By now, you might have a favorite ranker among the four of us. That’s fine, we’re adults. We’ve gathered to give you four options for a reason. In fact, we’ve gathered these four guys in particular for a reason.

Jeff Zimmerman primarily uses ZiPs rest-of-season projections, with a few tweaks, and so he’s our Sober Suzy. ZiPs does use information from this year, weighted against information from past years, and it does include playing time projections, but it does not get caught up in the excitement of a player in a breakout. Zach Sanders has his own projections, which are more intuitive, and he uses his value calculator to stack the players up against each other. On the other end of the spectrum, you have me and Mike Podhorzer. We are more intuitive, and yet we have different ideas about the players and different levels of cynicism.

Taken as a whole, you should get a reasonable set of rankings that doesn’t get too caught up in a hot month, or too upset about a bad start. That’s the aim.

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A commenter brought up a common refrain on a discussion of the first base ranks yesterday. That commenter asked if I would trade my Mark Teixeira straight up for Adrian Gonzalez, since I had ranked Mark Teixeira one spot ahead of Adrian Gonzalez. It was a simple question, but it brought into focus many of my feelings about these rankings.

First, there’s no such league that I’ve ever been in where I have offered or received an offer of one player at one position for another player at the same position. That doesn’t mean that it never happens, or shouldn’t happen, it just means that the hypothetical doesn’t really match up with reality in a useful way. Then again, if you felt strongly about those two players, perhaps you would make that trade.

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Perhaps I shouldn’t have scheduled the rankings week during a vacation week, but this isn’t a normal vacation. My wife and our three-month-old are visiting her sister, her 18-month-old, and her newborn in Hawaii — it wasn’t going to be a vacation like most vacations. In fact, even though rankings are a grueling, thankless task, they offer a respite (a vacation, perhaps) from my vacation.

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The baseball world is quiet. Only the All-Stars are stirring, and even that action puts many baseball fans to sleep. 90% of the game is on a three-day vacation — but not the gang here at RotoGraphs headquarters. Given the fact that all the teams have played more than half their games, it’s time to update the consensus ranks for the rest of the season. These are built for 12-team mixed leagues with traditional 5×5 stats, but we extended the rankings as far down as we could in order to give managers of all types a reference for the second half.

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Michael Fiers is the fire that the Brewers rotation needed when Shaun Marcum went down. What remains to be seen is if he’s the slow-burning campfire that will keep giving all year or the short-lived snap crackle pop of your average Independence Day firecracker in San Diego.

He wasn’t supposed to be this good. He didn’t even crack Baseball America’s top ten going into the season — his only appearances on the page were a mention for Best Control in the system and a thought by Tom Haudricourt that he might help the team, in some capacity, because he’d proven himself at Triple-A. Our own Marc Hulet put Fiers 15th on the Brewers list, mentioned he was 26 and didn’t have much of a ceiling, and then gave him the “likely swing-man” mark of doom.

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Sure, it’s a buy-low piece. But what I’m really saying is, trade me Matt Moore. Because I’m buying.

We can start with his strengths, even if they are obvious. His 11.9% swinging strike rate is fourth among qualified starters. Only Cole Hamels, R.A. Dickey and Stephen Strasburg garner more whiffs. That leads to a strikeout per inning, which is extremely valuable from a starter. All from a wicked 95+ mph fastball and a great changeup and curveball combination.

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Look at Jesus Montero. You probably aren’t excited by the .263/.301/.406 work, or the eight home runs. It’s just not a strong package, not after all that hype.

As that hype creates the context that has led to disappointment — an emotion that’s running high among his owners if twitter is to be believed — there are other ways to place Jesus Montero that make him more attractive. Context is key.

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Adam Lind is a major leaguer again. It’s probably because the Vladimir Guerrero thing didn’t pan out, or because the 25-year-old David Cooper doesn’t have the same power upside, or because Lind might actually be a better defensive first baseman than Edwin Encarnacion (or “E5”). It could be because of any of these things. But fantasy players may be tempted to think it was because Lind hit .395/.451/.669 in Las Vegas, and are probably ready to give Lind another shot. Should they?

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