Hot & Cold in the SBL

SBL season has started once again! We are merely 20 games in but it's enough to see who has the hottest start off the gate and who is still lagging behind to start the season. This is the season where history is made, where a lot of early hall of famers make their mark in the big league. As with any sports league in its inaugural season, last season SBL is not the most exciting of all things, and that is a thing with the inaugural season. The top talents are usually locked elsewhere contract-wise and the talents the league can instantly bring in are mostly duds from other parts of the world. Following the recent draft, the league had finally put up their first crop of legit talent into their big league and as we could see from the results, they were truly the future masters of this league as they looked to be washing those sophomore outs already in performance.


Hot!!! LF | Flynn Fungo #22 | Toronto Bighorns
.367/.457/.497, 2 HR, 7 RBI, 15 R, 16 SB, 1.6 WAR

Flynn "I Don't Care About No Motherfucking Team" Fungo might not realize it, but he's helping the team very hard with his insane output so far. The man has been lights out on the path, stealing nearly 1 base per game - it's 0.8 for you mathletes, now get off my back with your "to be precise" speech - and has a crazy .457 on-base rate. He is as close as a coin flip when it comes to getting on-base and you are very likely to flip four of the same at once, so expect him to get on-base every game. He is a true nightmare for every pitcher so far, as his threat doesn't stop after he bats. You will also need to hold him around the bag or give him second base. His performance of the year so far is his 4 steals game vs Cardinals on April 15. 3 hits, 1 BB and he stole all four times trying to give his team all the scoring chance possible.


Lucas Peterson is not underwhelming, like has provided okay value to his team but when you look at his SS rival Ajax Mohran then ooffff. Ajax Mohran was expected to the better fielder while admitting that Lucas Peterson bat batter but nope, Mohran was currently killing on both sides of the field, batting an insane (especially for his standard) .366/.409/.466 and keeping himself in an easy lead with +1.1 ZR over all his arguably inferior peers. Like Dale Cooper on the center field, Ajax Mohran is straight up better than everyone at fielding right now, simply one tier above, and the only way Lucas Peterson could get back into the race is to unfreeze his bat.


HOT!!! SP | Nate Nitro #6 | Indianapolis Invaders
3-02, 31.2 IP, 3.41 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, .221 BABIP, 32 K, 0.0 WAR

Starters are much harder to gauge early on due to limited sample size, but I will give the praise to the fireballer from Invaders for his performance so far. While you can argue that the man might eventually be busted open judging by his FIP, assuming you are a true believer of that, the man has been lights out so far and tie for most Ks among recent draftees and #2 for the whole league as a single sophomore currently has the lead. What's so impressive about this man was his very low WHIP and BABIP. His control of the fastball has been extremely impressive in this early going, especially when scouts had been expecting control to hurt him. He has given up most home runs so far, but he kept the damage low by not allowing extra scorers on the base. It's like "sure, take your 1 run, my Invaders brethren will be fucking you up with more soon". Invaders truly don't care about a single run, as they are the most offensively-threatening team.


Drillers picked so many pitchers this draft and one is bound to be the worst of them all. That man, sadly, was James Boxman. The man has found no salvation in his SBL journey so far. Sure, he had 3 quality starts by definition but his ERA really worried me as of now. Granted, this draft is more batter-heavy but one would expect these pitchers to not do too bad compared to the mediocre sophomores we have but no, Boxman was still stuck in his box and has a lot of things to figure out. So far, he couldn't give his team the value of his knuckleball, which is to last longer than other pitchers. He was taken out after 6 innings not because he was tired, but because the coach couldn't trust him to not give up runs late. I do not expect him to be a great pitcher by this year, but hopefully, he can drop his ERA to around the 4.00 range to show that he has potential and not a potential bust.

Of course, there were some of them with adjustment to make, and baseball was never a thing of one season -- or even just 20 games. There is still a lot of the season to go and for the cold players to warm up. The hot players will look to stay hot, and prove that this is not "hot" for them but their true average.