Second base looks like a deep position heading into 2017. This is likely news to no one reading this column. However, something that goes overlooked a bit is how shallow the position is in NL-only leagues.

Taking a look at the average draft position for 2B, this becomes quite clear. After Nats teammates Trea Turner and Daniel Murphy, second-base options for NL-only formats grow thin in a hurry. Dee Gordon, DJ LeMahieu, Jose Peraza, Ben Zobrist, Jedd Gyorko, Logan Forsythe, Neil Walker and Josh Harrison round out the top ten. There’s a pretty big drop-off after Gordon and LeMahieu, both of whom I personally value significantly less than Turner and Murphy to begin with.

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Last Thursday, I used my new xBABIP equation to identify 10 fantasy relevant hitters whose xBABIP marks were significantly above their actual BABIP marks, suggesting serious BABIP upside in 2017. Today, I’ll make many of you sad with a list of names who are at risk of major BABIP regression this season, if they don’t improve their underlying skills by a massive degree. By no means do you want to avoid these names, you just simply don’t want to value them assuming their 2016 BABIP marks are actually sustainable. But since someone in your league probably does believe the 2016 BABIP is real, you probably won’t end up rostering them at a fair price.

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Chat transcript is below.

See the full draft here: LABR Mixed Draft

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Projection Analysis: Yoan Moncada

Many prospect experts project Yoan Moncada to be one of the game’s few top prospects. Some have him as the top guy but his MLB playing time and production varied substantially. I found I needed a projection I felt comfortable using.  I’ll start with his playing time.

I believe he’ll be promoted between the Super Two deadline (so the White Sox can save money) and early September (rosters expand). I thought about using July 15th (All-Star Game) as my cut off.

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Welcome to the kickoff of our 2017 rankings. We’re going position by position this week and next with our initial roll out of rankings. We will update these in March based on Spring Training activity and injuries.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Brad Johnson
• Justin Mason
• Al Melchior

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable.

If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

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A week ago, I introduced the newest version of our ever evolving xBABIP equation, this time incorporating the much-needed shift data. Last Thursday, I identified the 10 fantasy relevant hitters with the greatest BABIP upside in 2017, given the gap between their 2016 BABIP and xBABIP. In the comments, I was asked if I could perform a retrospective analysis to see how the new equation would have done if I ran it heading into the 2016 season.

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It’s that time of year again: Scoresheet prep time! For those of you unaware, Scoresheet is a league where you build a full 25-man-type roster (you get up to 30 active players) complete with bench players, full bullpens and so on.

Here’s our league page, for instance.

I’ve had fairly good clubs over the last couple seasons. I was 88-74 last season as “Jedd, Ed and Eddie” and 95-67 in 2015 as “Wasted Aces” — because I had Yu Darvish, Marcus Stroman and Masahiro Tanaka. Welp! The 2014 season was also solid (95-67), as my team was named aptly as “Ricky Nolasco is not very good.” Basically, I haven’t finished under .500 since team “new Warne order” — don’t ask — went 76-86 in 2013, so maybe I’m starting to get the hang of it?

The way Scoresheet works is that you keep major league players and minor league players. Any player who is still eligible to win Rookie of the Year is considered minor-league eligible. Those players cost you picks starting from the back of the 35-round draft. So, if you keep five rookies, your last pick would be in the 30th round. Keeping MLB players costs you picks at the front of the draft, so there’s obviously some strategy at play here. Read the rest of this entry »

Chat transcript below:

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The fantasy community is down on Justin Upton. I get it, but it’s a little strange to me given our collective penchant for recency bias. Upton had a monster second half and finished the season an almost-perfect replica of his usual self. (The operative qualifier being “almost.” We’ll get to that in a second.) Sure, it was a rocky year, but hey, Joey Votto had one, too. Dude was batting .213 with a 27 percent strikeout rate (K%) through May…

Right, so Upton was an almost-perfect replica of himself. In a vacuum, his production looks nearly identical to his typical annual accomplishment, down to nearly every statistic except for his batting average on balls in play (BABIP). In my investigation of his woes, I noticed his uncharacteristically low infield hit rate (IFH%). Here’s a list of hitters with higher infield hit rates than Justin Upton in 2016:

• Salvador Perez
• Kendrys Morales
• Albert Pujols
• One hundred and thirty five other players not surnamed Ortiz, Mauer, Seager, Granderson, Cabrera, Votto or Kemp

Yes, Upton ranked among the bottom 6 percent of hitters in terms of infield hits. If there’s a single bone to pick about Upton’s season — well, aside from the insane volatility — it’s that his BABIP failed to get back on track, continuing to linger at a league-average mark. It seems a trend has emerged; accordingly, it’s easy to accept said trend as a new normal, as a resignation of Upton’s fifth tool.

I’m here to make the classic* Infield Hit Rate Defense, or IHRD, as it’s known in the infield hit community.**

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Today we are kicking off our series on ottoneu FanGraphs points league rankings. This year the rankings will include values from myself, Joe Douglas, and Chad Young. We are presenting our individual dollar values, the average of all three individuals, plus the ranking of that average. In addition the tables below include ottoneu eligibility (5 games started/10 games played in the prior year). Players are ranked at their most valuable position, and the hierarchy we are using is C/SS/2B/3B/OF/1B (with 3B and OF being a coin toss in terms of replacement level, we chose to include 3B/OF eligibles at 3B).

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