Who was too high or too low in MLBRank
Dan Szymborski
ESPN INSIDER

Our yearly Top 100 rankings have hit the press, which means that in my semi-official capacity as the ombudsnerd, it's time to submit our list for a bit of a roast. What's the fun of a list if you don't disagree with it, after all?

Too high: Bryce Harper, No. 5.
I'm going to commit another act of Harper-related heresy. Bryce Harper is currently overrated around Major League Baseball. While I think he's a top-20 guy, phenomenally talented, still young, with the potential to be a perennial MVP contender, this is just too high a ranking for me right now. To rank fifth, I think you have to compete for an MVP/Cy Young year in and year out. Everyone else in the top 10 does. But Harper has really had only one season in which he has put everything together and had an MVP-type season. He might very well get there, but I don't think he should be in the single digits yet.


Too low: Kyle Seager, No. 97. By my reckoning, Seager ranks 10th on our list of third basemen, despite being just 30 years old. He sits fifth among third basemen over the past five years in WAR, at 23.4, while hitting .264/.337/.456 with an excellent glove. Miguel Sano still doesn't have a 3-WAR season in the majors, and as amazing as he is, Adrian Beltre is 39 years old. Neither should rank higher than Seager, one of Seattle's bright spots

.Too high: Dallas Keuchel, No. 33. If we were making this list in 2015, I'd have no complaints. But over the past two seasons, Keuchel hasn't been nearly as sharp as in his 2014 and 2015 seasons, with a 3.79 ERA in 313⅔ innings (with a 3.83 FIP). That comes out to an ERA+ of 104, far from ace status; according to writer Chris Jaffe's research, the best starter in a rotation has historically been in the 120-125 range.I think Keuchel's "true" ability is better than a 104 ERA+, but if you're going to tell me that he's the ninth-best starting pitcher right now, he needs an ace argument -- right now. After all, he ranks higher than Noah Syndergaard and Carlos Carrasco.


Too high: Ryan Zimmerman, No. 93. First off, we have too many first basemen, with 10 first basemen making our list of 100 players. But let's assume for the sake of argument that 10 first basemen is the right number. How do we get Zim to 10th? His .303/.358/.573 line in 2017 is superficially impressive, but that's what it took for him to rank ninth among first basemen in FanGraphs WAR and 15th by Baseball-Reference's reckoning.I'm not going to fault Zimmerman for a poor start, just the fact that his 2017 was by far his best season in a very long time, and he's 33 years old. I'm not sure Zimmerman would make my top 250.


Too low: Aaron Nola, No. 100. The Phillies didn't sign their ace when they inked Jake Arrieta -- they already had Nola. Nola had one of the most overlooked seasons in 2017, putting up a 3.54 ERA/3.27 FIP in 168 innings for the woeful Phillies. ZiPS ranks Nola sixth in rest-of-season WAR so far, projecting him to a 12-10, 3.50 ERA the rest of the season. Maybe you're not as optimistic as the projections, but I don't think placing Nola 30-40 places higher is unjustified.


Too high: Miguel Cabrera, No. 83. I'm sorry, but I think even this is too high for Cabrera, given his age and nightmare season in 2017. While my heart wants to think that Miggy has a few more years like 2016 remaining in the tank, I'm just not certain he's a top-100 player anymore. I'm not sure Cabrera is clearly better than Justin Smoak or Matt Carpenter or Brandon Belt at this point, and I've got to believe that argument for Cabrera to make my list. This is a 2018 list, after all.


Too low: Rhys Hoskins, No. 90. Trivia time! Which left fielder has the best rest-of-season projected WAR in baseball by ZiPS? If you said Rhys Hoskins, you'd be correct and also probably remember the header to this section. At press time, Hoskins' career OPS in the majors was 1.038, and that's without some kind of freaky BABIP messing up the works (his has been a very mortal .281). Left field is a very shallow position overall, so Hoskins can give up 100 points of OPS from his early career line and still lead all left fielders in the stat. He's certainly top-50 now, I'd say.


Too low: Michael Conforto, NR. Conforto is the highest-ranked player in the ZiPS preseason projections who failed to make our top-100 list, so I can't simply not mention the Mets' underappreciated young star. It isn't just a projections thing, either: Conforto ranked fifth among left fielders in bWAR in 2017 despite playing in only 109 games. There might be a point where we adjust our health expectations down for Conforto, but I'm far from that point. He needed a spot on this list.



Too high: James Paxton, No. 73.
Paxton has shown flashes of success between injuries -- most notably his 2017 season, with a 2.98 ERA and 10.3 K/9. But to make this list, shouldn't attendance count? As a pitcher who has never thrown 140 innings in a season, Paxton's availability over a full season is still a question mark. It's hard for me to rank Paxton this high without a single full season under his belt.

Too low: Marcus Stroman, No. 71. It's not as if Stroman ranked fourth in the AL in both ERA and WAR in 2017 and finished his second consecutive 200-inning season coming off Tommy John surgery. Oh wait, it is. Stroman's first few starts haven't gone well, and I'm not quite as exuberant about his 2018 as ZiPS is (ZiPS ranked him 31st), but I think he has shown enough and there's enough remaining upside to put him closer to the middle of these rankings.


Just right: Shohei Ohtani, No. 52. I went into this exercise thinking, "Nobody can love Ohtani as much as I do!" I was wrong, and Ohtani ended up ranked about where I'd put him, which more than anything showcases the phenomenon he is in 2018, the 21st-century version of Fernandomania. For a player with two weeks of playing time at the major league level who previously played only at what is essentially a Quadruple-A league to rank this high demonstrates how his combination of skills can soften even the hardest-bit journalist. My heart would rank him even higher, simply watching him tear around the bases or throw 99 mph effortlessly, but this is the right place considering he still has only a few weeks of MLB playing time.