SBL Notebook, Week 2

The sleeping giant of 2010 is fully awake and roaming the (scorched) SBL earth in 2011. The Bammers, four-time league champions who last season simply had One Of Those Years, tumbling into the American division cellar and staying there, are back in their more familiar position atop the AL heap, kicking butt and taking names . . . and no prisoners. OK, yeah, it’s only two weeks, but the Bammers seem so far ahead of the field that the rest of the AL, in recent seasons the SBL’s power division, simply looks powerless at their feet. It’s not just that the Bammers have roared to a 13-0 start after this week’s 7-0 cakewalk. It isn’t just that they already have sprinted out to a five-game division lead. It’s that no one else even appears close to them at the moment. Their six Week 1 wins were by 10-1, 9-2, 9-2, 9-2, 9-2 and 7.5-3.5. This week, apart from a 6-5 semi-squeaker against NL co-leaders DamianUnited, their other six Ws were by an average score of 8.5-2.5. Two words: Un . . . touchable. The Bams seem to have everything you could ask for in a baseball team – power (8 HRs, a league high in this rather tepid hitting week), speed (8 SBs, tied for second), strike-zone selectivity (.377 OBP, third), quality starting pitching (ERAs of 1.26 and 3.11 this season), a lights-out bullpen (7 saves this week) and power arms across the board (league-best 1.08 K-rate). What are their division rivals to do but bide their time and hope the Bammers punch themselves out in the early rounds? The Badgers’ respectable 8-5 record has earned them nothing better than a five-game hill to climb, and two AL teams, the Puny Pontiffs and the Batfaced Barristers, already are staring at double-digit deficits. . . . Things are more competitive just now in the National division, where DamU and the Inmates share first place, and three other teams are tied for third, two games back. In fact, take a picture of this week’s standings—the AL, cradle of champions and contenders, currently has only two winning teams and FOUR ABJECT LOSERS, while the NL, which more than occasionally struggles to get more than a couple squads above .500, has five teams on the winning side of the ledger. . . . Speaking of the NL race, a statkeeping snafu deprived the Patton Inmates of two Week 1 saves to which they were entitled; adding those two saves changed the Mental Defectives’ result against DamU from a loss to a win.