The 2013 Top 100 Players In Baseball, Part 3
Baseball, The Cheap Seats — By Matt Whitener on February 20, 2013 at 12:01 pm
[Rev note: Spring training is upon us and the 2013 MLB season right around the corner. With that, our own Matt Whitener is counting down the Top 100 Players in Baseball. View part 1 here and part 2 here.]
In day three of the 2013 Top 100 Players in Baseball, we hit the middle of the mountain and start into the Top 50 players in the game today. At this point, the free agency season is nearly at a close (with the exception of the Kyle Lohse rumors), and the teams are what they are. The impact of each player’s performance on his team shows his true value and factors into where each is ranked this week.
Does competition have anything to do with placement? Sure, it has to. Team success is a major marker of if there’s any point to how good a player is. With the exception of a few extreme differences in top player-to-team effort (think David Wright, Giancarlo Stanton or Felix Hernandez), most top players compete. Here in the middle of the list, the translation will be started from the really good players to some of the best of the best.
46 of the 100 players were members of teams that made the 2012 postseason, in comparison to over 80 that made the All-Star team, won a Gold Glove or even won an MVP at some point. In today’s list, there’s as diverse a mixture of impacts as there are in the game, or at any other part of the Top 100. But there really is only one goal, and in today’s list there are 17 players that visited the postseason in the last two years … and another seven that have been World Champions at one point, at least one time over.
Tags: adam jones, Adam Wainwright, adrian gonzalez, aroldis chapman, Baseball, Brandon Phillips, Bryce Harper, Chase Headley, Cliff Lee, cole hamels, Curtis Granderson, Dustin Pedroia, Giancarlo Stanton, gio gonzalez, jered weaver, Joe Mauer, Jose Reyes, Justin Upton, Mariano Rivera, Mark Teixeira, Matt Cain, Matt Holliday, MLB, R.A. Dickey, Roy Halladay, ryan zimmerman, Top 100, Top 100 Players In Baseball, zack greinke
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4 Comments
My inherent bias clearly is in play here, but I feel like perhaps Cole and Roy are a little underrated given the Phillies’ struggles last year. But still not egregious arguments over here.
There’s still not enough damn Braves on this list, some bullshit.
-Ed.
Doc Halladay was one of the toughest calls on this list. He could just as easily end up 25 spots higher or 25 lower next year, but it all depends on how he bounces back.
Hamels is in the top 5 of lefties in the game. There’s pretty strong crop in front of him, but his talent doesn’t always get the support it deserves from his numbers (or team recently), that’s true. Cliff Lee is there to offer a shoulder to that stuggle.
Here’s me nodding in agreement with Mauer at 38. Three years ago, he would have been top five on this list easily, maybe even top two. The Twins need to figure out how to best use him. It’s amazing they haven’t yet.