Kevin Youkilis: Horrible Looking Muppet Monster and Nightmare Fuel
Every month or so during the baseball season I will be making a list of the best Jewish players in Major League Baseball. This will be called The MLB Chosen People Power Rankings, as you see in the headline.
Because I’m a lazy asshole and I didn’t think of the idea until last night, the first post, which is a pre-season post, is coming at you about a week into the season. Deal with it. I’d do this with basketball too, but I think you be tired of seeing the list go Ama’re, Omar Casspi and Jordan Farmer.
#1 Kevin Youkilis, 3B, Boston Red Sox: I suspect that the main fight will be over the top spot and debate over who is better, Youk, The Greek God Of Walks, or Ryan Braun, The Hebrew Hammer. I lean towards Youk for his superior on base percentage and his ability to play solid defense at both first and third while Braun can only bumble around in left field.
#2 Ryan Braun, LF, Milwaukee Brewers: I went over the reasons why Youk is better than Braun, but Braun can hit like a mofo. He does have Youks insane plate discipline, but few do. He’ll hit .300 and 30 homers and no one will complain about that. One advantage he does have over Youk is that he’s a good looking dude whereas Kevin Youkilis looks like a cross between a biker and some sort of horrible muppet.
#3 Ian Kinsler, 2B, Texas Rangers: I feel like this guy is incredibly underrated and he is coming of a bizarre pair of season where he managed to go from 31 homers to 9 and actually improve on offense and be named an All-Star. Swapping 21 homers for 55 points of on base percentage may not get you any girls (chicks dig the long ball) but avoiding outs is the key to baseball and I’d much rather have the guy with the .382 mark over the .327 mark regardless of anything else.
#4 Ike Davis, 1B, New York Mets: I actually forgot about him on the first draft of this, so my apologies to Mr. Davis. Its not that I forgot he was Jewish, its more I forgot he was a player and I forgot who is on the Mets. He was a rookie last year and put up solid numbers, but his prodigious power numbers in the minors have a lot of people thinking he could make the leap to battle with Youk and Braun at the top of this list. He has an added bonus of playing for the Mets, which should boost his popularity even if he ends up as an Andy LaRoche type player.
#5 Danny Valencia, 3B, Minnesota Twins: Another solid rookie from last year who put up a nice line of .311/.351/.448 in 85 games. He only hit 7 homers, but if you get that over a full season he’ll hit like 12, which is at least not embarrassing. Still, the average is great and OBP solid. Twins fans are just happy that Nick Punto isn’t there. Jewish baseball fans should be happy that there are 5 Jewish starting positional players in the majors and they’re all good.
#6 Jason Marquis, SP, Washington Nationals: Imagine my surprise when I picked up my annual copy of Baseball Prospectus and read that Jason Marquis is slated for the Nats rotation. Injuries and playing for the horrid team Washington will knock you right of the map. He’s a solid innings eater when healthy, and he’s supposedly healthy…so yeah. He’s currently 5th all time in wins and strikeouts for Jewish major leaguers. Which really means Jewish kids have crappy arms. Where’s the next Koufax already?
#7 Craig Breslow, RP, Oakland Athletics: Why yes, the talent pool of Jewish baseball players is just deep enough to avoid having a lefthanded relief specialist in the top five. At least he’s a good one who sported ERA’s of 3.01 and 2.60 the last two years. Not to mention that his double degrees molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale make him the smartest man in all of baseball, if not all of professional sports.
#8 Scott Feldman, SP, Texas Rangers: He’s a starting pitcher, which is a plus, and he’s had exactly one good year (2009). He was terrible last year and everyone expects him to be terrible again this year. He’ll probably be bounced out of the rotation before long. Poor guy. You never know what could happen, the Rangers could smarten up and put Neftali Feliz in the rotation and put Feldman in the bullpen where he rediscovers he’s cut fastball and becomes the Jewish Mariano Rivera. One can dream…
#9 Ryan Kalish, OF, Boston Red Sox: Kalish has been compared frequently to another Jewish outfield from Red Sox history, the great Gabe Kapler. Kapler won the heart of Red Sox fans by not playing on Yom Kippur, hustling, posing half naked in a body building magazine and being in the outfield when the Sox won for the first time in 86 years. This is not fair to Ryan Kalish, who has no chance of recapturing that magic, but, unlike Kapler, he actually has a chance to be a solid player. He put up lines of .293/.409/.527 and .294/.359/.476 last year in AA and AAA before being called up to the majors. If he ever gets a chance a regular playing time he could be very good center fielder.
#10 John Grabow, RP, Chicago Cubs: Grabow is like a terrible version of Breslow. He’s another lefty relief specialist, but he can’t get lefties out. Or righties. Given his ERA of 7.36 he would likely have trouble getting someone with no hands at all out. On top of that he went Stanford versus Yale. And nobody has ever called him the smartest man in baseball.
#11 Sam Fuld, OF, Tampa Bay Rays: A 29 year old with 146 at bats in the majors. At 5’10 he’s also very small. He’s also very versatile and plays hard, which really adds up to him being more of a fan favorite than a solid baseball player. Still he did hit .299/.409/.412 in 115 at bats for the Cubs in 2009. So there’s a chance he helps out Tampa and becomes something more than the gritty fan favorite on the end of the bench who you never want to play more than 25 games.
Ryan Braun is a dream boat.
