Article:The Powerless Rankings (4/10/08)

We all know and love (or possibly hate) the phenomenon known as Power Rankings. They provide just about anyone an opportunity to give their opinion on who the best teams are at one time  in any given league. But don’t we owe it to ourselves to know who the bad teams are as well? Sport Crack is proud to present a new weekly feature: The Powerless Rankings!

Rankings are done in reverse order, with 1 being the worst and 5 being the fifth worse… as if I needed to tell you. Rankings are also done on how the team is performing thus far with little to no regard of how they should be doing (I‘m looking at you Detroit). This is so the rankings will not be biased on previous years performance and will just be focused on the here and now. Oh, and please feel free to disagree vehemently. Thanks.

5. San Francisco Giants (3-6, LW: N/A) - The Giants pitching staff can be credited with the majority of the club’s three wins thus far. The offense? Well, the offense -- minus Bengie Molina -- cannot be credited with the wins. Unless you define credit as scoring 19 runs in 9 games. They did score 6 runs in the last two games though, so maybe they’ve finally gotten their act together.

Prognosis: Expect much of the same.

4. Houston Astros (3-7, LW: N/A) - It’s common knowledge the Astros have a strong offense. Too bad it hasn’t caught fire yet, because the pitching has done nothing to help matters. Although they didn’t let up too many runs, a mixture of mediocre pitching and mediocre batting will give you a mediocre performance for the first week. Hey, maybe Roger Clemens will come back mid-season to help them out... oh, that's right -- he's disgraced himself so badly he's unlikely to surface anywhere ever again. Or maybe he'll just be arrested for lying under oath... who knows. Too bad for the Astros, though.

Prognosis: Depending on when the offense decides to wake up -- don’t expect them to do much of anything.

3. Pittsburgh Pirates (3-5, LW: N/A) - Opposing offenses have scored a league high 54 runs against the Pirates pitching staff. Not to mention, they are 0-2 at home. If they can’t win at PNC park, than where can they win at? The offense has looked promising, though, so if they can get their pitching staff in order even just a tiny bit they could still turn it around.

Prognosis: Until their pitching staff realizes it’s not spring training anymore, expect the same as the previous eight games.

2. Washington Nationals (3-6, LW: N/A) - Sure, they started off great -- winning their first three games. Then they proceeded to drop their next six games. It’s not looking any better either, with the Braves coming to town on Friday for a trio of weekend games. Seriously though, six games in a row?

Prognosis: Upon breaking their slump, their still in the bottom third of the league.

1. Detroit Tigers (1-7, LW: N/A) - Speaking of six games in a row... I can’t remember any season in which a team that was supposed to be so good and looked so stacked on paper started so anemically. The good thing for them is they at least looked like the Tigers team they should have been in Wednesday’s game against the Red Sox. Is it just a slow start to the season or is this a legit preview of what’s to come from the Tigers -- the same team many people picked to win the World Series?

Prognosis: Barring half their team seemingly losing all of their baseball skill (Hmm, I wonder how that could happen)… expect them to be the Tigers of yore very, very soon.

Honorable mentions: Seattle Mariners, Atlanta Braves, and the (gasp) New York Mets