Phillies Land 4 on SNTs Top 50 MLB Players List

Sporting News Today has been chock full of Phillies goodness recently and in today's issue released the results of a recent poll on Major League Baseball's best players. According to the daily news item, 100 Hall of Famers, major award winners, and other personalities voted. Everyone can probably guess #1 (Albert Pujols, duh). To the delight of Philadelphia fans, the Phillies were well represented. Four made the cut. It's probably pretty easy to guess who. Click the picture to find out. I highlighted them so you can find them quickly.

Sporting News Today published a poll on the Top 50 players in MLB. Four Phillies made the cut.

For those of you allergic to clicking, the Phillies voted on the list are 2B Chase Utley (6th), 1B Ryan Howard (11th), SS Jimmy Rollins (15th), and SP Cole Hamels (49th). That's right, the Phillie have three of the 15 best players in MLB right now. Thank God they won the World Series last year or they'd definitely be seen as underachievers. Two of these rankings surprised me. First, even after a down 2008 season (and a crappy start to '09) Rollins is still mentioned, and in the first half. Second, Hamels at 49? That seems low after an amazing fall run. I think between 33-39 was more appropriate. To me, he's as valuable (or as good) as Dan Haren (33rd) and Jake Peavy (38) and I'd definitely take Hamels over Chad Billingsley (42), Cliff Lee (43), Roy Oswalt (46), and Carlos Zambrano (48). I know positionally they arent't the same, but how much longer is Carlos Delgado going to be overrated? Is he really the 47th best player right now?

If I can count correctly, then (surprise, surprise) the two New York teams lead the way. The Mets somehow manage to get six players in the Top 50. I think some people would take issue with that, based on on-the-field results. As in, there haven't been any since a N.L. East Title in 2006. Here are your "amazing" Mets: Johan Santana (#3), David Wright (#13), Jose Reyes (#22), Carlos Beltran (#23), Francisco Rodriguez (#34), and Delgado. The Yankees have five players listed: Alex Rodriguez (#2), Derek Jeter (#8), Mariano Rivera (#9), Mark Teixeira (#17), and C.C. Sabathia (#29). Those two teams along should prove that (A) baseball is a team game and you don't need a plethora of superstars to win and (B) some of these players may be overrated because of the city (team) they play in (for).

Other teams of note include the Red Sox (four on the list), Braves (two), Marlins (one), and Nationals (zero). Poor Washington.