SBL Notebook, Week 10

The end of the first round of interleague play couldn't have come soon enough for the National division, which lost the cross-divisional battle for the fourth consecutive week, this time by the humbling count of 31-5. That brought the final four-week tally to American 95, National 49. This was, let's say, unexpected, and it's a little difficult to divine just what happened here. There had been no indication during the first six weeks that the results of the first IL period would be so one-sided; in fact the NL entered Week 7 with a slight advantage, having won 25 of the 48 interleague games contested to that point. But then several NL teams simultaneously commenced a May-June swoon that coincided with the start of interleague play, and the AL took advantage. The Derelicts (3-21 the last four weeks), the Whiteskins (4-20), the Godfathers (7 -17) and the Inmates (8-16) spent the interleague period spinning their wheels in the mud, and by the time it was over all four teams were well below .500 (ranging from eight games under to 26), with only the Cherry Valley Bombers and DamianUnited left standing and relatively unscathed at the top of the heap. Meanwhile, the entire AL prospered, with all six teams posting winning records over the four-week stretch, led by the Badgers (19-5), the Pumped-Up Pontiffs (17-7) and the Zero's (also 17-7). The result was virtually no movement in the AL standings -- the Z's, BTIB with a 42-20 record, are three, four and six games ahead of the three teams closest to them in the standings; four weeks ago those margins were three, four and five games -- but six owners who could feel a little better about themselves and their teams' prospects for having spent the last month inflating their records at the NL's expense. Five of the six AL teams are above .500 at the moment, and none among that quintet is further than nine games back in the standings. The NL race has devolved into a two-team affair, with the Bombers -- whose 2-4 ledger was the best the Nationals could muster this week -- four games up on DamU, while the third-place Inmates have dropped 12 games in arrears. . . . The Holy Crusaders continue to ravage the land with their mighty bats, which this week produced 15 HRs and 43 RBIs, both league highs. In the last three weeks, the pointy-hatted horde has swatted 42 home runs and driven in 119 runs. Good God, man!

Whiteskins Put Ethier On Trade Block?

The rumor mill is circling with word that the Whiteskins, just barely avoiding the cellar in the National Division, are looking for saves and their owner is shopping L.A. Dodgers OF Andre Ethier.

Is there a team willing to add an all-star for a closer? Hard to see/say.

SBL Notebook, Week 8

It was the damnedest thing. The American division won the interleague tussle for the second straight week, which was surprising enough in itself, just from looking at some of the semi-ugly numbers accumulated by several AL teams. And the margin of victory, a fairly decisive 24-12, that was a surprise too. But the way all this came about, how the wins and losses broke down, well that was just seriously weird. Two National division teams, the front-running Cherry Valley Bombers and runners-up DamianUnited, just rolled over all six AL foes; nobody really came close to beating them. But then the other four NL clubs combined to go 0-24. Which means, as you advanced mathematics aficionados have no doubt already figured out, that all six AL squads posted the exact same WL ledger for the week, 4-2, keeping the division standings the same as last week (except for win-loss totals and percentages). Not so in the NL, where what had been a more-or-less competitive three- or four-team race was blown wide open. DamU remained three games behind the defending champion CVBs, of course, but the Inmates, Whiteskins, Godfathers and Derelicts all lost six games to the leaders and suddenly trail by 12, 15, 18 and 20, respectively. . . . The hard-luck award for the week probably should go to the Batfaced Barristers, who continued their horsehide-abusing ways with 12 HRs, 50 RBIs and 41 runs, only to see those incredible numbers bettered by the CVBs (16 HRs, 54 BI, 42 R), the key difference in the Bombers’ 7-4 victory. DamU was simply ultra-solid across the board – league-bests in OBP (.383), saves (8) and K-rate (1.05), and good-to-very-good numbers in every other category – to best the triple-Bs by the same 7-4 count. But it seemed just a little unjust that the Batfaces’ prodigious numbers could produce no more than four wins, the same number of Ws posted by the far more pedestrian Zero’s, Moaners and Puny Pontiffs. Had this been a week of intra-division competition, the Barristers would have obliterated those three teams by 9-2, 8-3 and 7.5-3.5 scores, respectively. But life, and baseball, ain’t always fair, and it just so happened that the other four NL teams were unable to offer much resistance against anyone this week, even the AL’s lesser achievers. The Godfathers were undone by puny hitting in almost every stat, the Inmates, Whiteskins and Derelicts by horrific pitching (8.02, 7.11 and 5.16 ERAs, respectively).

SBL Notebook, Week 5

You want pitchers? We got ‘em, right here in the National division. No belly itchers or glasses of water allowed on the premises . . . and no margin for error, either. It was pitch or perish this week in the NL, where no fewer than three teams checked in with sub-2.00 ERAs and sub-1.00 BR stats. DamianUnited’s ostensibly spiffy 2.72 ERA and 1.04 BR stat? Sorry, fellas, you’re losing those categories to half your division mates. The big winners for the week were the Derelicts, who combined lights-out mound work (1.97 ERA, league-leading .81 BR, 3-0 WL) with some very solid offense (league-best 41 RBIs and .375 OBP) to go 7-0 and escape the NL cellar, where the Godfathers tumbled back in despite their own perfectly satisfactory 5-2 week. Most disappointed losers of the week were the Whiteskins, whose sensational chucking (.92 BR, week’s-best 1.74 ERA) was compromised by across-the-board offensive puniness, causing the ‘Skins to go 2-5. The aforementioned DamU, meanwhile, did enough things well -- 11 HRs, 7 SBs, 7 saves, .95 K-rate, in addition to their ERA/BR numbers – to go 5-2 and move into first place in what is shaping up as a competitive, but fluid, NL race. DamU, 16-3 the last three weeks, are a game ahead of defending champs, the Cherry Valley Bombers, and two up on the up-and-down Inmates, who vacated the penthouse for the first time this year. . . . American division teams did not pitch nearly as well – three had ERAs of 4.25 or higher, including an unsightly 6.02 for the Badgers – and paid for it in the seven-game week’s 12 interleague contests, 10 of which the NL won. The runner-up Badgers’ horrific hurling resulted in an 0-7 crash, which enabled the Zero’s to quadruple their lead, from one game to four, despite a less-than-scintillating 3-4 performance. The Z’s also maintained the Best Record In Ball for a second successive week; they’re 22-10 to DamU’s 21-11. The Moaners, who also pitched piss-poorly, were unable to take full advantage of the Badgers’ pratfall, going 2-5 to remain in third place.

