It goes without saying that the knuckleball is difficult to predict. It can break or flutter in any number of ways, twisting up hitters and catchers alike. It can also drive a fantasy player nuts, because there aren’t enough knucklers throughout history to help project the lone modern-day knuckleballer moving forward.

While largely disappointing, the season, it got better for R.A. Dickey.
As 2013 wore on, the knuckleballer regained some velocity on his trademark pitch and saw his performance improve, not quite to his Cy Young levels but to a place the Toronto Blue Jays would surely be happy with. That late-season progression is a positive for 2014, and the full-season stat line makes Dickey a potential value play in upcoming drafts.
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It’s almost as if at some point in 2012, someone attended one of Shelby Miller’s Triple-A outings and yelled, “Hey Shelby, get it together!”

Well, Miller has gotten it together, following up on an excellent 13.2-inning debut in 2012 with 31 starts, 173.1 innings and a 3.06 ERA in 2013. He finished third in National League Rookie of the Year voting and 21st in starting pitcher fantasy value, and only an embarrassment of pitching riches precluded the St. Louis Cardinals from using him in the playoffs.
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Zack Greinke had another excellent season in 2013, placing 14th in the end-of-season starting pitcher rankings and sporting the league’s fifth-best ERA at 2.63.

But how did Greinke rank outside the top-ten despite a top-five mark in ERA, a top-10 mark in wins (15) and a top-15 mark in WHIP (1.11)? It’s because for the second straight year, Greinke’s strikeout rate saw a dramatic drop, even though his swinging strike rate rebounded to double-digit levels.

Should we be concerned that Greinke struck out just 20.6 percent of batters he faced, and is there anything else concerning in his profile?
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Kris Medlen followed up his unsustainable 2012 breakout with a very solid 2013 campaign for the Atlanta Braves.

On the surface, his rate stats got worse, but that’s almost entirely a case of a 1.57 ERA and 2.42 FIP being largely unsustainable. The strikeouts took a slight dip, the walks inched up, and the BABIP and strand rate regressed closer to league-average levels.

Even still, Medlen was great, rating out as the 27th most valuable starter in fantasy and adding just shy of 200 innings of above-average pitching for the Braves.
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Colby Rasmus had somewhat of a re-breakout in 2013.

Having followed up a tantalizing 2010 sophomore season with a pair of disappointing campaigns, Rasmus produced a nearly-five win season in just 118 games, nearing career highs in home runs (22) and runs batted in (66).

Disabled list stints in August (abdominal strain) and September (ball to the face) kept him from being perhaps a top-30 outfielder. Instead, he ranked 55th and enters 2014 as somewhat of a question mark.
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Alex Rios and I have a bit of a close, personal relationship.

By that, of course, I mean he has absolutely no idea who I am, but I have some tangential connection to him as a fan-turned-wannabe-analyst.

That connection comes from Rios being the first prospect I was ever enamored with. As a Toronto Blue Jays fan, Rios’ 2003 – a .924 OPS with 11 home runs and 11 steals in 127 games at Double-A – was something to get excited about, and was really the first time I found myself keeping tabs on the minor leagues with regularity.

And from there, frustration.
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Kyle Seager settled in as a full-time third baseman in 2013, and while no longer having positional flexibility is inconvenient, he remained a top option at the hot corner.

A year after ranking 14th at the position in overall value, Seager pushed forward to be a starting caliber third baseman for 12-team leagues, ranking 12th in overall value.

His final fantasy lines were very similar:

2012 – .259, 20 HR, 62 R, 86 RBI, 13 SB
2013 – .260, 22 HR, 79 R, 69 RBI, 9 SB

But Seager actually made some improvements this year that make it appear there could be even more in store in his age-26 season.
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There is no denying that Dustin Pedoria is one of, if not arguably the best second baseman in baseball. (Really, he’s probably second.)

Manning the keystone for the Boston Red Sox, Pedroia’s 2013 finished an excellent three-year stretch where he was among the position’s statistical leaders across the board. Prior to that, Pedroia was excellent in an injury-shortened 2010 and had been among the position’s best from 2007 to 2009.

In fact, if we use Pedroia’s shortened 2010 as a dividing line, The Laser Show’s performance is a nice way to illustrate the changes to the second base position league-wide.
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Todd Helton is now retired. I’m sad to see him leave the game, and I think everyone else is as well. Dude is legend.

Now, these positional profiles have generally focused on how things changed for a player, sustainability and 2014 outlook. At the end of the first base series, however, I wanted to just look back and appreciate Helton, who, it turns out, was one of the top stars of the beginning of the ‘modern era’ of fantasy baseball.
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There’s not a lot of guesswork about Edwin Encarnacion anymore; we can be relatively certain there’s nothing fluky about his ascension to the second tier of fantasy first basemen, as odd as it may have seemed when it began in late 2011.

Given the depth of the position, perhaps his overall value isn’t all that striking – he returned roughly $18 this year, trailing only Chris Davis and Paul Goldschmidt at the position – but he now appears to be a safe pick.

He also appeared at third base 10 times this season, meaning he’ll be eligible on both corners in many formats next year (more on that during third baseman week, perhaps).
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