{"id":975,"date":"2016-05-11T20:23:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T03:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=975"},"modified":"2016-05-11T20:25:05","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T03:25:05","slug":"players-of-the-month-april-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"Players of the Month:  April"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/522665174?et=_va4SlsCSFRN4fTEUC-ipw&#038;viewMoreLink=on&#038;sig=mAvGHqf9P9NZhHGKs26PINlSclvP5N0cJ-fWgJpB9x8=&#038;caption=true\" width=\"445\" height=\"311\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"display:inline-block;\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nYes, I am continuing last year&#8217;s feature of naming a DTBL Batter and Pitcher of the Month following each month of the season. \u00a0Yes, we are more than a third of the way through May already. \u00a0No, I haven&#8217;t announced the April winners yet. \u00a0No, I don&#8217;t have a particularly good excuse for my tardiness. \u00a0Away we go&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As a reminder, these Players of the Month selections are not subjective. \u00a0I am simply calculating each player&#8217;s PAR for the month and giving the awards to the batter and pitcher who led the league in that category. \u00a0I will also use these monthly posts to run down the list of players who won the weekly honors, which are also given to the players with the highest PAR during that week.<\/p>\n<p>Although the 2016 season is still quite young, it does seem fairly clear that we will not have a repeat of last season with one team running away from the competition right from the start. \u00a0April saw a bunch of teams swap the top spots in the standings. \u00a0At the end of the month, the top half of the standings looked like a bit of a flashback to the early years of the league more so than recent seasons. \u00a0The Choppers finished the month in first place, with the Gators and Kings in the mix as well. \u00a0The defending champion Jackalope appear to be quite strong again and the Mavericks are right there as usual. \u00a0As for individual player performances, April was dominated by a number of players. \u00a0Before we get to the best players of the month, here are the weekly award winners:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batters of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 1 (4\/3 &#8211; 4\/10) &#8211; Eugenio Suarez,\u00a0Cougars<br \/>\nWeek 2 (4\/11 &#8211; 4\/17) &#8211; Bryce Harper,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\nWeek 3 (4\/18 &#8211; 4\/24) &#8211; Welington Castillo, Gators<br \/>\nWeek 4 (4\/25 &#8211; 5\/1) &#8211;\u00a0Victor Martinez, Mavericks<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitchers of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Week 1 (4\/3 &#8211; 4\/10) &#8211;\u00a0Clayton Kershaw, Mavericks<br \/>\nWeek 2 (4\/11 &#8211; 4\/17) &#8211;\u00a0Chris Sale, Choppers<br \/>\nWeek 3 (4\/18 &#8211; 4\/24) &#8211;\u00a0Drew Smyly, Moonshiners<br \/>\nWeek 4 (4\/25 &#8211; 5\/1) &#8211;\u00a0Clayton Kershaw, Mavericks<\/p>\n<p>There are some pretty surprising names on that list of hitters. \u00a0But the one of them who won the monthly award is not hard to identify. \u00a0Kershaw won half of the weekly pitching honors, but was edged out for the monthly award. \u00a0Here are the award winners for April 2016:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Batter of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bryce Harper,\u00a0Darkhorses<br \/>\n.286 AVG, 9 HR, 24\u00a0RBI, 16 R, 5 SB, 2.17 PAR<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pitcher of the Month:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Chris Sale, Choppers<br \/>\n1.66 ERA, 0.684 WHIP, 5 W, 0 SV, 32 K, 3.41 PAR<\/p>\n<p>Harper, the reigning NL MVP, picked up right where he left off last season. \u00a0He actually faded a bit in the final week of April and almost lost this honor as a result. \u00a0But his first three weeks were simply awesome. \u00a0He finished April tied for the league lead in RBI and one behind the leader in home runs. \u00a0His five steals were just one short of his full season total in 2015. \u00a0Jose Altuve and Nolan Arenado also had great Aprils and I believe both passed Harper in PAR on the first day of May.<\/p>\n<p>Early in 2016, Chris Sale&#8217;s strikeouts are down a bit. \u00a0But the rest of his numbers are as good or better than ever. \u00a0He won every game he started in April and led the league in both wins and WHIP. \u00a0His numbers were nearly identical to his crosstown counterpart, Jake Arrieta. \u00a0But Sale gets the nod for this award by finishing with a PAR that was a couple hundredths of a point higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I am continuing last year&#8217;s feature of naming a DTBL Batter and Pitcher of the Month following each month of the season. \u00a0Yes, we are more than a third of the way through May already. \u00a0No, I haven&#8217;t announced the April winners yet. \u00a0No, I don&#8217;t have a particularly good excuse for my tardiness. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-choppers","category-darkhorses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}