{"id":1277,"date":"2019-09-02T15:50:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T22:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2019-09-02T15:50:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T22:50:22","slug":"kings-vs-darkhorses-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1277","title":{"rendered":"Kings vs. Darkhorses Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id='lC76Og_FQldf_hzfhT8Fmw' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1169373687' 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:'lC76Og_FQldf_hzfhT8Fmw',sig:'ZAJnx_CpomI7iXBR-9pboxGAip00BvkQhFoj_X3ARQQ=',w:'594px',h:'402px',items:'1169373687',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><br \/>\nEntering September of 2018, the Kings held a slim four point lead over the Darkhorses.\u00a0 They would briefly relinquish that lead, but ultimately managed to win the DTBL Championship.\u00a0 This year, the Kings once again held a four point lead over the Darkhorses heading into the season&#8217;s final month.\u00a0 It is a pretty similar situation with these two seemingly the best bets to win it all.\u00a0 The margin over the rest of the league is actually a little larger this year though.\u00a0 As of today, the Mavericks find themselves almost 20 points behind the Kings with exactly four weeks to go.\u00a0 That&#8217;s not completely insurmountable, but they will definitely need some help from both of the top two teams to make up some of that ground.<\/p>\n<p>The Kings and Darkhorses both appear to be slightly better versions of the 2018 editions of themselves.\u00a0 The Kings still have the league&#8217;s best pitching staff.\u00a0 But this year, they have held the top spot in all five pitching categories for a good portion of the season.\u00a0 The offense is not as good, but only two other teams have more batting points.\u00a0 On the other hand, the Darkhorses once again have the league&#8217;s best offense.\u00a0 But this year, no other team is even close.\u00a0 They have 48 batting points and appear to be close to a lock to win four of the five batting categories (all but stolen bases).\u00a0 And their pitching staff is pretty good too.\u00a0 Like Kings hitters, Darkhorses pitchers rank third in total points.<\/p>\n<p>It is really hard to handicap this race, because unlike last year, these two teams have been neck-and-neck pretty much all season.\u00a0 Neither has had an extended period of poor play.\u00a0 Both teams are relatively healthy heading into the final four weeks as well.\u00a0 The Darkhorses are looking for their fifth league title, but first since 2010, while the Kings are seeking their record extending eighth league crown.\u00a0 It should be a fascinating race.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the award winners for August of 2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 20 (8\/5 &#8211; 8\/11) &#8211; Ronald Acuna,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 21 (8\/12 &#8211; 8\/18) &#8211; Gleyber Torres,\u00a0Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 22 (8\/19 &#8211; 8\/25) &#8211; Anthony Rendon,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 23 (8\/26 &#8211; 9\/1) &#8211; Eugenio Suarez,\u00a0Cougars<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 20 (8\/5 &#8211; 8\/11) &#8211; Mike Minor,\u00a0Naturals<br \/>\nWeek 21 (8\/12 &#8211; 8\/18) &#8211; Jack Flaherty,\u00a0Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 22 (8\/19 &#8211; 8\/25) &#8211; Dallas Keuchel,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\nWeek 23 (8\/26 &#8211; 9\/1) &#8211; Justin Verlander,\u00a0Kings<\/p>\n<p>The Batters of the Week in August featured four players having monster seasons.\u00a0 Ronald Acuna and Gleyber Torres have both already reached 30 home runs in their DTBL rookie campaigns.\u00a0 Anthony Rendon also surpassed that mark in the past week.\u00a0 And then there is Eugenio Suarez who hit his 40th (!!!) home run of the season yesterday.\u00a0 As usual, the pitching award winners are a bunch of veterans still going strong, with youngster Jack Flaherty crashing the party.\u00a0 Justin Verlander locked up the weekly award by pitching his third career no-hitter yesterday.\u00a0 Because that happened on September 1 though, it didn&#8217;t help his cause for winning another Pitcher of the Month award.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ronald Acuna,\u00a0Jackalope<br \/>\n.270 AVG, 11 HR, 27 RBI, 23 R, 6 SB, 3.26 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mike Clevinger, Naturals<br \/>\n1.96 ERA, 1.064 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 51 K, 3.06 PAR<\/p>\n<p>Last week, to the best of my knowledge, Ronald Acuna became just the second player to reach the 30\/30 HR\/SB club in his DTBL rookie campaign.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t have a particularly easy way to confirm this, but I did a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/tiny\/3STkX\">Baseball Reference Play Index search<\/a>\u00a0looking for 30\/30 seasons since 1993 in a player&#8217;s first two MLB seasons and the only other result was Mike Trout in 2012.\u00a0 So I feel pretty confident about this assertion.\u00a0 Acuna currently has 36 home runs and 33 stolen bases with four weeks to go in the season.\u00a0 He has a great shot at becoming the league&#8217;s fourth 40\/40 player.\u00a0 It once looked like a two horse race between Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich for the league MVP award, but Acuna is very much in the thick of that race now, in addition to Rookie of the Year.\u00a0 As strong as his August was, three other players nearly snatched this award from him:\u00a0 Demigods outfielder J.D. Martinez and the Nationals dynamic duo of Mavericks outfielder Juan Soto (also a DTBL rookie) and Jackalope third baseman Anthony Rendon.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have someone who isn&#8217;t a grizzled veteran winning the Pitcher of the Month award.\u00a0 Mike Clevinger was a late bloomer, but is in just his second DTBL season with the Naturals.\u00a0 At 28, he is easily the youngest to win this award so far in 2019.\u00a0 Despite losing about two months due to an injury, he has still managed to compile a nice stat line for the season.\u00a0 Half of his 10 wins came in August though.\u00a0 He led the league in August strikeouts with 51.\u00a0 For what it&#8217;s worth, he would not have won this award had Jack Flaherty&#8217;s first start of the month been as an active member of the Mavericks rotation.\u00a0 Despite that start not counting, Flaherty still finished third for the award.\u00a0 The runner-up was the Cougars&#8217; Sonny Gray who is having a very nice career resurgence this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Entering September of 2018, the Kings held a slim four point lead over the Darkhorses.\u00a0 They would briefly relinquish that lead, but ultimately managed to win the DTBL Championship.\u00a0 This year, the Kings once again held a four point lead over the Darkhorses heading into the season&#8217;s final month.\u00a0 It is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11,6,9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-darkhorses","category-jackalope","category-kings","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","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=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}