FanPost Friday: Rank the MLB teams from 1 to 30

Admit it: there are teams you love to hate, and teams you hate to love. I think it’s safe to say every baseball fan has one or two teams that manage to find a soft spot in their hearts, even if they wouldn’t call themselves a fan of that team (hello, Mariners).

With this in mind, we decided to borrow an idea from our Twins sister site Twinkie Town, and invite our readers to tell us how they’d rank all 30 major league teams.

We’ll be doing these FanPost prompts every Friday, hoping to inspire the readership to share their voices with us. What better way to hone those skills than with a list? If there’s one thing people on the internet love, it’s getting to share their opinions!

With that in mind, here are the rules for crafting your lists.

1. The Rays MUST be number one. This should go without saying, seeing as this is a Rays website. Any list with another team at number one won’t be counted in the end tally.
2. You have to write something. As tempting as it might be to just put together a 30 team list, you need to include your reasoning. It can be as short as one sentence, or as long as you want. Have a personal reason for disliking the Padres? Tell us all about it. Did you have a dog named Rocky growing up and like the Rockies more as a result? That’s gold, include it.
3. No ties, and ALL 30 teams must be included. Sure, it’s easy to forget about those NL teams we rarely see, but the Brewers still exist, so they need to be on your list. If you’re having trouble, the easiest way to do it is put in the teams you like, and the ones you loathe in at the top and bottom, then fill out the middle with the ones you have no strong feelings about.
4. Keep it PG. We want you to have fun making these lists, and we want you to be honest, but try to keep the language friendly. We’ll be putting together a list of the best comments in a a master post of how you ranked the teams, so what you write might end up there.

This is a fun way to take shots at division rivals, or express your admiration for a scrappy underdog team you feel fondness for. We’ll keep submissions for this open until March 30th, but will also feature a new prompt next Friday.

If you’re ready to get started, head over to this page, then select “New FanPost” from the left column. After that it’s all up to you.

Happy list-making!