SBL Notebook, Week 4

We're guessing that the proprietors of DamUnited did not go into the draft this year thinking, "Hey, let's see if we can assemble one of the great pitching staffs in SBL history" . . . because really, who ever does? Pitching is such a crap shoot, so difficult to predict year to year, more often than not, great SBL rotations tend to be happy accidents, rather than the result of brilliant planning and astute drafting. Witness the Moaners' experience two years ago, when they just kind of stumbled into a championship-winning rotation that featured 20-game winner Adam Wainwright as No. 3 starter (the year before he blew out his arm) and 19-game winner David Price as a No. 5 (!). While it's way too early to conclude that something similar is happening in the DamU clubhouse, we can say that things are shaping up quite nicely over there, and that the two-week run of sparkling pitching Damian's boys just completed might rank with any comparable stretch we've seen in our 30 years as a league. Following up last week's lights-out 1.12 ERA and microscopic .72 BR ratio, DamU checked in with an almost-as-good 1.71 and .84 this week. And, with their offense finally springing to life as well, the result was a 6-0 week that, combined with last week's 5-1, catapulted United into the thick of the National division race at 16-9, two games behind the pacesetting Inmates. Pitching must've been on Damian's mind to some extent on draft day, because he went fairly early for his ace, Cliff Lee at No. 33, the fourth SP taken. But, under the heading of isn't-that-always-the-way, Lee has been the one disappointment on the staff, logging only three starts before landing on the disabled list. It's been the later-round picks -- rock-steady-as-always CC Sabathia, as-good-as-advertised rookie Yu Darvish, good-and-getting-better Gio Gonzalez and wait-a-minute-where-the-hell-did-THAT-come-from-isn't-he-washed-up-retired-or-dead Jake Peavy -- who've made Damian's staff the envy of the league at the moment. The Damu bullpen looked shaky on paper when the season started, but it too is taking shape after the GM picked up newbie closers Fernando Rodney and Scott Downs in the first two supplemental drafts. And if the DamU hitters can stay warm after waking up from their April hibernation, this team could make a lot of noise in the NL race. . . . Also suddenly making noise are the Godfathers, who after a dismal first three weeks went 5-1 and escaped the NL cellar, replaced there by the Derelicts. The G-Daddies actually got off the schneid last week, although most of the league's owners are learning of this fact only now as they read this. To explain: Due to a statkeeping malfunction, the numbers from the second game of a Texas-Detroit doubleheader last week were not recorded before official Week 3 statistics were submitted to the commissioner's office. Once the error was discovered -- unfortunately after results had been published -- and stats from that game were added to Vic's totals, what was reported last week as a 6-5 victory for the Whiteskins over the Godfathers became a 6-5 win for Vic -- his first W of the season! The retroactive defeat dropped the 'Skins from a first-place tie into second, and this development so discombobulated Whitekins players that they apparently went into a snit and let it affect their play this week, when they rolled over and went 0-6, dropping the team all the way to fourth place. . . . The American division witnessed what could be called a return to normalcy this week, as 2011 pennant winners and perennial contenders, the Zero's, moved into first place, where they spent most of last season. The Z's have been doing it with pitching as well (2.66 ERA, nine saves, 1.14 K-rate this week), and the realization that they were able to go 6-0 and build a best-in-ball 19-6 record despite minimal input from slow-starting sluggers Jose Bautista, Mark Teixeira and Kevin Youkilis, and with red-hot Chris Young on the DL, is a disquieting, discomforting thought indeed for the rest of the AL.

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.

SBL Notebook, Week 2

It was another jailbreak week for the mighty Inmates, who have leaped out of their cage and fired a shot across the collective bow of the SBL with a scorching 13-0 start. Just eyeballing the ’Mates’ hitting numbers these first two weeks, you might think they’d been playing full seven-day schedules while the rest of the league was playing half-weeks. Led by fast-starting Matt Kemp, David Ortiz, Ian Kinsler, Corey Hart, Alex Avila and others too numerous to mention, the Inmates' ball-busters mashed 11 HRs this week – bringing their two-week total to an astonishing 23 – and accumulated 36 runs, 34 TB and 33 RBIs . . . all in 174 plate appearances, fewer than all but three other teams in a truncated five-day schedule. All that offense papered over some truly gruesome pitching – it’s hard to envision any SBL team this season throwing up an ERA as bad as the 8.01 the Inmates just left splattered on the dugout wall – and kept the Mental Defectives unbeaten, with a three-game lead on the Whiteskins. And, good grief, look down there at the poor Godfathers, winless and already 13 games out of first place in the National Division – after TWO WEEKS! Things are more competitive in the American Division, where the Badgers went 5-2 to supplant one-week wonders the Moaners at the top of the heap – but at a mere 9-4, one game better than quick-recovering Zero’s (who went 6-1) and two up on the Moaners, who experienced a 1-6 stumble after their 6-0 start. . . . Statistically, only the Z’s (33 BI, 30 runs, 7 HRs) and the Puny Pontiffs (8 HRs, 33 BI, 32 runs) were able to hang out anywhere near the Inmates’ high-rent neighborhood in a semi-short week when the league average for PAs was about 50 to 60 shy of what a typical SBL team would get in a typical SBL week.

