We read the tea leaves as best we can throughout Spring Training. Playing time, roles, platoons, etc., have a significant effect on the value of players on our fantasy teams. Despite the most reliable of crystal balls, once the season starts, you finally get to the truth about how players will be used. While the numbers are obviously far too small for us to do much dissecting at this point, the actual roles of players can be telling.

As much as I doubted that Mark Trumbo would see much action at third base, the two games he’s started have both been at the hot corner and it very much seem(ed) like the team was committed to playing him there routinely. In many leagues, he will qualify at third in just three more starts there and with that eligibility, Trumbo will be far more valuable. The burning question is whether his brutal defense will allow him to ever qualify. He’s already made three errors, he was left out of Monday’s starting lineup in favor of Alberto Callaspo, and it’s not likely that he’s going to displace Vernon Wells in the outfield anytime soon. While his defense was an ongoing topic of concern throughout the Spring, it’s certainly going to be under the proverbial microscope going forward. If Mike Scioscia loses any confidence he once had in Trumbo, it might not be long before Trumbo is a part-time player and irrelevant in fantasy circles. If he can somehow stick at third, however – he’s certainly worth owning, assuming you don’t play in an OBP league.

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Before the season started, I had a little heart-to-heart with myself about roster management. When I was writing a book last year, my editor gave me a piece of advice about certain segments of the manuscript that one might love, but just doesn’t work for one reason or another: “Sometimes, you just have to kill your babies,” she said.

I went into this season with full intent on applying that principle to my fantasy baseball roster. For too many years I’ve burned up a whole roster slot on a guy that I’m hoping will come back by the All Star Break or for the proverbial stretch run. I tend to fall in love with players and perhaps over-think what kind of value that player will give me at some undisclosed time in the future without considering what kind of value that extra roster spot will provide.

But no more.

Hi, my name is Michael, and I cut Andrew Bailey.

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This will be a real quick hitter here, thinking about periphery stuff in terms of roster strategy…

There are no doubt going to be a goodly number of you drafting fantasy baseball teams this weekend (so many in fact that we’re trying to throw together a weekend-long marathon chat for you should you want to check in with crisis situations!). After looking at the many squads I’ve already procured through sometimes deft and sometimes drunken decisions, I’m starting to prepare for my roster spots yet to become available via the disabled list. So while this is a waiver wire piece, it’s rather a bizarro-waiver-wire piece because I’m asking you to think about it in advance. Yes, it’s a strange time of year.

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I didn’t expect to do another post on recent developments at third base until after the season began, but there were several relevant (some more than others) circumstances that could impact any of you doing emergency, 12th-hour drafts the day before the season begins.

I’ve written far too much about Ryan Roberts over the past six months, and part of that is probably because I have a hard time figuring out if I like him in fantasy baseball, and in what kinds of formats he might be useful, if at all. Well, it turns out that Kirk Gibson might be having the same thoughts kicking around in his skull relative to real baseball as he’s given Geoff Blum quite a bit of praise recently and failed to commit to Roberts as his every day third basemen when questioned. I have to believe that Roberts will see the majority of the time at third and maybe this is the way a former “gritty” player rewards a player with “veteran savvy” who is having a decent spring. But if you own Roberts, take notice.

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If your memory works anything like mine, you have a small pocket of your brain specifically used for random, useless baseball trivia. For instance, I remember that Willie Bloomquist started the 2011 season with a 10 game hitting streak. I forgot my daughter’s date of birth yesterday, but I apparently made room in my skull for this.

Indeed – looking at his stats, Willie Boom-Boom was hitting .340/.360/.468 with seven RBI and he even hit a home run. It turns out, that was 33% of his home run total and 37% of his total RBI for the season. He finished at .254/.310/.320.

When the season starts, we try hard to not read much into small sample sizes – and if you’re a longtime reader, you know that the sample size is constantly referred to for the first couple months of the season, and for good reason. But in contrast to Spring training, these statistics actually matter to our fantasy baseball teams, so it’s hard to ignore when one guy is hitting out of his mind and another is barely doing anything. As logical as I try to be, I guarantee you that I’m disappointed when half my team doesn’t hit a home run on opening day.

