SBL Notebook, Week 1

Our newly truncated opening week produced a veritable trunkload of offense (proportional to the diminished sample size of course), but nothing of lasting value. What worthwhile conclusions are there to be drawn, after all, from what amounts to three measly days of major league baseball games? The unexpectedly explosive, bats-out-of-hell start by MLB hitters on opening weekend could possibly suggest that they are adjusting to the new world order and reclaiming some of the ground lost during a 2010 season rightly dubbed the Year of the Pitcher; then again, maybe it was all just a product of unseasonably mild weather nationwide. Big-picture analysis is fruitless at this early juncture; best to just forget about this week and move on—the good news being that, thanks to MLB’s decision to start and end the season midweek so as to condense the schedule and get the World Series over with before November, the heinous SBL “short week” is out of the way right from the jump, leaving us with 25 full and uncompromised weeks of competition to determine our 2011 champion. . . . One conclusion we CAN safely draw, based at least as much on roster inspection as on Week 1 results, is that the Bammers appear to be Back-with-a-capital-B, after a year in cellar-dwelling purgatory. Team management performed quite well on draft night and the four-time SBL champs reaped immediate dividends, posting numbers that ranked among the league’s top three in six stats (runs, RBI, ERA, BR, TB, WL). Of particular note were a microscopic, league-leading 1.26 ERA and .78 baserunner stat. Needless to say, the Bams went 6-0. . . . Much stranger, but no less successful, was the performance of the Whiteskins, who also went 6-0 despite throwing up a truly hideous 7.75 ERA (thank you, Fausto Carmona). A league-best four saves took a little of the sting out, but the real difference-maker for the Skins was that they simply killed it on the hitting side, mashing nine HRs (in three-plus days??!!), driving in 26 runs and scoring 24.