It’s time to finish up the infield. Surprisingly perhaps only to me, third base ended up being the deepest position more years than it wasn’t in my FanGraphs+ auction strategy analysis.

There’s probably more agreement at the top of this position than most, at least more than the shortstops. Once you get past the top three or four, the agreement stops, but then you also have a scrum that looks like it could be one single tier, all the way down past twelve. This could be a position you wait on if you miss the top guys in a mixed league. But don’t wait too long in deep league. It gets dicey again in the late twenties.

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One might think that writing about the Detroit infield would be easy. After all, how difficult could it be to say that “Prince Fielder & Miguel Cabrera are great and you should draft them”? Because, they are great. And you should draft them.

We can try to do better, though. Fielder’s debut as a Tiger was nothing short of a success, putting up a season that saw him lead all qualified major league first basemen in wOBA. (Joey Votto, of course, was far ahead, but missed too much time due to injury.) Fielder’s .398 mark was right in line with his .393 career average and there’s little to think he won’t be able to do it again, though it’s interesting to see that he got there somewhat differently than usual. His 30 homers tied for sixth among first basemen and were his lowest since hitting 28 in his rookie season of 2006. That’s partially due to the fact that he set a career low in flyball percentage (33.3%); while his HR/FB rate was within career norms, fewer flyballs is going to equal fewer homers. That’s not entirely a bad thing, because those balls largely turned into line drives, contributing to a career best .313 batting average. Fantasy players would like to see a few more of those hits end up over the fence, though either way, Fielder remains an easy top-three first baseman in all formats. Read the rest of this entry »

Much about the White Sox bullpen is more stable than it has been in years. They have a closer in place, they have a set of reliable set-up men, and they have respectable depth in the minors should they need it. However, with six viable starters for five slots, the Sox also have the option of moving Hector Santiago or Jose Quintana into the bullpen for this season.

Both will join the White Sox rotation soon enough, but if Santiago is the odd man out, he’ll likely stay with the major league club in a set-up role. This is unlikely to affect either of the Matts – Thorton and Lindstrom – but it could move Nate Jones from his set-up job back down to lower leverage middle relief.

The White Sox bullpen was right about league average last season, but with another year of experience for players like Addison Reed and the addition of Lindstrom, there’s a very real possibility that they’ll be a top-10 bullpen this season. Read the rest of this entry »

While the Cleveland Indians had a disappointing 2012, at least they’re doing what a 94-loss team should be doing: making changes. While the solid up-the middle starters in the Cleveland infield will be sticking around, the team has shuffled their outfield and a good chunk of their infield in the hopes of improving on their dismal previous season. And while the team’s depth chart is still in flux (and may be throughout the season), there’s a lot of room here for an enterprising fantasy owner to squeeze some value out of this team.

Catcher

Carlos Santana is an upper-tier catcher capable of filling three stats consistently: homers, runs, and RBI. Despite hitting a rough patch in 2012, Santana still put up solidly above-average offensive numbers (including a 120 wRC+), and again offered plenty of plate appearances for a catcher. His batting average is a little bit of a downer (but he rocks in OBP leagues), and you can’t expect more than a handful of steals, but he’s still one of the best bets at catcher in fantasy. His backup, “Tofu” Lou Marson, is wholly un-rosterable despite getting a decent share of plate appearances backing up Santana … even though he did post a sharp walk rate and OBP in ’12.

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Next stop on the Pod Projections train is last year’s breakout starter Chris Sale, who spent his first season in the White Sox rotation. While I cannot claim credit for expecting him to be that good, I was a huge fan heading into the season. But after a more human second half that included a 4.03 ERA and a significant innings increase, what should we expect as a follow up?

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You know what? I don’t think I have to link back to the positions we’ve done before. Because David Appelman was kind of enough to revamp the RotoGraphs landing page, and now you can easily access all your draft tools — including our consensus ranks, and later our tiered positional ranks — just by scrolling your eyeballs to the right an inch-plus. Scroll those eyeballs! Enjoy one-touch draft tools! Applaud the dark overlord!

Okay, back to shortstops. Given the health and bust/regress concerns of the other shortstops in the top five, maybe it’s not surprising that we have a new number one shortstop this season. Starlin Castro won’t wow you in the speed or power stats, but he is on the right side of his peak, and he has been slowly building his skillset, so it seems that his risk of regression is low, and he should be healthy, too. It’s in interesting that we agreed by not agreeing — only one analyst had Castro first, and yet it seems fine that he is first. It’s not like we can just wipe away those lost Jose Reyes seasons.

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I have been working my way through Dr. James Andrew’s book, Any Given Monday. Here are his top seven myths surrounding sports medicine.

#1: Tommy John surgery will improve pitching performance.

A few quotes on this subject

I cannot be clearer about this: There is nothing that sports medicine can do for a throwing arm that is better than how the good Lord created it. There is no surgery that enhances performance. It simply doesn’t exist. If the body entered this world whole and healthy, you can never repair something in the body to make it better than its original condition. It’s just not possible. Cutting something always makes it weaker. I cannot stress this enough: A healthy pitching arm will always be more stable and more capable than one that has been operated on.

On pitchers come back throwing better

Yes it is true that many pitchers do see an upswing in their pitching speeds after undergoing the surgery….Pitching improves because of the type of reconditioning and physical therapy that the athlete undergoes as he heals from the procedure.

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Few teams have experienced as much of a dramatic overhaul to the starting rotation this winter as have the Kansas City Royals. The starters underperformed in 2012, posting a combined 5.01 ERA, and the organization brought new blood. In fact, the Royals could conceivably break camp with a starting rotation that features five pitchers who were not on the 25-man roster last year on Opening Day. Crazy.

The top four starters in spring training are guaranteed spots in the rotation, according to manager Ned Yost. That means James Shields, Jeremy Guthrie, Ervin Santana and Wade Davis will anchor the staff for the Royals to begin the season. That also means the battle for the fifth spot in the rotation has not been settled, and four pitchers are vying for the opportunity to break camp as a starter: Bruce Chen, Luke Hochevar, Luis Mendoza, and Will Smith.

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There are many ways to express how bad Cleveland’s rotation was in 2012. Their staff was 3rd worst in ERA, WAR, xFIP and SIERA. They were 29th in K% and 28th in BB%, which left them tied with the Twins for the worst K%-BB%. Their “best” pitcher was Zach McAllister who gave them 125.1 innings of 4.24 ERA ball. Ubaldo Jimenez continued to see his velocity decline, and his ERA was over 5.00 as a result. The man who is likely to pitch in their 2013 season opener, Justin Masterson, posted the worst ERA of his career (4.93). They had three other pitchers who threw more than 80 innings, Derek Lowe, Josh Tomlin and Jeanmar Gomez, and none of them had an ERA below 5.50.

Thankfully, it would be almost impossible for their staff to be much worse.

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Much has been made of the success White Sox pitchers have experienced under the tutelage of pitching coach Don Cooper. Since Cooper’s first full season on the job, the rotation has consistently been a strength, ranking fifth in WAR since 1993. Last season, however, the team took a step backwards. For the first time since 2004, the rotation finished outside of the top-10 according to WAR. The team obviously believes in their current group, and will return the same cast of characters in the rotation this season.

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