It somehow left a fairly recognizable 5-foot-8 dude off the top 10 list … after a season in which he smoked 33 home runs … for the winningest team in the whole sport.
That would be the Braves’ dynamic second baseman, Ozzie Albies. And you know who noticed he missed that list? Pretty much the entire population of Georgia, for one thing. But also a bunch of people who hang out in Albies’ locker room. Imagine that.
THE ATHLETIC (TO CATCHER TRAVIS D’ARNAUD):“Do you ever watch MLB Network’s Top 10 Right Now shows?â€
D’ARNAUD:“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that.â€
TA:“Did you happen to catch the second-base show?â€
D’ARNAUD:“Yeah, Albies wasn’t on it.â€
TA:“So what was your reaction when you realized he wasn’t on it?â€
D’ARNAUD:“I was shocked. Really shocked. I mean, All-Star … 30 homers, 100 RBIs for a second baseman is usually pretty special. … Threat on the basepaths … great teammate … makes all the plays. I’m shocked.â€
TA:“Do you guys ever talk about it in the clubhouse?â€
D’ARNAUD:“Oh yeah. We joke around with him. We say: ‘You can’t even make the top 10,’ and stuff like that.â€
Hmmm, why do we think the “stuff like that†might be the best part? But whatever. By revealing this vital information, d’Arnaud had just blown Albies’ cover.
So when we asked the Braves’ second-base energizer this weekend if he was aware of those MLB Network top 10 shows, his initial reply was: “No.†But when he was asked, seconds later, where he guessed he’d finished on the second-base list, he smiled. The jig was up.
“I didn’t even make the list,†he fessed up. “I heard that.â€
What he wasn’t really certain about was who had ranked this list. We helpfully informed him that a computer — aka, The Shredder — had done that ranking. He didn’t seem that impressed by this innovative use of technology, for some reason.
“It’s a computer,†Albies retorted, not sounding like a huge fan of, say, Steve Jobs, Statcast or “The Matrix†movies. “So I don’t think the computer knows how to play a baseball game.â€
In The Shredder’s defense, we should acknowledge that the computer knows lots of stuff about baseball. It’s just that the only stuff it knows is what it was programmed to know.
So what was The Shredder programmed to weigh when it was spitting out top 10 lists for each position? We posed that question to MLB Network’s Research Department. We’ll give you the answer in a moment. But first …
