As the story is told, a baseball pitcher is looking for a raise. He marches into the general manager’s office brandishing numerical proof of his value to the team. He has the highest number of wins, the lowest earned run average, and the most strikeouts. The g.m. listens to the pitcher’s recitation and then says: “Tell your statistics to shut up.”

Numbers may not motivate general managers, or those who choose the Oscars, but they speak volumes about the banking business. Although looking at a bank’s total performance can be as daunting as evaluating a Jackson Pollock painting, banks that generate a profit or return on assets (ROA) in excess of 1.0 percent are considered exceptionally healthy.

Last year, a half-dozen locally operated and/or headquartered banks broke that ROA barrier. And the envelope, please: Rancho Santa Fe National Bank came in first, sporting an ROA of 1.95. San Diego National Bank ranked second at 1.64, freshly off its two-year first-place perch. In fact, both RSFNB and SDNB exceeded 2.0 ROA in 2000, but the recession nicked just about everyone in 2001. Chula Vista’s Balboa Thrift and Loan earned an ROA of 1.22 in 2001, Capital Bank of North County and California Bank and Trust Co. both weighed in at 1.21, and La Jolla’s Imperial Capital Bank rounds out the top performers with a rating of 1.15.

Accepting the award for Rancho Santa Fe National is Bob Sporrer, who recently became the CEO and chairman of the newly merged Capital Bank of North County and Rancho Santa Fe National Bank. The merged entity operates under the RSFNB name.

Here’s what happened: The holding company of RSFNB, John Eggemeyer’s First Community Bancorp, bought the holding company of Capital Bank of North County, called WHEC Inc. Rather than continue under the leadership of Jim Boyce, a 20-year veteran, Eggemeyer chose to bring in the leaders of the purchased bank. Sporrer had been a director of Carlsbad-based Capital Bank since its formation in 1987; the president of the new combination is Don Schempp, previously the president of the Carlsbad bank.

Sporrer and Schempp have drawn the Community Chest card that says, “Your bank has been purchased. You take over newly merged bank.” As Sporrer says, “Capital Bank had been a privately owned bank with 12 shareholders and we found ourselves in a situation where there were a variety of strategic issues. It was easier to sell the bank than raise deposits.”

And Boyce? “Jim is on a consulting contract and is not involved with the day-to-day operations of the bank.”

Sporrer says the decision to go with new leadership “came from the First Community side. Apparently, they saw something they liked in our management style and identified us as the people they wanted to operate the ongoing entity.” (Boyce did not return calls.)

Sporrer says First Community paid about $23 million for Capital Bank’s roughly $150 million in assets; the merger was approved by regulators on March 7. RSFNB already was in the $250 million asset neighborhood, so the combined bank has a base of about $400 million. RSFNB has four offices: its Rancho Santa Fe headquarters, Escondido, La Jolla and Carlsbad. Capital Bank has offices in Vista, Encinitas, Carlsbad and a branch in Legoland.

Most significantly, RSFNB’s legal lending limit has jumped to the $5 million neighborhood, so Sporrer, Schempp and Co. can entertain the developers of certain tract housing projects. Sporrer says the short-term goal is to become the largest locally operated bank in the North County, improbable as long as California Bank & Trust, with $8.36 billion in assets, remains headquartered in Del Mar Heights. Becoming the largest North County community bank is another matter.

While new hands ride herd on the merged RSFNB, Robert Horsman continues in the saddle at ROA runner-up San Diego National Bank. Horsman was there 20 years ago, “before we had a charter,” and expects to retire there.

While SDNB is locally operated and headquartered, it is part of the Chicago-based FBOP Holding Co., meaning that behind SDNB’s asset base of roughly $1.6 billion stands a big brother with assets of more than $10 billion. “We have the same board in place now as we did when we sold the bank on Feb. 28, 1997,” Horsman says. “What FBOP does for us is this: when we sold in ’97, our maximum loan limit was about $2 million; now we can do $100 million. I don’t think we’ve done anything over $75 million. I got to look at that kind of business (before the sale) and I used to salivate over it. I can do anything that walks in the door now.”

