Jason Heyward is having a terrible year, I’m sure you noticed. What makes things harder on those that want to believe in positive regression from the star outfielder is that in some superficial ways, it looks like his other bad year, that one in 2011. Finding the differences between the two has implications both on Heyward’s rest-of-season prognosis, as well as the effort to pin-point his long-term upside.

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Coming into the season, I thought Matt Carpenter was a decent sleeper in deep leagues. In the Skip Schumaker mold, he might play a decent enough second base to make an empty batting average work. I bought him in a few deep leagues, and ranked him 35th among third basemen, and made a comment that I’d rank him around 22nd among second basemen. We had one comment about him.

Flash forward to our All-Star ranks. He ended up 12th in our second base rankings update, but was ranked anywhere from seventh to 25th by our various rankers. He sparked nine comments. That’s a lot of variance for a guy that has ten months with more than 20 plate appearances in the major leagues… and has hit over .290 in seven of them. How you think of him going forward is based on batted-ball theories, your league settings, and even how you ended up with him.

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We’re done! We’re finally done!

With the pitchers we come to the end of another exhausting week of ranking pitchers.

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Time to rank the closers!

Again, we’re going to the bullpen report guys to do the rankings — Alan Harrison, Ben Pasinkoff and Colin Zarzycki at your service.

Take a good look now, because any minute now things might change. The Brewers, Phillies, Mets, Astros, Marlins, Cubs, and Padres all look like they could sell a bullpen piece. Problem is, there are fewer identifiable buyers with that need. Detroit is obvious. Maybe the Braves could use a lefty. Maybe the Orioles would buy a closer. Maybe the Dodgers would trade for a reliever, Ned Colletti is crazy like that.

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Third base has to be the group with the most movement.

But mostly I love the ones that don’t move. Like Michael Young, ending a nine-player chain of movement. Yeah, he’s still Michael Young. And was Michael Young last time we ran the third base rankings. And then David Freese and Chris Johnson, okay, they’re older fantasy role-players that might not move much, but Trevor Plouffe and Juan Francisco are pretty much what we thought they were,too?

There are some nice names on this list. Could be the best in baseball, relatively, at the end of the year. At least on the infield.

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My ideal set of rankings has input from both human and computer sources. In our rankings, we have one set of ranks that are built on projections, meaning that overall our rankings are 25% computer. That’s low for me. But I know that our other three human rankers also use the computer projections to varying degrees, so the number is probably closer to 50% computer, which I like.

But, ostensibly, we have one computer ranker. Jeff Zimmerman uses a proprietary mix of ZiPs and Steamer projections, and then takes the plate appearance projections from our depth charts. Every once in a while a player won’t be updated on the depth charts — human error — but if we stay vigilant, this mix should produce the best computer-generated rankings you can find. The addition of depth chart information can do a lot to undo the biggest flaw in projections: they don’t always know who has the job.

One remaining avenue to deal with with respect to the computer rankings is what to do with the missing plate appearances due to projected injury. Zimmerman has done a lot to advance the state of injury projections, and some of that is now built into the various projections he uses. We know that past DL stints predict future ones, for example. And that age is a heavy factor. But once those PAs and IPs are gone, they can be replaced through the waiver wire.

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There’s some decent movement in the shortstop rankings.

A lot of the movement was a long time coming. Larger samples have made the starts by Jean Segura, Everth Cabrera and Jed Lowrie more believable. Segura’s batting average came back to earth, but there are more reasons to believe in his power now. Everth Cabrera still doesn’t have any power, and is pretty bad with the glove, but his new contact rate now comes in a bigger sample now. Maybe he isn’t doomed to hit .250+ going forward. Jed Lowrie has managed to avoid catastrophic injury too. He’s one or two games away from a career high in plate appearances!

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At the beginning of the year, I thought this might be the worst position in baseball. It might still be when all is said and done, but there are positive things you can say about this group, too.

There are actually some great young players at the position. Jason Kipnis has zoomed to the top. Jose Altuve probably won’t ever be a true-talent top three guy, but for batting average and speed, he looks like a steady contributor. Kyle Seager is a find. Matt Carpenter was a favorite of ours, but he’s outproduced even our more rosy projections. Jedd Gyorko has a nice compact, fast swing and looks like he’ll have a bit of power. Anthony Rendon, well we have to see about his strikeout rate, but he’s looking good too. Nick Franklin! And maybe even Jurickson Profar.

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The king is dead. Long live the king.

That’s right, we have a new number one. For many of you, it’ll be far too late to move Albert Pujols off the top of the heap. But, given how his season went last year, and the excellence he’s shown his whole career, and his combination of contact and power, and his bad batting average on balls in play, it seemed like the good bet was on him to recapture some magic once he was healthy. Maybe the all-star break will help him, but now the mounting evidence about his decline (three-year declines in ISO and HR/FB in particular) is just too much to ignore.

The replacement top dog is not by consensus, however. It’s a pick em, so my ranking got the extra weight. It’s what the boss does in situations like this. But it is worth noticing that all four rankers had a different number one first baseman. Who’s your number one?

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With all the ups and downs in the catcher position, the coloring on this table might be a surprise to some.

Yeah, until Russell Martin, nobody moves more than two spots in the rankings since our last update. Even Brian McCann only moved two spots by proving he was healthy. Jason Castro’s new batted ball profile, and all that new power? It earns him a few spots.

Evan Gattis won a job, lost it, got hurt and got healthy again, and there he is, almost in the same spot (he was 18th). He’s actually a decent argument for the consensus approach. Others may have undervalued his power, while I definitely over-projected his playing time. But now that we know more about his playing time with a healthy McCann, our rankings are closer — all of us have him around #20 — and the result is the same. Because the consensus reins in any outlier.

Between the tenth-best and twenty-best catcher, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. .260 or something, double-digit home runs… it may not sound exactly like that for each one, but it’s an approximate thing. Maybe a catcher in green in that group is more interesting than the rest just because he’s in green. Maybe it’s Alex Avila or Wilson Ramos, finally getting healthy.

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