{"id":142,"date":"2011-06-25T10:44:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T17:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2011-06-25T11:24:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T18:24:38","slug":"pujols-less-jackalope-keep-rolling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Pujols-less Jackalope Keep Rolling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Injured Jackalope Star Albert Pujols<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the big stories of the 2011 season has been the rash of injuries to corner infielders, particular for the top contending teams.\u00a0 Perhaps the biggest blow came last week when the Jackalope lost their All-World first baseman Albert Pujols to a fractured forearm.\u00a0 This injury will probably put him on the shelf until sometime in August.\u00a0 In the mean time, the Jackalope’s strong hold on first place will be put to the test.<\/p>\n

The Jackalope currently lead the league by a comfortable 13 points.\u00a0 They have perfectly positioned themselves to be able to survive injuries, even this one to their most valuable player.\u00a0 In years past, the Jackalope almost solely relied on Pujols to carry their offense.\u00a0 But that has not been the case this season.\u00a0 They have accumulated a very solid 37 batting points despite Pujols not quite putting up his usual MVP-worthy numbers.\u00a0 Of course, losing him for a couple months weakens their offense, but I believe they are still in great shape.<\/p>\n

The off-season focus on rebuilding the offense may really pay off now.\u00a0 With Ryan Howard and Mike Stanton on board, the Jackalope do have some other guys to turn to for some power.\u00a0 Those two players were the direct result of a couple bold trades which sent elite starting pitchers elsewhere.\u00a0 The Jackalope pitching hasn’t missed a beat though as they are currently first or second in every pitching category.<\/p>\n

The other thing the Jackalope have going for them is that they aren’t the only contending team fighting significant injury issues.\u00a0 The second place Kings learned yesterday that first baseman Justin Morneau needs neck surgery, and he too will likely be out until August.\u00a0 They also lost a pair of starting pitchers (Tommy Hanson and Clay Buchholz) to the DL last week, although neither are expected to miss much time.\u00a0 The Kings have been the hottest team in the league over the past month, despite a complete lack of production from the usual power position of first base.\u00a0 Morneau and Adam LaRoche were supposed to anchor that position, but both were ineffective and now injured.\u00a0 LaRoche is out for the year and has been released.\u00a0 On the other side of the infield, the Kings have had a pair of third basemen spend significant time on the disabled list.\u00a0 Ryan Zimmerman is back, but David Freese remains out.<\/p>\n

Third base has been an especially troubling position for the third place team, the Moonshiners.\u00a0 Almost every week, the Moonshiners have had to call on someone new to fill the hot corner position.\u00a0 Losing David Wright to an injury has been very costly as his replacements have been completely ineffective.\u00a0 Next in line are the Naturals, who are also missing their top third baseman, first round pick Pedro Alvarez.\u00a0 Like the Moonshiners, the Naturals have had a hard time trying to find a worthy player to fill that spot.\u00a0 With all these injuries to corner infielders, there is basically nothing left to choose from in the free agent market.<\/p>\n

So while the Pujols injury is very significant, the Jackalope have a great chance of holding their lead since their closest competitors have equal or greater injury problems of their own.\u00a0 I didn’t even get to the teams lower in the standings who have been absolutely decimated by injuries.\u00a0 It has been a war of attrition so far this year, and the Jackalope are winning that battle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the big stories of the 2011 season has been the rash of injuries to corner infielders, particular for the top contending teams.\u00a0 Perhaps the biggest blow came last week when the Jackalope lost their All-World first baseman Albert Pujols to a fractured forearm.\u00a0 This injury will probably put him on the shelf until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jackalope","category-kings","category-moonshiners","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}