{"id":500,"date":"2008-07-10T19:37:02","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T18:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=500"},"modified":"2008-07-10T19:38:34","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T18:38:34","slug":"europes-top-fifty-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s top fifty teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mister-Baseball.com, the premier website on European baseball, runs an interesting feature in which they put together a list of the top fifty teams throughout Europe<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 As they admit, this is something of an imperfect science.\u00c2\u00a0 You cannot simply look at a Dutch team’s record and compare it to a team from the Czech Republic on a like-for-like basis.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Each European league is of a slightly different standard; the best team in one league might not make it into the top five of another.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean that compiling a ranking system is a fruitless task though.\u00c2\u00a0 Mister-Baseball factors in the relevant strength of each league (which is subjective to a degree) and then works from there.\u00c2\u00a0 More to the point, this isn’t a case of Mister-Baseball putting together a definitive, unquestionable ranking list.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s intended as a guide and something to spark debate.<\/p>\n

They updated the list\u00c2\u00a0on Wednesday\u00c2\u00a0and it’s good to see that two British teams are included.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve been following Joe’s posts about the National Baseball League, you\u00c2\u00a0may well be able to guess which teams they are.\u00c2\u00a0 The London Mets have literally been unbeatable so far this season and they rank twentieth on the list.\u00c2\u00a0 The Manchester Eagles are one place behind.<\/p>\n

The Netherlands provides five of the top twenty teams, including the first-placed Corendon Kinheim, with the strength of the\u00c2\u00a0German, Italian and Spanish leagues also being recognised.\u00c2\u00a0 What really makes you sit up and take notice is the breadth of countries that are represented.\u00c2\u00a0 From Belgium to Belarus, Romania to Russia, and Sweden to Slovakia; baseball is truly a European sport.<\/p>\n

While the Mister-Baseball ranking list is a great discussion starter, the best way to settle the arguments over which league tops the rest is via a well-organised, regular European league.\u00c2\u00a0 The IBAF’s plans<\/a> to introduce such a competition are very exciting and European baseball fans will all be waiting impatientily for them to come to fruition in the near future.\u00c2\u00a0 2010 is the projected start date and it can’t come soon enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mister-Baseball.com, the premier website on European baseball, runs an interesting feature in which they put together a list of the top fifty teams throughout Europe.\u00c2\u00a0 As they admit, this is something of an imperfect science.\u00c2\u00a0 You cannot simply look at a Dutch team’s record and compare it to a team from the Czech Republic on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}