As you’ve seen, we’ve started to roll out our 2012 keeper rankings. Today we look at the top tier of shortstops, which includes two unsurprising names.

Troy Tulowitzki ($22)

It comes as no surprise that Tulowitzki is in the first tier. Over the past three seasons he has the eighth highest wOBA in baseball, behind only Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista, Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder and Kevin Youkilis. No shortstop comes within .20 points of Tulowitzki’s mark of .396. We’re talking keeper rankings, though, so what he did three years ago may not be relevant for 2012. Let’s take a look at last season. The 27-year old had another excellent season, hitting 30 home runs while driving in 105 runs. He doesn’t steal bases anymore, going from 20 in ’09 to nine in ’11, but when you have the power he does it’s a non issue. His strikeout rate was down while the walk rate ticked up. He reverted back to hitting more line drives and fewer ground balls, seeing his LD% jump from 15 to 19.

If patience is a virtue then Tulowitzki is one of the most virtuous players in the game. His Swing, O-Swing and Z-Swing percentages are all well below league average while his Contact, O-Contact and Z-Contact percentages are all above league average. When he sees a pitch he likes, he hits it. It truly is hard to find any flaw in his game. The only time he’s seemed human was May of this year when he put up a .196 BABIP and .278 wOBA. Take out that month and his seasonal wOBA jumps from the ~.380’s to .440. He finished the season as the 28th ranked player according to Yahoo!, which isn’t too far off from his 23rd place finish in 2010. I actually think our values have him ranked a tad low at 25th overall and $22. He’s just starting the prime seasons of his career and plays a premium position in a great hitter’s park. He’s going to remain in this top tier for the foreseeable future.

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I have a bit of an undesirable task of trying to make some kind of sense out of the third base mess from the past season. On the one hand, we have guys like Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright who are typically top shelf third basemen heading into the season. However, if you’ve looked over the FVARz database, you’ll notice their actual fantasy value relative to on-field performance was keeping company with Danny Valencia and Daniel Murphy. So what a top tier at third base for keeper value looks like is probably open to a great deal of debate.

Fortunately, what’s not debatable is who leads off the first tier, and that’s quite obviously Jose Bautista – who ranks a country mile (or should I say country click to honor our friends to the North) ahead of the rest of the pack. The big question after Bautista’s breakout 2010 is what he would provide as an encore, and to my surprise, he was every bit as good in 2011 (in fact, he was better if you count WAR at night to put you to sleep like I do). Bautista improved his batting average, his walk rate, and lowered his strikeout rate and while he was a little dinged up, he still managed to be the only player to hit better than .300, record 40 or more home runs and drive in and score more than 100 runs. He is one of the no-doubters in terms of keepers, certainly considering the dearth of talent at third base.

And now it gets interesting.

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Yesterday, we began the process of unveiling our 2012 keeper rankings here at RotoGraphs, starting with the first tier of catchers and National League outfielders. Today, we get to American League outfielders with tier numero uno.

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My 2012 2B keeper rankings begin today. The top tier players were the top 2Bs in 2011 and project to have the top fantasy talent looking forward (I will be using the talent rankings to create the 2B tiers). These 3 are good, so I will be looking deep for any troubling trends.

Dustin Pedroia (28 years old) – Dustin is one of the best players that contributes to all 5 standard fantasy stats. After having an injured left foot in 2010 that cost him half the season, he bounced back nicely in 2011.

I had to really look to find any real blemishes. The one trait that I have noticed is that his contact skills are on a bit of a decline (93% in 2009 to 87% in 2011). His strikeout rate has increased over that same time frame from 6.3% to 11.6%.

His walk rate though is also at an all time high (12%). It looks like he is being a more particular at the plate.

The change in discipline can also be seen with his FB%. It has gone from 41% to 33%, but his HR/FB has gone from 6% to 11%. In 2011, he hit less fly balls, but more of them left the yard for a career high 21 HRs. Generally, he is just showing signs of a maturing player with more walks, strikeouts and home runs.

He will be hitting at the top of a good lineup, so there will be plenty of Run and RBI opportunities. There is no reason to believe that Dustin will see any decline in 2012.

Ian Kinsler (29 years old) – Ian had a great season with 32 HRs and 30 SB. His value would have been much higher if his AVG had been better (0.255). Going into 2012, I could see him being the best 2B if he can combine both power and AVG at the plate.

The main drag for his value in 2011 was his AVG. His average was not down because of his K%, which was a career low (10%). It was down because of his 0.243 BABIP. Historically, Ian’s BABIP, raises and lowers opposite of his FB% and HRs. Here is a chart of BABIP, HR and FB% ordered by BABIP:

In the seasons he tries for more HRs (increase FBs), his AVG suffers (lower BABIP) and vise versa.

Ian is easily one of the top 2B in the league. The one knock I have is figuring out which Ian shows up. The one that hits 30 HRs with a 0.250 AVG or the one with 18 HRs and a 0.290 AVG. Maybe, it will be the magical season with 30 HRs and a 0.300 AVG.

Robinson Cano (28 year old): Robinson was himself in 2011. It was almost a mirror of his 2010 season.