SBL Notebook, Week 1

First order of business: Don't nobody panic! Take a step back, breathe, and recognize that first-week results, as they might put it in Old Blighty, don't mean shite. A certain strain of SBL owner -- the more neurotic among our number, and they shall remain nameless here, but you/we know who you/we are -- tends to look at Week 1 numbers and let his imagination run wild, mentally extrapolating this small, isolated statistical sample into full-blown, ironclad, irreversible season-long trends -- like, if your 35-HR slugger from last year doesn't go yard at least once . . . or your star closer blows a save . . . or that staff ace you were counting on for 250 K's whiffs only five in seven innings . . . or, worst of all, if any or all of this results in an 0-6 or 1-5 start to the season -- well, that's it, then. It's over, you're doomed, all these clowns who underperformed in Week 1 are going to underperform to the exact same level in Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, and every single godforsaken week all the way through Week 26, and a 100-loss season is now absolutely, positively guaranteed. And your friends in the commissioner's office are here to tell ya . . . it just ain't so. If your boys stumbled out of the gate -- as the Bammers and the Godfathers just did, going 0-6 -- take heart, all is not lost. If you roared off the starting line -- as the Moaners and the Inmates just did, going 6-0 -- don't get cocky, there are 25 weeks to go and a lot can change. For evidence, we need go back only one year and look at 2011's Week 1 standings. A year ago, the Bammers and the Whiteskins sat atop the American and National division standings after scintillating 6-0 starts. By season's end those teams sat in fourth and last place, respectively, a combined 22 games under .500. Down at or near the bottom of those 2011 first-week standings we found the Cherry Valley Bombers, at 0-6, and the Zero's, at 1-5. Do we need to remind anyone who wound up winning the division pennants and meeting in the SBL Series? The Z's and CVBs would finish a combined 207-117, with the Bombers winning a close battle in the championship tilt. So, there you are -- the baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint, so everyone just chill. . . . It's also worth noting that last season began with an expected burst of offense, despite a severely truncated 3 1/2-day schedule, but then hitting numbers soon regressed and stayed flat for several weeks thereafter. This year, again, brought some surprisingly robust hitting to kick off the season -- but, just as a warning, don't be surprised if the lumber cools off in the coming weeks. Our little scheme to tweak the schedule -- splitting the first 11-12 days of the MLB season into two somewhat-shortened SBL weeks so as to return us to our traditional format with (almost) every stat week ending on a Sunday -- worked out just fine, for one week, anyway. Although we had what amounted to only about five full days' worth of games, plate appearances weren't too far off what we'd see in a normal week -- all but a couple of teams made it into the 200s, and the league average of 208 was only about 30 or so short of a full load. That's a fair and representative sample, we'd say. The league average of 7.25 homers was better than we've seen in some full-length weeks, and while there weren't many eye-popping RBI numbers, a handful of clubs made it into the 30s in runs and/or TB. The Inmates enjoyed a 12-HR, 36-run, 34-BI bash-fest, numbers that would hold up as category-winners in many a seven-day week.

SBL Notebook, Week 17

It's tempting to declare this a no-harm no-foul week, but the truth of the matter is, there was a LOT of harm inflicted in Week 17 -- almost all of it administered by the National division and absorbed by the American division, whose constituents were left in a mood most foul. The Nationals, who decisively won the first interleague interlude (Weeks 7-10), began the second four-week IL period with their most dominant performance yet, walloping the Americans by a 28-8 count. Leading the NL onslaught were the ever-mercurial Whiteskins, the division cellar dwellers who, oddly enough, posted the only 6-0 record for the week, riding some outsized offense (49 TB, 44 RBI, 7 SBs) and lights-out pitching (2.35 ERA, 1.27 K-ratio). The no-harm no-foul part of the equation applies to the NL race -- because no team in the division went worse than 4-2, there was very little change in the standings, with the Godfathers maintaining their one-game lead over the Inmates, and the Derelicts, DamianUnited and the Cherry Valley Bombers bunched in third through fifth places, separated by only three games. The other division race, however, grew only more one-sided, because the Zero's, Best Team In Ball for nearly a month now, were the lone AL entry to survive the week with their dignity fully intact, losing only to JP in a 5-1 run that inflated their lead to 11 games over the Bammers -- whose 2-4 mark represented the best the rest of the division could muster. Elsewhere it was total mass humiliation -- the other four AL teams getting their collective clocks cleaned to the tune of a combined 1-23. Sheesh. . . . The NL was just too good everywhere you looked, mashing 55 HRs (a robust 9.2 per team) to the AL's puny 35; averaging an impressive 37 RBIs (to the AL's 28) and 33 TBs (to 28) per team; and posting four ERAs of 3.35 or better, no BR stat higher than 1.25 and no K-rate lower than .85. No NL team was less than good, and if they had been playing amongst themselves, it might've been downright cannibalistic. But facing the overmatched AL, it was simply a bloodbath. Better luck next week, Junior Circuit.

