BWNR vol. 3

That's Bi-Weekly Narcissistic Rankings in case you are wondering . . .

Something else that might have crossed your mind - what does the lovely and talented Jewel Staite have to do with a ranking of major league baseball teams?

Absolutely nothing.

But what had you rather have me do - search the interwebs for some lame but vaguely relevant graphic every time I make one of these lists? Or bless your eyes with one of god's more beautiful creations?

Yeah. that was the same conclusion I came to. Besides, there's more than one way to get folks to look at my posts, eh?

On to the list!

I noted last week that early season fluctuations can be radical, and that my self imposed 12-slot limit on movement would occasionally cause some counterintuitive placements. Also, there is still the illusion that some teams are better (or worse) than any sane analysis can support. Bear with me and as we get more and more games played we will seperate the contenders from the pretenders more clearly.

1. Arizona (1)- Has given us no reason to doubt.
2. LA Angels (3)- moving up from #3, have held together well while their top two pitchers have been on the shelf
3. Boston (4)- righted the ship, seemingly, with an impressive run, but now they are skidding on a five game losing streak.
4. Chicago Cubs (14)- big climber this time.
5. St Louis (10)- These two are virtually tied but I don't want to get into a habit of copping out with ties. Since Chicago has been somewhat better since the last list, I went with them
6. Chicago White Sox (6)- Danks and Floyd are proving to be real finds for Kenny Williams so far
7. Oakland (15)- refusing to go away
8. Milwaukee (5)- as other teams move up they slide towards what is probably a mre realistic slot
9. Philadelphia (11)- the slippage of other teams means that the Phillies move up
10. N. Y. Mets (8)- waiting on Pedro...
11. Cleveland (7)- still not playing up to expectations
12. Tampa Bay (19)- I'm not on the Rays bandwagon at all, but got to give props for sweeping the Red Sox
13. N. Y. Yankees (12)- Like Cleveland, Toronto, and Detroit, not impressing early
14. Toronto (2)- an impressive first 12 games, a hideous next 12 games, a drop of the maximum twelve slots
15. Atlanta (9)- could have fallen farther but for the movement of some other teams
16. Florida (28)- up the maximum, they - like Oakland and Baltimore - insist on hanging around and muddying the waters a while longer
17. Baltimore (25)-this pains me, I'll be glad when the LSD-like hallucinations in the standings begin to clear up some
18. L.A. Dodgers (21)- some recovery from a very bad start in relation to their hopes
19. Detroit (13) - have been considerably better the last couple of weeks but they still had some dropping to do based on their astonishingly bad first two weeks
20. Seattle (17)- not impressing anyone
21. Houston (26)- some folks thought this team would be a contender - I don't see it
22. Kansas City (18)-regression to the mean?
23. Minnesota (20)- some of these teams it's hard to say much about
24. Cincinnati (24)- maybe pulling out of their skid
25. San Diego (16)- i really figured they would be better than this
26. Colorado (27)- probably too early for me to say this but those of you who thought last year's freakish September and October run justified O'Dowd - yeah, not so much.
27. Pittsburgh (22) - yet another non-descript year
28. Texas (23)- probably not THIS bad
30. Washington (29)- have to be disappointed that Florida isn't keeping them out of the basement.

~WillRain