I think at the crux of it, the question is asking whether people [call them “the market”] are adjusting middle infielders’ values upwards artificially as compared to other positions. But another way to ask this (from a fantasy baseball drafting perspective), is perhaps:
“Due to the market’s perceived value of the scarcity in the Middle Infield (MI) position, are other positions better valued at the draft table?”
We are pleased to announce a new projection system, “ATC”, is available on FanGraphs. It can be found on the projection pages and is also available in the auction calculator.
Today we are introducing to the public, the Average Total Cost Projection System (ATC Projection System). The system gets its name from the fact that it “averages” many projection systems together.
The ATC system does not simply take a straight average of all the projection systems. Instead, each system accounts for a different weight for each statistic for which it projects (The weights are based on historical past performance). For example, System A might be given a 20% weight for batter homeruns. but just a 5% weight for pitcher strikeouts. System B might have a 10% weight for HRs, but just a 2% weight for Ks. And so on. The ATC system incorporates ZiPS, Steamer, FanGraphs FANS and other freely available projections, plus prior MLB statistics over the past 3 seasons. There are, of course, some manual edits made along the way, mostly for playing time projections, as we get closer to Opening Day.