In what turned out to be the wildest finish in league history, six months of thrilling baseball action was not enough to distinguish one team as being the league’s best.\u00a0 Instead, for the first time ever, two teams will share the title.\u00a0 When the regular season ended a week ago, David’s Darkhorses and Nick’s Naturals both finished with 76 points, making them the 2010 Dream Team Baseball League Co-Champions.<\/p>\n
Besides the tie at the top, this season becomes quite historic for another reason as well.\u00a0 With the shared title, the Darkhorses captured their fourth consecutive DTBL Championship.\u00a0 Kevin’s Kings accomplished the same feat in 2000-2003.\u00a0 The Darkhorses fourth title ties them with the Kings for the most championships in DTBL history.\u00a0 This was definitely the least dominating Darkhorses championship team, but that takes nothing away from what they have accomplished.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Naturals captured their second DTBL crown.\u00a0 They also won back in 2005.\u00a0 For most of the seasons since then, they have been a consistent contender, but haven’t quite been able to run down the Darkhorses.\u00a0 This second title matches the Naturals with the Mavericks, Gators and Choppers as two time champions.\u00a0 Only the Darkhorses, Kings and Cougars have won more.<\/p>\n
The Naturals made some history of their own with this championship.\u00a0 They captured all 50 possible batting points.\u00a0 No team has ever reached 50 points in total batting or pitching, although the 1994 Cougars did obtain the maximum 30 batting points (there were only six teams in the league at that time).\u00a0 Not surprisingly, the Naturals 26 pitching points is the fewest ever for a champion since the league expanded to 10 teams in 1998.\u00a0 The Darkhorses reached 76 points in a much more conventional manner:\u00a0 40 batting and 36 pitching.\u00a0 So while the Naturals were dominating the league with offense and mediocre pitching, the Darkhorses proved to be the most balanced team, just like they have been in all of their championship seasons.<\/p>\n
Obviously, this was the closest finish in league history, but not only because the top two teams finished with identical point totals.\u00a0 Two other teams came within five points of the title.\u00a0 Jay’s Jackalope finished three points behind the leaders for a third place finish while the Kings came in fourth, just five points back.\u00a0 The only other comparable season where the race came down to four teams was in 1999 when the Choppers won by two points with three teams tying for second place.\u00a0 Since 2001, only three teams have finished within five points of first and those were in different seasons.\u00a0 In fact, the league has completely lacked pennant races in recent years.\u00a0 The closest margin of victory in the past four years was 8 1\/2 points.\u00a0 So to have four teams well within that margin is quite remarkable.<\/p>\n
The race was tight all season.\u00a0 The Darkhorses held the top spot for a majority of the season and even seemed to be distancing themselves from the pack in the late summer.\u00a0 But the Naturals put on a late season charge and even appeared headed to the consensus title in the final week of the season.\u00a0 The Darkhorses put forth one final gasp and tied the Naturals with two days remaining.\u00a0 Surprisingly, despite some extremely tight races in individual categories, the standings remained the same through the final weekend.\u00a0 The prospect of a couple National League tie-breaking games loomed large, but it turned out the playoff spots were clinched in the final day of the regular season and no additional games were necessary.\u00a0 So with that, the Darkhorses and Naturals each claimed a piece of the title.<\/p>\n
So how did each team do it?\u00a0 As mentioned, the Darkhorses were the more balanced team.\u00a0 They really didn’t have any players with MVP caliber seasons, but instead had a roster full of quality players.\u00a0 Perhaps not quite to the extreme as their past championship clubs, but this squad didn’t have many weaknesses.\u00a0 Adrian Gonzalez was probably their top offensive player, but Darkhorses were shockingly absent from the offensive league leaders list.\u00a0\u00a0 Gonzalez clubbed a team high 31 home runs.\u00a0 Matt Holliday had a very good season as well with a .312 average and a team high 103 RBIs.\u00a0 Hanley Ramirez had another typically solid season too.\u00a0 But other than that, not a lot of guys stand out.\u00a0 On the pitching side, Tim Lincecum, Chris Carpenter and Roy Oswalt once again helped make up one of the league’s best pitching staffs.\u00a0 Although they were overshadowed by the Jackalope rotation this year.\u00a0 The bullpen, led by Brian Wilson and Francisco Cordero, led the league in saves.\u00a0 Oswalt won the league WHIP title (1.00) and Wilson recorded more saves than any other DTBL closer (48).<\/p>\n
