SBL Notebook, Week 3

There is no fear of intimacy in the Sun Baseball League, where every team is willing to get as close as is legally permitted, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation. It’s hard to envision a week much closer, both in terms of game scores and statistical totals, than the one we just experienced. Twenty of 36 games were decided by scores of 6-5, 6.5-4.5 or tiebreaker; another eight were 7-4 verdicts. That leaves only eight outcomes that could be described as in any way one-sided. Things were especially tight in the American division, whose teams were involved in three of the week’s four tiebreakers, five 6-5 results and three 6.5-4.5 games. Nothing was more emblematic of the wild week than this cool/cruel fact: the Badgers went 6-0, the Bammers went 0-6 . . . and their game against each other went to a tiebreaker. Of course when you look at the numbers, it’s easy to see how the line between victory and defeat could be so razor thin. All six AL teams finished in the 30s in runs, the totals ranging from 31 to 36. Four AL teams had RBI totals ranging from 31 to 35 . . . four posted a cluster of BR stats ranging from 1.11 to 1.19 . . . and, good grief, five American teams put up ERAs in the 2s, with a preposterously minuscule range of 2.52 to 2.70. The Badgers and the Moaners both came in at 2.68, necessitating some overtime calculations to determine that the Badgers had won the stat 2.679 to 2.683, a key moment in their 7-4 win over the M’s. . . . The Badgers’ 6-0 week took them to 15-4 on the season, tied for the best record in ball, and two games better than AL runners-up Zero’s. But pity the poor Bammers, who, it’s fair to say, suffered a major injustice by going 0-6 in a week when they totaled 35 runs, 33 RBIs, 33 TB, a 2.57 ERA and 1.11 BR ratio. It just don’t seem right. . . . Over in the National division, the Inmates’ block-rockin’ start cooled considerably, a 2-4 week dropping them from 13-0 to 15-4 and into a first-place tie with the Whiteskins, who went 5-1. And DamianUnited had a week almost as weird as the Bammers’, but in a good way. DamU’s offense produced a puny four HRs, 17 BI, 20 TB and .302 OBP, yet the team still went 5-1 on the strength of a pitching week that might be as good as any we’ll see all season – 1.12 ERA, 0.72 BR (!), .95 K-rate, 4-0, 6 saves. And naturally, of those five wins, one was by tiebreaker, two were by 6-5 and a fourth was 6.5-4.5. It was the only way to fly this week. . . . One final note: A moment of silence, please, for the Godfathers, whose inexplicably awful start extended to 0-19 with a third straight winless week.