{"id":1272,"date":"2019-08-07T20:11:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T03:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2019-08-07T20:11:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T03:11:29","slug":"moose-mo-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1272","title":{"rendered":"Moose, Mo and More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"85EBKVEKTLB_MSCxoJYMfA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1164066858\" 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:'85EBKVEKTLB_MSCxoJYMfA',sig:'mlkMjahfdC_cnN4s2PNL1h0jcaVC26y59C8mCIQaSrc=',w:'594px',h:'368px',items:'1164066858',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nA few times in recent years, I have taken the opportunity to write about the DTBL careers of a set of players recently inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.\u00a0 Well, I think I might as well go ahead and make it an annual tradition for my July recap article.\u00a0 Our league has reached a level of longevity such that virtually every player inducted into the Hall had a significant impact on this league as well.<\/p>\n<p>On July 21, six players were honored in Cooperstown, New York.\u00a0 All six are DTBL alums and at least three would be sure fire Hall-of-Famers in this league as well, if such a thing existed.\u00a0 The six honorees were:\u00a0 Harold Baines, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera and Lee Smith.\u00a0 Here is a review of their DTBL careers, going in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n<p>Harold Baines was one of the more controversial selections in recent years, chosen by the Veterans Committee after never receiving much support during his time on the Baseball Writers Association ballot.\u00a0 Personally, I find arguments over players who *are* selected to be tiresome.\u00a0 More time should be spent arguing about players who are left out rather than trying to diminish those selected.\u00a0 Baines was an excellent player, and a personal favorite of mine.\u00a0 That said, he was\u00a0probably the least accomplished DTBL player of this group with his prime years coming well before this league started.\u00a0 He was drafted by the Gators in the inaugural draft of 1993 and spent five seasons with them as their primary designated hitter and was a member of their 1995 championship team.\u00a0 He then spent his final two seasons as a part time player on a couple expansion teams:\u00a0 the Angels in 1998 and the Moonshiners inaugural season of 1999.\u00a0 Baines hit at least .290 in every season except his last one.\u00a0 All told, he compiled an impressive .303 career batting average with 81 home runs.<\/p>\n<p>The late Roy Halladay was a major part of the modern pitching evolution of the late 2000s and early 2010s when power pitchers started to rule the day.\u00a0 He spent his entire DTBL career with the Jackalope and litters their career leaderboard.\u00a0 His run from 2008 to 2011 was just about as good as it gets over a four year span.\u00a0 In every one of those years, he struck out over 200 with ERAs below 3.00 and at least 17 wins.\u00a0 He won the DTBL Cy Young Award in 2010 and finished third in 2008 and 2011.\u00a0 On three occasions, he won 20+ games (2003, 2008, 2010).\u00a0 In his 12 year career, he racked up 177 victories, which ranks 10th in league history and third among players who debuted after 2000, behind Justin Verlander and C.C. Sabathia.\u00a0 Halladay is the Jackalope franchise career leader in wins and innings pitched and trails only Felix Hernandez in strikeouts.\u00a0 His 75.8 Pitching PAR also leads the way, by a margin that will only increase when I get around to calculating the numbers from his first three seasons.\u00a0 The Jackalope selected Halladay in the fourth round of the 2002 Draft.\u00a0 I would say that pick worked out pretty well for them.\u00a0 He was a critical piece of their first championship squad in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>As designated hitters go, nobody has ever been as good for as long as Edgar Martinez.\u00a0 Interestingly enough though, he actually got his start in this league as a third baseman for three years, even though DH was an official position in our league in those days.\u00a0 While he could certainly hit for power, his carrying tool was his ability to hit for average.\u00a0 His career mark of .316 ranks ninth in league history.\u00a0 But he hit over .320 for six consecutive seasons from 1995 through 2000.\u00a0 Martinez debuted for the Kings in 1993 and then played for the expansion Metros in 1994 before settling in with the Cougars for the remainder of his career (1995 through 2004).\u00a0 Unfortunately, my transaction records are a little scattered from the 90s, so I don&#8217;t recall exactly how he made those team jumps.\u00a0 I do know that the Cougars must have cut him loose after his typically solid 1998 season though because they then reacquired him with their first round pick in 1999.\u00a0 I think expansion draft rules that year may have played a part.