SBL Notebook, Week 14

Pardon the overwrought patriotic allusion, but what more appropriate way to mark Independence Day than with revolutionary upheaval . . . and bombs bursting in air . . . in the American division? Loosely translated, the SBL experienced an overthrow at the top of the AL standings, fueled by home run fireworks. It was a very happy ID4, indeed, for the Zero's -- ironically the only SBL team whose owner resides on distant shores outside the borders of this great nation of ours. The Z's rode the homer-happiest offense in a relatively homer-happy week to a 6-0 performance and supplanted longtime residents the Bammers from the AL penthouse. The Bams had been in first place from Day 1 through Week 13, the entire first half of the season, but their lead, 11 games as recently as Week 10, dwindled steadily in June, and they were felled from their pedestal as July dawned, a 2-4 stumble landing them in second place, two games behind the new front-runners. The mighty Zero's' prodigious offense smashed and dashed its way to 16 HRs, 40 RBIs, 33 runs, 31 TB, 8 SBs and a .371 OBP -- across-the-board strength sufficient to overcome some of the week's most incendiary pitching (league-worst 5.32 ERA, 1-4 WL, 1.29 BR) without breaking a sweat. Also acquired as a result of their big week was the exalted Best Team In Ball status -- at 55-32, the Zero's are one game better than the NL-leading Inmates . . . which makes them the third BTIB we've had in the last three weeks. . . . The Inmates stumbled a bit in a 2-4 week but, because one of their wins was over the second-place Godfathers, the Mental Defectives actually doubled their division lead, to two games. The G-Daddies, who went 1-5, can't get too comfortable in the runner-up spot, either, with resurgent DamianUnited staging a rear-guard action that resulted in their leapfrogging the Derelicts into third place, five games behind the Inmates and three back of the G's. DamU, rebounding nicely from last week's 0-6 pratfall, went 5-1 on the strength of 15 HRs, 33 BIs and some outstanding pitching (2.20 ERA, 6 saves, .94 BR). The only team to beat them was the cellar-dwelling Whiteskins, whose pitching was even better (microscopic 1.27 ERA, 5-1, .95 BR), and who would've gone 6-0 themselves if not for the misfortune of having to play the Zero's, the only AL team that could've beaten them, in their interleague matchup. . . . Both pennant races remained quite competitive, with the top three teams in each division separated by only four games (AL) and five (NL). However, two season-long contenders, the Badgers and the Derelicts, suffered simultaneous 0-6 mini-meltdowns that dropped them into fourth place, eight and seven games, respectively, out of first. . . . As mentioned above, there was a detectable dinger uptick, the 12 teams combining to hit 102 homers, an average of 8.6 per team, and 20 more than the league managed last week. Doing the most to skew the stat northward were the Zero's, DamU and the Cherry Valley Bombers, who combined for 41 circuit clouts, 40% of the total.

SBL Notebook, Week 11

It was another week, the third in a (hopefully) continuing series, when the SBL was converted into a MASH unit -- and no team induced pitching-staff triage quite like DamianUnited. The club that draws its name from the lowest-scoring sport on the planet produced some most un-soccer-like offense, highlighted by a preposterous 19 HRs and 62 RBIs, both all-time franchise highs and within hailing distance of the SBL records in those categories (believed to be 21 and 68 respectively; if anyone can confirm or disprove these figures, please notify the commissioner’s office). That, plus 42 runs, 33 TB and not-too-shabby pitching (3.19 ERA, 1.13 BR, 4-1 WL) carried DamU to its first 6-0 week this season, and lifted the National division’s fourth-place entry to within seven games of co-leaders the Inmates and the Derelicts. Just about everyone in DamU’s lineup contributed to the onslaught, but leading the way in this voyage of the Dam were 1B David Ortiz (four HRs, 13 BIs) and SS Troy Tulowitzki (2 HRs, 2 2Bs, 13 BIs). Their efforts were augmented by a dab of when-you’re-hot-you’re-hot sub-in luck: backup catcher Miguel Olivo produced a combined 3 HRs, 6 RBIs and 4 runs on two days when starter Miguel Montero happened to sit out. Something magical about catchers named Miguel, apparently. Every team that had the misfortune to encounter DamianUnited on the schedule ended up shaking his fist and shouting “Damn you, DamU!” Leading that chorus were the Moaners, who managed to take Da United to a tiebreaker in the teams’ interleague matchup but were blown away by what might have been the highest tiebreak number in SBL history -- a 212.1 figure fueled by those 19 HRs, which translated to 76 points in the top-secret tiebreaker formula. That loss was the only blemish in a 5-1 week that left the M’s two games out of second place in the American division, still shared by the Badgers and the Zero’s. Both of those teams went 3-3, failing to take full advantage of a rare 1-5 stumble by the pacesetting Bammers, who still enjoy a comfy nine-game lead. The NL race remains where the action is, with the Inmates going 5-1 to pull back into a tie with the Double-Ds (4-2) atop the heap, the Godfathers hanging tough at four games out and DamU now very much in the picture, too. The NL, still feeling frisky after its interleague triumph in weeks 7-10, won five of six cross-divisional tilts this week. And small wonder, when you look at some of the prodigious offense around the division, notably for the Derelicts (47 BI, 44 runs, 12 HRs) and the Inmates (39 runs, 13 HR, 42 TB). The Cherry Valley Bombers (44 runs, 33 TB, .362 OBP) and the Whiteskins (10 HR, 35 BI, 32 TB) also did their share of damage, but were undone by horrendous pitching (7.09 and 6.30 ERAs, respectively). . . . Congrats to the Batfaced Barristers, who posted their first winning record of the season (4-2), one of only two the AL could manage this week.

DamU, 'Skins Make Deal

From the of Office of the Commish...

"DamianUnited and the Whiteskins consummated a trade Monday:

OF N.Cruz and SP Dempster to DamU, OF Del.Young and SP T.Hudson to the 'Skins.

For those following along at home, Hudson takes Dempster’s place on the Whiteskins' taxi squad, and Dempster goes directly into DamU’s rotation in the spot previously occupied by Hudson. The 'Skins can move Hudson into their rotation on the next draft day."

