{"id":571,"date":"2013-11-04T18:00:52","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T01:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=571"},"modified":"2013-11-04T18:14:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T01:14:10","slug":"not-that-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"Not That Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Jackalope first baseman Paul Goldschmidt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The DTBL season ended more than a month ago, so now seems like the perfect time to finish part 3 of my 2013 season review.\u00a0 The first part was a recap of the Kings’ championship season.\u00a0 Part two covered the other teams who were title contenders through most of the season.\u00a0 Finally, we have the other six teams who were never really in the race.\u00a0 This isn’t to say that 2013 was a terrible year for all of them, just that there was a fairly noticeable gap between the top four and these six most of the year.\u00a0 While a few of these teams were surely disappointed in how their season went, none of them were truly awful.\u00a0 The Jackalope finished in last place, but their 35.5 points was the second highest total for a last place team in league history.\u00a0 So, while none of these teams were particularly close to competing for the title this season, it is also fair to say that none of them need major reconstruction to be right in the thick of the race next year.<\/p>\n

Of these six squads, the team that is probably most satisfied with their 2013 season is the Cougars.\u00a0 They finished in fifth place, making this the first time they have finished in the top half of the league since 2004.\u00a0 A much improved offense complemented an already strong pitching staff.\u00a0 The main reason for the offensive surge was Chris Davis.\u00a0 The second round steal led the league in home runs (53) and RBI (138).\u00a0 He figures to get strong consideration in the upcoming MVP vote.\u00a0 Madison Bumgarner and Adam Wainwright helped the Cougars finish second in ERA.<\/p>\n

Another team that made great strides this year would be the Darkhorses.\u00a0 As many assumed they would, they managed to bounce back from the 2012 season from hell when everything that could possibly have gone wrong did.\u00a0 Luck still wasn’t completely on their side as they had to fight through a bunch of key injuries, especially early.\u00a0 But finishing sixth a year after coming in last is obviously a big step in the right direction.\u00a0 They more than doubled their ’12 point total as well.\u00a0 Bryce Harper had a nice rookie year for the Darkhorses, but they expect even bigger things from him next year.\u00a0 Keeping Hanley Ramirez healthy for an entire season will be key as well.\u00a0 On the pitching side of things, it is still a bit of a work in progress, but Matt Moore and Mike Minor had solid years.<\/p>\n

Following two teams who made big improvements this year was a team that went in the opposite direction.\u00a0 The Moonshiners finished in fourth place a year ago, but were just a 1.5 points away from winning their first title.\u00a0 Obviously, they had hoped to compete for the title again this year, but it wasn’t to be.\u00a0 They finished in a disappointing seventh place.\u00a0 Other than the surprising A.J. Burnett, all of the Moonshiners pitchers failed to meet expectations.\u00a0 Well, Jered Weaver was pretty good too, but didn’t put up the kind of numbers they needed from a staff ace.\u00a0 On offense, the roster actually looks pretty good, but they lacked any one player having an especially huge season.\u00a0 This is really a hard team to diagnose.\u00a0 They don’t look like a seventh place team.\u00a0 But they are lacking that star player to take them to the next level.<\/p>\n

The Demigods took a small step backwards this season, dropping one spot to eighth place.\u00a0 Their weakness is obvious:\u00a0 pitching.\u00a0 They finished with just eight pitching points, the lowest total in the league.\u00a0 This was a surprising result considering their first round pick, Yu Darvish, turned out to be one of the best pitchers in the league.\u00a0 But the rest of the rotation was a mess and they finished the season without a closer on the roster.\u00a0 The amazing thing about the Demigods is that they finished in eighth despite having the second most batting points in the league.\u00a0 They got solid years out of almost all of their offensive players, led by newcomer Carlos Gomez and veterans Evan Longoria and David Ortiz.\u00a0 If they can just figure out their pitching problems, they are not far from being a contender.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure anyone is ever pleased about finishing in ninth place, but the Gators were really a much improved team over their ’12 squad which also finished ninth.\u00a0 Through the draft and trades, they were able to significantly improve their weak offense and have plenty of good, young talent moving forward.\u00a0 Second overall draft pick Yoenis Cespedes suffered through a bit of a MLB sophomore slump, but still put up strong fantasy numbers.\u00a0 But the real steals for the Gators were a pair of shortstops:\u00a0 Jean Segura (8th round) and Andrelton Simmons (4th round).\u00a0 Their in-season trade to acquire Starling Marte is looking pretty solid too.\u00a0 The Gators pitching staff, previously their strength, was a bit of a disappointment though.\u00a0 Staff ace C.C. Sabathia had one of the worst seasons of his career.\u00a0 If they can get him to bounce back next year, this will be a very dangerous team.<\/p>\n

Finally, we have the Jackalope.\u00a0 To be blunt, this season was a train wreck for them.\u00a0 Just two years removed from a league championship and a year after being in the title race until the last day of the season, the Jackalope hit rock bottom this year, finishing dead last.\u00a0 The offense was atrocious and the pitching staff, the league’s best the previous three years, was largely disappointing as well.\u00a0 It’s not too hard to figure out why their offense struggled so much.\u00a0 They were without their two best players for a good portion of the season.\u00a0 Ryan Braun fought through injuries before finally serving his PED suspension.\u00a0 And Albert Pujols was simply not himself at any point this season, eventually causing him to miss the last couple months of the year.\u00a0 The Jackalope finished a distant last place in batting points, despite getting a breakout season from Paul Goldschmidt.\u00a0 He was pretty much the lone bright spot though.\u00a0 Just like the Darkhorses a year ago, it is hard to imagine this team staying down at the bottom very long though.\u00a0 They have way too much talent for that.\u00a0 Plus, they are going to have the first pick in an absolutely loaded draft next spring….<\/p>\n

… Which leads me to my final thought.\u00a0 All six of these teams are going to be able to add potential superstars with their first round picks next year.\u00a0 I’m not going to name names, but look no further than the top MLB Rookie of the Year contenders to get an idea of what kind of talent is coming.\u00a0 If those picks pan out, I won’t be writing about these teams in the “non-contenders” recap next year.<\/p>\n

Congrats to the Red Sox on their World Series title.\u00a0 With that, the off-season is officially upon us.\u00a0 The 2013 DTBL Awards ballot will be posted in the next couple of days with announcements of the winners coming over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DTBL season ended more than a month ago, so now seems like the perfect time to finish part 3 of my 2013 season review.\u00a0 The first part was a recap of the Kings’ championship season.\u00a0 Part two covered the other teams who were title contenders through most of the season.\u00a0 Finally, we have the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,12,5,6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cougars","category-darkhorses","category-demigods","category-gators","category-jackalope","category-moonshiners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","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=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}