\u00a0 But anyway, the Cougars managed to hang onto him and he continued to hit for them for years to come.\u00a0 He won a DTBL Championship with the Cougars in 1996.\u00a0 He is their career batting average leader at .317.\u00a0 For his DTBL career, Martinez also hit 239 home runs with 956 RBI.\u00a0 He topped 100 RBI in five different seasons.\u00a0 There have been few pure hitters better than Edgar Martinez in the past quarter century.<\/p>\n<p>Justin Verlander needs just two more wins to reach 200 for his DTBL career.\u00a0 When he does that, he will become just the fifth player in league history to reach that mark.\u00a0 The other four are now all Hall-of-Famers, thanks to the recent induction of Mike Mussina.\u00a0 Had I not just looked it up, I don&#8217;t think I would have remembered or guessed that Mussina finished his career just one win shy of the league&#8217;s all time leader, Greg Maddux.\u00a0 Mussina won 239 games despite never compiling 20 in a single season.\u00a0 He won exactly 20 for the first and only time in his final season of 2008, but was an in-season free agent signing by the Moonshiners that year and only compiled 16 wins for them.\u00a0 But he posted double digit wins in an impressive 15 of 16 DTBL seasons.\u00a0 In addition to all the wins, he also ranks fifth in league history with 2,576 strikeouts and pitched more innings than every pitcher not named Maddux.\u00a0 They are the only two to record over 3,000 DTBL innings.\u00a0 Mussina was drafted by the Kings in 1993 and spent two seasons with them before being part of one of the league&#8217;s first blockbuster trades during the 1995 Draft.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as covered earlier, my transaction records from those days are rather lacking, so I don&#8217;t have the complete details.\u00a0 But I do recall it being a huge deal.\u00a0 Anyway, it certainly worked out for the Choppers who retained his services for the next 13 seasons.\u00a0 He and Greg Maddux top pretty much all of the Choppers career pitching numbers.\u00a0 That duo were a big reason why the Choppers won league titles in 1997 and 1999.\u00a0 While he might not be at the top of your mind when you think of the all-time great pitchers, he should be.\u00a0 Mike Mussina was one of the best pitchers in DTBL history.<\/p>\n<p>Mariano Rivera was the first player to ever be unanimously selected for the Hall of Fame.\u00a0 His case for enshrinement was pretty impeccable.\u00a0 Obviously, that would be true of his DTBL career as well.\u00a0 His 643 career saves is an incredible 83 more than any other pitcher has accumulated.\u00a0 I doubt anyone will come close to that total anytime soon.\u00a0 He topped 30 saves in 15 of his 17 seasons, with injuries cutting short the two seasons in which he failed to reach that total.\u00a0 Even in his final season of 2013, he managed to rack up 44 saves.\u00a0 His career high save total came in 2004 with 53 and he reached 50 in 2001 as well.\u00a0 But it wasn&#8217;t just the saves.\u00a0 His 2.02 ERA and 0.973 WHIP are both easily the lowest in league history among pitchers with at least 800 innings pitched.\u00a0 He had so many seasons with a sub 2.00 ERA and 40+ saves that it is basically impossible to pick a career best season.\u00a0 486 of Rivera&#8217;s saves came with the Cougars who drafted him in the first round of 1997, coming right off the heals of their third championship in four years.\u00a0 He remained with the Cougars all the way until 2009, when they traded him to the Mavericks for Mike Lowell, not the best trade the Cougars have ever made.\u00a0 Rivera had a productive season and a half for the Mavericks before he was traded again during the 2011 Draft to the Choppers in exchange for a second round pick which would become Starlin Castro.\u00a0 Rivera&#8217;s final two seasons were with the Choppers where he continued to be one of the best relievers in baseball.\u00a0 Oddly enough, Rivera never won a DTBL Championship while winning five World Series titles with the Yankees.\u00a0 Mariano Rivera rode one pitch, a nasty cutter, to a Hall of Fame career.\u00a0 He is the greatest relief pitcher in MLB and DTBL history.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have Lee Smith, the third former Thunder Chopper of this class.\u00a0 Like Baines, he was selected by the Veterans Committee and compiled most of his Hall of Fame numbers before this league started.\u00a0 That said, his DTBL career was short, but productive.\u00a0 He was an inaugural DTBL Draft selection of the Choppers in 1993.\u00a0 He saved 114 games for the Choppers in 1993 through 1995, which still puts him fourth in franchise history in that category.\u00a0 His 33 saves in the strike shortened 1994 season led the league.\u00a0 Through the first three seasons of this league&#8217;s history, Smith held the all-time saves lead.\u00a0 Obviously that didn&#8217;t hold up very long though as he didn&#8217;t record a save in his final DTBL season of 1996.