As we make our way through these rankings, let me just add in one thing. While relative value is something we have left for you to ultimately decide, there are certain players whom I consider keeper worthy and those that aren’t in spite of things like the Fantasy Value Above Replacement spreadsheet that we have been using. Sure, Yadier Molina may have outproduced Wilson Ramos according to our 2011 retro value, but am I keeping a catcher who is moving into his ninth season and will turn 30 years old at the All Star break because suddenly, out of the blue, he doubled his home run production last year? Probably not. It’s very difficult for me to think that a player who put up near identical numbers for his first seven seasons, suddenly can double his ISO mark in his eighth year and maintain that as his future level of production. I see it more as a statistical anomaly than anything else. Therefore, like each and every year prior, I would not even consider keeping Molina and subsequently must leave him off these rankings.
So today, I’ll throw out a few names of players to continue what we’ve done and tomorrow will finish it off with a few honorable mentions. There will be some players left off this list, but again, we’re calling them keeper rankings and not every player is worth keeping.
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