---

For the time being, it looks like DamU got the better of this deal, trading for one of the premier power bats in ball. Cruz's 15 HRs currently ranks him just outside the Top 10 in the MLB.

SBL Notebook, Week 10

Up was down and down was up in the final week of interleague play, though the end result was essentially the same as the previous week -- the National division pushing the American division right through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. Following up on last week’s 24-12 shellacking of the junior circuit, the NL administered a 25-11 beat-down in Week 10. Boy, is the AL glad that’s over. And the cherry on top of the National sundae was a decisive 83-61 victory for this four-week interleague period -- the first such triumph for the senior circuit in, well, who knows how long . . . most of us old farts can’t remember back that far. The odd aspect of this week’s outcome was that the primary damage was done by the bottom half of the division. While the three leaders -- the Derelicts, the Inmates and the Godfathers -- each went 3-3, the fourth-place DamianUnited, the fifth-place Bombers and the cellar-dwelling Whiteskins combined to go 16-2, led by the 'Skins 6-0 rampage. The ’Skins blasted 11 HRs, drove in 48 runs (league best this season), scored 39, pilfered eight sacks and posted a 2.83 ERA and 6-2 WL, and how was anybody gonna beat that? If the ’Skins could just generate a little consistency, they might yet be a factor in the race. So far, though, they’ve been all over the map -- 6-0 this week, 4-2 last week, 6-0 in Week 1 . . . and 8-36 in the seven weeks in between. . . . While the NL race remained tight -- the Double-Ds remained one game ahead of the Mental Defectives and three up on the G-Daddies -- the AL race blew wide open again, with the Bammers going 5-1 and inflating their lead from six games to 11. Three AL teams went 0-6, and one of those was the mercurial Zero’s, alone in second after going 6-0 last week, but now tied there with the Badgers and staring at a double-digit deficit. (Also going 0-6 were the Batfaced Barristers and the Puny Pontiffs, two luckless franchises that, incredibly, have combined for only 21 wins -- fewer than any other single team.). . . . The offensive revival hinted at last week seemed to pick up steam this week -- the league averaged a respectable 8.75 HRs per team (five reached double figures, the most in a week all season), an impressive 34.9 RBIs (three teams in the 40s, also for the first time this year) and 32.4 runs. It was almost like a time warp had taken us back to 1999. And think what those averages would’ve been if the Moaners hadn’t dragged them down by contributing only five HRs, 16 RBIs and 30 runs to the aggregate!

Last-minute trade proposal

Hi gang,

I'm taking to the blogosphere (because my telegraph gets poor reception here) to send out a trade proposal. I'm eager, though not desperate, to acquire an additional draft pick this week. Pablo Sandoval and Jonathan Broxton decided to get injured at the same time (possibly while fighting over a drumstick at HomeTown Buffet).

Here's my roster:

C: Arencibia, Santana
1B: Howard, Moreland
2B: Beckham, Hall
SS: Andrus, Lowrie
3B: Sandoval (injured), Jones
OF: Granderson, Zobrist, Bloomquist (injured), Cruz (injured) Lee, Crawford
SP: Sabathia, Burnett, Kuroda, Dempster, Billingsley
RP: Bell, Broxton (injured), Franklin, Fuentes
Taxi: Carmona, Braden (injured)

Eager, but not desperate.

SBL Notebook, Week 5

One of our veteran owners (who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are P.O., and who lives in Abu freakin’ Dhabi), dredged up a couple of interesting stats the other day—the cumulative MLB batting average for April was only .250, the OBP a meager .319. Which seems like a reasonable jumping-off point for our annual at-around-this-time-of-year musing about the continued shrinkage of offense in the majors. It’s certainly being felt in the SBL, which after a hot (three-day) start in Week 1 has witnessed steady downward pressure on hitting numbers. The league averages this week: 7.6 HRs, 28.6 RBIs, 28.5 runs, 25.6 TB (the latter skewed by two teams that combined for 81 TB; take them out of the mix and the other 10 teams averaged 22.7). Plus, there were only two OBPs above the .340. threshold. And, oddly enough, there was some pretty terrible pitching going around this week, with five SBL ERAs above 4.5, four of those above 5.40--including one hideous 6.69. Apparently those SBL pitchers didn’t get to face enough SBL hitters. . . . For years now, it hasn’t been unusual to see these kind of pedestrian numbers on offense for a week or two in April, but now it seems like we see them all month, and it bleeds over into May and when will it ever stop and are we going to HAVE TO ENDURE THIS TRAVESTY ALL SEASON???!! . . . OK, take a breath . . . and we now return you to our regular SBL programming. Quite suddenly, we have the makings of actual competition in the American division. For the first three weeks, the Bammers were well-nigh unbeatable, starting 18-1 and conjuring memories (fears?) of 2006, when the Bams started 19-0 and 37-1, were 77-10 at the All-Star break and generally made a mockery of the AL race, coasting to the pennant by 19 games before winning the SBL Series 17-9. But the last two weeks they’ve come back to the pack a bit, and their hard-luck 2-5 performance this week left them only two games ahead of the rock-steady Badgers, who have posted five straight winning weeks en route to a 22-10 record. Oh, and a third team has entered the picture -- the Zero’s, 7-0 this week, 13-0 the last two weeks and only four games out despite their unsightly 7-12 start. (As an example of how little offense it takes to win these days, the Z’s went unbeaten and almost unchallenged with 28 runs, 22 TB, 32 RBI and a .336 OBP -- though nine saves, a 1.07 BR stat, 4-1 WL and 3.04 ERA certainly didn’t hurt their cause.) And, even the struggling defending champion Moaners dragged their sorry butts back to .500 with a 6-1 effort, their first winning week since W 1. . . . The frenzied scramble in the National division showed no signs of abating, with three teams now tied for the top spot and a fourth, DamianUnited, only two games back. Special citation to the Godfathers, who continue to weather an injury wave that claimed top picks Evan Longoria and Josh Hamilton and slugging 2B Aaron Hill among others. After a 6-1 week, the G-Daddies share first place with the Inmates and the Derelicts, and a couple of their missing stars are due back any day now. . . . Kudos, too, to the Whiteskins, who just last week inserted the Rays’ Ben Zobrist into their starting outfield, then sat back and watched him produce one of the greatest single-player boxscore bonanzas in SBL history -- 7 for 10, 5 runs, 10 RBIs, 2 homers, 3 doubles and a stolen base in a Thursday double dip against the Twins. Hope you enjoyed that; miracle stat lines like that are why we play this game, and are also as rare as dodo birds. BTW, the Z-propelled ’Skins went 5-2, arresting a 1-18 slide the previous three weeks.

