SBL Notebook, Week 7

The first week of the first month of pure interleague play this season went to the American division, 21-15. Nothing particularly unusual about that; the AL has been the dominant force in cross-divisional competition for at least the past decade, with the exception of last year when the National division turned the tables. What was unusual, just a little bit, was the identity of the team that did the heavy lifting for the AL with a scorched-earth 6-0 sunburst. The team in question are the Batfaced Girls, one of two AL franchises that have never appeared in the SBL postseason. The other of those longtime down-on-their-luck clubs, the Puny Pontiffs, had served notice the previous two weeks that it just might have the personnel to make a serious run at its first playoff berth, and this time it was the Batfaces’ turn in a no-doubt-about-it performance that featured one 11-0 whitewash, a 10.5-0.5 thumping, a 9.5-1.5 win and three 9-2 triumphs. Talk about dominant: the BFGs’ offense, heavily dependent on the Baltimore Orioles (of all teams) with Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy and Matt Wieters, and spiced up by MLB batting leader David Wright, led the SBL this week in RBIs (42), TB (42) and OBP (.396) and was second in runs (35) and third in HRs (10) and SBs (7). If that wasn’t enough, they also had perhaps the league’s best pitching, topping the week with a 2.06 ERA and posting the second-best BR stat (1.10) -- thank you, Roy Halladay, Ted Lilly, Colby Lewis and James McDonald. . . . The unbeaten week lifted the BFGs alongside the Pontiffs as legit factors in the AL race – the Girls now occupy third place at 24-20, a game ahead of the PPs (who backslid with a 2-4 ledger after going 11-2 in weeks 5-6), four behind the pacesetting Zero’s and one back of the Badgers, who went 5-1 and moved up to second. The bottom of the AL deck features the somewhat jarring sight of the Moaners and the Bammers, who between them claim a dozen SBL championships, holding down the next-to-last and last spots, respectively. . . . Nothing much happened in the NL race, where the top three teams – the Cherry Valley Bombers, DamianUnited and the Inmates – all went 4-2, leaving the top of the standings unchanged. The CVBs, however, did nose ahead of the Zero’s for Best Record In Ball, by one game, while maintaining their three-game edge in the division. Another mildly jarring sight – the Derelicts, a playoff team last year, continuing their residence in the NL basement, an 0-6 week dropping them to 15-29.

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.

SBL Notebook, Week 3

There’s something happening here (in the National division) . . . What it is ain’t exactly clear (because, while it’s way too early to draw any conclusions, the NL race is looking like a four-team free-for-all) . . . So, let’s throw it out there (for what it’s worth)—could this finally be the year when the SBL balance of power shifts toward the senior circuit? We posed essentially the same question around this time last season, and the answer turned out to be no – the NL would finish with only one winning team, and an AL team won the championship for the sixth straight year. So take this with however many grains of salt you choose, but at the moment the NL, although it may not have the best team, certainly appears to have more good ones. The division has already had four different leaders in three weeks, with the Derelicts taking their turn atop the heap this week thanks to a nice 6-0 run. The top four teams are separated by only two games (though again, it’s way early), with records of 13-6, 12-7, 12-7 and 11-8, and all have virtues any SBL team would covet, assets that should hold them in good stead for the long term. (For details, consult your rosters.) Contrast this with the American division, which appears to have quickly devolved into a two-team affair -- the Bammers, off to a blistering 18-1 start, and the Badgers, hanging tough at four games back on the strength of the most dominant week the league has seen so far this young season. The rest of the division is made up of four losing teams already staring at double-digit deficits. . . . The Badgers simply were not going to be beaten this week, posting league bests in six categories—runs (39), TB (42), HR (12), RBI (39) WL (4-0) and saves (6), plus the second-best ERA (2.32) and SB total (8). The closest game in their 6-0 onslaught was an 8-3 win over the Bammers. Speaking of the Bams, they were nothing special, at least by the standards they established the first two weeks, but still eased to a 5-1 mark mainly because no one among the Bottom Four in the division appears capable giving them a game right now. . . . The Derelicts’ 6-0 week was considerably more dicey than the Badgers, featuring two 6-5 wins and another by 6.5-4.5. But a league-leading ERA (2.27) and BR stat (1.07) combined with just enough offense (38 BI, 37 TB) carried them through. Also worthy of mention are the Godfathers, who have soldiered on impressively despite devastating injuries to their top two draft picks (Evan Longoria, Josh Hamilton, both on the DL). Deprived of their primary power sources, the G-Daddies managed only 4 HRs and 21 RBI this week. But, ever resourceful, they found other ways to win, going 5-1 by getting on base (league-best .386 OBP), taking the extra base (33 TB), stealing any bag not nailed down (15 SBs!) and, not coincidentally, scoring lots of runs (37). They also pitched pretty well—2.98 ERA, 1.13 BR, league-leading .99 K-rate. The ’Daddies are 12-7, tied with the Patton Inmates, one game behind the ’Licts, one ahead of DamianUnited -- and who knows what the NL standings will look like next week? With four good-looking teams, this could go on all season. Or not.(How’s that for hedging our bets?). . . . Tough-luck award of the week goes to DamU, losers of what had to be the closest tiebreaker in SBL history—155.4 to 155.3, against the Batfaced Barristers.

