2013 Quarry Unlimited - League Leaders

Well I finally was able to get Blogger to work correctly yesterday and I got about three times as many views as before.  Hopefully it will continue to work properly.

Anyway, today's focus is on league leaders.  This is one subset that does continue to modern card sets, although I don't like them as much now because they are scattered throughout a set.  The first eight cards of the 1977 Topps set were the league leaders and that's the way it should be.  Unlike the 1977 set, there were two ties in the 2013 season among the eight major categories.  I decided to make two cards for both the Home Run Leaders and the Victories Leaders because splitting the picture would make the card look weird. Let's take a look at some leaders from the 2013 season.

Miguel Cabrera led the AL with a .348 average.  It was the third consecutive year that he led the league in batting becoming the first person to do that since Hall of Famer Wade Boggs did it four times from 1985-1988.  Michael Cuddyer became the sixth different Rockie to capture a batting title with his .331 average  It was Colorado's eighth title in their 21 year franchise history.

Chris Davis had a year reminiscent of Jose Bautista in 2010 and Cecil Fielder in 1990.  He basically came out of nowhere to have a 50 homer season finishing the year with a total of 53 bombs.  Pedro Alvarez and Paul Goldschmidt tied for the National League lead with 36 home runs each.  It was the first time the NL had a tie in this category since 1984 when Dale Murphy and Mike Schmidt also hit 36 homers each.

The RBI statistic has taken a beating from the sabermetric community, but it still gets its due here on my site.  Chris Davis and Miguel Cabrera had a wonderful back and forth battle for the RBI crown in the AL with Davis pulling ahead on the final day of the season with 138 to Cabrera's 137.  The NL race was much more anticlimactic with Goldschmidt winning by a large margin with a total of 125.

The stolen base is another statistic that has changed dramatically since my youth.  With home run numbers dropping across the board, there may be a slight renaissance of stolen bases in the next few years.  Jacoby Ellsbury paced the American League with 52 steals which was the most in the AL since Juan Pierre had 68 in 2010 for the White Sox.  With 46 steals, Eric Young Jr. became the first person to lead the NL while switching teams mid-season since Michael Bourn in 2011.

Pitching victories is another statistic that has fallen on hard times in recent years.  I think it is the perfect representation of irony that people don't consider wins when looking at the Cy Young Award, but Cy Young has the most wins all time.  Either way, Max Scherzer's 21 victories should buck that recent trend.  In the National League, both Adam Wainwright and Jordan Zimmermann finished the season with 19 wins.  Neither is expected to even compete for the NL award.  Welcome to modern baseball statistics.

Anibal Sanchez of the Tigers led the AL with a 2.57 ERA.  Sanchez and Max Scherzer became the first set of teammates to lead the AL in both victories and ERA since Frank Viola and Allan Anderson of the 1988 Minnesota Twins.  Clayton Kershaw led the NL in ERA for the third straight season.  He is the first pitcher to do that since Greg Maddux from 1993-1995.

Yu Darvish of Texas led the American League with a total of 277 strikeouts which the highest total in the AL since 2000 when Pedro Martinez had 284.  Clayton Kershaw led the National League with 232 strikeouts.  He also led the NL in 2011.  He was the first person to lead the NL in non-consecutive seasons since Jake Peavy did it in 2005 and 2007.

Firemen is one of those terms that has basically been replaced by a modern term, closer in this case.  Personally I prefer the term fireman because it adds a little more color to the game, even if I never really understood why that term was used.  Craig Kimbrel led the NL with 50 saves while Jim Johnson led the AL also with 50 saves.  The last time the leaders of both leagues finished with the same amount of saves was in 1959 when Turk Lown led the AL with 15 saves while Lindy McDaniel and Don McMahon had 15 saves in the NL.



You have to love that Eric Young photo.  He looks like he is about go on a rampage in a summer camp.  I am very happy that I was able to reference both Allan Anderson, Cecil Fielder, and Turk Lown in one single blog post.  I think that might be a first for the Internet. 


Thanx for reading.