SBL Notebook, Week 10

Offense remained as cool as our overcast SoCal June, but on the other hand the races are heating up, and that's not a bad thing, right? . . . If anything, the cloud cover thickened on the hitting side of the ledger this week. Except for the odd spasm of productivity sticking out like a sore thumb here and there (the Patton Inmates' 43 runs, Andy's Badgers' 14 HRs and 40 RBIs), the numbers were stunning in their smallness. Take away Gregg's total and no one had more than 34 runs, with half the league failing to get out of the 20s (one even failing to get INTO the 20s). Remove Andy from the equation and nobody exceeded 32 RBIs, with a whopping eight teams stranded in the 20s. It was the same in TB (league high was 33, only one other team topped 30 and three didn't even get to 20) and OBP (seven teams at .311 or lower, three not even reaching .300). Of course the corollary to feeble hitting is strong pitching, and there was plenty of that, with no fewer than four sub-2.00 ERAs and three more under 3.00 turning up on the stat sheet. . . . The National division won the last week of interleague play, 21-15, to earn a 2-2 split in this four-week period. JP's Whiteskins and DamianUnited led the NL rush by each going 6-0, a result that moved the second-place 'Skins four games closer to the BTIB, Dan's Cherry Valley Bombers, who went 2-4 and now lead by seven. Things got more interesting in the AL, where the BGoff Bammers continued flat for a fourth straight week (1-5 this week, 8-16 in interleague play) and saw their lead shaved from five games to two over Paulo's Zero's.