Saturday, May 10, 2008

Power Rankings Are A Joke In Yo Town

A quick peek at ESPN's MLB power rankings shows the A's sitting at number 1 on the list. Now, I'm definitely a card-carrying member of the A's bandwagon. I picked them to be over .500 and stay in the thick of the division race this year, even though Vegas set their season wins line at 73.5. I bet them to win the AL West just about everywhere I could, getting about 20-1 odds on average, which even at the time was obviously a ridiculous line.

Still...are you freaking KIDDING me? Number 1? The A's don't have the best record in MLB. They don't have the best run differential or third-order record. They certainly don't have the most talented team: how many Oakland players are owned in your fantasy league?

What do they have? A great bullpen, a decent rotation, and a very mediocre offense that's hitting much better with runners in scoring position, obviously a fluke great clutch performance.

Nobody thought, going into the season, that the A's were a better team than Boston or Arizona. Why have they now surpassed those teams, despite their worse record? I imagine that the Colombian drug lords are very proud of whatever they've invented that caused ESPN to hallucinate like this.

Perhaps I should offer to sell my division futures to whoever compiled this list at a payoff of even money. That should be plenty good enough for such a prohibitive favorite.

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