ESPN just released their top 250 for the remainder of the season. I was curious to see who fared best, according to their rankings. I wanted to rank the teams by a few simple ways of looking at them. First, I assigned each player a point value. Of the 250 players, 124 were from the AL. I assigned 124 points to the best player ranked (Miguel Cabrera) and one for the worst player ranked (Matt Capps). This probably doesn't reflect real value perfectly in the league, I doubt, for example, that Caleb would be able to trade Rajai Davis and John Danks for Evan Longoria, but it is simple and easy to get at. Another point, this system only gives value to the top 124 players, meaning that with our 24 man rosters there are 68 players who are rostered who are "worthless". These include any non-closer relief pitcher, and starters like Brandon McCarthy or Bartolo Colon.
I come out on top based on total points and number of players ranked (20). That isn't all that surprising, since I've managed to turn players who the ESPN rankings consider fairly low rank (Walden at 19 points and McCarthy at 0) into CC Sabathia (101 points). Our league values AL closers a lot more than these rankings do, for a ten team mixed, closers are pretty fungible, so this may not really reflect reality. Kate comes out on top with the highest average player value (73). Taylor, Mark, and Luke bring up the rear in terms of total points and our actual standings.
Team | Points | Avg. Points | Players | Rank |
Bill | 1262 | 63.1 | 20 | 3 |
Caleb | 1041 | 61.2 | 17 | 1 |
Kate | 1023 | 73.1 | 14 | 3 |
Spencer | 1004 | 62.8 | 16 | 5 |
Andrew | 915 | 61.0 | 15 | 2 |
Taylor | 911 | 70.1 | 13 | 7 |
Luke | 835 | 55.7 | 15 | 6 |
Mark | 759 | 54.2 | 14 | 8 |