2020 Kevin Mitchell Award winner: Christian Yelich

Christian Yelich secured a triple crown of sorts in 2020, leading the league in batting, on-base percentage and slugging, along with a number of other categories. The offensive explosion in his seventh DMBL season was enough to win the 2020 Kevin Mitchell Award as the league's top batter, comfortably outdistancing teammate Cody Bellinger.

2020 Kevin Mitchell Award candidates

Is a big hitting CF or SS more valuable than a power-hitting 1B? Does a DH who doesn't usually even play the field warrant as much consideration? It's an age-old question, as is just what "valuable" means. And in a season with home runs flying out of ballparks -- does it matter?

Sardine City finishes off Hopatcong in 6

Top-seeded Sardine City will return to the DMBL Finals for the second time in franchise history after disposing of No. 4 Hopatcong in a 3-1 victory in Game 6 of their DMBL semifinal series.

Kershaw's dominant playoff run ends with MVP

Clayton Kershaw was named the Most Valuable Player of the 2017 DMBL playoffs after completing an utterly dominating postseason run in which he won two games in each round of the playoffs, including the Game 7 clincher for the Hoboken Cutters.

Sardine City evens up series at 2-2

Sardine City throttled the Hoboken bullpen, erupting for 6 runs in the 6th inning, on its way to a 8-5 win in Game 4, to tie the DMBL World Series at 2 games a piece.

Pederson homers twice to back Kluber

Joc Pederson smacked 2 solo home runs to back Corey Kluber's 4th win of the postseason, leading Sardine City to a 5-2 win in Game 3 over Hoboken.

Sardine City clinches first DMBL World Series

Sardine City earned its first appearance in the DMBL World Series, knocking off top-seeded Vancouver in 6 games with a 7-3 win on Thursday night at The Cannery.

Cueto calms Straphangers for Game 5 win

Johnny Cueto rebounded from a weak Game 1 outing to go 7-plus innings while the Vancouver offense got in gear early and held on for a 4-2 win in Game 5 to force Game 6 in Sardine City.

Schimpf stuns Vancouver with Game 4 walkoff HR

Ryan Schimpf picked an opportune if unlikely time for his first home run off a left-hander this season. Schimpf yanked a solo home run to right off Andrew Miller in the bottom of the 10th inning to give Sardine City a 4-3 victory in Game 4 for a 3-1 series lead.

Kluber, Flowers lead Sardine City to Game 3 win

Corey Kluber showed why he's been Sardine City's ace for so long and Tyler Flowers continued his hot postseason hitting, leading the Straphangers to a 3-1 victory over Vancouver in Game 3 on Saturday night.

Behind two homers from Yelich, Sardine City evens series

Sardine City evened its Best-of-7 series Thursday afternoon with a 4-3 win over top-seed Vancouver behind two home runs from a hot-hitting Christian Yelich and a solid outing by journeyman left-hander Daniel Norris.

Vancouver holds on to take Game 1

John Jay went 4-for-4 and scored what proved to be the deciding run on a wild pitch in the 7th inning as top-seeded Vancouver took Game 1 in its Best-of-7 series against No. 4 Sardine City on Wednesday night.

R.I.P. Jose Fernandez

The DMBL recently lost a budding superstar in Jose Fernandez, who was killed in a boating accident in September.

Kluber K's 10 in complete-game win over Allentown in Game 1

Corey Kluber went the distance, striking out 10 and limiting the Allentown offense to seven hits and a run as Sardine City took Game 1 of their opening series, 5-1.

Curious qualifications in batting race

Fewer than 20 games to go in the 2014 season and only a few playoff spots and seeds remain to be determined but a few individual races are still more or less up for grabs.

Heading into Sunday's doubleheader action, Hanley Ramirez currently leads the league in batting at .346, a healthy lead over teammate Matt Carpenter (.335). Outside of Vancouver's Michael Brantley, third in the batting race hitting .330, the rest of the top five consists of San Francisco Experience batters: Brandon Belt (.326) and Joe Mauer (.325).

Ramirez is putting together a serious candidacy for the Kevin Mitchell Award as the league's most valuable batter. In addition to leading the batting race, he also enjoys a commanding lead in the RBI race with 158 to 126 for Livingston's Paul Goldschmidt. Though he's in the top 10 in home runs with 34, Ramirez has a steep hill to climb to catch Goldschmidt, who has a league-leading 45 homers, to truly threaten for the league's first-ever Triple Crown.

Sardine City rookie Christian Yelich has a few points on Ramirez and could very well be a stronger challenger than other Experience batters for the batting crown -- but he lacks enough plate appearances to qualify.

The 2014 first-rounder earned an All-Star selection and had been in contention for the batting race all season. He's currently hitting .352 but has been riding the pine for the past month.

Yelich started 87 games primarily in a platoon, going just 1-for-30 against lefties while batting a scintillating .380 versus right-handers. His last start was Aug. 12 versus Hoboken and he's since been relegated to primarily a pinch-hitting or pinch-running role.

Under Major League Baseball rules, a player must have 3.1 plate appearances in each of his team's games to qualify for a batting title. Yelich heads into Sunday's games with 420 plate appearances, short of the 446 plate appearances he'd need in Sardine City's 144 games. For the season, a player would need a minimum 502 plate appearances in 162 games.

With just 18 games remaining for the Straphangers, Yelich would need to average more than 4 plate appearances per game to reach the 82 necessary to qualify. Otherwise, only Carpenter seems close enough to Ramirez to give him a serious run.

Bailey twirls Bridgewater's first no-hitter

Another trophy for the mantle

Homer Bailey was one batter away from the first perfect game in DMBL history but had to settle for tossing the 12th no-hitter in league history and the first ever for the Bridgewater franchise. Bailey struck out 10 in blanking Sardine City 3-0 on Sunday at The Cannery.

It's the first no-hitter in the DMBL since August 2012 when Hopatcong's Josh Tomlin no-hit Hillsborough.

Bailey's only blemish was the sixth inning. The Mallers right-hander retired the first 17 batters before walking the No. 9 hitter, Marco Scutaro, and followed that up with a wild pitch before retiring Christian Yelich. Of Bailey's 120 pitches, 76 were strikes.

Bridgewater got their offense from a second-inning solo home run by catcher Brian McCann, an RBI single that Carlos Beltran tried to stretch into a double that ended the third, and a solo shot from Jose Reyes in the seventh. Dillon Gee went 7 innings, allowing 8 hits and 3 runs to take the loss for the Straphangers.

The almost-28-year-old (he turns 28 on May 3) has struggled in the first month of the season, twice going 4+ innings, leaving in the 3rd with an injury, and lasting just 1 inning in another start. Despite that, Bailey even his record to 1-1, lowering his ERA to 5.70, with a 1.18 WHIP. He's now fourth in the league with 11.0 strikeouts per 9 innings. The no-no is a bright spot in what's been a tough start for the Mallers, who suffered through a 10-game skid earlier and stand at 6-16 through Sunday's doubleheader.

At least the last three no-hitters in the league have been firsts for their franchises. Tomlin's was the first for Hopatcong and earlier that year, Ubaldo Jimenez and Jason Motte combined to toss Sardine City's first-ever no-no.