This seemed like an easy assignment: Rank the top 10 players in baseball right now.
What does that mean? If it's right now, as in you have to play a bunch of vampires who are so good they don't even use gloves ... Well, if that game is to be played today, Mike Trout couldn't play. He's hurt. So let's approach this with a little more flexibility than that. Still, it's a difficult list to compile. There are a lot of great players.
In fact, I'm really confident with only my No. 1 guy. After that ... well, I think we're open for debate. My list:
10. Aaron Judge, RF, New York Yankees: Emperor: Come to the dark side. Good. Good! Feel the hate flow through you ...
Look, of course it's way too early to rank Judge this high. He just crossed 300 plate appearances. Heck, Glenallen Hill once hit .350/.395/.643 over a 301-PA stretch.
Judge, however, is not Glenallen Hill. He has been the best position player in the game so far. As big as he is, he plays a pretty good right field. His learning curve at the plate has been remarkable. He's on pace for more than 100 walks, which is why even as his batting average likely falls, he'll maintain a high OBP. So with apologies to Kris Bryant and Nolan Arenado, I'm all-in with the big guy.
9. Josh Donaldson, 3B, Toronto Blue Jays: Tough call here between Donaldson, Arenado and Bryant. But here are the WAR totals the past three seasons:
I think you have to go with Donaldson. He has been better despite missing more than a month this season with a calf injury. If that's enough to knock him out of your top 10, I understand. He has been great when he has played this year -- .280/.379/.536 -- so even at 31, I don't see any sign of decline in ability. Long term, you obviously pick Arenado or Bryant, but for the rest of 2017 I'd take Donaldson.
With Arenado, you're buying into the defense while ignoring the Coors Field inflation. Even with that inflation, his .343 OBP doesn't come close to what Donaldson or Bryant put up. Consider that just since 2010 there have been 19 Rockies seasons in which a player posted a .350 OBP. In that park, it's just not that special. Heck, he's only fifth on his own team this season. I don't mean to criticize him, because the defense and power certainly make him an MVP candidate. I just think Donaldson is tiny bit better.
As for Bryant, he hasn't been quite as good as he was last season, and for the second year in a row he's not hitting with runners on base. He's at .094 with two outs and runners in scoring position, .162 in late and close situations and .152 in high-leverage spots. Those are small at-bat totals, but when considering the cream of the crop, it's enough to knock him out of the top 10.
8. Bryce Harper, RF, Washington Nationals: The obvious red flag here is a mediocre 2016 season, but he had a monster 2015 MVP season and is healthy again and having another MVP-caliber campaign. Harper's 2015 is the only non-Trout season since 2012 to lead FanGraphs WAR, so he's probably the one player who could potentially challenge Trout on a one-year basis. He excels at the two most important things on offense: getting on base and hitting for power. But he's not an elite defensive right fielder, and his baserunning has been oddly poor this year as he's not stealing bases and has taken the extra base just 35 percent of the time. It's possible he's just being conservative to avoid injury, or maybe he's losing a step.
7. Jose Altuve, 2B, Houston Astros: His offensive numbers are keeping pace with last year, proving the increased power and walk rates were a real improvement. A second baseman with 20-25 home runs, a .390 OBP, 25-30 stolen bases, solid defense and excellent durability? Thank you very much. A minor concern is his strikeout rate is up, but for him that means he's still one of the best contact hitters in the game. He has produced in big situations -- .483 in late and close appearances, .340/.404/.520 in high-leverage situations -- and if you want to consider intangibles, he's an 80 on the 20-to-80 scouting scale.
6. Corey Seager, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers: Where to rank all the gifted young shortstops? In April, it appeared Francisco Lindor was making The Leap, adding power to his otherwise sterling game, but the hits haven't fallen since and his OBP is way too low for top-10 consideration. Carlos Correa had a poor April but has been tearing it up ever since. Xander Bogaerts is hitting for average but not the power of the others and is a step slow on defense. Seager, meanwhile, is building on his impressive rookie season with a .400 OBP and solid-to-average defense. I'd like to see him pull the ball more to tap into his power (he has yet to pull a home run all season), but it's hard to argue that his approach isn't working.
6A. Carlos Correa, SS, Houston Astros: OK, so I'm cheating and turning this into a top-11 list. Correa had a miserable first three weeks, but he bounced back to hit .386 with 15 extra-base hits in May. I think he moves to third base in a few years, but his range is OK for now, and his power numbers should improve in the future as he adds strength and learns to lift the ball a little more.
5. Chris Sale, SP, Boston Red Sox: Sale has transitioned to the media bubble of Boston without any effect on his numbers, with a strikeout rate topping 35 percent. He and Max Scherzer are both above 35 percent, something only Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson have done. He's limiting home runs better than he had the past couple of seasons, even as homers across the league have gone up. His strand rate is a little low, which is why his ERA is higher than his FIP, and there's that blip in the second half of 2015 when he posted a 4.33 ERA. But that was two years ago, and he's more dominant than he has ever been. This looks like the year he'll finally win a Cy Young Award.
4. Max Scherzer, SP, Washington Nationals: Maybe I'm overrating him a bit as pitching in the NL East the past two seasons helps his numbers. But he seems to have taken his game to a new level, eliminating some of the home run problems that plagued him in the first half of 2016 while posting career bests in strikeout rate and batting average allowed. He's durable, working on his ninth straight season of 30 starts and leading the NL innings last season and this one. I love that he pitches with attitude and intensity. You can certainly argue Sale is ahead of him -- what would Sale do in the NL? -- but Scherzer's consistency gives him the slight edge for me.
3. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, Arizona Diamondbacks: After a bit of a down season for him in 2016, Goldschmidt is back to mashing, leading the NL in OBP and OPS. You have to be pretty awesome to rank this high as a first baseman, but part of Goldschmidt's awesomeness is, like Trout, that he does everything well. He's a plus defender at first and one of the best baserunners in the game. He's 66-for-80 as a base stealer the past three seasons (only six players have more steals) and takes the extra base 59 percent of the time compared with a league average of 40 percent. He doesn't say much, but his game speaks to his greatness.
2. Clayton Kershaw, SP, Los Angeles Dodgers: I'm not completely comfortable with this, as Kershaw has looked human this season with a career high already in home runs allowed. He missed some time last year with a back injury, although there is no indication health has anything to do with the home run problems this year. His strikeout-to-walk ratio isn't as insane as last year's 15.6 ratio, but it's still among the best in baseball. There's certainly an argument for Sale or Scherzer at this moment, but I'll stick with Kershaw's seven-year track record as the best in the game and the best since peak Pedro.
1. Mike Trout, CF, Los Angeles Angels: Trout hasn't played since May 28 and still ranks in the top 10 in WAR among position players. He was in the midst of his best season with a more aggressive approach early in the count that suggests that some of the improvement was real and not a small-sample-size hot streak. In his five-plus seasons in the majors, he already has accumulated 51.9 WAR, more than many Hall of Famers, and next season he'll pass guys such as Willie Stargell, Mike Piazza, Yogi Berra and Harmon Killebrew. He's the best in the game. But you already knew that.