3B Rank Diagnostics: The Misses

Going back in time can be rough. You hop in your DeLorean full of excitement and hop out shocked to see how you looked just a few months ago. What am I wearing? Did I really think that looked ok? Or, in a more relevant use of time travel judgment, did I really think Brett Baty would win the third-base job over Mark Vientos?! In this hypothetical return to the past, there I sit, pushing the buttons of my laptop late at night, typing out the following portion of my preseason third base ranks:

Either Brett Baty or Mark Vientos had to make this list and I chose Baty. They look like the same player from a statistical standpoint and both need to make improvements to be fantasy-relevant. But, they’re young and there’s certainly room to grow. Pay close attention to the 3B situation in NY during spring training. There’s also a world in which they act as a platoon.

It’s on brand that I didn’t scream any player’s name to the heavens and tweet out a firestorm of confident fantasy baseball advice. These things are difficult to predict. But, who saw Vientos coming? Who figured he’d catch everyone’s attention with a record-breaking playoff performance in the 2024 NLDS?

Baty did win the job out of spring training and was the Mets’ everyday third baseman through the first half of May, but once Vientos was called up and shared the position with Baty, he set himself apart. Between the 15th and the 30th of May, Baty struggled, slashing .200/.355/.360 to Vientos’ .310/.370/.548. The rest is actual history. Not only did he return positive value as a third baseman in standard fantasy formats, but according to our Auction Calculator, he ranked 15th behind Jake Burger and ahead of Matt Vierling. For all you sticklers out there, I’m using the same calculator settings I used in my preseason ranking system.

Vientos didn’t just surprise me, or you, or yes, even your Mets superfan cousin. He surprised every single projection system we host here on FanGraphs:

Just as it makes sense to eat dessert before dinner, I wrote about the players I ranked within a decent margin of error before I wrote about the misses. This analysis is somewhere in between. Here are the six players that did not crack my top 41 original players, but finished the season within them:

Matt Vierling’s 567 plate appearances helped him bulk his way to 16 home runs this season, the highest mark for both stats in his career. He was the perfect fantasy utility man for filling your lineup and that defensive versatility kept him in the lineup against righties, though he actually put up much better power numbers against them:

• vs.L: .275/.329/.391
• vs.R: .250/.306/.434

Looking at Vierling’s auction calculator Z-Scores, you only see one positive value: the number of runs he scored this season. He batted in the leadoff spot 50 different times in 2024. Vierling is a perfect example of how position in the lineup adds value.

Josh Smith was the subject of multiple FanGraph posts this season. The first came in June and focused on Smith’s change in approach at the plate and a new affinity for line-drive hitting while raising questions about the sustainability of some of his peripheral metrics. The second came much later in the year and focused more on Smith’s…leg muscles. Regardless, it was written at a time when Smith did see a regression in his first-half performance:

• 1st half: .293/.392/.469
• 2nd half: .215/.265/.300

…and it was drastic. Between halves, his K% increased, his BB% decreased, his BABIP tanked and though it was pointed out by Matt Martell that opposing pitchers were grooving fastballs to Smith on the regular, his Zone% actually increased slightly. That doesn’t mean pitchers approached him in the same way. A quick and dirty way to analyze this can be found in a pitch-value comparison between halves:

This may warrant further analysis, but it’s clear that fastballs challenged Smith in the second half of the year after posting great numbers against them in the first.

All of Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Jose Miranda, and Geraldo Perdomo made the end-of-season ranking list but still returned negative values. Kiner-Falefa and Miranda both exceeded their project plate appearances, which led to a lot of bulk accumulation of stats. But Miranda is the stand-out player in this group with a final slash line of .284/.322/.441. This season, Miranda found a nice balance between power and average while posting a career-low 15.4% K% and career-high 90% Z-Contact%. In years past he struggled to produce against fastballs, but in 2024 he figured something out, posting a 6.7 pVal (Statcast) on four-seamers. At the age of 26, Miranda will be a player to keep an eye on moving forward.

Like that NFT you bought during the tightest portion of the pandemic lockdown, preseason rankings lose value quickly. But, going back in time and re-evaluating the process is important. Did Josh Smith do enough to find himself in the top 40-something next year? Probably not. Then again, DeLorean or none, the future is uncertain.