All Star Break Consensus Ranks: Third Base
Third base has to be the group with the most movement.
But mostly I love the ones that don’t move. Like Michael Young, ending a nine-player chain of movement. Yeah, he’s still Michael Young. And was Michael Young last time we ran the third base rankings. And then David Freese and Chris Johnson, okay, they’re older fantasy role-players that might not move much, but Trevor Plouffe and Juan Francisco are pretty much what we thought they were,too?
There are some nice names on this list. Could be the best in baseball, relatively, at the end of the year. At least on the infield.
There are a lot of young names mid-rankings, too. Trade down for quantity at the position is the dynasty strategy then?
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.
| RG | Player | ES | JZ | MP | ZS |
| 1 | Miguel Cabrera | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | David Wright | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| 3 | Adrian Beltre | 3 | 3 | 5 | 2 |
| 4 | Edwin Encarnacion | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 5 | Evan Longoria | 5 | 6 | 3 | 5 |
| 6 | Hanley Ramirez | 6 | 5 | 6 | 14 |
| 7 | Mark Trumbo | 7 | 7 | 10 | 8 |
| 8 | Ryan Zimmerman | 11 | 8 | 7 | 11 |
| 9 | Pablo Sandoval | 10 | 12 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | Manny Machado | 8 | 16 | 9 | 13 |
| 11 | Kyle Seager | 12 | 10 | 12 | 12 |
| 12 | Josh Donaldson | 9 | 20 | 13 | 6 |
| 13 | Aramis Ramirez | 15 | 14 | 11 | 10 |
| 14 | Chase Headley | 13 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 15 | Matt Carpenter | 14 | 24 | 17 | 7 |
| 16 | Pedro Alvarez | 20 | 9 | 16 | 18 |
| 17 | Martin Prado | 16 | 11 | 21 | 21 |
| 18 | Jedd Gyorko | 18 | 23 | 20 | 16 |
| 19 | Brett Lawrie | 17 | 15 | 15 | 33 |
| 20 | Todd Frazier | 21 | 19 | 22 | 19 |
| 21 | Michael Young | 24 | 18 | 27 | 20 |
| 22 | David Freese | 22 | 22 | 23 | 23 |
| 23 | Mark Reynolds | 27 | 21 | 18 | 25 |
| 24 | Nolan Arenado | 23 | 29 | 19 | 22 |
| 25 | Anthony Rendon | 19 | 33 | 26 | 17 |
| 26 | Mike Moustakas | 25 | 17 | 24 | 36 |
| 27 | Chris Johnson | 26 | 27 | 30 | 28 |
| 28 | Trevor Plouffe | 28 | 26 | 29 | 29 |
| 29 | Kelly Johnson | 31 | 30 | 32 | 30 |
| 30 | Juan Francisco | 37 | 37 | 25 | 24 |
| 31 | Lonnie Chisenhall | 32 | 34 | 28 | 37 |
| 32 | Alberto Callaspo | 29 | 31 | 33 | 39 |
| 33 | Alex Rodriguez | 30 | 41 | 35 | 26 |
| 34 | Will Middlebrooks | 36 | 25 | 38 | 35 |
| 35 | Mike Aviles | 33 | 35 | 41 | 32 |
| 36 | Eric Chavez | 41 | 41 | 37 | 27 |
| 37 | Matt Dominguez | 35 | 38 | 34 | 41 |
| 38 | Jeff Keppinger | 38 | 28 | 42 | 41 |
| 39 | DJ LeMahieu | 34 | 36 | 39 | 41 |
| 40 | Jose Iglesias | 41 | 41 | 40 | 31 |
| 41 | Brett Wallace | 39 | 39 | 36 | 42 |
| 42 | Luis Valbuena | 41 | 41 | 31 | 43 |
| 43 | Juan Uribe | 40 | 41 | 41 | 40 |
| 44 | Jordan Pacheco | 41 | 40 | 41 | 41 |
Also ranked once were Luis Jimenez, Mike Olt, Eric Sogard, Conor Gillaspie, Maicer Izturis,
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Miguel Cabrera should be ranked higher.
Curious why JZ projects Alvarez to be at #9. Doesn’t he strike out 1/3 of the time? Does that indicate a regression? Thanks.
ZiPS/Steamer.
Not according to ZIPS and Steamer apparently?
I’m surprised to see 3 out of 4 rankers put Beltre ahead of Encarnacion. EE is better in 4 out of 5 roto categories, and looks to be due for positive BABIP regression. I’m with MP on this one.
Great stuff guys. I personally think Donaldson will be better then 4 or 5 guys above him. Any hope for Arenado? I’ve been holding onto him because my team could really use one more offensive contributor and I feel he has a lot of potential, but his low babip despite a lot of line drives frustrates me.
this
Wow, a lot of variance with Donaldson. 20 and 6…
the 20 comes from the projections and steamer doesn;t give him full playing time.
