FanSided’s Crowdsourced 2012 MLB Power Rankings

Last week, I sent a survey out to the FanSided MLB team inviting any so daring writers to take on the daunting task of power ranking all 30 teams in advance of the 2012 season. The goal: to create a crowdsourced power ranking list for the coming year.

A dozen bold souls wrote in, comprising a full 360 check-offs. Now, the results are in.

Without further ado, here are our rankings.

Votes were scored on a 30-29-28… basis, with ties broken first by which team was ranked higher on a majority of ballots, then by which team had the highest ranking from its most optimistic voter.

1. Texas Rangers—338 (1 first-place vote)
2. New York Yankees—334 (5)
3. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—325 (2)
4. Detroit Tigers—319 (4)
5. Philadelphia Phillies—312
6. Tampa Bay Rays—300
7. Boston Red Sox—294
8. St. Louis Cardinals—257
9. Atlanta Braves—240
10. Miami Marlins—240
11. San Francisco Giants—239
12. Arizona Diamondbacks—237
13. Cincinnati Reds—230
14. Milwaukee Brewers—212
15. Toronto Blue Jays—200
16. Washington Nationals—197
17. Colorado Rockies—164
18. Cleveland Indians—140
19. Kansas City Royals—134
20. Los Angeles Dodgers—128
21. Chicago White Sox—104
22. Minnesota Twins—102
23. Pittsburgh Pirates—102
24. Oakland Athletics—82
25. San Diego Padres—78
26. Seattle Mariners—75
27. Chicago Cubs—70
28. New York Mets—67
29. Baltimore Orioles—42
30. Houston Astros—13

The Rangers have made it to the World Series two years in a row, and our writers think they’ll deserve to make it a hat trick in 2012 as Texas barely edges out the Yankees for the No. 1 seed in our power rankings. They were hardly the consensus pick (only one writer put them at the top of his ballot), but all but two voters put them in the top three and no one ranked them lower than No. 7. They’re the coalition top seed, if you will.

A few more initial thoughts: We’re quite high on the Angels and Tigers but more bearish than I expected on the Diamondbacks and Indians. The American League is clearly viewed as superior, with each of the top four teams and six of the top seven hailing from the Junior Circuit. It’s also interesting to me how many divisional clusters there are on this list: 12 of the 30 teams are immediately preceded or succeeded by one of their division rivals.

If you’re interested in the numbers behind the results, here are the mean rankings, the standard deviations of the rankings, and the highest and lowest rankings for each team:

Finally, here are our projected standings for each division, as derived from our big list: (playoff teams in bold, wild card winners in italics)

I could quibble with a few of these rankings, but overall I’d say we did a pretty good job. All that’s left now is to wait and see how the season plays out!

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