Half a season is not a season, but it is enough to start reading the handwriting, and the handwriting through two weeks of Based Ballers Season 2 says something familiar at the top of the board. Birdo's Magik Mushrooms sit 2-0, and the way they got there is almost rude. Twenty-two runs scored, one run allowed. That is not a hot start; that is a bank vault with a slugger inside it. The man running the operation is Zeph, who you may remember as the manager whose TJD outfit went a perfect 15-0 through the Season 1 playoffs to take the inaugural crown. Whatever he is doing, he is doing it again, and Blue Magikoopa's six-hit afternoon — a single-game franchise best this season, and a number that echoes Toadsworth's all-time mark of six — was the loudest note in a very loud two weeks. Hammer Bro chipped in a five-RBI day of his own. Somewhere, a testing official is already filling out the paperwork. The surprise is who is keeping pace. Granbel's Jane Goodall's Nightmare is also 2-0, but the Nightmare are winning a completely different way — 10 runs for, 3 against, all of it built on arms rather than fireworks. Diddy Kong has been the headline, fanning sixteen in a single outing, the most any pitcher has recorded this season and a reminder that Granbel's club would rather bore you to death than trade haymakers. Two perfect records, two philosophies, and they cannot both keep the zero forever. Below them, the middle of the standings is where the actual baseball lives. Da Plumber Syndicate, Gareth's crew, are 1-1 with the most honest line in the league: 13 runs for, 14 against, a team still deciding what it wants to be. Fire Bro has decided for them, at least at the plate — a two-homer game, one of them a 94-foot bomb that stands as the longest this season, though the same afternoons that make him a hero also make him a strikeout waiting to happen, with a four-punchout game already on his ledger. He is a boom-or-bust machine wearing cleats. Love's Boo's Dinger Brigade are the other 1-1 club, and they are the most entertaining math problem on the board: 23 runs scored, 14 allowed, and a losing-column game to show for it. When they hit, they hit — fifteen runs in one outing will do that — but the Syndicate found a way to outslug them 10-8, and the Brigade learned the hard way that scoring in bunches only counts if the other side stops first. Which brings us to the bottom, where two teams are still searching. Chatter's Luigi's Had Enough are 0-2 and have been on the wrong end of the arithmetic all season, surrendering 27 runs while scoring five, including a 12-1 afternoon at the hands of Birdo's Mushrooms that was over before the ushers found their seats. Waluigi's nine-run outing is the season's high-water mark for runs allowed, which is not the leaderboard anyone wants to lead. And then there are the Weed Sox. Ylander's club is 0-2, which is unremarkable. What is remarkable is the number in their runs-for column: zero. Not a low number. The number. Two games, no runs, a lineup that has looked, shall we say, deeply relaxed at the plate. They were blanked 10-0 by Birdo and 4-0 by Granbel's Nightmare, and the standings sheet lists their offense the way a coroner lists a pulse. The bats will wake up eventually. The question is whether anyone in that dugout is in a hurry. So the ledger through two weeks: two undefeated clubs pulling in opposite directions, a pair of .500 teams trading punches in the middle, and two clubs staring at zeros — one in the win column, one somehow worse. The all-time books still belong to Zeph, who owns the biggest blowout at plus-nineteen and the highest-scoring half-inning at twelve, and nothing about the early returns suggests he plans to hand them back. Plenty of season left. But the top of the board looks awfully sure of itself. — Inky the Blooper