ESPN has another one of their link baiting lists that I'm totally biting on right now. ESPN experts were given a list of 600 baseball players that are going to play baseball in 2012 and were asked to just straight up rank 'em. Like go right down the line and give me the names of who's best... or at least rankable. The ESPN 500!
They have numbers 400 through 500 up right now.
Who do we care about as Gaslamp Ballers? Padres of course.
The Padres who show up in the 400-500:
Will Venable at 457. Ernesto Frieri at 492. Andrew Cashner at 428.
Incidentally, Anthony Rizzo doesn't show up in 400-500, so unless he's somewhere in that bottom unlisted 500-600 group, Josh Byrnes got screwed... according to ESPN.
So given that teams have their 25 man rosters and there are 30 teams in the major leagues. That gives us 750 players. Venable, Frieri and Cashner are in the bottom half of all 750 players that will make opening day rosters. Doesn't sound much like a "top" list does it? I guess that's why they don't call it a top list. Isn't 500 a little much though?
In any case, LINK BAIT TAKEN, ESPN.
[Note by jbox, 03/21/12 10:21 AM PDT ]
Here's Jayson Stark and Jim Bowden from ESPN talking about Andrew Cashner as one of the breakout guys.