{"id":495,"date":"2013-06-06T16:49:49","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T23:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=495"},"modified":"2013-06-06T18:01:01","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T01:01:01","slug":"a-terrific-trio-of-tigers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=495","title":{"rendered":"A Terrific Trio of Tigers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kings pitcher Max Scherzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This season marks the 10th anniversary of Kevin’s Kings most recent DTBL Championship.\u00a0 They are attempting to cap off the celebration this year by becoming the first franchise to win a fifth league title.\u00a0 They are the current front-runners, holding a nine point lead over the Mavericks.\u00a0 The primary reason for their lead is a dominant pitching staff led by three Detroit Tigers teammates:\u00a0 Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez.<\/p>\n

It can be a dangerous proposition to put all of your proverbial eggs in a single MLB team’s basket, but that is largely what the Kings are doing.\u00a0 With three fifths of their rotation consisting of Tigers pitchers, the Kings could have been doomed if this Tigers squad seriously underachieved.\u00a0 While Detroit is not running away with anything, their hitting and pitching have largely lived up to expectations, rewarding the Kings along the way.\u00a0 The Verlander, Scherzer and Sanchez trio has been especially dominant.<\/p>\n

These three pitchers are having great seasons, with each of them contributing very similar numbers.\u00a0 All three are on the league leaderboard in strike outs, averaging more than a strike out per inning.\u00a0 They all have at least six wins with ERAs of 3.70 or better and very solid WHIPs.\u00a0 Together, they have helped boost the Kings to the top of the league in wins and near the top in the other pitching categories as well.\u00a0 Each took a different path to get to this point of their career with the Kings, however.<\/p>\n

Verlander has been the ace of the Kings staff, and one of the top pitchers in the league, ever since the Kings selected him in the third round of the 2009 draft.\u00a0 This year, he has been solid, but not spectacular.\u00a0 In fact, he probably has the worst numbers of this Tigers trio.\u00a0 Scherzer and Sanchez both have better ERAs and WHIPs and even have more strike outs than Verlander to this point.\u00a0 But still, Verlander’s 87 strike outs and seven wins are nothing to sneeze at.\u00a0 He’s the safest bet to keep up the current pace for a full season since he’s done it four straight years.\u00a0 He has had a minimum of 17 wins and 219 strike outs in every season with the Kings.\u00a0 He is second, behind Randy Johnson, in franchise history in ERA, WHIP and strike outs.<\/p>\n

Scherzer has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season.\u00a0 He won his eighth game of the year this afternoon, tying him for most in the league.\u00a0 His impressive 0.89 WHIP is second best, as is his strike out total which reached the 100 mark this afternoon.\u00a0 He’s been fairly unlucky to have an ERA over 3 (3.24) when looking at the rest of his numbers.\u00a0 But he’s on pace to set career bests in all four relevant categories.\u00a0 Scherzer was acquired in a trade with the Jackalope back in 2010.\u00a0 At the time, he was stuck on the bench for a Jackalope squad that had one of the strongest rotations in league history.\u00a0 Now he’s playing a leading role for the first place Kings.\u00a0 He has been a solid strike out contributor for quite some time, but this year is the first time he’s put it all together for a significant stretch.\u00a0 But his hot streak really started in the second half of last season.\u00a0 His turnaround from a rough start was a key factor in the Kings near miss of the ’12 championship.<\/p>\n

Sanchez is the big surprise of this group.\u00a0 He’s been a solid, but not spectacular player for several years.\u00a0 But his inconsistency has led him to be shuffled in and out of the lineup since the Kings signed him as a free agent in 2011.\u00a0 The potential has always been there though, which is why the Kings have continued to retain his services despite being a part time player for them prior to this season.\u00a0 He won just seven games for the Kings a year ago, but is already at six this year.\u00a0 His 2.65 ERA and 1.09 WHIP are way better than his career marks.\u00a0 And 98 strike outs in 78 innings blows away anything he has done before.\u00a0 So if there is one candidate most likely to come down to earth, it would be Sanchez.\u00a0 He’s in a much better situation than in previous years though.\u00a0 He pitches for a very good offensive squad in a great pitcher’s ballpark.\u00a0 If he can continue to pitch as he has so far this season, he will be a pretty impressive third option for both the Tigers and Kings.<\/p>\n

The Kings will need these three guys to continue to lead their staff because they got some bad news yesterday regarding another member of their rotation.\u00a0 Jake Peavy has a broken rib and will miss at least 4-6 weeks.\u00a0 It was Peavy who was expected to be the Kings number three guy behind Verlander and Scherzer.\u00a0 But Sanchez has grabbed that spot and will try to lessen the blow of the loss of Peavy.<\/p>\n

Gators and Naturals Make a Deal<\/h2>\n

In other (belated) league news, the Naturals and Gators completed this year’s first regular season trade a few weeks ago.\u00a0 The Naturals dealt outfielder Starling Marte and their 8th round pick in 2014 to the Gators for relief pitcher Greg Holland and a 6th round pick.\u00a0 The Naturals were in desperate need of a closer following the spring training loss of Jason Motte and a subsequent injury to Chris Perez (who has some interesting legal issues hanging over him now too).\u00a0 Holland has been perfect for the Naturals so far, earning three saves with a spotless ERA.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Marte figures to be another important piece in the Gators rebuilding process.\u00a0 He has hit a rough patch since joining the Gators and is currently in their minors, but this trade was more about the future.\u00a0 The Gators have a vastly improved offense following a few years of historic ineptitude with the bats.\u00a0 Eventually, Marte should fit in nicely with the other good, young players the Gators have acquired in the last 12 months.<\/p>\n

The big story in baseball this week is ESPN’s report that MLB is seeking to suspend 20+ players, including some of the game’s biggest stars, in the wake of the Biogenesis PED investigation.\u00a0 However, I don’t think this is worth discussing in any great detail until actual suspensions are handed out.\u00a0 Call me a skeptic, but unless there is hard evidence beyond Tony Bosch’s personal testimony, I think MLB will have a hard time dolling out lengthy bans.\u00a0 Bosch is simply not a credible witness.\u00a0 But we’ll wait and see what other evidence is provided.\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This season marks the 10th anniversary of Kevin’s Kings most recent DTBL Championship.\u00a0 They are attempting to cap off the celebration this year by becoming the first franchise to win a fifth league title.\u00a0 They are the current front-runners, holding a nine point lead over the Mavericks.\u00a0 The primary reason for their lead is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gators","category-kings","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","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=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}