Saturday, August 27, 2011

SBL Notebook: Week 21

The National division race is tight enough to fry an egg on the sidewa . . . no wait, that should be "hot" enough. . . . Let's try, the National division race is tighter than a witch's . . . no, that should be "colder" . . . OK, the National division race is tighter than a piano wire. . . . sorry, it's best hackneyed, overused, unoriginal metaphor we could come up with on short notice. Suffice to say, the NL race couldn't be much closer if the four principals were quadruplets sharing the same womb -- the top three teams are separated by only one game, and the fourth-place entry is only four back. While the pacesetting Godfathers were dogpaddling to a 3-3 week, the surging Derelicts put together a second successive 6-0 to pull into a second-place tie with the Inmates (also 3-3), and the fourth-place Cherry Valley Bombers went 5-1 to pull within four games of the top. The Double-Ds have been an offensive force most of the season -- with big-ticket hitters like Adrian Gonzalez and Prince Fielder coming through as hoped, and less-heralded names like Jay Bruce, Hunter Pence, Mike Stanton and Jhonny Peralta exceeding expectations -- and of late their troublesome starting pitching has finally come around, led by the lefty likes of Ricky Romero and David Price. The 'Licts also have developed one of the SBL's strongest bullpens, anchored by the surprising Drew Storen and Brandon League and trade acquisition Jonathan Papelbon. Add it all up and you have a well-rounded team that appears to be in this for the long haul. The Derelicts' 2.13 ERA was the league's second-best this week (as was last week's 1.95), and they rang up the week's second-best HR (12) and RBI (43) totals, not to mention the No. 1 OBP (.385). The latter stat was fueled by what we believe to be a single-week league record of 40 walks . . . and THAT total was fueled by an outrageous 14 walks on Tuesday, which we're thinking has to be a one-day record as well. . . . The CVBs, meanwhile, continue to roll up big hitting numbers (43 runs, 12 HRs, 7 SBs, .381) behind the slugging likes of Miguel Cabrera, Dan Uggla, Jacoby Ellsbury, Lance Berkman, J.J. Hardy and Alex Gordon, complemented by a serviceable rotation anchored by Clayton Kershaw, Colby Lewis and Jeremy Hellickson. . . . There was also a detectable pulse in the American division race, for the first time in a while, as the Zero's -- still the Best Team In Ball by a comfortable margin at 86-44 -- remained stuck in neutral, posting a third consecutive 3-3 week -- and this time the runners-up Moaners were able to take a three-game bite out of the Z's formidable lead by churning out enough offense (13 HRs, 48 TB, 36 runs, 36 BI) to overcome their typically execrable pitching (4.54 ERA, 1.58 BR, .77 Ks). Still, the M's and the third-place Bammers (4-2) have a ways to go to make things truly exciting, trailing the Zero's by eight and 12 games, respectively, as we head into the home stretch, with 32 games left to play.

Week 21 standings

AMERICAN DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Zero's (3-3).................86...44....662....--
Moaners (6-0)..............78...52....600.....8
Bammers (4-2).............74...56....569....12
Badgers (1-5)..............54...76....415....32
Barristers (2-4)............40...90....308....46
Puny Pontiffs (0-6)........27..103....208....59
NATIONAL DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Godfathers (3-3)..........77...53....592....--
Derelicts (6-0).............76...54....585.....1
Inmates (3-3)..............76...54....585.....1
Bombers (5-1).............73...57....562.....4
DamianUnited (1-5).......65...65....500....12
Whiteskins (2-4)..........54...76....415....23

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

PaulO's Notes: Week 21

A fairly wretched week for these three. The Z's had a tragic week from their bullpen, which surrendered more ER (12) in 6.2 IP than did their SPs (10) in 34 IP. An 0-5 record in the pen, with 22 BR. Delightfully awful, as Leonard Pinth-Garnell would have put it. The Z's managed a bit of offense, led by the resurgent Ryan Braun, who was 10-for-30 with 10 runs, 7 BI, 3 doubles, 1 triple, 2 homers, 6 steals and 4 walks. ... Team Bat-Face scrounged up a bit of offense despite the continued absence of top pick Hanley "Fourth-Rounder in 2012" Ramirez and 2B Brian Roberts, who missed all but the first month. Sketchy pitching, however, including four hit batsmen. Maybe the Barrister hurlers are going all Carlos Zambrano, out of frustration. ... The Holy See was practicing non-violence toward the baseball, putting up one of the feeblest offenses of the season. Didn't help that the club got to the dish 61 fewer times than the Zs because the club has no active 1B; sees its starting 3B losing ABs to Sean Burroughs and is missing No. 1 SS SDrrew and top OF CBeltran. One homer this week, on a Tuesday sub-in by Duda, 2 steals, 13 RBI. ... The Vatican's revolutionary no-save bullpen did what it does, and all this resulted in the waste of some typically solid starting pitching.

