This winter, I made lists of the top players at each position over the next five seasons (2008 to 2012). Mistakes were made, readers were horrified and corrections were issued. With that experience to guide me, I've now combined all those lists for one uberlist: the top 50 major leaguers for the next five
years.
Drink up while it's cold, ladies.
15 comments:
I love it how you and Neyer have a mutual dick-sucking competition going on.
Links make the blogosphere go 'round, Uncas. Sorry if that bothers you.
How about this: write something fun and interesting about baseball (preferably that doesn't involve references to dick sucking) and people will start linking you too.
It may be a vulgar way to put it but describing not having to pay $9 for Rob Neyer articles (in addition to Gammons, Olney et al.) as "like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free" is trite and a bit overdramatic. I'm sure Bill Simmons would love the reference, though.
thanks for the link shyster. for a collosal prick, you even managed to sound magnanimous.
ignoring Uncas's jackassitude, I'll say this:
Peralta at 21 is way, way, wayyyy too high. If, 5 years from now, Peralta is considered a better player than Mark Teixeira, Russell Martin, Jake Peavy, Carl Crawford, Hunter Pence, Justin Verlander, Prince Fielder, Matt Holliday, Adrian Gonzalez, or Justin Morneau, I'll be stunned. Peralta belongs in the 40-50 range if he belongs on this list at all.
Also, how great is it that Evan Longoria ranks in the top 20 while it seems like Neyer forgot about Alex Gordon until the list was almost over? I guess no experience is better than a bad experience when it comes to can't-miss, power-hitting 3rd base prospects.
Uncus: That was meant to be tongue in cheeck. I can't always hit it on the nose, but I hope you've been reading long enough to realize that I'm not one for purple prose. Not genuine purple prose anyway.
Ken: I can't begin to get into a Shawshankoff with anyone. My Shawshank Fu -- at least without the aid of IMDB -- is weak. Still, we all need friends in here. I can be a friend to you.
dan: There are a lot of oddities about that list, aren't there? I was a bit surprised to see Peralta that high too, and agree with your other comments. Neyer obviously tried to mesh together his positional lists from last month in the service of ESPN's rather silly "Campaign 2008" thing, and I get the sense that it suffered a bit in the transition.
you speak the truth shyster. for as with both this blog and andy's bible, it can be said that salvation lies within.
Get busy bloggin' or get busy dyin'.
Hey, I'm as liberal as the next guy, but if you start posting pictures related to uncus' post, I'm going to have to take my free reading somewhere else.
Next thing you know, this will turn into a Yankees-lover forum.
No worries, 64! I promise to keep all of the fellatio facetious around here.
Fellatio Facetious, hmm, wasn't he Biggus Dickus's cousin?
Thanks for the link (and yeah, Gordon is way too low on the list), but I'm not cleaning up after the bird.
Is anyone else getting sick of Neyer's disdain for the NL? Yes, the AL is currently better, but I could be fooled into believing Neyer thinks the NL doesn't even play the same sport. And this top 50 list plays like another vehicle for his tired "AAAA" opinion. I like the rest of his stuff, but regarding NL vs AL, seriously Rob, get over it.
It is growing a bit tired, in my view, Alex, from Neyer and others. We get it: the NL is a weaker league right now. I don't disagree with that, nor do I think most people do.
But mentioning it over and over in every article is getting old. They're not playing different sports, and the AAAA designation is clearly overstating things.
I think that bringing the subject up is valid when assessing the front office approach of teams -- the AL does, as Neyer often says, have more money and more brains now -- but to suggest that we need to come up with some sort of league translation like we would for AAA or the Japanese leagues or something is preposterous.
You must not have enjoyed this year's Baseball Prospectus, which had countless mentions of the NL currently being the vastly inferior league.
That said, I remember the AL having a win % in Interleague Play of around .610 in '06, and while I can't find their '07 overall record, I can't believe the NL made huge strides.
I'd suggest that 7 of the top 8 teams in baseball play in the AL right now (but the NL would probably have the next 6 teams on that list, so they ARE closing the gap).
- Peck
No disagreement with that assessment Dan. My issue, I think, has more to do with the individual player comments as opposed to the team assessments.
I mean, it's one thing to say that there are many more strong teams in the AL than the NL, because that's true. It's another thing to say that player X is going to become a hall of famer simply by virtue of moving to the NL or that player y is going to crater simply by moving to the NL.
I don't think the individuals are so different, nor do I think there's a huge difference on the bottom of the leagues team-wise. Will that have an effect on some players switiching leagues? Sure. But it's not going to be as huge as people say it will.
Johan Santana is a great example. Many are predicting Pedro-99 type stuff from him this year. Really? The Phillies and Braves were two of the top three scoring teams in the NL last year and both scored more runs per game than the Tigers Santana will no longer be facing multiple times a year. While the Marlins and Nats may suck, he doesn't get to feed on the Royals or White Sox -- the worst offensive teams in the AL last year -- anymore.
I think he'll do just fine, but to the extent people are predicting historic greatness, well, sorry, I don't see it.
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