\u00a0 While he bounced around a whole bunch of MLB teams in the latter stages of his career, he did not pitch for any DTBL team besides the Choppers.\u00a0 One of the original fireballing closers, Lee Smith is a worthy Hall of Famer.<\/p>\n<p>On to the awards for July 2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 15 (7\/1 &#8211; 7\/7) &#8211; Yulieski Gurriel,\u00a0Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 16 (7\/11 &#8211; 7\/14) &#8211; Josh Donaldson,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 17 (7\/15 &#8211; 7\/21) &#8211; Ronald Acuna,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 18 (7\/22 &#8211; 7\/28) &#8211; Nelson Cruz,\u00a0Komodos<br \/>\nWeek 19 (7\/29 &#8211; 8\/4) &#8211; Starling Marte,\u00a0Komodos<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 15 (7\/1 &#8211; 7\/7) &#8211; Aaron Nola, Demigods<br \/>\nWeek 16 (7\/11 &#8211; 7\/14) &#8211; Mike Soroka,\u00a0Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 17 (7\/15 &#8211; 7\/21) &#8211; Clayton Kershaw,\u00a0Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 18 (7\/22 &#8211; 7\/28) &#8211; Stephen Strasburg, Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 19 (7\/29 &#8211; 8\/4) &#8211; Justin Verlander,\u00a0Kings<\/p>\n<p>July was a good month for Braves players and Mavericks pitchers, as three of each won weekly awards.\u00a0 Braves and Jackalope teammates Josh Donaldson and Ronald Acuna took the Batter of the Week honors surrounding the All-Star break.\u00a0 Two other DTBL teammates won the award the following couple weeks as Komodos sluggers Nelson Cruz and Starling Marte finished the month with a bang.\u00a0 The Mavericks pitching staff has been heating up as of late.\u00a0 60% of their rotation claimed a weekly honor in July with Mike Soroka, Clayton Kershaw and Stephen Strasburg all continuing to pitch extremely well.\u00a0 Two of the players listed above parlayed their strong weeks into a full month of excellence in July.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yulieski Gurriel,\u00a0Demigods<br \/>\n.398 AVG, 12 HR, 31 RBI, 18 R, 0 SB, 3.26 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Stephen Strasburg, Mavericks<br \/>\n1.14 ERA, 0.916 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 44 K, 3.21 PAR<\/p>\n<p>Yulieski Gurriel has been a solid big league hitter for some time now.\u00a0 But one thing that has kept him from being discussed among the elite players in the game is a relative lack of power at a position where big home run totals are expected.\u00a0 Entering this season, his career high for homers was 18 in 2017.\u00a0 Entering July, he was on his typically pedestrian pace with just eight dingers.\u00a0 But then he went and hit 12 in a span of 18 games and has already smashed his career high mark.\u00a0 In addition to the dozen July home runs, he also came just short of hitting .400 for the month (.398).\u00a0 Despite those gaudy numbers, he won this award by the slimmest of margins over Moonshiners third baseman Rafael Devers, who has basically been on fire for three straight months now.\u00a0 Nobody else was close to Gurriel or Devers.<\/p>\n<p>It is genarally\u00a0a good sign for a pitcher when he allows fewer earned runs than he knocks in at the plate in any given game.\u00a0 In July, Stephen Strasburg pulled that trick for the entire month!\u00a0 He surrendered just four earned runs while compiling a 1.14 ERA and added six RBIs to help his own cause while at the plate.\u00a0 Strasburg continues the trend of veteran pitchers winning this monthly pitching honor.\u00a0 But at 31 years old, he is actually the youngest pitcher to win this award in 2019.\u00a0 He was a comfortable winner, but two other pitchers who had a great run in July were Astros righties Justin Verlander (Kings) and Gerrit Cole (Jackalope).\u00a0 With the addition of Zack Greinke to their rotation, it would appear the Astros are well armed for another World Series run.<\/p>\n<p>A reminder that the DTBL trade deadline is coming up next week:\u00a0 Thursday, August 15.\u00a0 Trades must be accepted by both parties by midnight on the 15th, even though trades consummated between the 12th and 15th won&#8217;t be processed until the following Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images A few times in recent years, I have taken the opportunity to write about the DTBL careers of a set of players recently inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.\u00a0 Well, I think I might as well go ahead and make it an annual tradition for my July recap article.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,8,12,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-choppers","category-cougars","category-demigods","category-jackalope","category-mavericks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272","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=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1275,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions\/1275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}