Okay, so, I’ve been messing around with this baseball stuff, specifically trying to rank the first basemen for the Tennessee team. I started this whole thing at the beginning of the 2024 season, and I gotta say, it’s been a bit of a ride.
I started by looking at the players we had returning this year. The big names that caught my eye were Blake Burke, our first baseman, and Christian Moore, the second baseman. These guys are seriously good. I mean, Burke even hit a home run in one of the games against Auburn, breaking some kind of record for the team. It was a solo shot in the fourth inning, and they won that game 12-2. Pretty awesome, right?
So, after seeing all that, I dove into the stats and the news. I found this site, TN Varsity, that had a list of the top baseball players in the Class of 2026. I spent hours cross-referencing their list with what I was seeing in the games. Then I stumbled upon another list, a top 5 first basemen list, where this guy Pete Alonso was ranked number one. They call him “The Polar Bear.” I compared his stats with Burke’s, just to get a better sense of where our guy stood.
Then I decided to go even deeper. I found this list of prospects for the team. Drew Beam, who’s supposed to be our star pitcher, was ranked 14th. Christian Moore was way down at 67th. That got me thinking about how these rankings actually work.
I kept updating my own rankings every month. I watched a bunch of games, read every article I could find about these guys, and even tried to understand the strategies the coaches were using. It was a lot of work, but I really wanted to get these rankings right.
- Watched tons of games.
- Read articles about the players.
- Compared stats between different players.
- Updated my rankings every month.
By the end of the season, I had this whole system down. I felt like I really understood what made a good first baseman and how our guys stacked up. It wasn’t just about hitting home runs, though that’s always cool. It was about consistency, defense, and how they worked with the rest of the team.
So, yeah, that’s how I spent the last few months. It’s been a fun project, and I learned a ton about baseball and these players. Hope you guys find it interesting too!
