Red Sox Fantasy League Rankings Drop, but one player zooms UP
By Earl Nash
The Fantasy League savants at ESPN* have had a second chance to rank MLB players and “Upon further review…” 10 Red Sox made it onto their Top 250, but only three are rated higher now. Mike Aviles made the biggest leap on the rankings, a 99 point increase from 297 to 198. Of all MLB shortstops Aviles he placed 17th, followed by 18th Marco Scutaro and 19th Jed Lowrie.
The deepest plunge was 116 slots from 70th to 186th by, funeral drum roll…Carl Crawford.
Due to his injury, Ellsbury dropped 100 slots from 8th to 108th.
The rest were minor changes with two trade candidates sliding downward: Youkilis -32 and Beckett -37.
Pedroia (9th) and Cano (8th) were the only two AL East players in the current Top 10 of the 250 best.
[latest ranking on left; April ranking in parenthesis; change since April to right of name.]
9. (15) Dustin Pedroia +6
15. (14) Adrian Gonzalez -1
41. (66) David Ortiz +15
76. (56) Jon Lester -20
108. (8) Jacoby Ellsbury -100
127. (95) Kevin Youkilis -32
140. (103) Josh Beckett -37
186. (70) Carl Crawford -116
198. (297) Mike Aviles +99
248. (246) Alfredo Aceves -2
"The seven experts* still have faith in Albert Pujols; he was downgraded from #2 to #11 best in MLB. Josh Hamilton improved his standing from #40 to #6."
Changes in all 250 MLB rankings from April to current are here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=May2012ranks250
*The rankers: Fantasy analysts Matthew Berry (MB), Eric Karabell (EK), Tristan H. Cockcroft (TC) and AJ Mass (AJM), fantasy editor Brendan Roberts (BR), and the Answer Guys’ Dave Hunter (DH) and Shawn Cwalinski (SC).
For daily rankings by ESPN, go here: http://games.espn.go.com/flb/playerrater
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