With all the commotion of the seven-game NHL championship series, the thrilling NBA playoffs, US Open, and the largest sporting event in the entire world, The World Cup all going on at the same time, is anybody actually watching baseball?
Rank (Pv) |
Team |
Record |
Comments |
| 1 (3) |  |
48-25 | The Tigers are getting some overdue respect. They’ve have had the best record in baseball for five out of the last six Power Rankings reports. This is the first time they’ve occupied the numero uno. On an individual note, Magglio Ordonez has quietly re-emerged as force to be reckoned with, leading Detroit in hitting (.307), HR (15), RBI (52), hits (82), and OPS (.883). |
| 2 (2) |  |
46-25 | Ozzie’s going off the deep end, but the Sox seem to thrive under his eccentric style of leadership. They’ve won 6 in a row, all against teams in the playoff hunt. |
| 3 (1) |  |
44-27 | Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez have combined for 16 wins so far on the season. For more on the future Hall of Famers, read my other articles. |
| 4 (4) |  |
42-28 | Trot Nixon has always been one of my favorite players in the game. He’s the kind of player who looks like he would have fit in just fine whether he was playing ball in the 1920s, the 1960’s, or the 21st century. The career .282 hitter is thriving in his everyday role, hitting .333 with 6 HR and 39 RBI. |
| 5 (5) |  |
40-30 | I said at the beginning of the year that it would take bird flu to keep the Red Sox ahead the Yankees. Well… I think A-Rod got it. He’s hitting just .220 in June, with almost three times as many strikeouts as RBI (19 Ks, 7 RBI). |
| 6 (6) |  |
42-28 | Chicago groundskeepers will be kept busy cleaning red feathers and blood off of the pitcher’s mound. Cards pitchers were slaughtered for 33 runs in two games against the reigning champs. |
| 7 (7) |  |
39-32 | A lot of weight is being placed on the shoulders of AJ Burnett, due to return from the DL shortly. Manager John Gibbons said, “I think everything is kind of riding on how Burnett does.” |
| 8 (12) |  |
39-33 | Nick Swisher leads the A’s in all offensive categories, and I do mean all: games, at-bats, hits, runs, homeruns, runs batted in, 2B, total bases, walks, strikeouts, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. |
| 9 (8) |  |
39-33 | Ken Griffey Jr tied Mike Schmidt for 11th on the all time homeruns list when he jacked his 548th against the Mets. |
| 10 (10) |  |
38-34 | Gary Matthews Jr has turned into one badass Texas Ranger, leading the team in hitting (.337), on-base percentage (.391), slugging percentage (.552), 2B (25) and 3B (4). Chuck Norris would be proud. |
| 11 (11) |  |
37-35 | An article quotes Ozzie Guillen as saying that Astros’ manager Phil Garner treated him like some “crazy Venezuelan man,” during last year’s World Series. I have a hard time seeing what the problem is, because that’s exactly what Ozzie is. |
| 12 (13) |  |
38-33 | Mike Piazza is a career .340 hitter with 10 HR in interleague games, showing that he might be a perfect candidate to DH in the AL for the last couple years of his career. |
| 13 (9) |  |
36-35 | It figures that as soon as I get on the Dodgers’ bandwagon they lose 10 out their next 14 games. Completely unrelated to the team’s success (or lack thereof), it’s good to see an organization that hasn’t given in to the temptation to name their stadium after a beer company, auto manufacturer, corporate retail mega-chain, or insurance company whose CEO just awarded himself a $30 million bonus at the expense Joe Average. |
| 14 (14) |  |
36-36 | Miguel Batista has gotten blown up in the month of June, going 1-3 with an ERA of 7.77. |
| 15 (15) |  |
36-36 | The NL West is a funny division. At the beginning of the season they all stunk. Then it seemed they all caught fire at the same time and all of a sudden all five teams had winning records, the only division in baseball that could make that claim. And, as quickly as that had happened, all five teams cooled off and settled in around .500. Right now, Arizona, San Fran, and Colorado all have the exact same record, and the Dodgers only have one more win. |
| 16 (16) |  |
