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2024 Winners

It's the dead of winter, and perhaps most of you are not thinking much about baseball, unless you are fans of the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, or $765 million dollar contracts. We regret the lateness of this award ceremony, but of course you have heard all the controversy and so are aware off the reason: the Kingman Award committee has been beset with litigation over the allegation that "the award was created by a single member of the league . . . in order to give himself an award." Our previous lawyers prevented us from commenting on the allegations or handing out any further awards. However, the important work if this committee is more important than our safety, so we fired them and we are bringing you the awards you crave!

It was another wild year of Everything's Coming Up Milhouse. The headlines this summer were all dedicated to Fernando Valenzuela's run. You've seen it all, so it's hardly worth rehashing: Fernando set a new all-time record for regular season matchup wins. They seized this title from 2018 Super Nintendi. HOWEVER, Fernando fell short in the playoffs and did not win the championship. This of course confirms what we always knew, Fernando Valenzuela is the Seattle Mariners of the league. More importantly, they cannot be considered the greatest team in league history, and that title will remain with Super Nintendi - as of course befits a team named after Andrew Benintendi. Reached for comment, the manager of that historic squad, the still greatest team in league history, begrudgingly admitted "I guess it's good strategy to have BOTH MVPs simultaneously putting up historic numbers on your team. But it's Freddie Freeman who wins you championships." Wise words.

On the Batter K front, it was a year of highs and lows. I'll start with the bad news. In Week 4 Uno Dos Tres! set a record for fewest batter Ks with only 31. This shameful performance made the committee briefly consider calling for the award - and the league - to be disbanded. That is, until we saw the heroics of Slide into those DMs. The DMs set a new all-time record for Ks in a single week, with 122 in week 15. Only last year, we remarked on a new record, and it has already been bested! More impressively, the DMs set a new season record with 1883. 1883, for those who lost track, was the year that Krakatoa exploded, creating a shockwave that circled the earth at least three times. The eruption of Ks by the DMs this year cannot claim quite that destructive power, but the similarity bears noting.

Before we get to the award, the committee has used its time barricaded in its bunker while the mob raged outside to reconsider methods. The simple sum of Ks and TBs doesn't seem to capture the spirit of the award. There were 14 players with more than 300 TBs, and the leading K master had only 218 (with one other player topping 200 Ks). This means that, too often, TBs swamp Ks. What we are interested in for the Kingman Award, though, is not just who has a high SLG, we want to celebrate the reckless abandon of taking gigantic hacks and letting the chips (or, balls) fall as they may (as long as that's in the catcher's mitt or the bleachers - anything else is weak). The question was how to do so. The Kingman Award is about Elite Performance, not average, so we settled on the following formula: we create a normalization factor by dividing the MLB leading TB total by the leading K total. This year, the MLB leading TB was 411 (you can guess what team that player was on), and the leading K was 218. So the Kingman Normalization Factor (tm) is 411/218 = 1.8853211009. That factor is then multiplied by Ks before adding them to TB. You're welcome.

The winner of the 2024 Dave Kingman Award for hacking excellence is Slide into those DMs. Congratulations! It was a bombastic, rollicking performance by the DMs all year, and they blew the doors off their competition. Week 15 was maybe the apotheosis of the DMs's greatness: not only did they set the all time record for batter Ks, they also set the single season mark for TBs that same week. This is what the award was made to celebrate, and this performance justified the whole project.

The Most Kingman Award goes, shockingly, to Shohei Ohtani. Shohei continues his sweep of the postseason awards, and with this award, he is only a CY Young award from baseball's EGOT. Shohei, of course, lit the world on fire with an absurd 411 TBs, which dragged his only pretty good K total of 162 across the finish line. The committee was disappointed that their tweaks to the formula still allowed such a TB driven result. But this award is too important, and the result must be respected. There is also a strong contingent of young players putting up amazing Kingman Normalized numbers, including Ezekiel Tovar, Zack Gelof, Brent Rooker, Oneil Cruz, and a man we all expect to win multiple Kingman Awards, Elly De La Cruz.

