2014 Fantasy Baseball Yahoo Ranklings

In past years, I’ve said the following analogy.  There’s years of looking up to your father, whether you agree all the time or not.  Then, one day, he takes a poop on your couch.  You take him to the hospital; he’s in need of some sort of psychology examination.  If the tests come back conclusive that he pooped the couch simply out of laziness, then that’s ESPN.  If tests come back that he’s gone crazy, well, over at Yahoo The Noise ranked Matt Carpenter 37th overall.  A recipe for success at Yahoo involves Kosher salt because you need to take Yahoo’s rankings with a bigger grain of salt.  Now, with that said, I think this year Yahoo’s flipped the script on ESPN.  Yahoo’s rankings are better this year, i.e., they’re closer to mine than ESPN.  At least that’s the vibe I get from looking at them, I didn’t actually stop and weigh the differences and divide that weight by pi to the seventh integer and multiply by X.  I simply looked at what they had vs. me and think Yahoo did a better job this year.  They have also changed their rankings dramatically in the last week.  See, I originally had The Noise down as ranking Carpenter 30th overall.  Just about every guy in the chart at the end of this post has moved closer to my rankings in the last week.  I’m not saying they’re copying (or they’re not copying fast enough), because, well, they’re still off and now it’s time to spit fire:

We should all be thanking Yahoo.  Since they’re hosting more fantasy drafts than any other site, they’re also steering more people in the most head-scratching ways.  I’ll happily draft Evan Longoria this year (as my top 20 shows).  Thanks to The Noise ranking him 30th overall, Longoria is all the way down at twenty-four in Yahoo’s overall rankings.  More Longo for us, so thank you.  By the by, I have the funkiest 2nd round as any fantasy baseball ‘pert.  Ride or die with L.J. Hoes and Grey Albright or just die with Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista and Evan Longoria way higher in my rankings.  I’ll address the elephant in the room.  Wait, Billy Butler already left my room.  Okay, I’ll address what seems like I have AARP-itis ranking these 2nd round old-timers so high.  Firstly, Longoria is 28 years old, so he’s not an old-timer and he wasn’t bad last year.  Secondly, Bautista and Pujols were hurt last year, but if you prorate their seasons to 155 games, they were on their usual paces.  Thirdly, no one hits 30 homers any more and these guys can.  Cliff Lee, he has nothing to do with this.  Fifthly, if they show they’re hurt in Spring Training, I’ll be the first one to drop them in the rankings, but right now they’re fine.

The biggest question I get is, “Do you use hair care products on your upper lip?”  The second biggest question I get is, “If Yahoo (ESPN, CBS, Fox, whoever) ranks this player way after you’ve ranked them, do you wait to draft them?”  The short answer is depends.  The long answer is deeeeeeeeeeeeepends.  I don’t risk losing a player I really want.  I want Anthony Rizzo more than humanly possible and have him ranked way before everyone else — around 4 rounds on average.  I could wait until a round before he’s taken, but I would veer on the safe side and take him two rounds before anyone’s thinking of him.  Could I get sniped by someone lurking over my shoulder, reading my rankings?  I suppose, but there’s other players I like so I’m fine with missing out on a guy here and there.  Do you hear how emotionally balanced I sound?  Marriage is treating me well!  (God damn, I wanna have sex with different women than my wife.  Is this normal?  I’m three months in.  Does it get easier?  Please tell me it does.)

(BTW, for those wondering if I’m going to look at CBS’s rankings, I’m not.  To throw it back to the intro analogy, CBS’s rankings are like a 3-month-old pooping on your couch.  If you use CBS’s rankings, you should’ve known better to leave non-diapered rankings where you didn’t want them to defecate.)

So, let’s cut out the jibber-jabbering, though I’m already failing on that front.  Sometimes I just can’t keep my big mouth shut. Thankfully, since I type with my tongue.  Did you know, when I type “HA!” I’m really trying to type, “Help Angola!”  Bono would know that.  Any the hoo!  I’m going to list players in a handy chart like I did the other day with ESPN.  The Thank You’s have it.  It being good value from my rankings vs. Yahoo’s.  The No Thank You’s don’t have it.  They’re bad people.  Meh, they might be okay people, but they’re likely not ending up on any of my Yahoo drafted teams.  For this, I’ll be using my 2014 fantasy baseball rankings (go figure!) and Yahoo’s 2014 fantasy baseball rankings (crazy, right?).

THANK YOU

NO THANK YOU