Last season piggy backed on work done by Bill James for pitchers and created a way to rank batters up to the day. The idea is similar to tennis rankings where the ranks change right after each tournament. It’s been a while since I looked at the ratings, so on a slow Friday afternoon, here are the rankings as of the morning of June 28, 2013.

I have no argument with the the top of the list. Cabrera, coming off a triple crown year and threatening to repeat that feat is clearly the best hitter in baseball. Joey Votto might be on top if he had not missed a big chunk of 2012 to injury. Yadier Molina leads the NL in hitting, and Buster Posey gets a big boost from playing in a ball park that kills offense. Mike Trout, although he has not been playing that long, puts up amazing numbers. It’s interesting that there are so many catchers and third basemen near the top of the list; those are positions not necessarily associated with great hitters.

I notice, too, that Manny Machado cracked the 500 point barrier, and Yasiel Puig is already well above 400. One criticism of the system is that young players rise too fast. Puig ranks 271, however, which seems about right; in other words, there are about nine players per team that rank higher than Puig. I’ll buy that for a rookie off to a great start.

So enjoy the rankings and let me know what you think.