For the first time ever, ESPN aired its annual fantasy baseball rankings summit live on Periscope and Facebook on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, giving fans the unique perspective on how the Worldwide Leader in Sports convenes and constructs its player rankings right from its war room.
"Fans have asked us over the past few years about how the team crafts our official fantasy rankings for the season," Andrew Feldman, editorial product manager at ESPN, told Tech Times. "With hopes of giving them a unique look at how our process works, for the first time we utilized a number of social platforms to give fans the chance to watch us live and interact."
In addition to hashing out player rankings by position and overall, the ESPN Fantasy team also fielded questions on Facebook as part of its live give-and-take exchange with fantasy baseball owners who can't wait to play ball during the upcoming 2016 season.
So, when the dust cleared and each member of the ESPN Fantasy squad was tired of stating their case on behalf of certain players, this is how their Top 10 overall players' list was ranked.
Our #FantasyBaseball Top 10 overall: Trout, Goldschmidt, Kershaw, Harper, Donaldson, Altuve, McCutchen, Stanton, Arenado, Machado
— ESPN Fantasy Sports (@ESPNFantasy) January 27, 2016
It's hard to argue against Mike Trout being the top-ranked player entering the 2016 season. Hitting .299 with 41 home runs and 90 RBI in his fourth consecutive All-Star season in 2015, his record more than warrants making the Los Angeles Angels center fielder the top pick in your fantasy baseball draft.
Pretty cool that ESPN decided to open up its Fantasy war room to the public in such an interactive way. Perhaps it will follow that procedure with other fantasy sports moving forward.
