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.