{"id":566,"date":"2013-10-16T12:56:35","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T19:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=566"},"modified":"2013-10-16T12:56:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T19:56:35","slug":"best-of-the-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=566","title":{"rendered":"Best of the Rest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Choppers relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through most of the 2013 DTBL season, there was a fairly obvious line of demarcation between the contenders and the also-rans.\u00a0 Four teams had legitimate title aspirations most of the season, while the other six were left to build for the future.\u00a0 The Mavericks, Choppers and Naturals were not able to win the league, but to varying degrees, 2013 was a good season for them.<\/p>\n

For the second consecutive year, the Mavericks missed winning the league championship by a single point.\u00a0 And the similarities between 2012 and 2013 don’t end there for the Mavericks.\u00a0 Just like 2012, they were the best team in the league in the second half of the season and possibly would have won both years if the season was a week longer.\u00a0 They erased the Kings double digit lead and briefly took over first place at the end of August.\u00a0 But injuries to key players down the stretch eventually did them in.\u00a0 A couple of those injuries could have a lingering effect on their 2014 campaign as well.\u00a0 They had to finish the season without the services of three of their best players:\u00a0 Matt Harvey, Manny Machado and Edwin Encarnacion.\u00a0 Since the season ended, the news hasn’t gotten any better regarding Harvey and Machado.\u00a0 Harvey eventually succumbed to Tommy John surgery and probably will not pitch next year.\u00a0 Machado underwent knee surgery that may not have him back in time for Opening Day.\u00a0 Encarnacion’s injury was less serious, but couldn’t have come at a worse time.\u00a0 He led the Mavericks in home runs and, at the time of the injury, was also the club leader in RBI.<\/p>\n

Although they didn’t win the title, the 2013 Mavericks can lay claim to a couple impressive distinctions, arguably including the greatest pitching staff in league history.\u00a0 They broke the league record for lowest team ERA and WHIP.\u00a0 Their 2.63 club ERA smashed the record previously held by the 2011 Jackalope (2.83).\u00a0 In WHIP, they also bested the ’11 Jackalope mark 1.05 to 1.12.\u00a0 They were well on their way to breaking the strikeout record as well before the Harvey injury, but wound up falling nine strikeouts short of the total by the 2007 Mavericks.\u00a0 It is hard to imagine another team besting those team ERA and WHIP totals anytime soon.\u00a0 Harvey, Clayton Kershaw and Stephen Strasburg helped make up one of the most dominating rotations ever assembled.\u00a0 Kershaw and Harvey finished 1-2 in both ERA and WHIP.\u00a0 The offense wound up being a bit of a disappointment though, and ultimately was the reason they didn’t win the league.\u00a0 They will look to improve that group next year, particularly since it seems unlikely they will be able to duplicate this pitching performance.<\/p>\n

Besides the Kings, the Choppers were probably the team most pleased with their 2013 season.\u00a0 They finished the season in third place, a height in which they had not reached since 2001.\u00a0 In fact, this is the first time they have finished in the top half of the standings since 2006.\u00a0 This was no fluke.\u00a0 They made significant improvements to their offense, and especially their pitching, to finish just nine points out of first place.<\/p>\n

The Choppers led the league in home runs, RBI and saves.\u00a0 The saves title was extremely interesting since they spent a good portion of the year with a starting pitcher occupying one of their bullpen slots (Alexi Ogando).\u00a0 But Craig Kimbrel and Mariano Rivera more than made up for that.\u00a0 Their rotation was sneaky good as well.\u00a0 None of these guys got serious Cy Young hype, but Chris Sale, C.J. Wilson, Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester and Jarrod Parker all had outstanding seasons.\u00a0 The staff accumulated 37 pitching points, only exceeded by the record breaking Mavericks.\u00a0 The Choppers offense wasn’t too shabby either.\u00a0 Finishing on top of the league in HR and RBI was a true team effort.\u00a0 Seven different Choppers hit at least 20 home runs while eight guys had 70+ RBI.\u00a0 Pedro Alvarez led the team in both categories (36, 100), and he was nearly matched by Mark Trumbo (34, 100).\u00a0 Also, Jayson Werth was one of the best hitters in the league in the second half of the season.\u00a0 This was a huge stepping stone season for the Choppers.\u00a0 They should enter 2014 as one of the top title contenders.<\/p>\n

It is almost always a disappointment for a defending champion when they are unable to successfully defend that title.\u00a0 So the Naturals probably won’t remember this season fondly.\u00a0 However, this year’s squad really wasn’t that much worse than the team that won it all in dramatic fashion a year ago.\u00a0 In 2012, the Naturals won the league with 70.5 points.\u00a0 This year, they only dropped a handful of points down to 66, but that put them in a distant fourth place.\u00a0 Their offense actually earned them more points than a year ago.\u00a0 But because of the emergence of a few other teams’ pitching staffs, the Naturals took a bit of a dive.<\/p>\n

Just like last year, the Naturals offense was carried by strong MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera.\u00a0 Cabrera led the league in batting average and finished second behind Chris Davis in both home runs and runs batted in.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, it was batting average that kept him from winning the DTBL triple crown a year ago, a feat he did accomplish in the American League in ’12.\u00a0 Andrew McCutchen further entrenched himself as one of the game’s best hitters this year too.\u00a0 But besides those two players, the Naturals lacked that third dominating player they needed to make a serious title run.\u00a0 As mentioned, the pitching staff took a hit this year.\u00a0 Matt Cain was the biggest disappointment.\u00a0 Mid-season injuries to Zack Greinke and David Price proved costly as well.\u00a0 The Naturals most consistent pitcher from start to finish this year was the under-appreciated Jordan Zimmermann who finished second in the league with 19 wins.\u00a0 The Naturals don’t need to do much to return to the top next year.\u00a0 Perhaps they will focus on building depth in case they face another injury plagued season in 2014.<\/p>\n

The final part of my 2013 season review will examine the six teams who were not serious title contenders this year.\u00a0 Look for that sometime late next week.\u00a0 I hope you have been enjoying these baseball playoffs.\u00a0 It has been one of the most exciting Octobers I can recall, with nearly every game coming down to the final pitches.\u00a0 Let’s hope for more of the same the next couple weeks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through most of the 2013 DTBL season, there was a fairly obvious line of demarcation between the contenders and the also-rans.\u00a0 Four teams had legitimate title aspirations most of the season, while the other six were left to build for the future.\u00a0 The Mavericks, Choppers and Naturals were not able to win the league, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-choppers","category-mavericks","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","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=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":569,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}