Here's the all-Powerball MLB lineup of your dreams
On Saturday night, the Multi-State Lottery association announced that the numbers for the record-breaking $949.8 million Powerball jackpot were 32, 16, 19, 57, 34 and 13. To win the jackpot, the winning ticket would have had to have all five of the first numbers (in any order) and have 13 as the sixth (the Powerball number). No ticket met these requirements.
To put that jackpot in perspective, $949.8 million is more $17.3 million more than the record-breaking contract that Giancarlo Stanton signed last season ($325 million), and the contracts that David Price ($217 million), Zack Greinke ($206.5) and Jason Heyward ($184 million) signed this season ... combined.
If someone had won and chose to take the winnings in the form of one cash payment, the lump sum would have been in the neighborhood of $558 million, which is more than both of Alex Rodriguez's monster contracts ... combined.
According to Forbes, $949.8 million is more valuable than 14 MLB franchises (not accounting for the lesser lump sum or for taxes), something that more than a few baseball fans were dreaming of doing before the numbers were even read:
Hopefully nobody wins the powerball. Payout is almost enough to buy an mlb team. That's when I'll play.
— Jared (@BranginDaHeat) January 10, 2016
Winning power ball and bringing an MLB team to Indiana
— B???ˇá? (@DowellBrendan) January 10, 2016
Might have to start a @mlb team in #NewJersey when I win the #900Million on the #PowerBall #Winning #NeedTeamName
— Richie Navarro (@RichieNavarro3) January 9, 2016
And -- if one of those fans turned out to be astronomically fortunate enough to win the $949.8 million jackpot and be able to purchase an MLB franchise -- we'd assume that they might have developed some sort of superstitious affinity for the numbers 32, 16, 19, 57, 34 and 13, so we went ahead and assembled a lineup of MLB players that hypothetical new owner would want to acquire, post haste:
1. Kolten Wong - 2B - #16
- Joey Votto - 1B - #19
- Bryce Harper - CF - #34
- Chris Davis - LF - #19
- Jose Bautista - RF - #19
- David Ortiz - DH - #34
- Manny Machado - 3B - #13
- Salvador Perez - C - #13
- Matt Carpenter - 3B - #13
Jose Fernandez - SP - #16
Jon Lester - SP - #34
Felix Hernandez - SP - #34
Chris Young - SP - #32
Alex Wood - SP - #57