The Naturals were led by offense, offense and more offense.\u00a0 Two of the leading MVP candidates are Naturals.\u00a0 First basemen Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto will both garner strong MVP consideration.\u00a0 Cabrera finished in the top four of the league in every offensive category except stolen bases.\u00a0 He hit .329 with 38 home runs, a DTBL leading 126 RBIs and 111 runs scored.\u00a0 Votto also finished among the league leaders in all of those categories, slightly behind Cabrera in each.\u00a0 Votto hit .324, 37 home runs, 113 RBIs and 106 runs scored.\u00a0 While those guys were awesome for the entire season, it was the late season tear of Troy Tulowitzki which may have pushed the Naturals over the top.\u00a0 Tulo finished with 27 home runs, almost all of which seemed to be in the last month and a half of the season.\u00a0 Although the Naturals pitching points were on the low side, they did have a few guys who had tremendous seasons.\u00a0 David Price and Jon Lester carried the starting rotation and Joakim Soria had another solid season out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n
The Darkhorses and Naturals earned the league’s ultimate prize, but a few other teams have to be happy with their season as well.\u00a0 The Jackalope had their best finish (3rd) since 2006 and were in the race the entire season.\u00a0 Led by the league’s best pitching staff, if they can improve their offense a bit, they will be a favorite in 2011.\u00a0 The Kings rebounded from an absolutely dreadful last place finish in 2009 to finish fourth this year.\u00a0 An improved pitching staff in the second half of the season bodes well for the future too.\u00a0 The Moonshiners and Gators saw modest improvement, moving up one spot each to finish fifth and sixth respectively.\u00a0 And although a seventh place finish isn’t much to get excited about, it was the best finish for the Choppers since 2006.<\/p>\n
Then there were the rest.\u00a0 The Mavericks took the honor of the league’s most disappointing team.\u00a0 Ravaged by injuries and out of the race early, they made a bunch of trades with an eye to the future.\u00a0 This left them with a very thin roster for the last couple months of the season.\u00a0 Just like this year, they will have two of the first three picks in the draft next year though.\u00a0 Hopefully it turns out better for them this next time around.\u00a0 The Cougars fell to ninth place despite a surprisingly good offense led by MVP candidate Josh Hamilton.\u00a0 However, their league worst nine pitching points removed any hopes of being a contender.\u00a0 Finally, the Demigods had their worst season ever, finishing dead last.\u00a0 For a while, last place looked like it was going to be an extremely coveted position.\u00a0 However, Stephen Strasburg’s injury put a bit of a damper on that.\u00a0 Next year’s draft still figures to be quite loaded though, so these bottom finishing teams will have an opportunity for immediate improvement.<\/p>\n
Speaking of next year’s draft, a coin toss will be performed to determine which team will pick 10th in the draft.\u00a0 The first tie-breaker for determining draft position is a head-to-head stat category comparison.\u00a0 However, the Darkhorses and Naturals each bested the other in five categories, so the coin toss will be necessary.\u00a0 I will wait until I have another DTBL member present to witness it and will let you know how it turns out.<\/p>\n
That’s all for the 2010 DTBL season.\u00a0 Thanks to everyone for yet another exciting year.\u00a0 18 seasons are in the books!\u00a0 This was one of our most active seasons in terms of activity too, which always helps keep things interesting.\u00a0 I will be in touch about the post season awards voting soon.\u00a0 Congratulations to Dave and Nick on their well deserved titles!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In what turned out to be the wildest finish in league history, six months of thrilling baseball action was not enough to distinguish one team as being the league’s best.\u00a0 Instead, for the first time ever, two teams will share the title.\u00a0 When the regular season ended a week ago, David’s Darkhorses and Nick’s Naturals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-darkhorses","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","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=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}