{"id":1365,"date":"2020-11-23T11:52:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T18:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2020-11-23T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T19:10:09","slug":"abreu-tatis-share-mvp-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1365","title":{"rendered":"Abreu, Tatis Share MVP Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"b2WtSh3aTEN-tegRie277w\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1273065592\" 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:'b2WtSh3aTEN-tegRie277w',sig:'eN-qq1C7xv_riCawp5LGEphzMPLrBh82cf-OQWx3eBg=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1273065592',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nA sixty game regular season didn&#8217;t afford players much of an opportunity to distinguish themselves from their peers.\u00a0 Plenty of players made the most of the shortened schedule and had tremendous seasons.\u00a0 But how do you determine which player was most valuable over such a short time frame?\u00a0 It would appear the voters for the 2020 DTBL Most Valuable Player award had many different thoughts on that.\u00a0 In quite possibly the most competitive award vote in league history, not one player received even half of the available points.\u00a0 Five different guys received a first place tally and four others were ranked in the top three on at least one ballot.\u00a0 A group of four players finished within four points of each other at the top of the results table.\u00a0 And finally, two players tied for the ultimate prize.\u00a0 Cougars first baseman Jose Abreu and Demigods shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. are the 2020 DTBL Co-Most Valuable Players.<\/p>\n<p>Jose Abreu has been a steady force for the Cougars since 2015.\u00a0 But prior to this year, he had never received so much as a single MVP vote and has never been named a DTBL All-Star.\u00a0 This year, however, he was clearly among the league&#8217;s elite hitters.\u00a0 He led the league with 60 RBI.\u00a0 His 19 home runs trailed only Luke Voit.\u00a0 He also hit .317 with 43 runs.\u00a0 The batting average was easily a career high for Abreu and the pace he set in those counting stats would have been personal bests as well.\u00a0 Being among the leaders in runs batted in is nothing new for Abreu though.\u00a0 He finished second with 123 a year ago and has had at least 90 RBI in every season but one, prior to this season.\u00a0 Abreu&#8217;s 4.4 Batting PAR ranked fourth in the league, which is an unusually low ranking for a MVP.\u00a0 But the margins were so small that distinguishing between players based on that stat alone didn&#8217;t make a lot of sense this year.\u00a0 He was just 0.2 points behind the leader (Tatis).<\/p>\n<p>Abreu was selected by the Cougars with the first overall pick in the 2015 Draft.\u00a0 By first overall pick standards, perhaps his career had been a slight disappointment prior to this year.\u00a0 But he&#8217;s hardly been a bust.\u00a0 He finished fourth for the Rookie of the Year award in 2015, following a strong first season.\u00a0 His best full season was probably last year when he .284 with 33 homers and 123 RBI and a career high 5.4 PAR.\u00a0 He almost certainly would have blown past that figure this year though with a full schedule.\u00a0 He&#8217;s now finished with at least 4.0 PAR in four of his six DTBL seasons.\u00a0 Abreu was a major reason why the Cougars finished second in the league in batting points.<\/p>\n<p>In case you didn&#8217;t get a chance to read the Rookie of the Year article, here is a quick recap of Fernando Tatis Jr.&#8217;s season.\u00a0 The first overall selection in this year&#8217;s draft lived up to the hype and then some.\u00a0 Tatis led the league with 4.6 Batting PAR.\u00a0 He hit .277 with 17 home runs and 11 stolen bases.\u00a0 Only five players had more steals and only two hit more home runs than Tatis.\u00a0 Nobody exceeded his total in both of those categories.\u00a0 He also led the league with 50 runs scored.<\/p>\n<p>While many players have come close in recent years, including Ronald Acuna last year, Tatis is the first player to win both the DTBL Rookie of the Year and DTBL Most Valuable Player in the same season since Ryan Howard in 2006.\u00a0 Jake Arrieta had been the last person to win a pair of the three major awards, taking the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year in 2015.\u00a0 While Tatis&#8217; resume is quite impressive, he wasn&#8217;t a lock to be the top finishing Demigod in this vote.\u00a0 First baseman Freddie Freeman also garnered strong support.\u00a0 Tatis and Freeman were the primary reasons why the Demigods had the league&#8217;s most improved offense in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>As a White Sox fan, I&#8217;m reluctant to even mention this, but Tatis and Abreu very easily could have been teammates.\u00a0 However, the Sox dealt Tatis to San Diego for Big Game James Shields in 2016.\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think this is the first time that we have had co-MVPs.\u00a0 In fact, I have a faint recollection of this happening in one of the league&#8217;s first couple seasons.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as I&#8217;ve mentioned before, my records are lacking on awards voting from the first decade of the league&#8217;s existence.\u00a0 This data is likely sitting on an old hard drive that I still posses, so maybe I can fill in the blanks later.<\/p>\n<p>The voting for this award was all over the map.\u00a0 Abreu received the most first place votes with four, but didn&#8217;t garner any second or third place tallies and was entirely left off one ballot.\u00a0 He accumulated a total of 49 points, which was matched by Tatis, but in a different fashion.\u00a0 Tatis received three first place votes along with a pair of seconds.\u00a0 But he was also left off two ballots.\u00a0 Perhaps the top stealth candidate for this award was the guy who finished third.\u00a0 Beanballers shortstop Trea Turner was not among the players strongly considered for the National League MVP award.\u00a0 He was an extremely valuable fantasy player, however, racking up impressive totals in all five offensive categories.\u00a0 Turner hit .335 with a dozen homers and a dozen stolen bases.\u00a0 He scored 46 runs and knocked in 41.\u00a0 His 4.4 Batting PAR was a smidge ahead of Abreu.\u00a0 Turner only received one first place vote, but was the top choice for runner-up with three seconds.\u00a0 He finished with 47 points, just two behind Abreu and Tatis.\u00a0 Komodos third baseman Jose Ramirez was also just a flipped vote here or there away from winning this award.\u00a0 Ramirez actually had nearly identical numbers to Tatis across the board, but with a slightly higher .292 average.\u00a0 Ramirez received a single first place vote, two seconds and three thirds.\u00a0 He finished with 45 points, just four behind the winners.\u00a0 But wait, there was one more player who had a reasonable shot at being the MVP.\u00a0 Demigods first baseman Freddie Freeman didn&#8217;t receive any first place votes, but was another popular choice on ballots.\u00a0 He appeared on eight ballots for a total of 32 points.\u00a0 Those were the five who appeared on a majority of ballots.\u00a0 Kings outfielder Mookie Betts also received a first place nod as one of the three total votes given to him.\u00a0 To add to the chaos of these results is another fascinating fact.\u00a0 The champion Darkhorses easily led the league in batting points.\u00a0 However, not one of their players were among the eleven players who received MVP votes.\u00a0 Finally, this is the first time in Mike Trout&#8217;s illustrious career that he has not received a MVP vote.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/MVP20.txt\">Click here<\/a> to view the full voting results.<\/p>\n<p>And with that, official business for the 2020 DTBL season is complete.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a trying year for everybody.\u00a0 I hope this league was a fun distraction for you at times this summer.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s all hope for a return to normalcy in 2021.\u00a0 Have a great Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images A sixty game regular season didn&#8217;t afford players much of an opportunity to distinguish themselves from their peers.\u00a0 Plenty of players made the most of the shortened schedule and had tremendous seasons.\u00a0 But how do you determine which player was most valuable over such a short time frame?\u00a0 It would appear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-cougars","category-demigods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","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=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}