The committee closes by awarding a lifetime achievement award to Ian Happ. Mr. Happ impressively recovered from his down year of only a 22.1% K rate back up to a respectable 25.6%. We know his commitment to the lifestyle of a King Man, and we expect more great things next year. A second lifetime achievement award is unprecedented, and perhaps a bit bewildering, but if ever there was a person deserving, this is he.

Postscript: the committee just realized that Week 15 was the week of historic K heroics last year, and of the DMs's Kingman heroics this year!! Coincidence? No way. See you in Week 15, 2025.

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2023 Winners

With the 2023 season in the books, we also finally have our first winner of the Dave Kingman Award for Hacking Excellence: Cowabunga Dudes! The Dudes hacked away to a league leading total of 4834 K+TB. As a result, I am now the proud owner, for this year anyway, of the signed Dave Kingman photo that sits on Martin's mantel, obscuring various pictures of family and loved ones. (It may also be pasted on the ceiling above his bed glaring down on him, or perhaps the inside door of the bathroom facing the toilet, where it can force all visitors to reconsider their values regarding taking giant hacks. I never asked, but those are the only three places that would make any sense)

So congratulations to me, and thank you, thank you - please, really, you can sit down and stop cheering now.

It was a hard fought win at the end: Kekambas roared to the finish line for a total of 4754 K+TB, just narrowly missing the lead. For this spectacular finish, Kebambas has been granted an honorary award as well! (there is no prize)

However, the Kingman prize itself feels almost trivial in light of the true greatness that we witnessed this year. This year, Ozzie's Crazy Train set an all time record in most batter Ks with 1824!! Those of you who were not tracking these important stats with bated breath might have missed this accomplishment - let that be a lesson. I would also like to point out that this year, we also saw new a new record set in single week Ks, as both Ozzie and the The Axe managed 118Ks. Incredibly, both accomplished this feat IN THE SAME WEEK, week 15. Week 15 will go down in league history as the all time high-water mark for batter Ks (Sadly, the two were not facing off that week.) Let us bow our heads in a moment of reflection in the strikeout greatness that unfolded all around us this year.

This years MKP (Most Kingman Player) award goes to perennial stalwart Kyle Schwarber of Kekambas, by unanimous vote of the governing body. K-Dog led the league with 215 Ks, and finished just outside the top 20 with 277 TB. That is all-around greatness, which deserves to be honored. We salute you, Schwarbombs!

We would also like to grant special recognition on the pitching side to Lance Lynn, who went out there every day to give up homers and get Ks. He finished with an incredible 353 TBA, good for second in all of baseball, and 191Ks for 20th. Most importantly, he was picked up and dropped probably 15 times in our league, always there on the wire as a dependable source for TBA and Ks. A service to us all.

Finally, the council would like to extend a special lifetime achievement award to our very own Ian Happ. Not only for his service on the field, jacking taters and ripping whiffs, but his service off the field, as an ambassador for Everythings Coming Up Milhouse. He had an off year this year, only striking out 22.1% of the time, instead apparently opting for walks and 'balls in play.' But we know his heart is in the right place, and we still honor him as the great man he is.

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Announcing the Dave Kingman Award for Hacking Excellence

The committee is proud to announce this new award for the fantasy baseball league Everythings Coming Up Milhouse. The award will be given annually, to the team with the highest total of Batter K+TB in the regular season. DKMVP status will be granted to the player on the winning team that made the greatest contribution to this tremendous accomplishment. Remarkable performances in this domain by other players or teams may also be noted along with the official winners, but note that these will not be considered formal awards.

Taking gigantic hacks does not always win titles, but it is more than a mere approach to hitting; it is a way of life, the truest expression of the American Spirit and all that makes the world fun and exciting. We felt it was time to commemorate those most truly committed to this lifestyle with a fitting award, of a signed photo of Dave Kingman.

Dave Kingman is rightfully the Patron Saint of gigantic hacks. He was the Bate Ruth of striking out, putting up numbers that people had not even imagined possible before he arrived on the scene. But when he connected it went a long way, for 442 career homeruns at a time when that really meant something. His laser-like focus on gigantic hacks meant for a low batting average, and bad defense, for any focus on these other skills would have taken away from what he really believed in

We the committee urge you all to take a hack: sometimes you’ll miss, but when you connect, it will go out of the park.