35-37 | Albert Pujols has been injured for three weeks and finally somebody has surpassed him in RBI and tied him in HR. Ryan Howard hit his 24th and 25th homeruns on Tuesday against the Yankees, bringing his RBI total up to 65. In other news, Sal Fasano still has the best mustache in baseball. |
| 17 (22) |  |
36-37 | The Mariners own a couple interesting RBI stats: Kenji Johjima leads all rookies with 39 RBI. Raul Ibanez is 2nd among all MLB outfielders in RBI with 56. Now, if the M’s could just find a way to beat the A’s. They’re 1-9 against Oakland, 35-28 against the rest of the league. |
| 18 (21) |  |
35-35 | Has anybody noticed that Minnesota has two outfielders with girl’s names? No? Most people probably haven’t noticed that they’re coming off an 8 game winning streak either. |
| 19 (17) |  |
36-36 | Colorado has played well as of late, winning 9 out of their last 15 games, but they’ve been unable to win the close games in the late innings. In the last three weeks they’ve lost 7 games by two runs or less. |
| 20 (18) |  |
36-37 | During the month of June, Milwaukee is only hitting .235 as a team, lowest in the majors. |
| 21 (19) |  |
32-39 | Eric Wedge said earlier in the season that he wasn’t considering it, but Victor Martinez really needs to spend more time at the plate and less time behind it. The Tribe’s backstop has made 5 errors and only thrown out 15% of basestealers. |
| 22 (23) |  |
33-40 | The Orioles have to be very happy with Chris Ray’s performance this year. He’s converted all 18 save opportunities with an ERA under 3.00. |
| 23 (26) |  |
30-38 | Rookie Dan Uggla is hitting .406 with runners on base, powering the Fish to win 9 in a row. Maybe now that the NBA playoffs are over South Floridians can start paying attention to their other professional team with a championship ring. |
| 24 (24) |  |
32-42 | Alfonso Soriano will either be a coveted free-agent this coming off-season or a building block for the Nationals to build their franchise on and escape the ghosts of their Expos heritage. Soriano has averaged about 35 homeruns per season since 2001, and so far this year he has 24 to go along with 51 RBI. |
| 25 (25) |  |
32-40 | What a difference winning makes. Last year, you heard nothing but good things about Chone Figgins–he was the sparkplug, the team MVP, the on- and off-field leader, the gold-glove caliber utility-man (only 10 errors total, at 6 different positions). This year, he’s been accused of dogging it, his batting average is down 35 points under his career, and he’s already made 11 errors. |
| 26 (20) |  |
30-42 | Atlanta’s bullpen can be blamed for a great deal of their problems, with an ERA of 5.30, worst in the National League. |
| 27 (27) |  |
31-41 | Rocco Baldelli has looked great since his (much delayed) return from the DL. He’s hitting .370 with 2 homeruns, 5 doubles, and an OPS over 1.000. However, he’s yet to attempt a steal, so it’s too early to say with any certainty how confident he is on his new knee. |
| 28 (28) |  |
26-39 | Greg Maddux started out the season hot, but since then he hasn’t looked good. For the month of June he had a 1-3 record with an ERA of 6.20. |
| 29 (29) |  |
28-43 | Mike Gonzalez has looked particularly good so far in June, saving 6 games with an ERA of 2.45. The Pirates would probably be stupid to trade him, but a lot of playoff contending teams could use help at the back end of their bullpen. |
| 30 (30) |  |
21-49 | Emil Brown leads the team with an OPS of .740. Only 6 teams in baseball have a team OPS lower than the Royals highest player. |
One reply on “MLB Power Rankings for June 22nd- 2006”
White Sox I think Ozzie Guillen has completely lost it. He brings up a pitcher to intentionally hit someone. When the pitcher gets the guy out, Guillen goes crazy.
When he gets criticized for the move, he calls sportswriter Jay Mariotti a “fag.”
We all used to love Ozzie’s crazy antics, but now, I think we’re getting sick of him. He’s lucky he won the World Series last year. If the Sox sucked, he would be gone.
On a side note: I love the comment about the two Twins outfielders having girls names. I never thought of Torii Hunter and Shannon Stewart in that way before. Hahaha.