Let’s have some fun. I wanted to do some kind of offseason rankings, so I dialed up Choo’s favorite fantasy site, Razzball, for their rankings.
I can’t say I agree with all of their rankings, especially since they didn't include Shohei Ohtani in prospect rankings, but oh well, I used it for this.
I’ll give the “ultimate team” rankings and then break down how we got there.
1. Big Ol Country Breakfast, 112 points
2. Natinals, 106 points
3. Philly Cheese Steaks, 100 points
4. Monkeys Never Cramp, 85 points
5. JimmyJam Slammers, 78 points
6. Gameday Gamblers, 71 points
7. Big League Choo, 68 points
8. NJ Bombers, 63 points
9. Crox Sox, 55 points
10. Lebowski Urban Achievers, 48 points
11. Steroid.ERA, 44 points
12. Sex Panthers, 37 points
OK, now that we got that out of the way, many may be wondering how the hell am I No. 5, among other things.
Well, for this, I broke it down into four categories — infields, outfields, starting pitchers and prospects — all ranked by Razzball.
In the infield, position-by-position, you got points for whether a player was ranked No. 1 (10 points) in their position, or No. 10 (1 point). I also didn’t double up points at an infield position, a la I had two catchers in the top 10, but I only ranked my highest one.
Outfield was just the top 20 overall outfielders, so it was 20 points for Mike Trout and 1 point for Mr. Lorenzo Cain who was ranked No. 20 (technically No. 22, but as you'll read, I didn't double up for guys like Cody Bellinger).
Pitchers and prospects were also 20 to 1.
Note that in each infield position and outfield, I skipped over players who shouldn’t be there, a la Anthony Rizzo was ranked third among second basemen and that is just stupid, so I acted as if he wasn’t there and moved down the list.
Now, taking prospects out of the equation, here’s how the standings looked:
1. Philly Cheese, 100 points
2. Big Ol Country Breakfast, 94 points
3. Natinals, 84 points
4. Monkeys Never Cramp, 72 points
5. Crox Sox, 55 points
6. Lebowski Urban Achievers, 48 points
7. Gameday Gamblers, 45 points
8. JimmyJam Slammers, 40 points
9. Big League Choo, 38 points
10. Sex Panthers, 37 points
11. Steroid.ERA, 23 points
11. NJ Bombers, 23 points
Of course, the two World Series teams are at the top in Big Country and Philly Cheese.
They actually were the only two teams to have complete infields ranked in the top 10.
Breakfast’s was significantly better with Salvador Perez, Anthony Rizzo, Brian Dozier, Anthony Rendon and Trea Turner all garnering a JLB-best 39 points.
Steaks, who obviously led pitching with 57 points (#HeinzKetchup) from a JLB-best four starters, got 26 points from Mike Zunino, Edwin Encarnación, Dee Gordon, Justin Turner and Francisco Lindor.
Choo’s infield earned him 30 of his pitiful 38 points as Gary Sanchez, Jose Altuve and Nolan Arenado are all ranked No. 1 at their positions. He got another 8 points in the outfield for Nelson Cruz and zero points at pitcher.
He would have had a few points at pitcher, but he sent Zack Greinke back home to Steroid.ERA who missed him dearly. (I guess Trevor Story is the guy at short.)
The two new franchises that cherry-picked players from two rosters have done quite well for themselves.
I was surprised to see the Natinals on top considering Monkeys Never Cramp has Mike Trout, Carlos Correa and Giancarlo Stanton, but the Nats were the only team to get 30-plus points in both outfield and pitching.
Either way, National League is going to be tough again, according to this.
At any rate, what’s all this mean? Probably nothing. We all know Breakfast and Cheese — a great combo, of course — are the February favorites to reach the World Series again based on current roster construction.
But there’s plenty of time for that to change. Trades, the draft, the actual season — they’ll all make these numbers pointless.
At this point — if she has even read this far — Gina will just ask, “Well then why the hell did you waste 30 minutes doing this when you could have been cleaning the basement?”
I have no answer.
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