SBL Notebook, Week 5

And then, depression set in. So said Bill Murray in “Stripes” (or was it “Caddyshack?” . . . No, definitely “Stripes” . . . But jeez, when are we going to stop falling back on these silly movie quotes in the Notebook every week?) -– and so it was for offense in the SBL this week. The depression in this case was more like a trough, into which tumbled the relatively robust hitting numbers we’d seen in recent weeks. In their place were stats so tiny in some cases, you’d almost have thought it was All-Star week. Oh, there were a couple of exceptions, which we’ll dispense with right away: Derek’s Derelicts continued on the offensive tear they’d begun last week, walloping 18 HRs and collecting 40 RBIs, 36 TB and a .388 OBP. And Paulo’s Zero’s kept the power turned on with 12 HRs, after blasting 19 in Week 4. But that was it for noteworthy numbers. While the D’s and Z’s were combining for 30 homers, the other 10 teams combined for 59, and puny average of 5.9 per team (yes, we figured that out all by ourselves). Nobody but the Derelictables reached 40 RBIs (league average for everyone not named Derek: 29), no one could top his 36 TB, no one had more than 37 runs . . . you get the picture. It was the kind of week in which Mikee’s Moaners could “complement” their usual sturdy pitching with microscopic, (dare we say?) depressing o-stats across the board (31 runs, 26 TB, 6 HRs, 27 RBIs, 2 SBs, .272 OBP) and still post three 9-2 blowout victories -– part of a 4-3 week that actually lifted the M’s back into first place, a game ahead of displaced penthouse occupants Bristow’s Batfaced Girls, in the Great Mediocrity that is the American division. The AL race has devolved into quite the unremarkable mess, with no team able to distinguish itself, the top five separated by a mere four games. Three different teams have held first place in five weeks, and none has stayed there for longer than one week. The real power is in the National division, home of not only the mashin’ Derelicts but also the celebrated BTIB, the Patton Inmates, who enhanced their reputation with a 7-0 week that took their record to a sparkling 27-5, six games up on the smokin’-hot D-Train. More to the point, the NL won eight of 12 interleague games in this seven-game week, after going 9-3 the previous two weeks. Do we spy a trend here?

PaulO's Note: Week 5

Let's make this brief. Go right to what seemed to make the difference among the cellmates. The Z's: Five saves and a 1-0 record from the bullpen; Dotel and RSoriano 5IP, 0ER, 3BR, 9Ks and a 1-1 record. ... The Bat-faced Girls: King Felix, 3.1, 7ER, 9BR and an L and an 0-2 record. The Papacy: Mark Teixeira finally showing signs of waking, going 9-for-27 in the OBP world, with four runs, 8BI, a 2B and 3HR, as well as seven saves from three guys, Capps (!), Feliz and Lidge in a 2-0 week. ... If the Bitsy Threesome manages to beat any outsiders, it may come down to a big sub-in Thursday for all three at the catcher spot. Z's: (JBuck) 5223 with two taters; BFGs: (Barajas) 4223 with two taters; Papacy: (YMolina) 5143 with 2B and SB.

