Phillies Gloriously Populate Bottom Rungs of Top 500 MLB Players List

Despite Domonic Brown’s much-noticed springtime warzone, predictions of his breakout year, and potential pre-emptive awarding of an everyday outfield job, ESPN still won’t rank him higher than #497 of their top 500 MLB players.

Delmon Young even managed to almost crack the top 475 (#476).  John Lannan got as high as #462.  But Brown couldn’t buy a vote and sunk over 100 ranks from his 2012 status, proving once and for all that Ruben Amaro essentially runs ESPN.

Was it the walks?  Brown is second only to Chase in free passes, which as we all know are the most valuable, most despised statistic of Ruben Amaro’s overall plan.  Is it the hitting?  Is it “a little much?”  Are they scared of him?  That he’ll gain too much confidence and blast one of their analysts over the batter’s eye in center field?

We’ll never know the reason why Brown is lowly ranked.  I mean we could guess it’s because he’s never really been too effective between his first AB ever and this spring.  But if we put that reason aside, we’ll never know!

Delmon Young, on the other hand, is a mystery.  476 seems awfully high for a guy who has zero stats to judge him by because of an ankle/weight problem that is destined to make/has already made him a basically talentless defender.  He hit a bunch during last year’s ALCS, but not every series is that brief frenzy of games he played once in 2012.

And John Lannan!  He’s all “John Lannan” about everything.  What’s that about.

In a way, though, this is a backhanded compliment.  I mean, here we are in the musty sub basement of MLB and there are only three resident Phillies.  Who knows what the next hundred rankings hold!  Who knows how they’ll rank Ryan Howard – it will either be way too low or way too high; there’s no such thing as adequate judgment of his current skills.  Who knows how far Roy Halladay’s barfing has dropped him out of the national spotlight!

Also: who cares.