{"id":1465,"date":"2022-11-23T13:06:54","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T20:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1465"},"modified":"2022-11-23T13:06:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T20:06:54","slug":"verlander-completes-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1465","title":{"rendered":"Verlander Completes Comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"03Tc02CCT81FyqrC0hzu7Q\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1430508354\" 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:'03Tc02CCT81FyqrC0hzu7Q',sig:'JpfsWuiMtQ5B2UqWytBYyZ7zQPJGaWQjVs1JjIlXL18=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1430508354',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nWhen Justin Verlander underwent Tommy John surgery after just one start in 2020, it felt like it could be the end of the road for one of this generation&#8217;s greatest pitchers.\u00a0 While many pitchers have successfully returned from UCL surgery, most weren&#8217;t 37+ years old at the time.\u00a0 After missing almost all of the 2020 season and all of 2021, Verlander returned this season as a slightly different pitcher, but as good as ever.\u00a0 He helped lead a rejuvenated Moonshiners pitching staff to their first ever DTBL Championship.\u00a0 In a year of countless great pitching performances, Verlander was quite clearly the best.\u00a0 In a unanimous decision, Justin Verlander is the 2022 DTBL Cy Young award winner, earning the award for the third time in his career.<\/p>\n<p>Verlander&#8217;s comeback season was quite magical.\u00a0 The 39 year old defied odds to put up one of the best seasons of his career, which is saying something since he had already authored some of the best seasons in league history.\u00a0 His ERA and WHIP tell most of the story.\u00a0 His 1.75 ERA ranks sixth all time while his 0.83 WHIP is the fourth lowest single season mark in DTBL history.\u00a0 Both marks easily led the league this season and were personal bests as well.\u00a0 His 18 wins also led the league this year, but doesn&#8217;t quite stack up with historical records due to the modern suppressed pitcher win environment.\u00a0 185 strikeouts is an impressive number, but was not near the league leaders and highlights a changed approach for Verlander in which he no longer dominates simply by not allowing hitters to put the ball in play.\u00a0 Verlander&#8217;s 14.8 Pitching PAR led the league by over 2 points and is the eighth highest mark since 2005.\u00a0 He now holds three of the top 8 figures in that stat&#8217;s single season leaderboard.<\/p>\n<p>The Moonshiners are the third DTBL team for which Verlander has starred.\u00a0 Originally drafted in the second round by the Demigods way back in 2007, he spent a dozen spectacular seasons with the Kings with whom he won four DTBL Championships and a pair of Cy Young awards.\u00a0 Those two Cy Young campaigns (2011 and 2019) are on the short list of the greatest pitching seasons in league history.\u00a0 He won 24 games while striking out 250 in 2011.\u00a0 In 2019, he had a 0.80 WHIP with 300 strikeouts and a record Pitching PAR of 17.5.\u00a0 Tommy John surgery ultimately ended his run with the Kings as he was dropped from the league roster while recovering from surgery in 2021.\u00a0 The Moonshiners made him a second round selection for the second time in his career when they picked him with the 17th overall pick in this season&#8217;s draft.\u00a0 That proved to be quite the steal for the Moonshiners.\u00a0 Verlander joined Alek Manoah and Yu Darvish to make up the league&#8217;s best starting pitching trio.\u00a0 Their championship gives Verlander a smooth five DTBL rings to go along with three Cy Young awards.\u00a0 This is the second straight season in which a pitcher has won his third Cy Young, following Verlander&#8217;s former Tigers and Kings teammate Max Scherzer turning that trick last year.<\/p>\n<p>Verlander&#8217;s gaudy numbers made him the obvious choice for this award.\u00a0 He received all nine first place votes to become the unanimous choice for this award, totaling 90 points.\u00a0 That is definitely not to say there weren&#8217;t other great pitchers this season though.\u00a0 In one of the most under-the-radar dominant seasons in recent memory, Diamond Dogs righty Sandy Alcantara put himself into the company of the league&#8217;s elite pitchers.\u00a0 Perhaps most impressive was his 228.2 innings pitched, which was 26 more than any other pitcher.\u00a0 Oh, and he also struck out 207 with a 2.28 ERA and 0.98 WHIP.\u00a0 Alcantara was the only pitcher besides Verlander to appear on every ballot.\u00a0 He received three second place votes and a total of 41 points.\u00a0 Next comes what might be the most anticipated aspect of this vote:\u00a0 where will Dylan Cease and Alek Manoah rank following their narrow Rookie of the Year competition?\u00a0 Well, turns out they flipped for this award.\u00a0 Rookie of the Year runner-up, Moonshiners young hurler Manoah finishes third for the Cy Young in his debut season.\u00a0 His 2.24 ERA and 0.99 WHIP were incredible for such a young pitcher.\u00a0 He received a pair of second place votes and a total of 31 points.\u00a0 Right behind him is Rookie of the Year winner, Choppers fireballer Cease.\u00a0 Cease received three second place votes, but was left off three ballots, which ultimately caused him to fall three points behind Manoah with 28.\u00a0 For the record, nobody swapped the order between Manoah and Cease on their Rookie of the Year and Cy Young ballots.\u00a0 It was just a matter of how those points were distributed.\u00a0 One other pitcher received a second place vote, that being Cougars ace Corbin Burnes.\u00a0 Burnes finished second in the league with 243 strikeouts.\u00a0 He is the only pitcher to rack up 200+ strikeouts with a sub 3.00 ERA each of the past two seasons.\u00a0 Burnes finished in fifth place in the vote with 13 points.\u00a0 A total of 10 different pitchers received Cy Young votes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/CY22.txt\">Click here<\/a> to view the full voting results.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s looking like I won&#8217;t get around to announcing the 2022 DTBL Most Valuable Player until early next week. There probably isn&#8217;t too much suspense surrounding who will win that award anyway though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images When Justin Verlander underwent Tommy John surgery after just one start in 2020, it felt like it could be the end of the road for one of this generation&#8217;s greatest pitchers.\u00a0 While many pitchers have successfully returned from UCL surgery, most weren&#8217;t 37+ years old at the time.\u00a0 After missing almost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-moonshiners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465","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=1465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}