SBL Notebook, Week 13

We've reached the halfway point in the season, numerically if not chronologically (MLB's new midweek start ensured that the real-world season won't reach its midpoint until the middle of this week), and 81 games in, it's almost anybody's ballgame. The division races are a beautiful mess, with eight teams solidly in the picture, fortunes ebbing and flowing depending on who's hot and who’s not at a particular moment in time, last week's Cinderella turning into this week's pumpkin, and then back again. The two hottest teams in Weeks 11-12, DamianUnited and the Moaners, tripped on a crack in the sidewalk this week, and now it's the Godfathers and the Zero's who are on the ascension after going 6-0 and 5-1, respectively, to tighten the division races like braces on a middle schooler's teeth. Blessed with a talented and versatile roster but cursed by injuries much of the season, the now-fully-functional G-Daddies got it all together and scorched the earth with perhaps the most dominant 6-0 week we've seen all year. A big hitting week in which they ranked first or second in the league in five categories (40 RBI, 36 runs, .387 OBP, 37 TB, 9 HR) was complemented by lights-out pitching (1.40 ERA, .98 BR, 1.09 Ks, 5-1), resulting in a Sherman-through-Georgia march that left body parts hanging from tree limbs -- three 10-1 blowouts and no other game closer than 8-3. The 6-0 surge lifted the GFs to within one game of the National division-leading Inmates, who held their own with a 4-2 mark grounded in some pretty impressive pitching of their own (2.25 ERA, 6 saves, 1.03 BR). Meanwhile, the Derelicts (2-4) and DamU (0-6) fell back to five and eight games out, respectively. . . . Good pitching was a recurring theme this week, with eight sub-3.00 ERAs and, even more remarkably, four under 2.00. The best of them all, and in fact the best ERA seen in the SBL all season, was the 1.18 posted by the Zero's, who also had six saves, a 1.09 BR and .98 K-rate and rode it all to within two games of the first-place Bammers -- the closest to the top the Z's have been all season, and the closest any American division team has been to the Bams since Week 5. The Bammers, who started 13-0 and 18-1 and have occupied the AL catbird seat from the get-go, had their own sterling ERA (1.45) to brag about, but all it got them was a hard-luck 2-4 week that included two 6-5 losses and a 6.5-4.5. The four defeats also cost them the Best Team In Ball status they'd clung to all season; the Mental Defectives took possession of the coveted yellow jersey at 52-29, with the Bammers and Godfathers sharing the runner-up spot at 51-30. . . . Another team on the rise, albeit intermittently, has been the Cherry Valley Bombers, whose best-o’-week 14 HRs, not to mention 37 RBI, 35 runs and 1.98 ERA, were the key ingredients in a 5-1 week. The Bombers had a disastrous start -- 1-12 and 3-16 -- but since Week 3 they've gone a respectable 35-27, moved to within five games of .500 and become, more often than not, a Team You Don't Want To Play. At 14 games behind the Inmates and 13 back of the second-place Godfathers, the CVBs face a long hard climb to get into playoff contention, but stranger things have happened.