ESPN’s 2013 Fantasy Baseball Ranklings

Writing these posts where I look at the differences between my 2013 fantasy baseball rankings and ESPN’s fantasy baseball rankings gives me severe agita, but I want to be calm.  I don’t want an ulcer.  So, for this post, I put on the Dixie Chicks’s cover of Landslide… Children get older, I’m getting older too… Unfortunately, I hunt and peck on my keyboard and it took me that entire song to type up the first sentence of this paragraph and iTunes shuffled to N.W.A.  Right about now, N.W.A. court is in full effect.

“Judge Grey presiding in the case of Razzball vs. ESPN.”

“Prosecuting attorneys are MC Grey, Ice Grey and Eazy-mother*******-Grey!”

“Order, order, order… Ice Grey, take the mother******** stand.  Do you swear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help your stupid ass?”

“You goddamn right!”

“Well, won’t you tell everybody what the eff you gotta say?”

F ESPN!  They have the authority to kill position scarcity!  Tulowitzki will have to retire for five years before they lower his preseason ranking.  I already went over my Buster Posey overrated post; Yadier Molina is silly high at 49 overall; Hanley’s above where I have him; Joe Mauer’s about 30 spots higher than I’ve ranked him.  You have to go all the way to Wilin Rosario at 185 on ESPN’s rankings to find a catcher I have higher.  Of course, they’re down on Rosario.  He’s a young catcher in a great park and he could hit 30 homers.  Is there a Rosetta Stone to understand what they’re talking about?  Another catcher they have much lower than me?  Salvador Perez… I think I’ve finally figured this out.  Take guys that actually have upside and bury them, take guys that peaked last year and overrate them.  Victor Martinez must’ve really thrown them for a loop.  “He didn’t play last year, so I say we bury him.”  “But he was good the year before.”  “How about we just put him in the middle somewhere and hope no one sees him?  In fact, we can rank him using invisible ink!”  “Is there ink with computers?”  “Hold on, I’ll call, IT.”  Yo, Grey, I got something to say.  F ESPN!

“MC Grey, will you please give your testimony to the jury about these effed up rankings?”

F ESPN!  Drop your bat, and Grey’s gonna blast!   Pitching is the same nonsense.  Sale, Cueto, Clayton Kershaw, Jered Weaver and Roy Halladay are too high; Scherzer, Greinke, and about 30 other pitchers too low.  Is anything considered below the surface with their peripherals?  Sale threw too many innings, Cueto was lucky, Kershaw has a Mama-from-Mama’s-Family hip, Weaver is throwing frisbees he’s lost so much speed, Scherzer had the 25th best starter year in 2012, according to ESPN(!), and they’re expecting him to get better (according to their projections) and they lowered his ranking for this year.  WHAT?!  I wish I could make the font on that WHAT even bigger because I think they’re smoking narcotics.  I love Matt Harvey.  I planned on drafting him everywhere.  Then they go and put him 44th overall for all pitchers?  C’mon!  Why you gotta start making sense now?  Get off my jock!  And, while you’re at it, get off Rudy’s jock too.

“Easy-Grey, won’t you step up to the stand and tell the commenters how you feel about this bullsh*t?”

F ESPN!  Cause ESPN always got something stupid to say!  Paul Goldschmidt is ranked 73rd overall.  By their own admission, he was ranked 55th overall at the end of last year and they projected him to hit 6 more homers this year with more runs and RBIs.  I guess a few less steals and a slightly lower average dropped this 25-year-old that plays in a hitters’ park.  You try to make sense of that and you’ll be muttering to yourself walking around in a potato sack.  I have him 19th overall and Rudy has him 21st overall for 15 team leagues.  You know when ESPN will have AuShizz ranked in the top 20?  Next year.  Adam Jones they projected for a 29 homer, 15 steal season with a .287 average.  That sound like a 2nd round guy to you?  Yeah, me too, that’s why I ranked him in the 2nd round.  ESPN, on the other hand, ranked him 34th.  Makes sense?  No, of course it doesn’t.   That’s all right, I’ll happily draft them in all of my leagues and… While I’m driving off laughing this is what I’ll say… F ESPN!

Now on the less-gangsta tip, here’s a chart of the biggest values from ESPN to me (Thank you!) and the players that ESPN overrates (No thank you!):

THANK YOU

NO THANK YOU