Captain's (B)log: England South week 17

A high-scoring week in England South has seen a lot of changes to the table. The leaders have been reeled in, the top 7 seem to be just breaking away slightly from the rest, and, indeed, only those 7 are above .500. Three teams put up double figures in the 'Win' column. And one team has fallen from 4th to 11th in the space of just 2 weeks! Ouch...

Week 17 Results

• London Knights 4-7 Enfield Lips
• Guildford Angels 6-6 Bognor Yankees
• Orpington Dodgers 3-8 Dunstable Phillies
• Havant Hackers 2-10 Sussex Royal Engineers
• St. Leonard's Marlins 3-8 Oxford Oilers
• Felixstowe Fury 8-3 London Bananas
• Bromley KC Royals 1-10 Solent Vipers
• Woking Whites Sox 1-10 Essex Eagles

Standings

Significant Moves

A lot of movement on the wire this week, in comparison with previous weeks in this league. Having lost Jorge Posada, Orpington were delighted (& surprised) to find Ramon Hernandez available as a replacement. London Knights deemed David DeJesus surplus to requirements (replacing him with Ian Stewart); Dunstable happily gave DeJesus a new home with them. They parted company, though, with Randy Wolf, sensibly seeing his fantasy value plummet with his new team in Houston.

Several other moves were made this week, mainly consisting of spot starters being picked up, or reserve hitters being replaced with other reserves. But with only 2 weeks left before the trade deadline, expect to see one or two big moves in the near future.

Waffle

Quite a heavyweight encounter between two of the top 6 - London Knights and Enfield Lips. The Lips got off to a huge start, posting 17 RBI on the Monday, and leaving the Knights with a mountain to climb. Unsurprisingly, the Knights never got close, eventually losing RBIs by 27 to 44! But the match-up itself was not as one sided as the 10-1 scoreline going into Sunday's games suggested! A brief resurgence from the Knights resulted in them sneaking Runs by 1, moving ahead on WHIP, taking the only Sunday save (thanks to Broxton) to win that category and holding onto the lead in ERA. The Lips took a deserved 7-4 win; the Knights are thankful it wasn't worse!

Elsewhere, three teams put up double figure victories, one of which saw third-placed Sussex take apart leaders Havant by 10-2. Havant still lead...but by a mere 1 game over Solent, who also put up a huge victory, 10-1 over Bromley. Solent, Havant & Sussex can all probably start making plans for the postseason.

A team who looked good for the postseason only two weeks ago - Woking White Sox - suffered a devastating loss (and their third in a row), 10-1 at the hands of Essex. They have slumped a massive 7 places in the table in only two weeks. Whilst not out of it, they need to stop this slump quickly. That win for Essex lifted them up two places into the top 6.

Just outside the playoffs are London Bananas, who suffered a defeat to the reigning champs, Felixstowe, 8-3. The Fury are unlikely to qualify for the playoffs this year, but at least they are going down fighting. After the Bananas, there is a 5.5 game gap to Dunstable (8-3 winners over Orpington) and then another half a game to Oxford (similar winners against St. Leonard's). Orpington & Woking are seven games back from the playoffs as things stand; the teams below them have no choice but to win every single remaining match up to stand a chance.

In Week 18, the top 7 teams all avoid playing one another, giving them a chance to stretch that gap over the teams below them. A juicy match-up awaits between the London Knights & Orpington Dodgers - no doubt there will be plenty of smack talk between two Croydon Pirate teammates! Biggest game of the week, I think, is the tie between Woking & Solent. Woking simply have to win to get back into the playoff hunt, but it will be far from easy against a team who have won 7 of their last 8 match-ups, and are looking to move into top spot...