below.\u00a0 Jackalope pitcher Gerrit Cole struck out 65 batters in the first month, which also ties a league record set by Curt Schilling in April of 1998.<\/p>\n<p>Again this year, I&#8217;m going to write monthly posts like this one, recapping the weekly and monthly award winners.\u00a0 Here are the batters and pitchers of the week for the first five weeks of the 2019 season.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 1 (3\/20 &#8211; 3\/31) &#8211; Cody Bellinger,\u00a0Komodos<br \/>\nWeek 2 (4\/1 &#8211; 4\/7) &#8211; Anthony Rendon,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 3 (4\/8 &#8211; 4\/14) &#8211; Austin Meadows, Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 4 (4\/15 &#8211; 4\/21) &#8211; Christian Yelich,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\nWeek 5 (4\/22 &#8211; 4\/28) &#8211; Luke Voit, Naturals<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 1 (3\/20 &#8211; 3\/31) &#8211; Jose Berrios,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\nWeek 2 (4\/1 &#8211; 4\/7) &#8211; Mike Clevinger,\u00a0Naturals<br \/>\nWeek 3 (4\/8 &#8211; 4\/14) &#8211; Blake Snell,\u00a0Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 4 (4\/15 &#8211; 4\/21) &#8211; James Paxton,\u00a0Naturals<br \/>\nWeek 5 (4\/22 &#8211; 4\/28) &#8211; J.A. Happ,\u00a0Komodos<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, April was a rough month from an injury perspective for players who were off to hot starts.\u00a0 Exactly half of the players listed above wound up hitting the injured list shortly after earning their weekly honor.\u00a0 Rendon and Meadows would have been in the conversation for Batter of the Month if not for their injuries.\u00a0 Bellinger and Yelich, on the other hand, have remained healthy and are off to historically fast starts.\u00a0 But only one of them can win the month&#8217;s top honor.\u00a0 That goes to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cody Bellinger, Komodos<br \/>\n.431 AVG,\u00a014 HR,\u00a037 RBI,\u00a032 R,\u00a05 SB,\u00a04.64 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Justin Verlander, Kings<br \/>\n2.45 ERA, 0.864 WHIP, 4 W, 0 SV, 53 K, 3.31 PAR<\/p>\n<p>An old guy and a (relative) newcomer.\u00a0 23 year old Cody Bellinger not only had arguably the best month of April in league history, but on the short list for best months at any point of the season.\u00a0 He is only the fourth\u00a0player to ever hit 14+ homers with an average over .400 for an entire month (or a month and 4 days, in this case).\u00a0 The others were Juan Gonzalez in July of 1996, Albert Belle in July of 1998 and Barry Bonds in September\/October of 2001.\u00a0 But Bellinger had a higher average than all of them, scored the most runs of the foursome and easily stole the most bases.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have monthly PAR calculations going back that far, but I would guess Bellinger&#8217;s was the best in league history.\u00a0 While his rookie campaign of &#8217;18 was slightly disappointing for the Komodos, it appears they are getting everything they could have hoped for out of him this season.\u00a0 It was unfortunate for Yelich to not have won this award because his numbers were insane as well.\u00a0 Moonshiners shortstop Tim Anderson came in third.<\/p>\n<p>Justin Verlander&#8217;s late career resurgence has continued into his age 36 season.\u00a0 Last year&#8217;s third place finisher in the Cy Young vote has started this season on top of the Pitching PAR leaderboard.\u00a0 His 0.86 WHIP led all starting pitchers in March\/April.\u00a0 With 53 strikeouts in 44 innings, he&#8217;s also maintaining an impressive strikeout ratio.\u00a0 He is currently keeping the Kings pitching staff afloat, as no other starting pitcher on the team has a PAR over 1.\u00a0 Verlander last won this monthly honor last June.\u00a0 This award could have gone to a bunch of different pitchers.\u00a0 Verlander barely edged out the Jackalope duo of Tyler Glasnow and Luis Castillo and Choppers righty Trevor Bauer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Five weeks into the 2019 season, it is apparent that we will not have a repeat of 2018 in the DTBL where a single team dominated the league nearly from start to finish.\u00a0 The Jackalope broke out to an early lead in the first couple weeks of the season, but since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-kings","category-komodos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","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=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1423,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}