The battle between American League favorites — the team that dominated Week 1 and the team that has dominated the JLB in the last four seasons — was not much of a battle.
Breakfast dominated Topton on the scoreboard 19-3-2, but to be fair, only a few categories were blowouts.
Topton's pitching didn't show up performance-wise, and now, they aren't even showing up. The injuries are piling up and he'll have to weather that storm to climb out of fourth place and remain in the hunt for 2023.
The fear of having a repeat of 2022 has to be there after last week.
Offensively, the shortstops led the way. Trea Turner had 11 hits, 10 of them being singles, 9 runs, 2 stolen bases and 4 walks. Francisco Lindor had seven hits, three of them being homers, and drove in 11 runs.
Needless to say, the Breakfast look as good as ever, and sitting atop the standings in the AL, he is still the team to beat.
Crox said that to start the season, and sitting in second place three games behind Breakfast, he knows the challenge is there. Crox edged the Gamblers by 2, which is reminiscent of their third-place battle last year.
The Gamblers' bats, which were red-hot in Week 1, fell asleep and batted just .204. Crox wasn't much better batting .235.
The same couldn't be said for the third-place Sex Panthers. Yes, she's still up at the top after batting .285 and pitching to a 2.64 ERA. She won 13-9-2 over last-place Choo, and so many bats are clicking right now, including Jarred Kelenic, who batted .471 last week with 3 homers. He's now batting .333 on the season and that is a welcome sight after last season's rookie flop.
All her first baseman are hitting, as is her No. 1 overall pick, DJ LeMahieu. Luis Arraez, Bo Bichette and Nolan Gorman also came through with a combined 25 hits for the Panthers.
Can she keep this up?
We'll find out this week as she faces her oldest rival, the Gamblers. The two have faced each other more than any other franchises in JLB history. Since 2017, the Gamblers have the edge in the series 177-142-49. In total — note, we are missing records from 2013 to 2016 — the Gamblers have 349 wins, 282 losses and 97 ties in their recorded matchups. That includes a pair of ALCS battles in 2009 and 2012.
The Panthers are looking to turn things around, having only won once — 17-6-1 in 2021 — in their last 11 meetings dating back to 2019.
A nice rivalry in the National League is underway this week, too, but its history is not as storied as the Gamblers-Panthers series.
The reigning National League champion Dude is taking on the first-place Cheese Steaks in a pivotal early season matchup.
The Cheese are coming off yet another win over the Nutz — make that now five straight convincing wins over Nutz with a 13-6-5 victory. Steaks have now posted wins of 16, 13, 16, 16 and 13 in their last five meetings.
The score, however, is a bit misleading as the Nutz lost five categories by 1, and another by 2. They tied triples at 2 each, homers at 8, stolen bases at 9, sacs at 2 and quality starts at 6.
This matchup EASILY could have gone the other way, so the Steaks can be happy with his first-place perch, but he has to know how close he was to going the other direction in the standings.
The Dude was primed to be in that first-place position on Friday, but his squad absolutely fell apart. A double-digit lead disappeared really quick and by the end of Sunday, Double Eh walked away with a 15-6-3 win.
Only five hits on Saturday doomed the Dude, as he watched Double Eh post 15 hits, 10 runs, 4 homers, 10 RBIs and 7 walks.
That was enough to help Double Eh win seven of the batting categories, and his strong pitching over the weekend led to eight wins with the arms.
The Dude did continue to mash, hitting 18 homers to push his JLB lead to 43 homers. In comparison, the team that just beat him, Double Eh, has only 16 on the season.
He'll gladly keep that power trip going this week against JV as he looks to win a fifth straight matchup against the Steaks. Last year's Week 20 win of 13-8-3 was the largest margin of victory during this four-matchup win streak.
In fact, 13 wins is the highest win total either one of these teams have managed against each other since their 2018 meeting in Week 9 when JV won 16-2-4.
The Slammers nabbed the final win of Week 2, taking down the Stantonians 14-8-2. That's the same exact score the Slammers posted over the Stantonians to essentially eliminate them in Week 20 from the 2022 playoffs.
This time around, the bats were alive for the Slammers, who batted .299 with 56 singles, 41 RBIs and 41 walks. Like many of the matchups in Week 2, the Stantonians were not far off from flipping this matchup, losing several categories that were in reach.
Bensalem now faces his old podcast co-host, Double Eh, with a chance to move into first place with a decent win — one like the 18-5-1 victory the Slammers posted in their final meeting of 2022.
But the last four matchups have flip-flopped in terms of who won, so Double Eh has that trend on his side, and maybe he can take down another 2022 playoff team to put himself into a position that no one saw coming based on the amount of green on his roster.
Now that would be a shake-up.
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