All Suns Sunbeams: Hellmouth Sunbeams Dream Team

By: Panda

At the close of the second major era of Blaseball, and with an immense amount of time on our hands, what better to do than to sift through 24 seasons of data?

And what better way to do that than to create each team’s All-Star lineup?

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of articles where teams submit their all-time best Lineups in the first year of Blaseball. We agreed on a few rules to start with:

1. Team sizes will be standard. 9 in the Lineup and 5 in the Pitching Rotation. Players cannot be considered Elsewhere or Shelled.
2. The Selection must represent a single season played with that team.
3. The player must have played at least one full season with that team.
4. A player can only be selected once across all 14 slots.
5. No Replicas are allowed.

These rules are set in place in order to capture the journey and essence of each of Blaseball’s teams. We want to avoid a replicalooza or a team of all honses.

With that in mind, I present “The All-Sun Sunbeams.”

Eugenia Bickle (S24) — BB 168 – OBP .503
Paula Reddick (S24) — BB 151 – OBP .484
Nagomi Nava (S20) — BB 82 – BA .305 – OBP .428 – OPS 1.224

I wanted to start off with the Heart of the current Sunbeams roster. These three players are, quite simply, some of the best ever when it comes to at getting on base. The early Sunbeams, as we’ll see later, focused on raw power and slugging, while the modern Sunbeams team plays the smallest possible ball: walking. The Sunbeams received the Base Instincts Blessing, allowing them to occasionally get extra bases on walks. With the Moxie-focused Blessings available in the late Expansion Era, the Sunbeams fully embraced their Basic nature, monopolizing spots in the OBP leaderboard through their sheer ability to stare down opposing pitchers.

Hahn Fox (S23) — HR 34 – RBI 271.7 – BA .315
Howell Franklin (S23) — HR 49 – BA .356 – OPS 1.171
Dudley Mueller (S11) — R 116 – BA .438 – OPS 1.270

The next 3 batters represent a bit more of the Power of the old Sunbeams, but with a little flair thrown in from the late Expansion Era. Hahn Fox’s Magnification makes them the ideal followup to the walk trio, and Howell Franklin is an excellent backup, having finally reformed their Flinch into High Pressure. With how often there will be baserunners for Howell, a Flooding game changes things immensely. Behind those two is Dudley Mueller, one of the first Sunbeams glow-ups, and a standout batter in the all-power Eleventh Season.

Igneus Delacruz (S11) — BA .303 – OBP .412
Nerd Pacheco (S11) — BA .335 – OPS 1.009
Randall Marijuana (S3) — PA 420 – BA .294 – OBP .357

The last three spots in the Lineup are taken up by 3 solid support batters. Igneus Delacruz was outdoing themselves immensely in Season 11, finishing with a regular-season .303 Batting Average, parlaying that into a .491 Batting Average in the postseason— truly a Clutch performance. Nerd Pacheco, one of the stalwart pillars of the Beams’ early days, brings in an impressive season with over 1 OPS, and finally, in what might be the greatest recorded stat in Sunbeams history, Randall Marijuana closes out the Lineup with their Season 3 total of 420 Plate Appearances.

Sandoval Crossing (S8) — ERA 2.89 – 83.5 SO/BB
Sigmund Castillo (S20) — ERA 1.9 – 5 HR Allowed
Miguel James (S14) — ERA 2.65 – WHIP .825
Jayden Wright (S17) — ERA 2.69 – 10.0 SO/9
Lars Taylor (S14) — ERA 2.98 – QS 14

The Sunbeams’ Pitching is a bit trickier to nail down, however. There was once a time when we tried to have good pitching, going into a season with 6 star pitchers in Sigmund Castillo, Jayden Wright, and Elvis Figueroa. A pair of errant peanuts and a shark bite soon reminded the Sunbeams that we were cursed to forever exist in a land of mediocre pitching and terrible defense.

Still, with how terrible the Sunbeams’ defense is and always has been, there are still highlights to discuss. Sandoval Crossing will always be a perennial favorite, having thrived in the Ruthlessness meta before it even existed, being one of the most accurate pitchers of the Discipline Era. The double Shadow-Infused Sigmund Castillo has been a fantastic success story, currently sitting at a career ERA of 2.7 and an HR/9 of .37, shutting down power hitters across the League. Solid outings from Miguel James and Jayden Wright in Seasons 14 and 17 make the cut.

And astonishingly, and you can either take my word on this or research for yourself, one of the 5 best pitching performances in Sunbeams’ history was Lars ‘Lone Star’ Taylor, who decided to be good for exactly one season.

To briefly highlight this, I’d like to list Lars’ regular season ERAs from Season 11 to 16:
S11 – 8.55
S12 – 6.40
S13 – 7.98
S14 – 2.98
S15 – 6.50
S16 – 6.71

The Hellmouth Sunbeams are a team that has adapted not only to the harsh conditions of living next to an eldritch portal to the depths of hell but also a team that has adapted consistently with the League and its trials and tribulations. A clear afterthought until the end of the Discipline era, the Sunbeams are now seen as contenders, each season feeling like it might be the next one they take. I, for one, am excited to see where this team goes in the second year of Blaseball.

Honorable Mention:
Aldon Cashmoney (S13) — BA .364 – OPS 1.247

Aldon only spent 1 season with the Sunbeams but is one of the few faces the Anti-Tourism Board has been instructed to ignore. Aldon is welcome back in the Hellmouth any time.