SBL Notebook, Week 4

That most egalitarian of divisions, the National, welcomed yet another new face at the top of its leaderboard, making it four different NL No. 1s in four weeks. Week 1 was the Whiteskins’ moment in the sun, to be followed by DamianUnited (Week 2 numero uno), the Derelicts (Week 3 head honchos) and, this week, the Inmates, sharing the catbird seat with the Double-Ds, but listed first because they had a better week (5-1 to Derek’s 4-2). This actually is the Mental Defectives’ second appearance in first place; they shared it with DamU in Week 2, with Damian listed first because of his superior 6-1 performance that week. The ’Mates’ owner has lamented the slow starts by a couple of key early draft picks, Carlos Gonzalez and Shin-Soo Choo, but the team has hummed along anyway, yet to put up a losing week -- thanks in part to a spectacular start by Matt Kemp, solid work by a semi-anonymous rotation (Michael Pineda? Tim Stauffer?) and a productive bullpen, always an Inmates staple. The only NL teams that haven’t sniffed the heady air of first place are the Godfathers and the Cherry Valley Bombers -- and the G-Daddies have been close, within one game of the top a week ago and three back now. If their injury luck ever turns around, they just might earn their own turn at the top. This week, though, they lost another key player, 2B Aaron Hill, who joined first- and second-round picks Evan Longoria and Josh Hamilton on the DL. . . . Meanwhile, what happened to the Whiteskins? After a scorching 6-0 start, they’ve gone 1-18 to plummet into a last-place tie with the Bombers. . . . The top of the American division treaded water, with the Bammers (now 21-3) and the Badgers (18-7) each going 4-2 to remain the top two teams in ball. There was a rumbling among the AL also-rans, though, as Paulo’s Zero’s rose up to go 6-0 and get their noses above .500 (at 13-12) for the first time this season. Their end-of-first-round double picks, Jose Bautista and Ryan Braun, propelled the Z’s to league highs in runs (40), HRs (13) and OBP (.377), in what was otherwise another tepid hitting weak. Meanwhile, the bottom three in the stratified division have dropped almost out of sight, already 12, 16 and 17 games, respectively, behind the Bammers. Is it possible to be out of a baseball divisional race after only four weeks? Maybe not, technically, but hope is hard to come by just now for the AL’s poor and huddled masses.

Sun-sational Six (Week 1 Edition)

Like the catcher who hits .500 the first week with three of his four HR he's going to hit for the season, the Sun-sational Six isn't fooled by fast starts. Impressed as hell, but fools? Nah.

Here's the SS-hit list after Week 1.

1. Moaners (Last week's ranking: 1): Get your blemishes while you can on the Moaners. Oh my god, the Moaners dropped two games in the first week. The world is coming to an end. Riggggghhhhht. We'll buy that right after we see it for another 25 weeks.

2. Badgers (Last week's ranking: 4): Any team with Albert Pujols batting a buck-something and still wins four games deserves a little respect. Since it's Andy, we hedge a bit. Still, there's no shortage of first-pick talent on this team, and over the long haul (as long as the Badges don't panic and sell Pujols low for say Manny PED-mirez), this group is going to contend.

3. Bammers (Last week's ranking: None): Probably dropped the ball on not including the Bammers on the preseason list. What? You thought this was science? Anyway, we're not completely sold with any team loaded with Pirates is going to be there when it counts, but the BGoffs do know a thing or two about powering to an SBL title or four. Welcome to the SS list.

4. Damian U (Last week's ranking: 2). The Sun-sational list is treating the Laker-lovers a little harsh, but man up, D-dog. This team definitely is built to repeat in the weaker division, but probably will have issues competing with the big dogs on the other side (or in this case, see those ranked 1-2-3 here). Anyway, the U's are no sheep.

5. Whiteskins (Last week's ranking: None). JP is probably looking around the room, saying, 'Who? Me?'" Yeah, what the hell, JP, you go 6-0 and you make a list. We're certainly not sold after four friggin' games of play, but crazier things have happened. You sure look a lot better than those pathetic CV Bombers or VW Godfathers. Just don't disappoint us.

6. Zeroes (Last week's ranking: 3): The Sun-sational list isn't fooled by the 1-5 start. There's way too much talent on this squad to be fooled by one week of competition. That means, get your act together this week or start looking for another list to get on, Paulo.

