All Star Break Consensus Ranks: Second Base

At the beginning of the year, I thought this might be the worst position in baseball. It might still be when all is said and done, but there are positive things you can say about this group, too.

There are actually some great young players at the position. Jason Kipnis has zoomed to the top. Jose Altuve probably won’t ever be a true-talent top three guy, but for batting average and speed, he looks like a steady contributor. Kyle Seager is a find. Matt Carpenter was a favorite of ours, but he’s outproduced even our more rosy projections. Jedd Gyorko has a nice compact, fast swing and looks like he’ll have a bit of power. Anthony Rendon, well we have to see about his strikeout rate, but he’s looking good too. Nick Franklin! And maybe even Jurickson Profar.

And you still have the useful veterans sprinkled in. In fact, these rankings go so deep that they make an argument against position scarcity. Well, not completely, you still see that these aren’t first basemen. But! Why reach in a twelve-team mixer if the 12th-ranked second baseman should hit .300 with 15-homer power? You could make a Chase Utley – Neil Walker old man – old man platoon work, even if they only have one healthy knee between them.

Second base: not quite as bad as we thought it would be.

With the color-coding we hope to highlight the biggest movers. That definition changes as you follow the ranks down the list — players had to move more to register a color change as you near the bottom of the list. These are rest-of-season rankings for 5×5 roto. Jeff Zimmerman’s rankings are a combination of ZiPs and Steamer rest-of-season projections with playing time determined by our depth charts. You can find the projections on every player page and the depth charts here.

Also ranked once were Danny Espinosa, Scooter Gennett, Cesar Hernandez, Eric Sogard, Brock Holt, Donovan Solano, and Chris Nelson.