ESPN's October Impact List, Which Ranked Bryce Harper 40th, has Only 13 Players Remaining
Remember that fugazi list that ESPN put together? They ranked the top 40 players in the MLB postseason based on a weighted WAR, and then factored in how far each team was expected to go by running 10,000 simulations off some other guy’s odds. The formula was so dumb that Bryce Harper, who currently has a 1.381 OPS in six postseason games, was ranked 40th.
After the divisional series, here are the players on the list that are still playing baseball:
- 8. Yordan Alvarez (Astros)
- 9. Jose Altuve (Astros)
- 13. Justin Verlander (Astros)
- 16. Framber Valdez (Astros)
- 20. Kyle Tucker (Astros)
- 23. Corey Seager (Rangers)
- 25. Alex Bregman (Astros)
- 30. Chas McCormick (Astros)
- 34. Zack Wheeler (Phillies)
- 37. Marcus Semien (Rangers)
- 38. Bryan Abreu (Astros)
- 39. Jordan Montgomery (Rangers)
- 40. Bryce Harper (Phillies)
That’s it. 13 players remaining from ESPN’s top 40 list. Eight of the 13 are Astros. Zero are Diamondbacks. The Phillies have a grand total of two players on the list and the Rangers three. Brilliant! Great job.
The best part is that 25% of the original list was Atlanta Braves. Even Bryce fucking Elder was on the list. If we redid the entire thing with only the four Championship Series teams in it, you’d throw Nick Castellanos and Trea Turner in there with Harper. Corbin Carroll is hitting .412 and Gabriel Moreno has 6 RBI. Josh Jung is raking. So on and so forth.
Next time, ESPN should just rank the top 40 postseason players using their eyeballs and common sense. Use your baseball experts, who watch the games. Instead, they gave us three paragraphs of mumbo jumbo to explain the formula, and 13 days later 67.5% of the players on the list were eliminated.