Fantasy Baseball: Gutsiest Midseason Calls

As our regular readers know, we’re just finishing up our midseason baseball rankings right now by position. Certainly, it will be great to see how accurate our predictions were, and we will definitely be looking back on them at the end of the year to see how we did.

But some of our calls—for better or for worse—deserve a special mention. Of course, our rankings are based on how we believe the players will perform from the moment we submit them onward. And we’re talking about half a season here. Some insane things happen in half a season. If you had said to me before the season Alex Rios was going to be a top 5 outfielder in the first half—I’d have called you crazy. But you would have been right. So we’re going to go over, some of our gutsiest calls—where we’re either very high or very low on one player compared to the group. A quick shout out to acr, this article was his idea.

Although I haven’t posted our starting pitcher rankings yet—they’re in. So you’ll get a sneak preview of some of those.

And just to be clear, I solely determined which picks to include in here, so there may be some personal bias toward/against players I like/don’t like.

Ray

Carlos Guillen at No. 13 in 2B. He has Guillen ahead of Dustin Pedroia, Kelly Johnson and Orlando Hudson.

Orlando Cabrera at No. 9 in SS. He has Cabrera ahead of Marco Scutaro, Erick Aybar and Troy Tulowitzki.

Carl Crawford at 8 in OF. Behind Justin Upton. Wow.

Clayton Kershaw as his No. 7 starting pitcher. In front of Ubaldo Jimenez, Felix Hernandez and C.C. Sabathia. Ray even said, "I have a feeling I am higher on Kershaw than most…"

Ricky Nolasco at 21 over Zack Greinke, Yovani Gallardo and Tommy Hanson. I guess he has faith.

Jason

Ryan Theriot as his tenth second baseman and No. 8 shortstop. He’s got him ahead of Aaron Hill, Rickie Weeks and Stephen Drew.

Jason Bartlett at 9. Over Scutaro and Alexei Ramirez.

Shaun Marcum at 59. I’m guessing Jason was concerned about Marcum’s injury. Note that he has him behind C.J. Wilson, Clayton Richard and Jair Jurrjens.

Brian

Dan Uggla at 11 in second basemen, behind Ian Stewart, Howie Kendrick and Aaron Hill.

Brian: Jay Bruce at 16. To be honest, I could totally see it happening, despite my personal ranking of him at 45.

Magglio Ordonez at 44 behind Denard Span and Garrett Jones.

Matt Garza at 23 in front of Matt Cain, Francisco Liriano and Zack Greinke.

Seth

Adam LaRoche at No. 11, ahead of Billy Butler, Pablo Sandoval and Paul Konerko.

Ichiro Suzuki at 6. Didn’t realize I was alone on this one until everyone else’s rankings came in.

Shin-Soo Choo at 47 behind Marlon Byrd, B.J. Upton and Aubrey Huff.

Ted Lilly at 35 in front of Andy Pettitte, Chad Billingsley and Tim Hudson. Especially if he goes to the Mets I think he’ll have a huge second half.

Francisco Liriano at 11 over Chris Carpenter, David Price and Justin Verlander.