SBL Notebook, Week 4

Like the elderly but plucky Plague victim in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who squeaked “I’m not dead . . . I’m getting better” as his son tried to throw him on the meat wagon, two of our most senior franchise owners have declared that reports of their demise were greatly exaggerated and appear well on the road to recovery. But before we get to Dan’s Cherry Valley Bombers and Paulo’s Zero’s, we pause for a word about the SBL’s most surprising story of the young season, the ascension of Bristow’s Batfaced Girls to heretofore uncharted heights, otherwise known as First Place. The Gals didn’t have the best week in the business -- in fact their pitching was as bad as we’re likely to see all season -- but they managed to scratch out a 4-2 mark and, on the strength of their month-long consistency, took over the top spot in the American division with an 18-7 record. It’s believed to be the first time Hizhonor has occupied the catbird seat unaccompanied, at least this late in the season. And looking at the impressive array of young, up-and-coming talent on his roster, there’s every reason to expect he can stay in contention for his first division title. The BFGs are the only team in the AL that hasn’t posted a losing week this season, and the fact they’ve done this despite injuries to several key players -- and despite their truly horrific 8.63 ERA, 2.13 BR stat and 0-4 WL this week -- has to bode well for their chances. Just think how high their ceiling may be once Nelson Cruz, Brad Hawpe and Huston Street return to active duty. . . . The Girls’ path to the AL mountaintop was cleared by Andy’s Badgers’ first toe-stub of the season, an 0-6 ker-plunk that dropped them all the way to third place, one game behind Mikee’s Moaners and three back of the BFGs. But the biggest noise of the week wasn’t the crashing of the Badgers but the roar emitted by the defending champion Zero’s as they awoke from hibernation. After staggering to a 5-14 start, the Z’s blasted out of their funk with a 6-0 surge fueled by a staggering 19 home runs, which their owner is claiming as a franchise record, and 49 RBIs. No fewer than five Zero’s players contributed multi-HR games to the cause, topped by a gimme-a-break-you’ve-gotta-be-kidding three-homer sub-in from backup catcher John Buck (!). It doesn’t get much better than that. . . . Over in the National division, the defending champion Bombers continued the resuscitation they began last week, putting together a second consecutive 5-1 performance fueled not by the monster offense that carried them in Week 3, but by sterling pitching that produced a 1.69 ERA, .94 BR stat and 5-1 WL, and lifted them to within a game of .500. Now seven and eight games, respectively, out of first place, the Zero’s and Bombers have served notice that they won’t give up their division flags without a fight. (Of course, that old Plague victim in “Holy Grail” ended up being clubbed to death by the meat-wagon owner at the son’s behest, so the Z’s and CVBs would be wise to keep the pedal to the metal!) Elsewhere in the NL, the Patton Inmates quietly went 4-2, improved their Best Record in Ball to 20-5 and maintained their lead at five games, albeit over a new runner-up -- Derek’s Derelicts (hooray, we remembered!), who assembled the best overall week (14 HRs, 43 runs, 42 ribbies AND a 2.05 ERA and 1.08 BR stat) to go 6-0 and displace DamianUnited from second place.

PaulO's Note: Week 4

"The defending-champ Zeroes showed they were ready to play -- three weeks after the season began -- by slugging 19 homers (a franchise high?) and plating 49 runners in a week of offense utterly outlandish by the puny standards of the first three weeks. This was how good it got: The Z's got a three-homer sub-in from John Buck. Yeah. And their pitching wasn't horrible for the first time this season, including a tidy 4-2 in W/L. The Z's really need a 6-0 week to get back into something vaguely approximating contention. ... Queer weeks for the cellmates here. The Bat-faced Girls had a decent week of offense but their pitching, which was steady-to-good for three weeks, went up in flames. (Maybe Joel Pineiro was available to the Angels for a reason.) Check that 8.83 ERA, just a couple of runs short of crossing 9.00, which Commissioner Davis could tell us (basically) never happens. And the 2.13 BR stat (crossing the 2.0 threshold; also quite unusual), the 0-4 and only two saves. BUT, there is that seeming anomaly of a glittering 1.08 K-rat. Long-time observers of the game have noted that pitchers being bombed often rack up a "good" K-rat. Something, perhaps, about throwing such fat pitches that they either get driven over a fence or missed entirely. Or facing so many batters that eventually the whiffs amass? Anyway, so what, you ask. Just this: That 1.08 K-rat is the one pitching stat the BFGs pluck from the Papists in their matchup. Which matters because the Girls take five offensive categories from the papacy, three by the tiniest of margins. That is to say, by one counting stat. The Girls had one more HR, one more RBI, and win OBP thanks to having one fewer PA (the teams tied in BR). In a 6-5 game. Game of millimetres (as we spell it over here) indeed."

