The 100 Best Players in Baseball
This “100 Best Players in Baseball” list took me a lot longer to put together than I expected (which explains why we didn’t have a post on Monday). I think it’s because I’m looking at it as a potential monthly feature* (JoeBlogs bonus!). My thinking is, hey, what if at the end of every month, I run a JoeBlogs up-to-the-minute Best Players in Baseball list, showing who’s up, who’s down, who has been promoted, who has been demoted, etc.?
That could be fun, right?
Obviously, it could also be NOT fun, particularly for me. But we never dip our toe into ideas here at JoeBlogs. We jump in, do a cannonball in the pool, and sometimes we get a good splash and sometimes we drown. That’s just the way it goes here.
*Maybe we call it something like the Dow Joe’s? Anyone got a cool idea for a name?
Anyway, the idea is simple: You’re a GM. You’re trying to win THIS year. Who are the 100 Best Players in Baseball at this exact moment to get you to the World Series?
As you might remember from the season previews, I did have a preseason top 100. It’s not entirely worthless—I tried to keep as close to it as I could—but it’s kind of worthless because, obviously, a lot of players got hurt, went to different teams, etc. Plus we now have a month’s worth of statistics to work with. You don’t want to overreact to one month of baseball, but I do think you want to react at least somewhat.
Do you believe in Elly De La Cruz’s dynamic first month? Is Salvy Perez really going to lead the league in RBIs? Is Alex Bregman finished? Has Ranger Suarez figured things out? What does Randy Arozarena’s awful start mean?
Remember: It’s best players in baseball THIS YEAR. So, for example, you will not find Spencer Strider on here, because he’s out for the year. He was No. 16 in my preseason 100. Below, you will see a list of the players who have already dropped out of the 100 because of injury or because I have reevaluated the player.
What I hope will be fun about this is that it will give us more stuff to follow all year long. Next to some players, you will notice emojis. I suspect they are self-explanatory, but just in case:
🆕 means that player was not on my preseason list.
⬆️ meant that player moved up on my list.
⬇️ means that player moved down on my list.
🤷🏻 means I might have really overrated this player.
No emoji means that the player is roughly where I originally had them ranked.
Please remember: This, like most of what we publish here, is complete nonsense. Here’s hoping it will be enjoyable nonsense. If not, we don’t have to ever do it again.
Players in my preseason Top 100 who have fallen off the list:
Spencer Strider 🤕
Sean Murphy 🤕
Shane Bieber 🤕
J.P. Crawford 🤕
Josh Hader, Astros 🤷🏻 (I actually left him off my list, because I don’t trust relievers. But I want to make special mention of him, because: (1) he was on pretty much everybody else’s list, and (2) though his numbers are atrocious, he seems to be pitching about as well as last year. He has just been very hit-unlucky).
Jesus Luzardo 🤕 (He’s only on the 15-day IL, but with his injury history, he fell off the list, anyway)
Matt McLain 🤕
Gleyber Torres 🤷🏻 (I will never, ever figure out Gleyber. He has yet to hit a home run this year.)
Just missed: Reed Garrett, Mets 🆕
I really wanted to put Garrett on the list, even though he has only appeared in 39 games over his bouncy career, and the first 31 were not especially memorable. But his eight games this year have been: Through 14⅔ innings, he’s 5-0 with an 0.61 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 14⅔ innings. I’m all in on this guy.
And now, the Top 100…