{"id":411,"date":"2012-10-29T11:58:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T18:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=411"},"modified":"2012-10-29T11:58:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T18:58:09","slug":"naturals-grab-third-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=411","title":{"rendered":"Naturals Grab Third Title"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Naturals pitcher David Price<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The World Series is over and the DTBL season wrapped up almost a month ago, so I suppose it is about time I write about the Naturals title winning season.\u00a0 Actually, I may have skipped this altogether, except I suddenly find myself with some unexpected free time thanks to Hurricane Sandy.\u00a0 Hopefully I won’t lose power before I finish this…<\/p>\n

Perhaps when it became obvious that we were headed for a chaotic sprint for the finish line, the Naturals should have been the clear favorite to finish first.\u00a0 They have now come out on top of the two best finishes in league history and have never won the title by more than 3 1\/2 points.\u00a0 Their 2005 title now looks like a cakewalk as they bested the Moonshiners by 3 1\/2.\u00a0 Then in 2010, we had the unforgettable first place tie between the Naturals and Darkhorses, with two other teams within 5 points of first.\u00a0 But the finishes to those seasons were nothing like 2012.\u00a0 As I covered in the last article, five teams had a legitimate chance to win the championship heading into the final day of the season.\u00a0 But in the end, Nick’s Naturals captured the 2012 Dream Team Baseball League Championship.<\/p>\n

With their third DTBL title, the Naturals are now tied with the Cougars for the third most titles in league history, just one behind the Darkhorses and Kings.\u00a0 Not bad for the league’s youngest franchise.\u00a0 Since the Darkhorses four-peat, the Naturals have been the league’s most dominating team.\u00a0 They have finished no lower than third place since 2009, including two titles and a second place finish in 2011.\u00a0 Despite finishing a distant second to the Jackalope a year ago, they were absolutely considered one of the favorites headed into 2012.\u00a0 But the manner in which they went about winning the title was not what most predicted.\u00a0 Previously a hitting dominated team, it was the Naturals pitching staff that led them to the title.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the Naturals finished 10 1\/2 points behind the Jackalope, but it was a shaky pitching staff that kept them from making a serious title run.\u00a0 They led the league with 45 batting points, but only earned a mediocre 25 1\/2 pitching points.\u00a0 That put them 23 1\/2 pitching points behind the champion Jackalope, obviously too big of a margin to make up on offense.\u00a0 But in 2012, it was almost the opposite situation.\u00a0 The offense slipped to just 29 batting points, ranking fifth in the league.\u00a0 A vastly improved pitching staff earned them 41 1\/2 points, just 1\/2 point behind the Jackalope for most in the league.\u00a0 When put together, those numbers earned them a one point advantage over the Kings and Mavericks.<\/p>\n

Although the offense was largely disappointing, one player in particular kept the team afloat:\u00a0 Miguel Cabrera.\u00a0 Cabrera famously won the first league triple crown since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.\u00a0 He did not win the same honor in the DTBL though since Melky Cabrera, Buster Posey and Mike Trout bested him in batting average.\u00a0 In case you were wondering about Melky Cabrera and Trout finishing ahead of him, our league uses 400 at bats as the minimum qualifying mark, so Cabrera was able to qualify despite the PED suspension and wound up winning the DTBL batting title.\u00a0 Meanwhile, although he finished behind Miguel Cabrera in the AL batting title race, Trout finished just ahead of him in our league because the Mavericks did not have him active for his first week in the MLB this season.\u00a0 But anyway, that does not take away from the impressive season by Miguel Cabrera.\u00a0 He hit .330 and led the DTBL in home runs (44) and runs batted in (139).\u00a0 Only Trout scored more runs than his 109.\u00a0 Just like in the American League, it should be a fascinating race between him and Trout for the MVP award.<\/p>\n

Cabrera was not the only standout offensive performer for the Naturals though.\u00a0 Andrew McCutchen appears to have reached superstar status.\u00a0 He joined the 30-20 club with 31 home runs and 20 stolen bases while hitting for a .327 average.\u00a0 He also figures to garner some MVP consideration.\u00a0 Chase Headley and Chris Davis were the biggest surprises on the roster, coming out of relative obscurity to have big seasons.\u00a0 Both were very shrewd early season free agent signings by the Naturals.\u00a0 Joey Votto was another player who was having a huge season, until a mid-season injury derailed him and he was never quite the same in the second half.<\/p>\n

In some ways, the Naturals offense wasn’t really that huge of a disappointment when you consider what they had to overcome.\u00a0 Injuries ruined most\/all of the season for some of their key contributors from years past:\u00a0 Troy Tulowitzki, Carl Crawford, Victor Martinez and a late season injury to Nick Markakis.\u00a0 6th round pick Mat Gamel was lost extremely early in the season as well.\u00a0 So the fact that the Naturals slipped up in batting points this season was not at all surprising.\u00a0 Fortunately for them, they had a pitching staff to pick up the slack.<\/p>\n

David Price, Matt Cain, Zack Greinke, Jordan Zimmermann and Jon Lester teamed up to create a starting rotation as good as anybody’s, except possibly the Jackalope.\u00a0 In fact, those five were so steady that Homer Bailey found himself in the minors almost the entire season despite a huge breakout season for him too.\u00a0 Lester’s season was slightly disappointing, but the other four were among the best pitchers in the league this year.\u00a0 Price will probably be the team’s top Cy Young candidate.\u00a0 He finished second in the league in wins (20) and ERA (2.56) and was also among the league leaders in WHIP (1.10) and strike outs (205).\u00a0 Cain threw a perfect game in ’12 and led the Naturals in WHIP (1.04) while winning 16 games.\u00a0 Greinke had another steady season, though he tailed off a bit after the trade to the American League.\u00a0 And Zimmermann had a breakout year, posting an impressive 2.94 ERA.<\/p>\n

The Naturals bullpen was a strength as well, finishing second in the league in saves despite finishing the season with just two closers.\u00a0 Jason Motte and Chris Perez finished third and fifth respectively in the league in saves.\u00a0 Jonathan Broxton contributed 27 saves as well, most of the coming before he was traded to Cincinnati.\u00a0 It was a nice showing by a group that lost one of its key pieces in spring training, when Joakim Soria was lost to Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n

The 2012 season will be best remembered for the unbelievable championship race.\u00a0 But when it was all said and done, the Naturals claimed a well deserved DTBL Championship.\u00a0 Next year, they will attempt to tie for the most titles in league history, and there is no reason to think they won’t be one of the favorites to do just that.<\/p>\n

Later this week, I will recap the season of the other title contenders and will then wrap things up with the teams that finished in the bottom half of the standings.\u00a0 If I get another day off of work, perhaps that second article will come tomorrow.\u00a0 Also look for the 2012 DTBL awards ballot to be posted later this week.\u00a0 Those award winners will be announced in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Series is over and the DTBL season wrapped up almost a month ago, so I suppose it is about time I write about the Naturals title winning season.\u00a0 Actually, I may have skipped this altogether, except I suddenly find myself with some unexpected free time thanks to Hurricane Sandy.\u00a0 Hopefully I won’t lose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","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=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}