The main trait dragging his fantasy value down, compared to the Kinsler and Pedroia, is his lack of speed. In 2011, he put up a respectable 8 SBs, which was 3 more than any of his previous seasons. If he is the top rated 2B in 2012, the ranking will hing on him putting up SBs in the 6 to 10 range vice the 3 he stole in 2010. It may not seem like that many SB, but these 3 2B are just that close in value.

Another key for Cano is where he bats in the Yankee lineup. In 2009, he batted equally in the 5th – 6th – 7th spots. In 2010 and 2011, he was normally in the 4th or 5th spots. It can be seen that his RBIs jumped from ~90 per year to ~110 per year. If he keeps this lineup position and A-Rod, Tex and the best of the Yankees continue to hit as in the past, he will be a great source of RBIs. If he is moved down in lineup (I don’t see much of a reason for a move) or those in front of him decline in talent (good chance), he may see his numbers decline.

Robinson is a top tier 2B, but normally in the past he had a near void in SBs. In 2011, he filled that void and his value increased. If he has some SBs in 2012, he will be an elite fantasy talent.

The fantasy season has largely drawn to a close — sure there’s Pick Six all the way until the final out — so it’s time to start thinking about the offseason. Here at RotoGraphs we’ll be unveiling our keeper rankings, tier by tier, position by position. For outfielders and pitchers, we’ll combine them at some point, too.

Here are your top tier National League outfielder keepers this offseason:

Matt Kemp
The number one producer in fantasy baseball last year according to Zach Sanders’ new calculator, Kemp had a season for the ages. One more home run and he would have had the fifth 40/40 season in the history of baseball. Even with slightly more power/speed combo players in baseball these days, it was an exemplary year. The mercurial 27-year-old center fielder put up career highs in hits, home runs, RBI, runs, walks, and stolen bases. That alone makes him a candidate for regression, but it’s nice to see what peripherals were actually in line with his career work. His strikeout rate, for one, improved over last year (23.1% this year, 25.4% last year) but really just settled into to his career rate (23.4%). Maybe his 10.7% walk rate won’t happen again (career 7.9%), but maybe it will. Kemp walked at about an average rate in the minor leagues and patience and power come with age. Speaking of power, his .262 ISO was a career high, but it comes off a steady three-year improvement in that category. He’s also slowly been shifting from hitting ground balls to hitting fly balls — after putting up a 1.4 GB/FB in 2008, he’s steadily pushed that ratio to the 0.9 he showed last year. First you get the fly balls, then you get the power. His HR/FB rate has followed the same steady progression.

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Throughout the season, we ran a series of fantasy rankings for each position at the top of each month to help you keep track of the risers and fallers and to see who might be worth a sell high or buy-low effort.  Well, this week, we are rolling out a series of Keeper Rankings for each position to help you get a leg up on the competition and begin your preparation for the 2012 season.  Each author will take his assigned position and each post will be dedicated to a specific tier within that position.  With that, here is the top tier for catchers in keeper leagues.

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Now that the 2011 fantasy season is all but over (don’t forget to play ottoneu Pick Six during the postseason!), we have an opportunity to look back and see which players did what, and where each player should have been drafted if we knew exactly what was going to happen this year. With that in mind, it’s time to produce some retrospective values and rankings for you to enjoy and reflect on.

Earlier this morning, I outlined changes made to the FVARz system that I introduced in February, and that system is what was used to produce these rankings. Please be aware that these are retroactive values only, and while you are free to use them for predictive purposes without adjustment, I wouldn’t recommend it. So, without further ado, let’s do this thing.

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On Saturday, I took a look at the five hitters whose HR/FB ratios increased the most from 2010 to 2011. This time I switch it up to check out the bottom of the list, those hitters who experienced the largest declines.

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You may remember that earlier this year I put together a series of three posts outlining a system for objective fantasy player rankings and valuation. The system was (and still is) titled Fantasy Value Above Replacement, or FVARz for short. Some flaws were pointed out in Februrary, and it’s about time I recognized them and corrected the system to allow it to be even better and more accurate.

The major flaw that was pointed out was the way I was adjusting for position. A players’ raw stats were only being compared to others at his position, instead of the entire player pool as a whole. After the changes to the FVARz system, this is no longer the case. Players raw stats are now compared to the entire player pool, while hitters and pitchers are separated for obvious reasons.

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I have to admit that I’ve been highly suspicious of Ryan Roberts all season long. Maybe it’s his spotty performance history, perhaps it’s my aversion to one-hit-wonders (I’m looking at you, Fernando Tatis), perhaps it’s the neck tattoos (sarcasm). Whatever the case, Roberts was unintentionally shoved under my radar for much of the season relative to his actual value. I concede that I prefer a larger sample size before I start to recommend a player, and perhaps that’s a shortcoming I need to think about.

Whatever the reason, Ryan Roberts was hard for me to like this season. It wasn’t until I started to come around about June that he made the third tier for my third base rankings and I defended his late season struggles as recent as September. But I concede that I kept waiting for him to turn into a pumpkin, and he just refused to do so, to his credit.

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