Friday, August 19, 2011

SBL Notebook: Week 20

Setting aside, just for a moment, the commissioner's hat and speaking as charter members of the American division, we can only tell the National division congratulations, well done . . . and enough, already! The NL completed an impressive interleague run with a 26-10 thrashing of the AL in Week 20, reaffirming the end of years of AL dominance in IL play. The Nationals finished the interleague portion of the schedule with a 169-119 advantage in games won, with the Americans having prevailed in only two of the eight IL weeks. This stands in stark contrast to trends of recent years -- particularly last season, when the AL went 183-105 in interleague play, the NL winning only one week (and by the slimmest of margins at that, 19-17 in Week 7) and, in Week 18, suffering one of the worst IL routs in SBL history, an almost all-American 34-2 blowout. This year AL teams were left wistfully longing for those halcyon days, after being steamrollered by the depth and strength of a National division with five legitimate pennant contenders. Week 20 was the cherry atop the NL sundae, as three of its representatives -- the Godfathers, the Derelicts and the Cherry Valley Bombers -- went 6-0, only one (DamianUnited) failed to at least break even, and no AL team posted a winning record. Those three unbeaten weeks, coupled with a stuck-in-neutral 3-3 by the Inmates, scrambled and tightened the NL race just a bit. The G-Daddies recaptured first place, a game ahead of the Mental Defectives, with the Double-Ds creeping to within four games of the top, the CVBs six back and DamU still within semi-striking distance, 10 games in arrears. The Bombers' recovery from a 1-12 start is an ongoing feel-good story in Cherry Valley; since those dark days of mid-April along the San Bernardino-Riverside county divide, the Bombers and the Godfathers have posted the best records in the division over the last 18 weeks, 67-44. But the G-Daddies were the most impressive story of this week -- they won all six games with relative ease thanks to league highs of 13 HRs and 7 SBS, plus 41 RBIs and 34 runs (damned efficient work, considering their .310 OBP), and, on the pitching side, the week's best ERA (1.40) and BR stat (.96). The Derelicts (42 runs, 11 HRs, .364, 1.95 ERA, six saves, 1.07 BR) were almost as strong in both disciplines, while the Bombers (12 HRs, 42 BIs, 6 SBs, .359) relied a little more on the offensive elements. . . . The AL race stayed static, with BTIB, the Zero's, going 3-3 for the second consecutive week (again, no AL team did better this week) and tearing another page off the calendar -- the Z's lead the Moaners by 11 games and the Bammers by 13, with only 38 to play.

Week 20 standings

AMERICAN DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Zero's (3-3)................83...41....669....--
Moaners (2-4).............72...52....581....11
Bammers (3-3)............70...54....565....13
Badgers (0-6).............53...71....427....30
Barristers (1-5)...........38...86....306....45
Pontiffs (1-5).............27...97....218....56
NATIONAL DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Godfathers (6-0)..........74...50....597....--
Inmates (3-3)..............73...51....589.....1
Derelicts (6-0).............70...54....565.....4
Bombers (6-0).............68...56....548.....6
DamianUnited (2-4).......64...60....516....10
Whiteskins (3-3)..........52...72....419....22

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Free agent draft No. 10

Pre-draft DL moves:
Badgers activate 3B ARodriguez, drop Moustakas
Bammers activate C McCann, drop Hernandez
Derelicts activate SP Oswalt, drop Jimenez
Inmates activate OF Choo, drop Patterson
Zero's activate 1B Morneau, drop Kotchman

