2018 Ben McDonald Award winner

Hopatcong's Stephen Strasburg, the league's only 20-game winner and the ERA champion in 2018, was a nearly unanimous selection as the Ben McDonald Award.

It's the first time a Floating Fish has brought home the Big Ben. No Hopatcong pitcher even received votes in the past two years of balloting. Fourteen different pitchers earned votes in balloting to recognize the league's top pitcher, including two relievers.

Strasburg (20-3, 2.55 ERA) earned 1st-place votes on four of the six ballots cast, along with a 2nd place vote, but did not appear on one ballot. The other 1st-place votes went to Marietta reliever Chad Green and Livingston's Jacob DeGrom.

Green finished second, appearing on 5 of 6 ballots and earning one of every kind of vote but a 6th place vote, followed by Tucson's Max Scherzer, who also appeared on 5 ballots, earning two second-place votes, and one each of a 3rd, 4th and 6th place vote.

Points are based on a 10-7-5-3-2-1 ballot:

1. Stephen Strasburg, HPG: 4-1-0-0-0-0 ----> 47 points
2. Chad Green, MAR: 1-1-1-1-1-0 -----------> 27 points
3. Max Scherzer, TUC: 0-2-1-1-0-1 ---------> 23 points
4. Corey Kluber, SCS: 0-1-2-1-0-0 ----------> 20 points
5. Chris Sale, SF: 0-0-0-2-2-0 ----------------> 10 points
6. Jacob DeGrom, LIV: 1-0-0-0-0-0 ---------> 10 points
7. Luis Severino, MAR: 0-0-1-0-0-2 --------> 7 points
8. Luis Castillo, EP-VAN: 0-0-1-0-1-0 ------> 7 points
9. Aaron Nola, VAN: 0-1-0-0-0-0 ------------> 7 points
10. Andrew Miller, SCS: 0-0-0-1-0-0 ---------> 3 points
11. Blake Snell, HIL: 0-0-0-1-0-0 -------------> 3 points
12. Justin Verlander, LIV- HIL: 0-0-0-0-1-0 -> 2 points
13. Marcus Stroman, ARK: 0-0-0-0-0-1 ------> 1 point
14. Mike Clevinger, MAR: 0-0-0-0-0-1 ------> 1 point

It's the first McDonald Award for Hopatcong franchise and the first time a Floating Fish pitcher has even received votes since voting resumed in 2016, with no support in the previous two seasons.
In addition to leading the league in ERA and wins, Strasburg challenged the single-season win percentage record late into the season, and also led the DMBL in quality starts (25) and quality start percentage (.758, tied with Sale); and ranked 3rd in WHIP (1.09) behind Kluber and Scherzer (tied with Sale), and in R/9 (10.3), behind Kluber and Sale/Scherzer.

Strasburg has spent four seasons in Hopatcong after the Floating Fish acquired him in January 2015 from the Durham Bulls (now the Tucson King Snakes) in exchange for CF Carlos Gomez. The 30-year-old Californian was drafted way back in 2009 by Philly in the 6th round of the supplemental draft. He spent that season in Philly's minor league system before the Endzone Animals (now the Green Rage) included him in a blockbuster eight-player deal just before 2010 protected lists were due.

In exchange for SP Roy Halladay and a 2010 3rd rounder, the Carolina Mudcats (later the Rowdy Roddy Pipers and then Durham Bulls, a derivative of the Tucson King Snakes) got Strasburg and SP Yovani Gallardo and Johnny Cueto plus three draft picks: Amityville's 1st in 2010, Marietta's 5th in 2010 and Philly's 2nd rounder in 2011.

Strasburg eventually broke into the DMBL with Carolina in the 2011 season, going 7-7 in 20 starts with a 4.10 ERA and 1.33 WHIP. He missed 2012 with Tommy John surgery, coming back in 2013 to go 14-13, 4.29 ERA with 252 strikeouts. His best season to date had been 2014, his only one in Durham, when he went 16-9 with 3.93 ERA for the the Bulls before they sent him to Hopatcong.

The 20-3 campaign helped Strasburg break through the .500 mark (45-41) during his tenure the Floating Fish after a rough start. In his first year in Hopatcong, Strasburg went 4-17 for a 92-loss squad in 2015 and followed that up with symmetrical records of 10-11 in 2016 and 11-10 in 2017.