We’ve finally come to the end of this long dance, and it feels good. The hope all along was not to impose our belief system on anyone with these rankings, but to show what a projections-based ranking system would look like: sober and difficult to budge. After all, true talent changes much less often than results do.

As for the major disagreements, they seemed to surround a few issues.

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Fridays used to mean shows and bars and friends, but they still hold the same excitement now that I’m a family man (and to tell the truth, they’ll mean shows and bars and friends again some day). The idea that I might have unstructured, unhurried time with my son, and maybe even time for a nap in the backyard with a beer by my side… that’s pretty exciting these days. When did I get this old.

Age has something to do with these ranks. It’s a double-edged sword. Have some years and a track record on you and we’ll give you more leash when you’re struggling. And yet you’ll have those that question if you’re done before your time. Be a young guy on the come and we’ll be tempted to have you number one with a bullet, but reason says that expectations should be tempered, especially those put upon teenagers.

Let’s look at the outfielder rankings, which have some high-profile movers and shakers and some interesting debuts.

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I’ll be honest with you. Rankings week is a tough week. It seems that everybody zooms in on the rankings of their players and wants them to be better. Most want more reactionary rankings than a site like RotoGraphs is going to give. The difficulty is that it is much more likely that a player’s true talent is the same as it was a month ago, and we do our best to find that true talent.

Of course, there are breakouts. There are role changes. There are injuries. And that’s where most of the movement will come. Third base should provide more movement than most, considering the fact that the position has had more breakouts, role changes and injuries than most. Let’s take a look at them.

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Shortstops are the red-headed stepchildren of the offense, but this year, catastrophic injury has stayed away. Oops, jinxed. You can blame the next one on me.

Early changes in contact rate and batted ball mix are the first to become reliable, so look there for possible reasoning. Speed is a tricky thing, too — it’s such an athletic skill that sensing a slight decline early in the season might just be enough to worry about their wheels. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet seen a study that points out a harbinger for a speed loss (could Bill James‘ speed score become reliable in a third of a season perhaps?).

Questions for another time. For now, your Updated RotoGraphs Rest-of-Season Consensus Shorstop Rankings ™.

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Let’s take a minute all sitting right here to tell you how these rankings came to be. In West fantasylandia, born and raised, on fantasy leagues is where we spend most of our days. Chilling out, ranking, adding, dropping, all trading players with the dudes on the playground, when a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started asking “What about rankings for the rest of the season?” We got in one little fight, and the Dark Lord got scared, and he said “You good for nothings gotta get a consensus together.” So we pulled up our own rankings, each with our own methods, and we yelled to Appelman “Yo dude smell you later.” We looked at our blog, we were finally there, we had Rest-of-Season Consensus Ranks for all of our players.

Uh, so yeah, the point is, these are our consensus ranks for the rest of the season. Because of our methodology, they will move slower than popular opinion. They also don’t give a ton of credit for past work. Just enough we think. On to the second baseman.

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There’s a little more movement in these rankings.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that these guys are, you know, catchers. For one, their full-season sample size is smaller than that at any other position. If BABIP takes 500+ plate appearances to stabilize, you might get three catchers in a given year that achieve that level of playing time. It’s rough on the knees. Plus, since it’s such a defensively demanding position, catchers aren’t known for their sticks. Somehow that seems relevant here — maybe if the group isn’t known for their offense, as a whole, then a small ripple in their projections can mean that the rankings have to change in a big way.

Up second are the guys that most often touch the ball second on any given play.

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You can read all the books and blogs you want, but once you start the (wonderful, frightening) process of being a parent, most of it goes out the window. It’s immediately triage: HOW DO I GET THIS BABY TO STOP CRYING.

You can read all the books and blogs you want, but once you start the (wonderful, frightening) process of being a fantasy manger, most of it goes out the window. It’s immediately triage: HOW DO I FIELD A COMPETENT LINEUP WITH ALL THESE DUDES ON THE DL.

So it’s been a month of triage. Let’s look at the first base consensus rankings and see what happened. Then we’ll head down the line and update all the positions.

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Jayson Werth is down. Now that the surgery was ‘successful’ and they didn’t attach his kneecap to his elbow, it looks like he’ll be out twelve weeks. That means he’ll be trying to come back in August from wrist surgery similar to the one that once robbed an entire year from him. He’s droppable in most formats.

What’s left out there for those that are now less a Werth? Especially in OBP leagues, you won’t get a guy that combines the speed and power upside Werth had, but the options aren’t all worthless.

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I bet you lost a closer. I’m here to help at 12:30.