-- Dan Evans, owner of the Cherry Valley Bombers

SBL Notebook, Week 1

Our newly truncated opening week produced a veritable trunkload of offense (proportional to the diminished sample size of course), but nothing of lasting value. What worthwhile conclusions are there to be drawn, after all, from what amounts to three measly days of major league baseball games? The unexpectedly explosive, bats-out-of-hell start by MLB hitters on opening weekend could possibly suggest that they are adjusting to the new world order and reclaiming some of the ground lost during a 2010 season rightly dubbed the Year of the Pitcher; then again, maybe it was all just a product of unseasonably mild weather nationwide. Big-picture analysis is fruitless at this early juncture; best to just forget about this week and move on—the good news being that, thanks to MLB’s decision to start and end the season midweek so as to condense the schedule and get the World Series over with before November, the heinous SBL “short week” is out of the way right from the jump, leaving us with 25 full and uncompromised weeks of competition to determine our 2011 champion. . . . One conclusion we CAN safely draw, based at least as much on roster inspection as on Week 1 results, is that the Bammers appear to be Back-with-a-capital-B, after a year in cellar-dwelling purgatory. Team management performed quite well on draft night and the four-time SBL champs reaped immediate dividends, posting numbers that ranked among the league’s top three in six stats (runs, RBI, ERA, BR, TB, WL). Of particular note were a microscopic, league-leading 1.26 ERA and .78 baserunner stat. Needless to say, the Bams went 6-0. . . . Much stranger, but no less successful, was the performance of the Whiteskins, who also went 6-0 despite throwing up a truly hideous 7.75 ERA (thank you, Fausto Carmona). A league-best four saves took a little of the sting out, but the real difference-maker for the Skins was that they simply killed it on the hitting side, mashing nine HRs (in three-plus days??!!), driving in 26 runs and scoring 24.

Draft Night 2011 In Chino Hills!

That one day a year is here! The Sun Baseball League's 29th annual draft night.

Owners for the Inmates, the Bammers, DamianUnited, the Vatican City Madmen, and the Moaners, the 2010 SBL champions, are already here.

We're still waiting for owners from the Bombers, the Badgers and the Whiteskins.

The Zero's will be drafting from Abu Dhabi, UAE, the Godfathers from Dallas and the Derelicts from Seattle, Wash.

Draft selection is pending. Stay tuned.

SBL Notebook, Final

A tip o' the Sun Baseball cap to Mikee's Moaners, winners of the venerable rotisserie league's 2010 championship by virtue of a 15-11 verdict over DamianUnited in SBL Series XXVIII. The Ms went almost wire to wire, piling up an impressive 125 victories and spending 23 of the 26 weeks in first place. They were fixtures atop the American division standings from Week 5 on, won the division flag by 19 games over the formidable Paulo's Zero's, then handled the Patton Inmates, 17-9, in the wild-card round before winning the Series against National division champions DamU -- who made some history of their own by becoming the first NL team to win a playoff series in the five years since the league added the wild-card round, doubling the postseason field to four teams. ... This is, the franchise owner is almost embarrassed to report, the Moaners' eighth championship in the league's glorious 28-season history; it is also their third in the last four years, a short-term run of SBL success unmatched in any previous four-year stretch. Which sort of makes the Moaners the Yankees of this fantasy outfit -- a comparison that deeply pains the club owner, given his lifelong hatred of the actual Yankees, a pathological contempt for the Bronx Bombers almost certainly traceable to his allegiance to the Dodgers virtually from the moment of their arrival (when he was 5) in Los Angeles from Brooklyn, where Yankee-hating was a civic responsibility ... and possibly acquired genetically, or by osmosis, dating to his gestation, in 1952, in the womb of a New York-born mother raised by a domineering Yankee-hating father ... ah, but we digress.

Every season, every team and every championship is different, but for the Moaners, championship No. 8 was REALLY different. An owner whose longstanding and passionate loathing of pitchers is perhaps unrivaled in league history ... just won a title primarily BECAUSE of pitching. In a drafting strategy born of desperation (after drawing draft position No. 8, perhaps the worst starting spot on the board), and at least partly by accident, the Moaners used five of their first 10 draft-night selections on pitchers -- and, even more surprising, it actually worked out. It started in the second round, when the Ms’ brain trust, stumped and mildly panicked as the draft clock ticked, was unable to find a hitter it deemed worthy of the No. 21 overall selection, causing it to blurt out the name "Tim Lincecum" – shocking, given the owner's unshakable belief that pitchers are notoriously unpredictable creatures, more likely to harm than help, and thus best left to the nether regions of the draft. While the cognitive processes that led to this momentous act of seeming madness remain unclear in the owner's memory, it resulted in the extemporaneous formulation of a new draft strategy: Draft MORE pitchers, early and often, so as to not "waste" the Lincecum pick, and build around the two-time Cy Young winner a staff that could, it was hoped, make the Moaners reasonably competitive despite what was sure to be a grossly inadequate offense. And, somehow, the pieces fell together -- Adam Wainwright (No. 74 overall) won 20 games; Andrew Bailey (87) was mostly lights out (at least when not injured); Carlos Marmol (100), in his first full season as a closer, turned into a 38-save monster with an outrageous 138 Ks in 77.2 IP; and Johan Santana (113) pitched like the vintage Cy Young winner of old at least as often as not. Throw in David Price, a young 19-win ace snagged for a song (216th pick) as the Moaners' No. 5 starter, and you had a staff that, in a season widely dubbed the Year of the Pitcher, was the SBL’s best. The Ms posted a sub-3.00 ERA a remarkable 14 times in 26 weeks, en route to a sparkling season ERA of 3.21. Their K-rate, an astonishing 1.01, might be a league record (think about it -- in any given given week, a K-rate over 1.00 is a rare and precious thing, likely to win you the stat ... and the Moaners AVERAGED that over an entire season). Their 92-58 win-loss record (Wainwright-Price-Lincecum-Santana combined for 66 Ws) was the best in the biz. And their bullpen, rounded out by Leo Nunez (often shaky, but still a 30-save guy) and supplemental pickups Alfredo Simon and Koji Uehara, churned out 124 saves, second in the league and an average of 4.8 per week.

