SBL Notebook: Week 23

"And then there were three." Besides being the title of perhaps the weakest album Genesis released in the 1970s (for those keeping score at home, their third LP after the departure of Peter Gabriel, and their first after lead guitarist Steve Hackett left the band, leaving only keyboardist Tony Banks, singer/drummer Phil Collins and bassist/rhythm guitarist Michael Rutherford to carry on . . . with a feeling-their-way transitional record before they bounced back a couple years later with the stronger "Duke" . . . ah, but we digress), that phrase more or less describes the current state of the riveting National division race -- which also appears to have been reduced from a quartet to a trio. The Cherry Valley Bombers continued their scorching-hot late-summer surge with a 6-0 week that took their record for the last four weeks to 23-2 and left them alone in first place. The Derelicts and the Godfathers each went 4-2 and are tied for second, two games back. But the Inmates -- who've spent more time (11 weeks) in first place than any other NL club this season -- suffered a second consecutive reversal of fortune, a 1-5 nose-dive piled atop last week's 0-7 crash-and-burn, and find themselves eight games out of first place and six out of the wild card. With only 19 left to play, that looks a lot more like a mountain than a molehill for the Mental Defectives to climb. . . . Meanwhile, the American division, which a week earlier had an ultra-tight wild-card affair going on -- a dead heat between the Moaners and the Bammers -- was reintroduced to the concept of wide-open spaces. The Moaners put together perhaps the most dominating week in the SBL this year, and although it moved them only two games closer to BTIB Zero's (who still lead by seven), it coincided with an unexpected 0-6 tailspin by the Bammers, who tumbled all-but-mathematically out of the division race, and six games behind the M's in the wild-card hunt. . . . The week was mostly about offense, and the Moaners certainly had their share of that -- league-leading totals of 51 RBIs and 12 HRs, plus 39 runs and 39 TB. But what really set them apart from the crowd, and turned all six of their games into blowouts, was some uncharacteristically strong pitching, from a team more accustomed to detonating stink bombs on the mound. For the first time all season they posted the week's lowest ERA, and though it was a fairly modest 2.66, in Moaner World it was something close to Shangri-La and Xanadu rolled into one -- only the team's fifth sub-3.00 ERA all season . . . as opposed to their 14 of 4.00 or higher. They also led the pack with 10 saves (second-highest total in the league in 2011) and posted the week's second-best BR stat (1.07) and K-rate (1.09). The result of all this: Two 11-0 whitewashes, three 10-1 victories and one 8.5-2.5 squeaker -- the latter coming against the Godfathers, the unlucky NL team that drew the short straw and had to play the M's in their best week of the season. . . . The CV Bombers were no slouches themselves in compiling Week 23's other unblemished ledger, combining massive offense (49 runs, 45 RBI, 10 HRs, .413 OBP) with decent pitching (3.00 ERA -- best in their division) to win six games without breaking a sweat (closest verdict: 7.5-3.5). . . . In general, it was a go-big-or-go-home week on the hitting side, with 12 teams combining to average 37 RBIs, 35.2 runs, 8.8 HRs and 29.4 TB -- perhaps the most productive week, top to bottom, we've seen in the league this year.