SBL Notebook, Week 3

Getting the standard disclaimers out of the way right off the top: It’s early in the season . . . It’s only one week . . . Blah . . . blah . . . blah. Now then, it must be said with considerable conviction that some good things are happening in the long-suffering National division. The NL, winner of only two SBL titles over the last decade and 0-8 in playoff series since we adopted the wild-card format in 2006, appears to be mounting a comeback. Leading the charge is the new Best Team In Ball, the Patton Inmates, whose potent blend of across-the-board offense and power pitching (particularly from the bullpen, a Mental Defectives trademark) has carried them to a 16-3 record. In fact, all that separates the ’Mates from a perfect 19-0 start are three oh-so-close 6-5 defeats, including two particularly perverse losses to Mikee’s Moaners. The Frontal Lobotomizers’ 6-0 Week 3 performance catapulted them out to a five-game lead, partly because several other quality teams in the division keep beating each other up, with DamianUnited, tied for first a week earlier, suffering a particularly hard-luck 1-5 dive despite solid numbers. More telling, perhaps, than the Inmates’ hot start was the way the NL manhandled the American division this week, winning five of six interleague tilts by scores of 9-2, 9-2, 8-3, 7-4 and 7-4; the only AL victory was a 6-5 squeaker for Bristow’s Batfaced Girls over struggling JP’s Whiteskins. A look at the stat sheet provides a clear-cut explanation for the NL’s dominance. All three of the week’s double-figure home-run totals, all three of the 40-plus RBI counts and four of the six 30-plus run totals were logged by NL teams. The Nationals averaged 8.8, 37.0 and 33.2, respectively, in those stats, the Americans a paltry 5.2, 23.0 and 26.8. The NL also claimed five of the top seven OBPs. The AL was puny as it’s been in recent memory; no team in the division had more than 30 ribbies and three failed to even drive in 20. On the pitching side, NL teams recorded three of the five sub-3.00 ERAs, the only two sub-1.00 BR stats and the three highest save totals (cumulative score in that stat: NL 26 saves, AL 14). All in all, a statistical, and head-to-head, butt-kicking. (Hmm, can a butt-kicking be head-to-head, anatomically speaking?) Even the defending division champion Cherry Valley Bombers awoke to partake in the NL feast, rebounding from their 2-11 start to go 5-1 behind a 12-HR, 43-RBI, 38-run onslaught. . . . The big question, of course: Can the NL keep it up? Is this just a one-week aberration, or is the division in this for the long haul, with an eye on that elusive first playoff series triumph and maybe the first league championship for an NL aggregation since Vic’s Godfathers won it in 2004? Time will tell, but the numbers so far are encouraging, and a look at the rosters suggests that the pieces are in place for an NL renaissance -- there are a lot very good players, off to very good starts, in that neck of the SBL woods. Meanwhile, two traditional AL powers, the BGoff Bammers and Paulo’s Zero’s, continued to struggle -- the Bammers going 0-6 and falling to a shocking, WTIB 3-16, already a dozen games behind front-running Andy’s Badgers, and the Z’s just a couple ticks north at 5-14. The Badgers and the surprising Batfaced Girls were the only AL success stories this week, each going 5-1, leaving the ’Girls just a game out of first place.

PaulO's Note: Week 3

"Some genuinely shaky numbers here, but somebody has to win. And it is the Bat-faced Girls who, true to early form, are the (marginally) better team ... and the Zeroes who didn't do enough to take advantage of weaknesses by their cellmates. ... The BFGs beat The Champs (hah) 8-3, but the Girls' game with the Papists was a excruciatingly tight affair. The BFGs won 6.5-4.5, avoiding a tiebreaker on the basis of (pick one) one more out recorded/one fewer baserunner allowed, winning the pitching BR stat by .001 -- 1.296 to 1.297. ... The Girls perhaps deserved to win, having put up the one genuinely impressive number on offense from this trio, those 12 (!) steals (five by NCruz). ... The Vatican's game with the Z's was nearly as close, coming down to a handful of baserunners in the OBP stat, which the Papacy carries by .015 points in a 6-5 game. ... So, onward and downward; we make no claims that any of the Tiny Trio will do much outside of this sad little pod."

