{"id":222,"date":"2011-11-16T20:02:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T03:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=222"},"modified":"2011-11-16T20:02:04","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T03:02:04","slug":"a-veteran-wins-dtbl-roy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=222","title":{"rendered":"A Veteran Wins DTBL ROY"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Choppers outfielder Jose Bautista<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Going into this year’s draft, the 2011 DTBL rookie class was not highly touted.\u00a0 To make matters worse, several of the top youngsters picked in that draft proceeded to have very disappointing and\/or injury-plagued seasons.\u00a0 However, the rookie class turned out to be rather deep with a bunch of players taken after the first round easily exceeding expectations.\u00a0 In the end, it was a “veteran” who won the 2011 DTBL Rookie of the Year Award.\u00a0 The honor went to Choppers outfielder Jose Bautista.<\/p>\n

2011 was Jose Bautista’s eighth MLB season, but the first season in which he appeared on a DTBL roster, making him eligible for this award.\u00a0 From 2004-2009, Bautista was little more than a platoon\/role player in the outfield and at third base with virtually no fantasy value.\u00a0 But in 2010, he broke out in a big way, slugging 54 home runs with 124 RBIs.\u00a0 Those numbers immediately made him one of the most sought after players in this year’s draft.\u00a0 The Choppers felt very fortunate to pick him up with the fourth pick in the draft.\u00a0 Although he entered this season with many wondering if 2010 was a fluke, he did not disappoint.\u00a0 He hit 43 home runs with 103 RBIs and 105 runs scored.\u00a0 His .302 batting average surpassed his previous single season high by more than 40 points.\u00a0 So while ’10 was his true breakout season, ’11 was the year he became a complete hitter and a legitimate superstar.\u00a0 He managed to lead the DTBL in home runs in his very first season.\u00a0 Finishing the season at age 30 made Bautista a very unusual “rookie”, but he is not the oldest DTBL ROY winner.\u00a0 I believe that distinction belongs to Andres Galarraga who won the league’s first Rookie of the Year Award in 1994 at the age of 33.<\/p>\n

Bautista was a huge part of a vastly improved Choppers squad.\u00a0 Although they finished the season in sixth place, the Choppers were in the hunt until the final month of the season and were much more competitive than they have been in recent years.\u00a0 That is largely due to the significant power boost provided by Bautista and Curtis Granderson.\u00a0 The slugging duo finished first and second in the league in home runs.\u00a0 Both figure to be strong candidates for the MVP Award, which will be announced next week.\u00a0 The Choppers finished in the top half of the league in all five offensive categories, a year after finishing in the bottom half in all except batting average.<\/p>\n

The depth of this year’s rookie class is very apparent after taking a glance at the award’s voting results.\u00a0 American League Rookie of the Year Jeremy Hellickson was on the DTBL ballot as well, but did not receive a single vote.\u00a0 Bautista won the award by garnering 7 of the 10 first place votes and a total of 87 points.\u00a0 The runner up was Bautista’s Choppers teammate, relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel.\u00a0 Kimbrel saved 46 games with a 2.10 ERA, 1.039 WHIP and an extremely impressive 127 strike outs.\u00a0 He was named the National League Rookie of the Year earlier this week.\u00a0 Kimbrel was a third round pick by the Choppers.\u00a0 Since they traded away their second round pick, all the Choppers first two picks wound up doing was finish first and second in the DTBL ROY vote.\u00a0 Kimbrel received the other three first place votes and accumulated 75 points.\u00a0 Another closer came in third, the Jackalope’s John Axford, who matched Kimbrel’s 46 save total.\u00a0 The only pitcher with more saves than these two DTBL rookies was Jose Valverde.\u00a0 Axford received enough votes to get 37 points.\u00a0 His Jackalope teammate, slugging outfielder Mike Stanton, finished fourth.\u00a0 Stanton’s 34 home runs gave the champions just the kind of power threat they needed.\u00a0 Just like the Choppers, the Jackalope struck gold in the first couple rounds of the draft.\u00a0 Stanton was a first round selection and Axford was picked in the second round.\u00a0 Rounding out the top five was yet another closer, the Moonshiners’ Drew Storen.\u00a0 Storen saved 43 games.\u00a0 The Kimbrel\/Axford\/Storen combination is about as good of a set of rookie closers as you will ever see.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to see the full voting results.<\/p>\n

The 2011 Cy Young Award winner will be announced this Friday and the DTBL Most Valuable Player will be named next Tuesday, November 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going into this year’s draft, the 2011 DTBL rookie class was not highly touted.\u00a0 To make matters worse, several of the top youngsters picked in that draft proceeded to have very disappointing and\/or injury-plagued seasons.\u00a0 However, the rookie class turned out to be rather deep with a bunch of players taken after the first round […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-choppers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","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=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}