WMHS Baseball Top-10 Rankings comparison (7th edition)

The guy you want to listen to when it comes to sports is the guy who dedicates an abnormal amount of his time to each piece of the minutia involved. The guy who sacrifices eating and shaving to follow ERA’s and comparative batting average when facing righties versus lefties.

I like to think of myself as one of those guys, which would put me squarely in the company of WestMichiganHighSchoolBaseball.com (bookmark the URL so your fingers don’t cramp typing it). Now there’s a group of sports nerds in the best sense of the term. We should all be so lucky.

After the jump, we’ll discuss WMHSB’s Top-10 teams in West Michigan, and compare them to the Grand Rapids Press’s Top-10 teams.  The goal here is to paint a clear, yet perhaps dividedly so, picture of the high school baseball landscape in the greater Grand Rapids area.

Read on, gentle reader.  Read on.

West Michigan High School Baseball (dot) com (May 10)

1. Portage Northern – 21-0-1 and ranked #1 in the D1 Coaches Poll and #10 in the Midwest by USA Today
2. Portage Central – 17-1 and now ranked #2 in the D1 Coaches Poll
3. Forest Hills Central – 15-1 and a sure bet to wrap up the OK Black
4. Grand Ledge – 19-0 and likely to be unchallenged until the Diamond Classic
5. Hamilton – 15-2 and sitting alone atop the OK Green standings
6. Forest Hills Eastern – 15-2 and control their own destiny in the OK Gold
7. Hudsonville – 11-4 after beating Grandville twice
8. St. Joseph – 13-5 with two losses to Mattawan last week
9. East Grand Rapids – 9-6, probably the best 6-loss team in the state
10. Grand Rapids Christian – 10-3, lost 2 of 3 to East Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids Press (May 6)

1. Forest Hills Central
2. Hudsonville
3. Forest Hills Eastern
4. Hamilton
5. Rockford
6. Grand Rapids Christian
7. Jenison
8. Kenowa Hills
9. East Grand Rapids
10. Forest Hills Northern

WMA’s take:

As it has been all season, it’s Forest Hills Central at one level, and everyone else in the greater Grand Rapids area at various points of another level.  These guys are sick at every position.  Thing is, in baseball all it takes is one not-quite-excellent day and you can lose to anyone.  As good as they are, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that they are immune to this fact.

In their most challenging week of the season to date, Grand Rapids Christian met with a buzzsaw in East Grand Rapids.  The Pioneers uncorked their bats during the three-day doubleheader, but the Eagles managed to stave off the sweep in game-3.  Either way, WMHSB is right about East Grand Rapids — their record is incredibly deceiving.  These guys are as good as most anyone.  The scary thing is that they’re young, and steadily getting better.

Forest Hills Northern makes an appearance on the GRPress list, and rightfully so.  They’ll have a big test in front of them this Thursday, when they take on West Catholic in the high school baseball equivalent of a mid-major, heavyweight bout.  WMA bloggess HeatherASmith will be there to make sure everyone is on their best behavior.

Also, if you live in Portage, you’re one lucky sonofagun.  Two of the top teams in the state, right in your backyard.  Good stuff there.

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