It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Kansas City Royals shocked the world last year, as they finally returned to the playoffs, and even reached the World Series. Then, they had the kind of offseason that reminded everyone why they had a 28-year playoff drought in the first place.

The Royals gave Edinson Volquez $20 million over two years. I don’t even need to make a joke, as the previous sentence is its own punchline. They also handed Alex Rios $11 million to take playing time away from younger, better players.

This piece, however, is about the infield, which is a bit of a mixed bag for fantasy purposes. Let’s dive a little deeper and see if anyone here looks like a good value for fantasy owners in 2015.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Colorado Rockies infield has some enticing fantasy pieces, although there are certainly legitimate questions swirling about. Several of these guys will be nearly universally owned, but which ones do you want on your team? Let’s take a trip around the diamond to determine how these players should be valued.

CATCHER

Wilin Rosario
Nick Hundley

Wilin Rosario seems like a pretty trendy pick this year, as he will reportedly get some playing time at first and/or in a corner outfield spot to keep his bat in the lineup. This being fantasy baseball, people like to freak out about catcher-eligible guys playing the position of not-catcher, and rightfully so. I’m all-in on Evan Gattis this year, for example.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Chicago Cubs outfield doesn’t have a single player in the top 30 fantasy outfielders here at Rotographs, but that’s certainly not to say they don’t have anything to offer to fantasy owners. In fact, one of my favorite fantasy prospects will be the everyday right fielder, and there’s a couple other options for NL-only leagues on the north side.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Houston Astros have a pretty interesting infield for fantasy purposes this year. Jose Altuve continues to be the No. 1 fantasy second baseman, which is where I’ve had him ranked since July. Altuve’s far from the only intriguing fantasy commodity in the Astros’ infield, so let’s take a look around the diamond. (As with my columns on the Yankees and Twins infields, I won’t include a separate section for the designated hitter. The DH will be covered position-by-position below.)

CATCHER

Evan Gattis
Jason Castro
Hank Conger

Evan Gattis is likely just an emergency catcher in real life, seeing as the Astros have Castro and Conger. However, for fantasy purposes, he’s still catcher-eligible, and our experts here at Rotographs have him slotted in as the No. 3 fantasy catcher for 2015. There’s plenty of reason for optimism here, as moving from behind the dish should allow him considerably more playing time than he received in either of the last two seasons in Atlanta.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

I wrote about the New York Yankees starting rotation last week and — seeing as I’ve already spent plenty of quality time with their depth chart — I decided to tackle their infield as well. (I will not be including a separate designated-hitter portion of this piece; I think that position will be a revolving door of several guys who I’ll already be covering positionally.)

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The New York Yankees head into 2015 praying that their rotation will hold up. As nearly anyone can reasonably surmise, it won’t. Injury concerns abound in the Yanks’ top five, and there’s not much help waiting in the wings. If everyone stays healthy, this rotation will be very formidable. Unfortunately, there aren’t many bigger ‘ifs’ than that one.

CC Sabathia
Masahiro Tanaka
Michael Pineda
Nathan Eovaldi
Ivan Nova
Chris Capuano

Those six names are the only ones that we have projected to pitch more than 19 innings as a starter for the Yanks this season. Considering the team used a whopping 13 starters last year, that’s red flag number one. Let’s start with Sabathia and work our way down.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Minnesota Twins have a whole lot of boom-or-bust potential in their infield for 2015. Brian Dozier is the one relatively sure thing, having put up a solid year-and-a-half of excellent production, following his June 2013 breakout. Aside from him…well, there’s a reason I titled this column the way I did. Let’s start things off at first base and work our way around the diamond up in Minneapolis, shall we?

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I’m the type of guy who likes a good challenge. At least, I must be. Why else would I volunteer myself to write about a 33-year-old reliever who made the transition to the rotation, pitched to a 3.44 earned run average in 32 starts, and then got traded?

Let’s begin by just reflecting on how remarkable Alfredo Simon’s 2014 was. He came into the season more than two years removed from his last start, having spent all of 2012 and 2013 pitching out of the bullpen. Not only had he not started in quite some time, but he was never any good at all as a starter in the first place.

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When Alex Wood broke into the majors in 2013 as a member of the Braves bullpen, there were more questions than answers regarding his long-term outlook. A fastball/changeup lefty, Wood lacked the third pitch that is so crucial for sustained success in a major-league rotation. He also relied on a funky delivery to generate deception. Whether that delivery remained deceptive after hitters got used to it was one question; whether Wood could stay healthy with his high-effort delivery was another.

Tim Hudson’s mid-season 2013 injury gave Wood a chance to show what he could do as a starter. In his 11 starts, Wood allowed plenty of baserunners (1.45 per inning), but largely mitigated that issue by allowing just 14 extra-base hits in those 11 starts. All told, his work as a starter was largely promising:

• 3.54 ERA, 8.68 K/9, 3.54 BB/9, .273/.340/.366 opponents’ slash

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For me personally, I’m not sure there was a bigger pitching surprise in 2014 than Dallas Keuchel. I saw a handful of Keuchel’s Triple-A starts in 2011 and 2012, and I had a hard time envisioning him carving out any meaningful role on a major-league pitching staff. As a lefty who topped out around 90 mph, Keuchel was also essentially a two-pitch pitcher.

To be fair, they were two pretty good pitches. Keuchel has always had a strong changeup, paired with a two-seamer with very nice dual-plane break. The problem was that his other pitches were basically junk. He threw some sort of slurvey breaking ball that didn’t fool anyone, and rarely found the strike zone. He had a four-seam fastball, but it was extremely flat and virtually lifeless.

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