The long-laid plans of Dave are coming to fruition! His patient accumulation of stud players has reached the tipping point. The Salem Seraphim Superteam has taken over our league! Look on, all ye mortals, and despair!
(I have been watching a show called Trollhunters this morning with my grandsons. Perhaps you could tell.)
Or, if you don’t want to despair for the fate of mortals in the hands of fallible divine beings, you could root for the Balk. I’m not sure where Balks are in the order of sentient beings… they may be no more sentient than a Pear or a Rosebud or a mountain range. But the image I get is of solid, indominable patience. Perfect as a foe of “angels” seeking domination.
Perhaps this epic language is a little overblown. But my alarm for the rest of the league is real. The Seraphim have the highest raw winning percentage in the league for this week AND for the season. They also have the highest adjusted winning percentage, both weekly and season-long. Without a single plate appearance from Mookie Betts, they scored almost 9 runs a game this week — only one other EFL team came close to matching them. They have plenty of pitching, even on a week with no Ohtani starts. They have so much pitching they should, according to the Sermon on the Mount, be sharing some of it with the rest of us. After all, they ARE Seraphim.
But maybe not that kind of Seraphim.
It turns out the Seraphim are not the only beings who dominated this week. Salem had matching .875 raw and adjusted winning percentages, leading the league in both categories. Two other teams competed almost evenly with them.
The Canberra Kangaroos came in second for raw winning percentage at .848, thanks to fielding an entire nine-man lineup OPSing .899 or better, including five over 1.000, led by Isaac Paredes at 6 for 11 with two doubles, a homer, and two walks.
At .798, the ‘Roos were only third in adjusted winning percentage — they more than survived their face-off with the Yankees. The Rosebuds swapped places with the ‘Roos, posting a .797 raw percentage and an .846 adjusted result. Portland survived a disastrous start by Hunter Greene (5 ip, 6 er) by getting 50 more innings at the cost of only 6 earned runs, finishing with a weekly ERA of 2.54. Jorge Polanco also came off the IL with a bang, going 2 for 4 last night with a homer.
Canberra is already on the fringe of the pennant race. At the rate they went this week (and assuming the Seraphim only maintain their current season winning percentage) the Kangaroos could be right in the thick of the race by the time we start facing each other (in week 17).
The Rosebuds dug a deeper hole, so have to be more patient. But with ex-Wolverines Nick Senzel (1.236 OPS) and Luis Urias (1.050) heating up, it’s not hard to imagine them also being in the thick of the race by late July or mid-August.