{"id":882,"date":"2015-07-03T08:40:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T15:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2015-07-03T08:40:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T15:40:41","slug":"players-of-the-month-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=882","title":{"rendered":"Players of the Month:  June"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/477126942?et=ztZ0Zh2rTiBFsechs5WyBg&#038;viewMoreLink=off&#038;sig=UdNi1re8zrIMQOTakl_EFnXdiMifDGt7-lUcMvBRWx8=&#038;caption=true\" width=\"445\" height=\"280\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"display:inline-block;\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nJune was another very good month for the Jackalope. \u00a0They maintained a healthy lead of near 20 points throughout the entire month. \u00a0They continue to lead the league in both batting and pitching points. \u00a0This is especially impressive since they haven&#8217;t exactly had a healthy roster at any point this season. \u00a0The latest injury will be their biggest challenge to date. \u00a0Giancarlo Stanton will miss at least a month with a broken hand. \u00a0A top MVP candidate prior to the injury, Stanton has been just one of several outstanding performers for the first place squad. \u00a0This injury might give other teams a little more hope though.<\/p>\n<p>Besides the Jackalope maintaining their comfortable lead, the other top stories of June involved a couple pitchers putting up historic runs of starts. \u00a0One led to a Pitcher of the Month honor, which I will get to in a bit. \u00a0But I&#8217;d be remiss if I didn&#8217;t mention Max Scherzer&#8217;s incredible run of three consecutive starts with a no-hitter (and near perfect game) sandwiched between two other near no-hitters. \u00a0Amazingly, that was not enough to earn Scherzer his second straight Pitcher of the Month award. \u00a0In fact, somehow, he didn&#8217;t even take home a Pitcher of the Week honor, despite being a hit batsman away from throwing a perfect game! \u00a0My method for selecting those honors makes it a near certainty that the weekly pitching award goes to the top starting pitcher who throws two quality starts in a week. \u00a0Unfortunately for Scherzer, those three starts came in separate weeks. \u00a0Anyway, it was a pretty impressive month for him. \u00a0Here are the weekly award winners from June:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 9 (6\/1 &#8211; 6\/7) &#8211; Jose Bautista, Choppers<br \/>\nWeek 10 (6\/8 &#8211; 6\/14) &#8211; Giancarlo Stanton, Jackalope<br \/>\nWeek 11 (6\/15 &#8211; 6\/21) &#8211; Manny Machado, Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 12 (6\/22 &#8211; 6\/28) &#8211; Nolan Arenado, Naturals<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 9 (6\/1 &#8211; 6\/7) &#8211; Chris Archer, Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 10 (6\/8 &#8211; 6\/14) &#8211; Chris Sale, Choppers<br \/>\nWeek 11 (6\/15 &#8211; 6\/21) &#8211; Anibal Sanchez, Kings<br \/>\nWeek 12 (6\/22 &#8211; 6\/28) &#8211; Collin McHugh, Cougars<\/p>\n<p>The races for the monthly awards were both extremely tight with a lot of deserving candidates narrowly missing. \u00a0Here are the award winners for June 2015:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nolan Arenado, Naturals<br \/>\n.304 AVG, 12 HR, 33 RBI, 24\u00a0R, 0 SB, 2.57\u00a0PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Chris Sale, Choppers<br \/>\n1.83 ERA, 0.812 WHIP, 2 W, 0 SV, 75 K, 3.77\u00a0PAR<\/p>\n<p>You know the Naturals must have a pretty good infield when Troy Tulowitzki is only their second best Rockies infielder. \u00a0Nolan Arenado had an incredible month of June and finished with a flourish. \u00a0His 33 RBI easily led the league and were the most in a month since Miguel Cabrera had 34 last May. \u00a0Arenado just barely edged out a pair of Mavericks for this award: \u00a0Manny Machado and Albert Pujols.<\/p>\n<p>It is very hard to win the Pitcher of the Month award with only two wins in the month. \u00a0But when the rest of your numbers are setting records, you can overcome criminally poor run\/bullpen support. \u00a0That&#8217;s what Chris Sale did in June. \u00a0He is currently riding an eight start streak of striking out at least 10 hitters. \u00a0He is only the second player in the past 100 years to accomplish such a feat. \u00a0His 75 strikeouts in 44.1 June innings looks like a misprint. \u00a0It is also a DTBL single month record, surpassing the 72 whiffs Pedro Martinez recorded in June of 1997.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June was another very good month for the Jackalope. \u00a0They maintained a healthy lead of near 20 points throughout the entire month. \u00a0They continue to lead the league in both batting and pitching points. \u00a0This is especially impressive since they haven&#8217;t exactly had a healthy roster at any point this season. \u00a0The latest injury will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-choppers","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","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=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}