I’m still continuing my commentary rankings even as we start releasing our Composite Rankings. These Average Draft Positions come from our projection pages. Each colored bar represents the start of a new tier.

Commentary Rankings:

• SP
• 1B
• 2B

Composite Rankings:

• C
• 1B

Let me know how you’re attacking C in the comments below. I’m open to taking Sanchez in the second round, but not specifically targeting him. From there, I’m likely to wait until the mid-100s or later to get my first catcher. I could double up with a Gattis/Ramos or wait for my second and get a Grandal/Iannetta. I did make some changes in these rankings compared to my initial run of the Composite C rankings, moving Lucroy up a spot and Iannetta up a few. Reminder: these are for a standard 5×5 league. Generally thinking of a 15-team league, but things wouldn’t change all that much for 10- or 12-teamers.

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Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re kicking things off with Catcher and we’ll be rolling out a new position each day over the next week-plus. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Justin Mason

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

You can also check out my 1B rankings with commentary here.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the seven ranking sets
• Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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Transcript is below!

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3/9/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

Strategy Section: Middle Infield Previews

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Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re kicking things off with Catcher and we’ll be rolling out a new position each day over the next week-plus. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts. When all the positions are out, I’ll make a spreadsheet that has all of them together with team and league columns added.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Justin Mason

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1. On catchers that wasn’t necessary because we all ranked 50 which made getting a top 40 pretty easy.

Updated March 12th – Paul updated Lucroy with OAK and adjusted his Iannetta ranking after further research.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the four ranking sets
• Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings (maybe less necessary with just four rankers, but we had it in past years)
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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Luis Castillo is one of the most exciting pitchers in this year’s pool. His 89-inning debut has vaulted him firmly into the top 100 picks and top 30 starters. Our good friends over at PitcherList.com have him slotted 20th on their board. I love Castillo, but are we being a little overzealous with the 25-year old righty?

There haven’t been a lot of guys putting up a 3.12 ERA/1.07 WHIP combo with an 18% K-BB rate in 90ish innings during their rookie season so finding comps wasn’t easy, but I came up with some thresholds and we’re going to look at what they did in their second season. It doesn’t necessarily mean we will figure out what Castillo is going to do by looking at these guys, but we will have some reference points and we’ll highlight one of most commonly used comps to zero on some potential results.

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3/5/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

Leading Off

• The industry loses a titan. RIP Steve Moyer.

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

• Paul DeJong extended
• Ichiro Suzuki back to SEA

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Check out the transcript below!

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Later today, Sony San Diego Studios will have their most anticipated stream regarding MLB The Show 18 as they cover Diamond Dynasty – the game’s online mode. In my first video game piece here, I covered my hitter wishlist for ’18 and we’ve already seen a pair of them come through with Vladimir Guerrero announced a couple weeks back and Albert Belle revealed just this week. In fact, the developers have had a banner year in legend announcements and we’re still three weeks from release.

In addition to those two, we’ve also learned that Babe Ruth, Bob Gibson, Frank Thomas, and Mike Piazza are on the way. And those are just the uber-stars. I’m plenty excited to see the likes of Joe Torre, Troy Percival, and Benito Santiago get in the game. We’ve been told that 30 new legends in all will be coming into the player pool and 14 have been announced thus far. Check the running list here. My guess for this afternoon’s stream is a big 1990s-2000s era starting pitcher will be revealed. It’s purely a hunch/hope, but that’s where I’m planting my prediction flag. With that in mind, I want to share my top five pitcher wishlist which happens to include guys all from that era. This wasn’t just to match up with my prediction, I’ve had this list put together for a while now, but only recently finished the write ups due to some other projects taking precedent.

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3/1/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Producer/Co-Host
• @jasoncollette – Co-Host

Follow The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational info here!

Logo designed discussed in the show can be found here: 78_AllStar

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