1. Popntiffs take OF Constanza, Beltran to DL
2. Barristers take OF Carp, drop Damon
3. Whiteskins take SP Niemann, drop Carmona;
........Taxi: Niemann up, Billingsley down
4. Badgers take OF Belt, Torres to DL
5. Bombers take SP J.Vazquez, drops Matsuzaka;
........Taxi: Vazquez up, G.Gonzalez down
6. DamianUnited take 2B Kipnis, Guillen to DL
7. Derelicts take C Hernandez, drop Posada;
........Taxi: Luebke up, Oswalt down
8. Bammers take OF En.Chavez, drop E.Thames;
........Taxi: Latos up, Zimmerman down
9. Godfathers pass;
........Taxi: Garza up, Hanson down
10. Inmates take 3B Paredes, drop Wigginton
11. Moaners take OF Pagan, drop Fuld;
........Taxi: Lohse up, Humber down
12. Zero's take 2B OCabrera, Uribe to DL

Friday, August 12, 2011

SBL Notebook, Week 19

A contagion of bad pitching swept through the National division, opening a window of opportunity for the American division to actually win an interleague week, and for once the AL managed to scramble through it without breaking anything. Six of the seven worst Week 19 earned-run averages occurred in the NL, and that as much as anything explains the AL's 24-12 victory, its first in an interleague week since a 20-16 verdict way back in Week 7, the first of our eight IL weeks. It was just one of those odd weeks when even normally reliable starting pitchers like CC Sabathia, Johnny Cueto, Alexi Ogando, Ryan Vogelsong, Jeff Karstens and Tommy Hanson got knocked around -- and because all those and several other struggling moundsmen toil for National division clubs, the NL took the brunt of the damage, with five of its six teams posting ERAs of 4.20 or higher. (In a related development, six of the seven worst BR stats also were posted by NL teams.) The best ERA the division could put forward was a mediocre 3.76, and even that wasn't enough to help the second-place Godfathers avoid an 0-6 fate -- not that it cost them much in the standings, since the first-place Inmates could do no better than 1-5, keeping the G-Daddies within two games of the top. Meanwhile, the Derelicts (3-3), DamianUnited (5-1 -- the only winning week by an NL squad) and the Cherry Valley Bombers (3-3) all took advantage of the top two's struggles to bunch things up a bit in the standings, where none of the top five trails by more than eight games. There was also a modicum of movement in the AL race, where a 3-3 hiccup by the Zero's coincided with a 6-0 by the runners-up Moaners and a 5-1 by the third-place Bammers. That tightened the proceedings just a little . . . but not much, with the Moaners still trailing by 10 games and the Bammers 13 back. The Moaners parlayed solid-by-their-meager-standards pitching (3.40 ERA, 4-2, eight saves) and just enough offensive strength (10 HRs, 36 runs, .390 OBP, 7 SBs) into the only 6-0 mark of the week, while the Bammers' success was built on the week's best overall pitching (2.61 ERA, .97 BR, 1.10 K-rate, 4-1, 7 saves), the continuation of a season-long trend. . . . League-wide, offense continues to behave like the stock market, with last week's mega-high followed by this week's trough . . . although still nothing like the paltry numbers we've often seen this season. The league averages for HRs (7.75), runs (33.0) and RBIs (29.9) held in the "respectable" range, though TB (23.5) experienced a significant dip, and there was a smattering of shockingly low OBPs, including the Godfathers' .256 and the Inmates' .264.

Week 19 standings

AMERICAN DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Zero's (3-3)................80...38....678....--
Moaners (6-0).............70...48....593....10
Bammers (5-1)............67...51....568....13
Badgers (3-3)..............53...65....449....27
Barristers (4-2)............37...81....314....43
Pontiffs (3-3)..............26...92....220....54
NATIONAL DIVISION
Team, LW..................W....L....PCT....GB

Inmates (1-5)..............70...48....593....--
Godfathers (0-6)..........68...50....576.....2
Derelicts (3-3).............64...54....542.....6
DamianUnited (5-1).......62...56....525.....8
Bombers (3-3).............62...56....525.....8
Whiteskins (0-6)..........49...69....415....21

