An Early Look at the Third Base Landscape

Over the past weekend at the AFL First Pitch Forums held by BaseballHQ.com, I participated in my first draft for 2016. It’s an NFBC 50-round draft&hold. The first 23 rounds occurred there in Arizona and the final 27 will begin online in January. Since it is third base week, I figured it’d be fun to take a look at how an early run 2016 draft treated the pool of top 15 third basemen.

Right away we see three first rounders and they follow their 2015 finish order as well. It’s hard to disagree with Donaldson at the top, but I’m not sure I’d crush someone for leaping one of the youngsters ahead of him. Donaldson now has three straight excellent fantasy seasons, this one likely culminating with an MVP, but will it get better?

He has missed all of three games per year during this run, but now he’s on the turf in Toronto and turning 30 in December. The other two actually have larger injury concerns as both have actually hit the DL. Arenado had a finger issue last year that cost him a month-plus. Machado has the scariest history having ripped up both knees, but he’s also the youngest at 23 years old.

Track record v. upside. Established veteran v. up-and-coming superstars. Again, it’s clear that Donaldson has the edge looking at things right now, but we’re trying to project forward. Is it so far out of the realm to see Arenado and/or Machado leapfrogging Donaldson? Let’s look at their numbers alone with some per season rates:

Beyond Donaldson himself, what are the chances the Jays score another 5.5 runs per game and yield 120+ R/RBI for him? They aren’t going to crater, but even a 100/100 season – which would be great – would still cost him 22 R and 23 RBI. Admittedly, I’m more playing devil’s advocate than anything else, but I think you can make a case to take Arenado or Machado as the top third baseman in 2016.

If Arenado figures out lefties on the road, maybe he can repeat or improve upon his ‘15. If you pull R and RBI from the Player Rater, Machado actually tops Donaldson 6.87 to 6.19 at 3B. I’m not looking for reasons to go against Donaldson, I’ll happily take him in the first round, but I wouldn’t necessarily view him as the lockdown top third baseman.

I recognize that Sano isn’t 3B-eligible everywhere with just nine games there. Unfortunately, he should be DH-only in just about every league coming into the season. I just figured many of you would wonder where he went so he got included.

Bryant will be very interesting in drafts just as he was in 2015. Those who shied away last draft season because of track record now have a 26 HR/99 RBI season on the books. I’d be surprised if he snuck into many first rounds, but that second-third round range is his wheelhouse. At least in this draft he separated himself from Todd Frazier, but I tend to view those two as much closer.

I was a little surprised that Carpenter went in the fourth round because I didn’t expect to see a big price jump after his power surge. He definitely altered his game to untap this power as Brad Johnson highlighted earlier this week, but Johnson also noted how 11 of Carpenter’s 28 HR fell in the “Just Enough” classification at HitTrackerOnline which was among the higher totals for the season.

I wasn’t that surprised to see Rendon go as the eighth 3B off the board. He did play half a season, but it was an injury washout. He fell back to league average statistically. The power plummeted and it’s hard not to think the MCL sprain and quad both on the left side weren’t a big part of it. I think even the most aggressive of us with Rendon knew that injury was his big risk. It went south last year, but I’m still willing to bet on the skillset because of how much it can yield.

The only difference between Seager’s 2014 and 2015 was a 22-RBI drop. He offset it with a 14-R jump. Otherwise, his OPS was just nine points lower (.779) with a meager one point difference in ISO down to .185. He’s got four straight years with 20+ HR, about 80 RBI, about 75 R, and a .260-something average.

Seager is a great consolation prize if you wait a little bit at third base. I don’t even really like calling him that because it undermines his track record and age (28) which both suggest we could see even more from him in 2016. But even if he’s “only” what he’s been for the last four years, you’re in great shape at the position.

Moose is really interesting. Is this just a spike season set to regress back toward his awful career marks or is something finally clicking? I tend to lean toward the latter. He still has the elements to be special. And yeah it’s happenstance of being teammates that brings up this comp, but it’s hard not to see some Alex Gordon in Moose’s profile. Pod dove into the breakout earlier this week.

Franco was a revelation in 2015. His second tour of both Triple-A and the majors returned huge dividends. Only a fractured wrist in August could slow him down and even then he still returned for the final series of the season. His high-contact powerful approach isn’t fully matured after just a half season in the bigs, but there is a lot to like here. He was the last third baseman of the top 10 rounds in this draft.