[StLee]

Analysis

The buzz around the CBO this week is the sudden collapse of the Starlight Lady Killers and the renewed hope for every other team in the Institute League. With a 1-8 start in the second half of the season, the Concord Radstags and Lexington Synths have overtaken the Killers in the Weekly Power Rankings.

Although Lexington has not been hot itself, it still has won 4 out of its last 9 to sit just a game back of Starlight. Concord is the ream on fire, being only outmatched by the Brotherhood League's The Slog Ghouls in the entirety of the CBO.

The Radstags have done it with both solid pitching and sometimes dominating offense, including a 16-1 shellacking of the Killers on June 17, the first game of the "new" season in our splitting of halves. One thing about the Concord team is that there is no one real standout player, but half of a team clearly thriving. That includes five players batting over .300, with the assumed star LF Dan Erb leading the way with a .364 mark. No player for Concord has yet to hit 10 home runs--1B Jason Robinson is close with 9--but the Stags lead the IL in home runs with 47, including six who have at least six. Pitching is still not good compared to the rest of the league, but ace Chris Radsco (5-5, 3.52) has been much more productive. Closer Bell Franklin (5 sv, 2.19) has been good.

In other areas of the Commonwealth, the Minutemen League's three-team race continues to be exciting with the bottom three pretty much out of the running. That means two of Quincy, Warwick, and Goodneighbor are going to get a chance to win it all, while the third team watches and what-ifs their way through the offseason. We have been waiting for one team to take control or another to start to fade back to the middle, but that has not happened yet, and we hope it stays that way. All three of the top teams get a "rest" week this week since they have home stands against the bottom three. Surprisingly enough, it looks like the Gunners get the best matchup when they host the Atom Cats (13-26, worst in the CBO). We can almost guarantee the Gunners win two or three in that series.

In other leagues, number one seems all but set unless the Ghouls (BL) and Oberland T-51s (RL) start fading like the Lady Killers recently did. Each of The Slog and the T-51s hold a seven-game lead with just 21 to play. The Ghouls have a tougher go next week when they travel to second-place County Crossing (20-19), while Oberland will be visiting fourth-place Egret (18-21).