{"id":1355,"date":"2020-09-29T08:36:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T15:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1355"},"modified":"2020-09-29T08:36:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T15:36:37","slug":"darkhorses-dash-to-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1355","title":{"rendered":"Darkhorses Dash To Title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"UbXmo7wNQU1mJZcdhG8PHg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1271180675\" 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:'UbXmo7wNQU1mJZcdhG8PHg',sig:'J2pgWOF06hUc7wBjyutfKI5fkcHM3Wm_nOK_p1eBajc=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1271180675',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n2020 was supposed to be the year of chaos and unpredictability in baseball and this league.\u00a0 To some degree, the former was true with multiple MLB teams missing week&#8217;s worth of games due to COVID-19 positive tests and having September schedules filled with 7-inning double headers.\u00a0 Season ending injuries and opt-outs were more prevalent than ever.\u00a0 But unpredictability?\u00a0 Nah, not in this league.\u00a0 Our pre-season projections saw the Jackalope and Darkhorses as the clear favorites to win the title in an abbreviated 60-game season.\u00a0 While other teams made some noise at times, ultimately it came down to those two teams in the season&#8217;s final days.\u00a0 In the end, it was the Darkhorses exorcising recent demons of close second place finishes.\u00a0 For the fifth time in franchise history and the first time in exactly a decade, David&#8217;s Darkhorses are the Dream Team Baseball League Champions.<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote about in the mid-season article, one thing I was most definitely not expecting in 2020 was for one team to have a stranglehold on first place.\u00a0 However, amazingly, the Darkhorses never fell below second place at any point of the season after the Opening Weekend.\u00a0 And they were in first place following all but two days of the final five weeks.\u00a0 But it did get a little scary for them as one of the days in which the Jackalope overtook them for the top spot was on the final weekend, with just two days remaining.\u00a0 With extremely thin margins in almost all categories, the consistent excellence from the Darkhorses was truly remarkable.<\/p>\n<p>The Darkhorses are a deep team with very few, if any, obvious weaknesses.\u00a0 This type of roster is going to be a contender in almost any type of season.\u00a0 But perhaps they were uniquely built for this particular season even more than one might have realized.\u00a0 While they did not suffer the same injury and opt-out carnage of some other squads, their depth was certainly challenged.\u00a0 James Paxton missed most of the season with an arm injury.\u00a0 Lorenzo Cain opted out after the first week.\u00a0 Matt Chapman hit the injured list in early September.\u00a0 Alex Bregman had an injury riddled campaign as well.\u00a0 What is really impressive is how they were able to overcome very little production from some of the guys who had been their most important players in recent years, most notably reigning MVP Christian Yelich who scuffled to the tune of a .205 average.<\/p>\n<p>So who picked up the slack?\u00a0 A whole bunch of guys.\u00a0 The Darkhorses easily led the league in batting points for the third straight year.\u00a0 Despite that, they did not have any player finish in the top 15 in Batting PAR.\u00a0 It was a total team effort.\u00a0 Bryce Harper led the way with 2.7 PAR, so yes, he finally gets his ring.\u00a0 Dansby Swanson had the best season of his career so far.\u00a0 Brandon Lowe may have been the steal of this year&#8217;s draft.\u00a0 The third round pick should receive Rookie of the Year consideration.\u00a0 Xander Bogaerts and J.T. Realmuto were their usual steady selves.\u00a0 Mike Yastrzemski was a great early season free agent signing.\u00a0 Despite the lack of any apparent MVP candidates, the Darkhorses unquestionably had the best offensive depth in the league, with positive contributions from all 14 batting spots.<\/p>\n<p>The Darkhorses have had a great offense for quite some time now.\u00a0 What had previously held them back a bit was their pitching staff.\u00a0 Technically, they only improved by 1\/2 pitching point from last year.\u00a0 But relative to the rest of the league, that was enough to get the job done.\u00a0 They tied for the fourth most pitching points.\u00a0 As usual, Jacob deGrom carried the rotation.\u00a0 Maybe even more so than usual, actually.\u00a0 He was their only starting pitcher to earn more than 1.0 PAR (4.5).\u00a0 Last year&#8217;s second choice starter Patrick Corbin was actually quite disappointing this year.\u00a0 Jose Berrios was the only other starter besides deGrom who lived up to expectations.\u00a0 This wasn&#8217;t really a championship caliber starting staff.\u00a0 But boy did the bullpen make up for that.\u00a0 Liam Hendriks, Brad Hand, Taylor Rogers and Mark Melancon made up what was by far the best bullpen in the league.\u00a0 Hendriks and Hand were the Darkhorses next two most valuable pitchers after deGrom, and were first and second in the league in PAR among relievers.\u00a0 Hand led the league in saves with 16.\u00a0 Hendriks was second with 14.\u00a0 The Darkhorses absolutely blew away the rest of the league in saves.\u00a0 They had 48 of them.\u00a0 The margin between them and the second best Moonshiners (23) was almost as large as the Moonshiners save total (25).\u00a0 So yes, the Darkhorses had nearly twice as many saves as another other team.\u00a0 These four relievers were paramount to the Darkhorses success in the other pitching categories as well.<\/p>\n<p>This season culminates an impressive three year run for the Darkhorses in which they finished in the top two spots in the standings.\u00a0 The last time a team had a similar run of excellence was the Naturals in 2010-12.\u00a0 This is the Darkhorses first championship since 2010, which was the year they actually shared the title with the Naturals, and was the final season of the Darkhorses&#8217; four-peat.\u00a0 Their five titles is second only to the Kings.\u00a0 If you were to split the DTBL history in half, the Darkhorses would probably earn the distinction of the league&#8217;s best franchise in the second half having won five of those 14 championships.<\/p>\n<p>This has been a trying year for all of us.\u00a0 But I am extremely grateful that MLB was able to successfully complete this season, and thus so were we.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s hope we are able to return to some semblance of normalcy by the time the 2021 baseball season begins.\u00a0 In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the Postseason, which will get started in a matter of hours.\u00a0 Congrats to David on a well-deserved championship!\u00a0 Thanks to everybody else for making this a very enjoyable and competitive season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images 2020 was supposed to be the year of chaos and unpredictability in baseball and this league.\u00a0 To some degree, the former was true with multiple MLB teams missing week&#8217;s worth of games due to COVID-19 positive tests and having September schedules filled with 7-inning double headers.\u00a0 Season ending injuries and opt-outs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-darkhorses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355","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=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1357,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions\/1357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}