On MLB Network, they are in the middle of their Top Ten Right Now, ranking the top ten players for each position in the Majors. On Thursday night, they did both the right fielders and left fielders. Gregory Polanco wasn’t even mentioned for right field, which shouldn’t be a surprise based on how deep the position is and his prolonged slump, plus no track record. For left fielders, Starling Marte was ranked fourth overall. Brian Kenny, who hosts the show, said he could see Marte moving up to the top spot in next year’s show.
Other rankings from the experts on the show had Marte all over the place and while the panel of Mike Petriello from Fangraphs, Vince Gennaro from SABR and Bill James didn’t give their top tens, they did all comment on Marte. Petriello has him in the top two, while James only seems to see Marte’s BB/SO rate and ignores everything else, so he didn’t even rank him for the second straight year. Gennaro said he had him in his top ten, but near the bottom. The co-host of the show with Brian Kenny was Eric Byrnes, who ranked Marte sixth. Kenny had him second overall, trailing only Alex Gordon.
Coming into last year, Marte was ranked sixth overall, so he has moved up the list. He ended up hitting .291/.356/.453 in 2014, stealing 30 bases and posting a 5.6 WAR, which ranked eighth in the National League.
Last week, the show named Jordy Mercer the sixth best shortstop in baseball and Andrew McCutchen was named the best center fielder.