Dorks And Losers

Spring train­ing is at an end, and it’s about time to see some offi­cial game action. The big-time off­sea­son issues worked them­selves out. Alex Rodriguez ended up resign­ing with the New York Yan­kees, despite Yan­kee front office threats of no exten­sion offers if A-Rod opted out of his pre­vi­ous con­tract. Johan San­tana was finally traded, to the New York Mets — for a lot less than the Yan­kees or the Boston Red Sox offered.

There are more, but Day One makes the entire pre­vi­ous off­sea­son erasable. It’s fun to debate who the best play­ers are because gen­er­ally no one can really agree. There are cer­tain play­ers who are absolute locks to be on every list, but their list place­ments are never assured.

My list is about baseball’s best play­ers, and there are some who include pitch­ers and some who don’t. I’d rather not get into that argu­ment, so I’ll just stick to talk­ing about posi­tion play­ers.

Top 5

1. Han­ley Ramirez (SS) — Florida Marlins

I bet not many peo­ple knew Ramirez tied for the sec­ond most (NL) hits with Jimmy Rollins last year. If you look at his 2006 and 2007 stats, you’ll see a scary trend: in roughly the same num­ber of at-bats, he had 33 fewer strike­outs and 27 more hits, with almost half of that hit increase being home runs (17 to 29). This is a good sign that Ramirez is begin­ning to find his power and could seri­ously con­tend for 30–30-30 (2B, HR, and SB) in only his third full season. He was traded in a deal involv­ing Josh Beck­ett a cou­ple years back and while the Red Sox prob­a­bly wouldn’t have won a World Series with­out him, I bet Theo Epstein shakes his head when­ever Julio Lugo steps up to the plate.

2. Alex Rodriguez (3B) — New York Yankees

No need to defend this pick.

3. Carl Craw­ford (LF) — Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays

He’s prob­a­bly the most under­rated player in base­ball. Play­ing for the Rays can keep you unno­ticed from most peo­ple. He posted his high­est bat­ting aver­age (.315) and sec­ond high­est OPS (.820) last year. He’s always had to carry the team, but look­ing at 25-player ros­ter (no more Eli­jah Dukes and Del­mon Young to watch over) his bur­den might not be so heavy this time around, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the start­ing rotation.

4. David Wright (3B) — New York Mets

Wright was the only shiny Sep­tem­ber spot for the Mets last year. Had the team not col­lapsed as it did, he might have gar­nered at least one first place vote in the MVP bal­lot­ing. And by the way, how many third base­men do you know had 30–30 sea­sons?

5. Cur­tis Grander­son (CF) — Detroit Tigers

He starts the sea­son on the dis­abled list, but I don’t think any­one doubts he’ll push for another seat in the 20–20-20–20 club (2B-3B-HR-SB). Here’s a scary fact, the only sin­gle digit num­ber on his 2007 stat sheet is his CS (caught steal­ing)… at 1.

Hon­or­able Mention

Jimmy Rollins (SS) — Philadel­phia Phillies: The reign­ing National League MVP never seemed to the get the same atten­tion for being a 20–20-20–20 player as Grander­son did.

Chase Utley (2B) — Philadel­phia Phillies: Had an MVP-caliber year last sea­son despite miss­ing the final month. Will be MVP come October.

Joe Mauer © — Min­nesota Twins: His career high for games played is 140 in 2006. Will he ever reach that again?

Vladimir Guer­rero (RF) – Los Ange­les Angels of Ana­heim: I still flinch every time he swings a bat. I couldn’t imag­ine pitch­ing to him.

Jose Reyes (SS) – New York Mets: I guess you’d have to see this guy live to be as enam­ored as Peter Gam­mons is.

Grady Size­more (CF) — Cleve­land Indi­ans: He falls in the same cat­e­gory as Reyes. Needs to bounce back if he wants to keep in Gam­mons’ good graces.

Troy Tulow­itzki (SS) — Col­orado Rock­ies: I haven’t jumped on the band­wagon yet, but I will if he explodes this year.

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