Ahhh but Bob Melvin does.
Over the last calendar year, Donaldson is second in wRC+ and fourth in wOBA. Dude still gets no love.
Can’t believe Carpenter is so low.
Second in the league in runs scored and I don’t see him moving from that 2 spot in the Cards lineup for a long time to come.
Carpenter bats leadoff.
Details, details…
Once again, where is the most agreement and most disagreement about ranks (outside of the top-5). For a little more fun, the ranks are the Yahoo! 3B ranks so far this season for the player. What this shows is that performance so far this season does not make it more likely that experts will agree on future value. Yep:
Most agreement on player’s rank: Jordan Pacheco (66), David Freese (27), Juan Uribe (32), Chase Headley (29), Kelly Johnson (13).
Most disagreement on player’s rank: Brett Lawrie (69), Mike Moustakas (58), Anthony Rendon (42), Juan Francisco (30), Matt Carpenter (4), Eric Chavez (31).
Are these rankings based on Yahoo standard position eligibility? If yes, has Scutaro been overlooked or not good enough?
Obviously a lot has been made about JZ and his computer models, but he either needs to revisit his methods or perform a reasonability check and make adjust as necessary. Middlebrooks @ 25 when he is in AAA with no signs of returning any time soon is just ignorant.
As a whole I don’t particularly care for JZ presenting the average of ZIPS and Steamer as “his” rankings. Perhaps those rankings could be put into their own columns and they could find another person to actually post personal rankings with human thought applied.
It’s obvious that the computer models rank players with limited track record lower, Carpenter, Donaldson and Machado for example, I’d like to know where JZ really ranks them.
This has been explained so many times. JZ does put a lot of thought into his rankings. The blend of ZIPs and Steamer he uses is his own blend, and he obviously has a specific system for ranking the players. I don’t understand why people get so upset about this, or why people consider it less useful. I like to know where the computers generally rank players, and having someone contribute their own way of combining the projections is quite useful.
Yeah, but Middlebrooks ended up at 34 when the other rankings were 35/36/38 so it really didn’t impact his overall slot more than a spot or 2. Also, looking at who is below him, I would take Middlebrooks over just about everyone, especially in the long term based on the potential he showed last year. Except for Iglesias playing way over his head, it’s pretty much a shit salad down there.
The impact JZ has on Middlebrooks’ final ranking in particular is irrelevant to me. The issue to me is what appears to be an obvious flaw in the methodology that undermines the credibility of his rankings and in turn reduces the usefulness of the composite rankings.
Statistical analysis should compliment traditional analysis – not replace it entirey. Even just a quick resonability check and fix for obvious gaps such as this would suffice. If he wants to leave the rankings as is he could still analyze the results point out where/why certain results might be out of whack.
Or he could just continue doing what he’s doing because he clearly has the respect of the baseball community…you know, he’s the one working for FanGraphs…you’re the one commenting on his work…
by the way, use the thesaurus much? using big words to cloud what you are trying to say just makes it look like youre trying too hard.
Clifford- Which of those words did you consider so big that a thesaurus would be necessary?
To be fair, “Middlebrooks” is like a jillion letters.
Ramirez, Headley, and Panda seem awfully high while Alvarez and Carpenter seem way too low. I actually think JZ’s projections got this position better than any other.
The computers hate Josh Donaldson. Below Michael Young, Moustakas, Lawrie and Todd Frazier? No way..
Any hope for Headley? Worth buying low?
I have Arenado, C Johnson, and Gyorko to cover my 3B, but am in a roster squeeze with Gyorko coming off the DL. Who should I release? Or, should I release no one until after the Rockies complete their long homestand, and suffer the handcuff of not being able to do any adds/trades while I have a non-DL player (Gyorko) still in my DL spot?
(league uses OBP and TB instead of AVG and HR)
I’m assuming this is a redraft? Johnson has been playing about ten miles over his head and should be replacement level or worse in the second half. Arenado is a bit more intriguing, but he hasn’t done anything at the MLB level yet. I’d look for someone else to pick up and drop both of them.
There’s no one better to pick up (Moustakas, Plouffe etc) and 3B is my week lineup spot so I’m OK with a platoon.
It’s a keeper league, but we only keep a few guys and it’s not NL-only, so none of these guys would factor into the keeper discussion (unless Gyorko has a monster second half).
I would flip flop Chisenhall and Mark Reynolds…Lonnie is hitting .292 with 3 HRs in 20 games since his recall, while Reynolds is currently in the midst of a 3 for 33 slump and hasn’t hit a HR since June 28th. Obviously Reynolds is one of the streakiest hitters in the game and he’ll probably go on another hot streak at some point this season, but Chisenhall just looks so much more comfortable at the plate now, I think he’s finally figured it out.
Any idea why Prado is behind Carpenter in 3B and 2b ranks yet ahead of him in the OF ranks?
That’s kinda funny actually.