Friday, August 5, 2011

SBL Notebook, Week 18

Suddenly the league awoke, as if from a dream, to find itself in another time, another place . . . say, around 1998, or 2003, or any year in between. We were back in the chicks-dig-the-longball era, and while the experience is sure to be ephemeral, it certainly was a glorious week, wasn't it? Twelve teams combined to smash 112 home runs, an average of 9.3 per team . . . and six teams reached double figures, the first time all season that half the league has made it to that promised land. Leading the way were the Moaners, whose 15 HRs came within a whisker or two of equaling their total for the previous THREE weeks combined. Then there were the Godfathers, with 13 . . . The Inmates and the Cherry Bombers with 12 each . . . The Zero's and DamianUnited with 10 apiece. This truly was a first-in-flight week for the SBL, at least by this year's modest standards. It wasn't just home runs, either; offense spiked pretty much across the board. The league averages for RBIs and runs were 35 per team, with five totals in the 40s . . . nine of the 12 teams reached the 30s in TB . . . half the league had OBPs of .349 or better. If you weren't hittin' this week, you may as well have stayed home. . . . This was also -- and this surely wasn't a coincidence -- probably the worst pitching week in the SBL this season, with not a single team recording an ERA in the 2s. There were four in the 5s, however; a couple in the 4s, and two more in the high 3s. . . . When the smoke had cleared, the National division had recorded another interleague victory, but at least the American division made it respectable this time, losing only 20-16. That counts as a moral victory for the battered AL, which has won only one of the six interleague weeks contested so far, and just last week got shellacked 28-8. . . . There was also a change at the top of the NL race, where the Inmates rode their Big Fat O (12 HRs, 46 BI, 36 TB, 36 runs, .377) to a 6-0 week that moved them back into first place, a game ahead of the Godfathers, who went 4-2. And, for now at least, those two have separated themselves from the NL pack, with the Derelicts, the Bombers and DamianUnited having dropped back by eight, 10 and 12 games, respectively. . . . The AL race was just more of the same, with the Zero's continuing to roll along without a care in the world, their 5-1 record this week taking them to an remarkable 33-4 in the last six weeks, and to 77-35 overall, keeping them comfortably ensconced as the Best Team In Ball. The Moaners also went 5-1 and hopped over the Bammers into second place . . . but remained a very distant 13 games out of first, with 50 left to play.

Week 18 standings

AMERICAN DIVISION
Team, LW.................W....L....PCT....GB

Zero's (5-1)...............77...35....688....--
Moaners (5-1)............64...48....571....13
Bammers (1-5)...........62...50....554....15
Badgers (0-6).............50...62....446....27
Barristers (2-4)...........33...79....295....44
Pontiffs (3-3).............23...89....205....54
NATIONAL DIVISION
Team, LW.................W....L....PCT....GB

Inmates (6-0).............69...43....616....--
Godfathers (4-2).........68...44....607.....1
Derelicts (2-4)............61...51....545.....8
Bombers (3-3)............59...53....527....10
DamianUnited (1-5)......57...55....509....12
Whiteskins (4-2).........49...63....438....20

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Free agent draft No. 9

Pre-draft DL moves:
Barristers: drop 3B Blake
Derelicts: activate OF Kubel, drop Snider

1. Pontiffs take OF Duda, drop Presley;
........Taxi: Danks up, Carrasco down
2. Barristers take OF D.Jennings, drop Pagan;
........Taxi: Myers up, Pineiro down
3. Whiteskins take SS Betancourt, Lowrie to DL
........Taxi: Colon up, Burnett down
4. Badgers take 1B Goldschmidt, drop Huff
........Taxi: Sanchez up, Britton down
5. Bombers take 3B Bonifacio, Rolen to DL
6. DamianUnited take OF MeCabrera, drop Brown
7. Moaners take RP Madson, drop Bastardo
8. Derelicts take 3B Lawrie, drop Alvarez
........Taxi: Marcum up, Luebke down
9. Bammers take C Hernandez, McCann to DL
........Taxi: Zimmerman up, Latos down
10. Inmates take OF Bourgeois, Choo to DL
11. Godfathers take 2B Keppinger, drop S.Rodriguez
12. Zero's take SP Strasburg, Strasburg to DL

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Bams Take Desperate Measures

Coming off the SBL ticker tape (We're f*ing old school around here):

"The Bammers send SP Haren and 2B Walker to Pontiffs for SP Latos and 2B Cano"

---

The Pontiffs, the abyss of the league, heard the cries of the fast-approaching Bams and sent up its last surviver, Robinson Cano, to help right the Bams' beleagured mancraft.

It's a risky move for the Bams, who trade SP Dan Haren and 2B Neil Walker, two of the team's most consistent players. For the Pontiffs, strictly a cash dump. Cano wanted too much to re-sign.

Also, why hasn't this league considered "keeper" players? Or has it?