The Moaners also benefited from impeccable timing -- pitching carried them early, when their offense was indeed unimaginably feeble, and later, when the pitching developed a few cracks, the offense, partially refurbished through the supplemental draft, was there to pick up the slack. The Moaners were consistently strong in stolen bases and total bases (147 SBs, 5.7 per week; 773 TB, 29.7/week), and ample power was supplied by four 30-HR, 100-RBI producers: Carlos Gonzalez, Ryan Howard, David Ortiz and (gulp) a miracle named Jose Bautista. (No other SBL team had more than two 30-100 guys; there were only 15 in all of baseball this year.) Gonzalez, nabbed with the 152nd pick (quite the steal!), was the kind of six-category star every SBL owner dreams of -- 34 HRs, 117 BI, 111 runs, 34 doubles, nine triples, 26 SBs, .376 OBP. As for Bautista, what can we say except, simply, Best ... Supplemental Pick ... Ever. A 29-year-old journeyman with 59 career homers (no more than 16 in a season) before this year, Bautista bashed an out-of-nowhere 54 dingers for the Blue Jays, 12 more than the MLB runner-up, Albert Pujols. The Ms acquired him six weeks in, with the next-to-last pick in the third supplemental, and from that point forward he hit 44 round-trippers in Moaner togs -- still more than any other player in ball hit for the entire season. Oh, he also drove in 124 runs, scored 109, had 35 doubles and a .378 OBP, even swiped nine sacks -- and the fact that the Moaners were able to draft him as a 3B, enabling them to bury their biggest (literally) draft-night bust, Pablo Sandoval, on the bench, was just an added bonus. Bautista was, too, part of an unusually strong collection of supplemental picks who helped the Ms get better as the season went on -- a group that also included Uehara and Simon, SPs Brett Myers and Madison Bumgarner, OFs Angel Pagan and Jose Tabata and 2B Ty Wigginton. That's eight useful players in 12 drafts, a very good batting average in the supplementals, and all the more remarkable for the fact that the Ms picked last or next-to-last in every draft but one. And the Moaners certainly needed that supplemental help, in a season when their first six choices in the draft proper -- Howard, Lincecum, 2B Brandon Phillips, Sandoval, OFs Carlos Lee and Bobby Abreu -- came up short of expectations, in most cases well short of career norms.

And now, in the clumsiest of segues, we interrupt this self-indulgent, narcissistic diatribe to give it up for DamianUnited, one of the strongest entries the National division has produced in recent years. Damian had one of those magical drafts in which most of his picks met or exceeded expectations. His offense was prodigious, the best in the league, powered by MVP candidate Josh Hamilton (32-100 despite missing almost all of September), comeback-player-of-year favorite Vladimir Guerrero (29-115), ageless Paul Konerko (39-111, .393 ... from the 221st pick!), binge basher Troy Tulowitzki (27-95, .381 in only 479 ABs) and a host of others. And his starting rotation, topped by NL Cy Young favorite Roy Halladay, CY contender Josh Johnson and AL whiff king Jered Weaver, was as good as any this side of Moanerville. But there's also a strong what-might-have-been element to DamU's season -- how good would they have been had they not suffered so many injuries to key players? While the Moaners skated through the season largely unencumbered by significant injury issues, DamU not only lost Hamilton and Johnson for the crucial final month, they were without their first two draft picks, 2B Ian Kinsler and SS Tulowitzki, for a combined 3½ months -- Tulo for about six weeks in June and July, Kinsler for about nine weeks over two separate DL stints, in April and August. As it was, Tulowitzki had better numbers than any other shortstop in ball, but what would he have done in the 600 ABs a full season would've provided? We'll never know. ... Kudos, too, to the Zero's, who put together another power-packed offense, one of the league's two or three best, and masterfully massaged a suspect pitching staff to squeeze 106 wins out of a roster that, in the hands of a lesser manager or less attentive GM, might not have gotten to 90. The Z's also gave DamU all they could handle in the wild-card round -- in fact their regular-season head-to-head matchup resulted in a 13-13 tie, necessitating use of the overall-season-stats tiebreaker, which Damian won by the slimmest of margins, 6-5, with DamU's microscopic 237-235 edge in home runs ultimately turning the tide. ... For the second consecutive year, the competition for the NL wild-card spot turned out to be the most interesting of the four races. Last year, it was JP's Whiteskins going 5-1 in the final week to wipe out Vic's Godfathers' five-game edge, forge a second-place tie and prevail in a tiebreaker to make the playoffs. This year, it was the Inmates, having begun the final week four games out of a playoff spot, going 6-0 and leapfrogging the third-place Godfathers (who went 3-3) and second-place Derek's Derelicts (1-5) to nab the prized postseason berth. . . . And, last and least, condolences to Dan's Cherry Valley Bombers, the defending NL champions, who executed a first-to-worst swan dive to edge out the BGoff Bammers for the WTIB booby prize with a 53-109 record. Better luck next year.

Before we sign off for the season, we offer our heartfelt thanks, as always, to our statkeepers -- Paul Oberjuerge, Gregg Patton and newcomer Dan Evans -- for their dedicated (and punctual!) work all season, and to first-year draftmeister Derek Rich, who seamlessly assumed the supplemental draft mantle from Brian Goff and smoothly guided the biweekly free-agent grab bags with a veteran's aplomb. And, of course, thanks to all of you for playing, and helping to sustain the spirit and tradition of one of the nation's oldest continuing fantasy baseball enterprises -- and, in our humble opinion, the absolute best of them all! Have a great off-season, and we'll see you, in person or via Skype, in March for the 2011 SBL draft.