It turns out, I maybe should have done a MI Edition instead of both a SS and 2B Edition of this series. Of course, I didn’t know that until Zach Sanders posted his 5×5 SS rankings and I found that a couple of flames from a couple weeks back were reappearing in ottoneu’s little black book this week.

Ben Zobrist and Martin Prado, both of whom were covered in the 2B Edition were two of the five biggest SS climbers when you leave 5×5 and move to linear weights. And Everth Cabrera, who warranted but a brief mention in the 2B piece was the farthest faller at SS. But four of Sanders’s top 10 made meaningful moves when we switch the scoring format.

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A show of hands of who misses baseball. Everyone? I thought so.

• With the re-signing of David Ortiz to the two year deal that he was looking for, the Boston Red Sox have taken one of the premiere — if not aging — bats off of the market. In all likelihood, this was the best move for Ortiz and his potential fantasy owners. Last season Ortiz crushed the ball at Fenway “Pahk” at a .359/.463/.706 pace. In other words, Ortiz’s slugging was .130 points higher than teammate Nick Punto’s OPS as a Red Sock. For the second straight year Ortiz’s home OPS was over 1.000 and his away OPS was under .900. Age aside, Ortiz still makes for a valuable fantasy contributor in both standard 5×5 leagues and Ottoneu. I’ll be aiming to draft him.
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Alcides Escobar exceeded expectations in 2012 by hitting almost .300 and had 35 steals. In Zach Sander’s end of season SS rankings, Escobar ended up with the 10th highest rating. Going into 2013, he is primed to repeat 2012.

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Erick Aybar is a perennial sleeper. You might make a joke about never waking up here, except that just last year he hit ten home runs and stole thirty bases and looked like a reasonable starting shortstop in every fantasy league. This year’s work was a step back — only eight home runs and 20 stolen bases — and left him on the outside of the top twelve in our end-of-season rankings.

Here’s the thing though. He was still a decent starting-level shortstop in most leagues — when he was in the lineup.

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Asdrubal Cabrera was a popular regression candidate around these parts entering last season. Prior to 2011, Cabrera was a middle-of-the-road fantasy shortstop. He hit for a decent average, popped a handful of home runs and stole a fair amount of bases. He wasn’t going to kill you at the position, but if you ended up with Cabrera, it was obvious you waited to draft a shortstop. His 25 home run breakout altered that perception. With that, of course, came questions of whether it was a fluke. And though Cabrera did see some regression in the home run category, a fair amount of the strides he made in 2011 stuck.

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How often does a 22 year old actually perform basically right in line with pre-season expectations? Well, Starlin Castro pretty much did just that this season. According to Zach Sanders’ calculator, he earned $18, ranking him 5th among shortstops. Our RotoGraphs consensus rankings slotted him fourth, so Castro did what he was supposed to. Top players are certainly expected to be consistent year in and year out, but this was only Castro’s third full season, so really, a major breakout or a flop wouldn’t have been too surprising. So what does the future hold for young Starlin?

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The 2012 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. This week focuses on shortstops.

The players were ranked based on their 2012 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 350 plate appearances over the course of the year. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiple positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth.

These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

Due to the magnificence that is MLB Network, I was able to take in an early-season Adam Wainwright start. For me, the draw was how Wainwright would pitch after a season off. For Wainwright, it was pretty ugly, as he allowed eight earned runs and was chased after three innings.

But what caught my attention was my perception of how the announcers were trumpeting David Freese as though he was some sort of Schmidtian force to be reckoned with. Like many viewers, I too had taken in the glory of his World Series heroics, and eventually I chalked it up to how few business days had elapsed since then, but it really had me wondering if this Freese guy was as good as these announcers were saying, or if it was simply hometown announcing at its….finest?

Schedules being what they were, I didn’t actually dig too deeply into Freese, at least not until today. Today, let’s have a look at Freese’s 2012, and how he looks heading into the next baseball campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

2012 was supposed to be a big year for Pablo Sandoval in fantasy circles. Entering his age 25 season and coming off a 23 homer campaign in only 460 plate appearances the year before, a healthy Sandoval should have been a reasonable shot to touch 30-35 round-trippers with an above-average batting average if he could stay on the field. In fantasy circles, he was being treated like one of baseball’s near-elite. According to ESPN’s average position draft tracker, he was going off the board 38th overall (5th among third basemen). So in March, owners definitely didn’t envision seeing Sandoval slip to 26th in Zach Sanders’ End of Season Rankings for guys at the hot corner.

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