Among SDNB’s recent projects is the $87 million development of The Lodge at Torrey Pines, for which SDNB provided $32 million. With its asset base approaching $2 billion, Horsman says SDNB is looking to expand its branch network of 17 offices (including a loan production outlet in Las Vegas) to about 25 offices. Communities under consideration include North Coastal, Solana Beach and Del Mar.

But not El Centro. Horsman pours a bucket of cold water on rumors that have SDNB acquiring Valley Independent Bank and Community National Bank in Escondido. Such a combination would vault SDNB into the $3 billion neighborhood; plus synergy thrives in SDNB’s San Diego network and the more rural VIB and CNB.

“I’ve heard that before; that’s not true,” Horsman says. “I would imagine there could be a fit there, but there’s nothing at all going on. That irritates bankers when that stuff starts going around and it’s not true.”

If he had made a few more good loans, Frank Mercardante’s Southwest Community Bank might have earned an ROA of 1.0, but instead rates honorable mention with an ROA of 0.86. As it is, Southwest should have gone out with a $5 million stock offering by the time of publication, and expects to stand at around $150 million in assets by June. In business only five years this December, Southwest is growing at a rapid clip of about 40 percent a year, and is ahead of the CEO’s own projections. Headquartered in Encinitas, Southwest has branches in El Cajon, Downtown San Diego and Escondido and maintains an administrative office in Carlsbad. “We’re a San Diego bank,” Mercardante assures.

With the offering, Mercardante’s upper lending limit will rise to $4 million. The bank’s sweet spot is commercial lending, and the CEO says his bank led all locals in awarding SBA loans last year.

Southwest is looking to expand, and although Mercardante says nothing is crystallized, he’s looking at communities outside San Diego where mergers and consolidation have left locals with few community banks from which to choose. “If you look at banks historically, new bank applications come in waves. Ten years from this new crop you’ll see some of these banks in mergers. In the ’80s and ’90s, deposits migrated from community banks to majors, so that the majority of deposits moved to major banks as the number of banks was reduced by 70 percent.”

Even as the national economy recovers from recession, Mercardante says fears of terrorism show the need for caution. But Southwest has a two-income household. Its Financial Data Solutions Inc., headquartered in Murietta with another data center in El Monte, provides data processing services to 40 financial institutions. Southwest owns 51 percent, having sold the rest to the Business Bank of California in 2000.

FDSI grossed $1.4 million in revenue in 2000. Last year, revenue grew to $3.5 million and Mercardante expects to do $5 million this year.

But even in banking, statistics can be misleading. La Jolla’s Regents Bank would rank low in the ROA derby with a negative 4.75. But that’s because, Regents is a de novo, having opened on Sept. 14. Banks typically take 18 months to three years to show a profit, and Regents is on track with that timetable, reports Dan Yates, president and chief executive.

A San Diego native, Yates moved back home three years ago to open the local office of the First Business Bank of California, owned by Mellon Bank out of Pittsburgh. The management team of Regents includes majority owner and Chairman Tom Young and Bill Nelson, formerly chairman of Scripps Bank.

From his headquarters in La Jolla village, Yates sees Regents as a commercial bank catering to small- and mid-sized companies, in which the bank role is as much consultant as it is lender. In addition to the La Jolla office, Regents has opened in Koll Center Downtown, bringing along key people from the old Scripps Bank. Rick King was brought in to attract professionals such as attorneys, and Darla Clark was also recruited from Scripps to work with corporate clientele.

Regents opened with $10 million in capital, but Yates notes that the asset base has grown to more than $50 million as of March 31. “We are ahead of target in terms of growth of the bank,” he says.

As Willie Sutton once noted, banks are where the money is, but Yates doesn’t believe bankers go through the rigors of opening banks for financial glory.

“If it gets in your blood, community banking is so enjoyable,” he says. “It’s the day-to-day thrill of what you do. Because it’s a lot of work, if you come back into it for a second or third round, you’re not doing it because you think it’s going to make you wealthy, but because you like to do it.”

In other major moves since the year 2000 ratings, California Bank & Trust vaulted from ninth place to fourth in ROA. Imperial Capital Bank dropped back one spot to fifth. First National Bank of North County is moving on up from 11th to sixth. Recording the biggest falls were Bank of Coronado (from fifth to 13th) and First Pacific Bank, from 20th to 22th.