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A week from tomorrow, the season officially begins. It will begin and end while I’m likely still asleep as first pitch is 3:10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, but it will be fun to awaken to statistics that actually matter.

But with still a week to go, things can go right and wrong in a hurry, and while the news below may not be anything new to you, dedicated sports reader, it affects the third base landscape and thus I present it to you with my brief commentary.

Miguel Cabrera has indeed been playing third base despite the consensus opinion that it may very well make Doug Fister have a hissy fit. On Monday, Cabrera decided to try and field a hot grounder off the bat of Hunter Pence not with his glove, but with his face. The video is worth watching if only to see Max Scherzer get a bona fide case of the heebee-jeebees upon seeing the wound.

The news this morning is he has a small fracture under the eye and he received several stitches and will be re-evaluated in a week. At first blush, I can’t see this derailing the third base experiment heading into the season. But, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here – he does not qualify at third base yet – and strange things can happen in Spring Training. Another liner off the noodle, and perhaps the Tigers decide to protect their slugger and let him DH the majority of the time? If you draft him as your every day third baseman and he doesn’t gain eligibility until June, you’re probably going to grow weary of having to watch Josh Donaldson man third for two months.

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Tiers seem to unearth the mighty wrath of fantasy baseball enthusiasts, but since we’ve already seen the third base consensus rankings and my general reactions to them thereafter, it’s time to categorize the gentlemen at the five into tidy little compartments of descending desirability.

As you well know, the tiers are not hard and fast — they change (sometimes dramatically) over the course of the first few months of the season. In fact, there’s been movement in these tiers even before I had a chance to publish them! It’s important to remember that these are not keeper tiers — they simply attempt to arrange rough approximations of value in standard 5×5 leagues as you prepare for what might be your final draft(s).

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Monday featured the third base version of the ongoing consensus rankings project and the results actually did reveal a pretty good amount of consensus from our four great minds, but there were some details and departures in opinions worth pointing out.

First of all, and this was teased out in the comments, it’s fairly likely we’re going to see names like Miguel Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, and Mark Trumbo on the list of the third base eligible come May (for most league formats, probably much earlier). In the case of the former two, it would shake up the rankings in the top five considerably, and there’s a good chance many of you are targeting Cabrera as the overall #1 pick given his new digs in the infield.

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I think it was Edison that once said something to the effect of “opportunity occurs when good fortune meets preparation.” While motivational quotes might not inspire Kyle Seager, this should be written in fancy calligraphy across his baseball card, because it’s opportunity that keeps falling into his lap.

The Spring started with the Seattle Mariners committing to Chone Figgins as their leadoff hitter, which was probably going to place him at third base a fair amount of time. They also had Carlos Guillen in camp to provide some third base insurance and perhaps some of that veteran savvy crap. This likely relegated Seager into some kind of utility role or perhaps having his ticket already punched for Tacoma.

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Seated quite comfortably on a bar stool at my favorite watering hole, I looked up at the television, and the vision was unmistakable. The green infield grass and the diamond it outlined – baseball is back and it felt like normalcy had finally returned to my life after slagging through the insufferable images of the sport where they kick things and constantly feign injury.

Yes indeed, Spring Training – everyone starts with the same number of wins and hope trumps reality. Optimism not only surrounds real-life clubs, but it also permeates us fantasy folk — and it’s almost a little impossible to try and eschew Spring results as we all look for information on who is going to help us claim our bragging rights in our respective leagues. Velocity, best shapers, worst shapers, all of this noise that we know probably doesn’t matter seeps into our consciousness despite efforts to the contrary.

Looking back at 2011, I can’t help but think I should have seen the writing on the wall. In the Spring, Mike Morse hit nine home runs and slugged .818. Asdrubal Cabrera hit .364/.400/.636. Alex Gordon hit .343/.459/.729 with six home runs and 23 RBI in just 70 at-bats. Ryan Roberts hit .509/.603/.660! On the flipside, Adam Dunn hit .224/.333/.448 with three home runs and 27 strikeouts over 67 at-bats. I should have seen it coming!

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