SBL Notebook, Week 2

It's unwise to read too much into a baseball season in its infant stage -- SBL results, 13 games in, determine supplemental draft position but little else. So the ongoing spectacle of last season's division winners, Dan's Cherry Valley Bombers and league champions Paulo's Zero's, sharing cellar space with four-time SBL champs the BGoff Bammers after two weeks probably should be taken with entire shakers-full of salt. But perhaps the most surprising development at this early juncture is the presence of Mikee's Moaners at the top of the American division heap -- not because they haven't been there before (they have, and not infrequently), but because of how they got there. The M's, to put it bluntly, cannot hit -- Week 2 totals of four home runs, 28 runs, 31 RBIs and an abominable .278 OBP drive home that point much more effectively than the team's hitters have been driving home baserunners. But, in a shocking turn of events for a team owned and operated by one of the SBL's most notoriously pitching-phobic CEOs, the Moaners have suddenly and unaccountably begun channeling the mid-1960s Dodgers, overcoming a popgun offense by deploying a dollop of speed on the basepaths and superior work on the mound to fashion a 12-1 record, including an unlikely 7-0 run this week despite the feeble hitting numbers cited above. Those Dodgers featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and an offense, personified by speedsters like Maury Wills and Willie Davis, that labored to manufacture just enough runs to eke out a 3-2 or 2-1 or 1-0 victory. Today’s Moaners have, for two weeks, featured Tim Lincecum and Adam Wainwright in the Koufax-Drysdale roles and Rajai Davis offering a somewhat pale Wills impersonation. Lincecum and Wainwright this week contributed 23 quality innings in which they allowed two runs, 20 baserunners, struck out 23 and notched three Ws, making them the linchpins in perhaps the best pitching week in franchise history -- microscopic ERA (1.23) and BR (.79) numbers, a 5-1 WL and monster K-rat (1.14). Moaners starters trudged to the hill seven times and surrendered exactly six earned runs in 53.2 IP. Meanwhile, R.Davis, who seems to have less trouble getting to second base than he does to first, contributed three of the Moaners' seven stolen bases, even as his OBP plunged to .246 (as leadoff hitter for OBP kings the Oakland A's, no less). And that, more or less, is how the M's managed to go 7-0 -- they won at least four pitching stats from everyone they played (in fact they conceded only 3.5 of a possible 35 pitching points), were beaten in stolen bases by only one of seven opponents, and picked just enough low-hanging fruit in the other hitting categories to win a fistful of close games -- one in a tiebreaker, three by 6-5, one by 6.5-4.5 and two 7-4 "blowouts." Decades of SBL experience and wisdom inform us that reliance on starting pitching as a long-term strategy is a recipe for failure in a fantasy league, particularly one that is 55% offense. But it has paid a short-term dividend for a Moaners team that deviated wildly from its traditional drafting approach by spending (wasting?) six of its first 10 selections on pitchers -- three starters and three relievers. . . . OK then, after availing himself of what he's sure will be his only opportunity all season to extol his team's (clearly ephemeral) virtues, your humble servant turns his gaze to the rest of the league, and sees that it is good. DamianUnited extended their stay in the first division with another solid week anchored by pitching (1.87 ERA, 1.04 BR, 4-1, .98 Ks) anyone but the Moaners would envy; they share the NL penthouse (at 10-3) with the Patton Inmates, whose combination of solid hitting and exceptional pitching was all but unbeatable in a 6-1 week. Andy's Badgers continued to look like the league's most explosive offensive force, though their pitching (5.40 ERA, 1.56 BR) let them down in a 4-3 week that left them two games behind the Moaners, and one ahead of Bristow’s Batfaced Girls, who rode 12 SBs, a .399 OBP and quality pitching across the board to a nice 6-1 week. And as for the Bombers, Bammers and Zero's, hey, it's only a two-week sample, just a blip on a long season's radar screen, not a six-month trend.