This Is Why No One Reads The Sporting News

I love statistics, lists, and rankings as much as the next guy, but holy shitballs - The Sporting News has no idea what they're writing about anymore.

Each year, they comprise a list of Major League Baseball's Top 50 players. These rankings are decided by a brain trust of 125 experts. I'm not sure what type of time vortex or bizarro world these "experts" are stuck in, but my God... this is probably the worst job of judging current talent I have ever seen.


Albert Pujols was chosen as their #1. Kind of hard to screw that one up. From there, the list goes to shit. Quickly.

Why so bad? Well here’s a few that jump right out at me: Jeter at #4 overall is just silly. Ichiro is in the top 10 and he somehow jumped up 22(!?!) spots from last year's list. Ryan Braun should probably be higher than 22. (He doesn't get as much national talk as he really deserves.) Chase Utley should be higher than 9... some would argue he's one of the 3 best in the league.

I'm not even going to try and rationalize how guys like Todd Helton, Derrek Lee, Bobby Abreu, Aaron Hill, Carlos Pena, and John friggin Lackey made the Top 50. What makes it worse are some of the guys they completely failed to mention. It makes my face hurt to see that guys like Ubaldo Jimenez, Joey Votto, and Nelson Cruz get no love.

The whole thing just makes no sense at all. Do these people even watch baseball? Considering they do this list EVERY year, you cannot assume they are taking into account past performances over the last decade or so. If you're doing a list like this every year, it damn well better be an accurate depiction of the CURRENT 50 best players.  You know, instead of a sad excuse for a baseball article where your rankings come off as intelligent as a Joe Morgan thought.

Anyway, you can check out the complete rankings HERE if you feel like getting pissed off.