Scherzer’s 300th K photo by The Real Youppi for TalkNats.
MLB Network’s annual Top 100 Players Right Now! program last night placed seven Washington Nationals in their Top-100 players and right-handed pitcher Max Scherzer was ranked fifth on their list. Scherzer, who ranked 11th on last year’s countdown, finished one spot ahead of the Houston Astros’ José Altuve and one spot behind the Cleveland Indians’ Francisco Lindor. If you follow the popular NavyYardNats on Twitter, he was none too happy about the Nats rankings.
The seven members of the Nationals who were named on the Top 100 list are Scherzer, Anthony Rendon ranked 21st, Juan Soto ranked 36th, Patrick Corbin ranked 78th, Stephen Strasburg ranked 80th, Trea Turner ranked 84th and Sean Doolittle ranked 89th. If you go by Fangraphs ratings for instance, Rendon ranks as the 11th highest in pre-season WAR ratings at +6.2. Bryce Harper coming back would make it eight.
The rankings show was hosted by MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger, alongside Ron Darling and Mark DeRosa, and the six-part series across three nights counted down the top players based on player performance over the past several seasons, with an emphasis on 2018 and projected 2019 performance. Base-running, defensive value and award finishes were all taken into account when evaluating players, including those returning from injury. Top 100 Players Right Now! featured a cumulative 219 All-Stars, 38 Gold Glove Awards, 29 World Series championships, 14 MVP Awards, 13 Cy Young Awards, seven batting championships, six #1 overall picks in the MLB Draft and three Roberto Clemente Awards.
“In the year of ‘The Opener’, we are talking about a guy who averages in the last six seasons 219 innings, 270 strikeouts, 2.81 ERA, struck out 300 batters this year,” Darling said of Scherzer. “And he’s only the fifth pitcher in the history of baseball to have five consecutive years where his WHIP is under 1.0. … He’s one of those pitchers where if you do what I do for a living, if you see his name on the ticket, you can’t wait for the game to start.”
An embeddable recap on Scherzer can be seen here. The ranking of the top-20 players for MLB Network’s Top 100 Players Right Now! is listed below and the complete ranking is available here:
Top 100 Players Right Now! 1-20:
1. Mike Trout, OF, Los Angeles Angels
2. Mookie Betts, OF, Boston Red Sox
3. Nolan Arenado, 3B, Colorado Rockies
4. Francisco Lindor, SS, Cleveland Indians
5. Max Scherzer, RHP, Washington Nationals
6. Jose Altuve, 2B, Houston Astros
7. Alex Bregman, 3B, Houston Astros
8. Christian Yelich, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
9. Jose Ramirez, 3B, Cleveland Indians
10. Jacob deGrom, RHP, New York Mets
11. J.D. Martinez, OF/DH, Boston Red Sox
12. Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees
13. Chris Sale, LHP, Boston Red Sox
14. Manny Machado, SS/3B, Free Agent
15. Bryce Harper, OF, Free Agent
16. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, St. Louis Cardinals
17. Freddie Freeman, 1B, Atlanta Braves
18. Joey Votto, 1B, Cincinnati Reds
19. Giancarlo Stanton, OF/DH, New York Yankees
20. Justin Verlander, RHP, Houston Astros
https://twitter.com/Nationals/status/1096242809957425152
