It’s another week of recommending mediocre players who might just be less crappy than the rest of the fish in your free agent pool. Or, you could just stream any hitter facing Roy Halladay.
I asked. You answered. Who knew the most commented on post with my byline would be a poll about OBP leagues? Over 1,000 of you play in leagues that count OBP in some way or another. So that means I will be publishing articles specifically focusing on players in this scoring format. Today I will identify a couple of hitters who may be available in your league and gain value when OBP, rather than AVG, is a category.
We here at RotoGraphs preach patience. There is nothing worse than making a reactionary transaction based on a small performance sample and then a month later looking back and realizing your mistake. Unfortunately, every league has at least a couple of owners who simply cannot stop themselves from dropping the slow starter after a week and adding the flavor of the day. This means that your patient approach is going to almost guarantee you will miss out on the breakouts who went undrafted. So with that in mind, let’s look at the ultra tiny sample of one game to analyze some of the lesser owned hitters who launched a home run on opening day.
Earlier this month we rolled out our consensus rankings, and now it’s time to pick them apart a bit and separate everyone into individual tiers. The individual player rankings slightly different from our consensus — I did disagree with some rankings and adjusted accordingly — but not a whole lot. In the past I excluded the catcher-eligible guys from the first base rankings because no one ever bothered to actually plug those guys into first base in their lineups, but I’m going to include them this year for the sake of completeness. Here are the tiers:
Tier One
Albert Pujols
Joey Votto
Prince Fielder
Despite offseason knee surgery and what is now a four-year decline in wRC+, Pujols remains in the top spot because he’s as much of a lock for .280/30/100 as any player in the game. At first base you need guaranteed production, and that’s exactly what Albert gives you. Votto is kinda coming off a knee injury of his own and would occupy the top spot in OBP leagues. Fielder mashes andI don’t think there would be much argument if he ranked ahead of the other two.
My how times have changed. Four seasons ago the Yankees rode one of the best infields in baseball history — combined 23.5 WAR out of their starting catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman — to the World Championship, but when 2013 opens they will have one bonafide superstar, one major question mark, and three guys either hurt or coming off injury on the infield. You have to see it to believe how ugly it is:
| C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Chris Stewart | Mark Teixeira | Robinson Cano | Derek Jeter | Alex Rodriguez |
| Backup | Francisco Cervelli | Dan Johnson | Jayson Nix | Eduardo Nunez | Kevin Youkilis |
| Depth | Austin Romine | Corban Joseph | David Adams |
There are probably six players on this depth chart that are more important than Evan Gattis. But it’s fine if you want to read about Evan Gattis, I won’t be bitter. I promise.
On Monday, I started identifying which players at each position my ranking differed most from the RotoGraphs consensus. I began with catchers, and now it’s time to move around the diamond to first base. Once again, I will only look at those expected to earn value in standard 12-team mixed leagues. With the first base, corner and utility slots, I will assume 20 first base will earn at least a buck of value. The bullish picks will only include players I ranked in the top 20, while the bearish will include only those included in the top 20 by the consensus.
Last week was all about the consensus ranks. This week, you’ll see some tiered ranks as we also try to finish up the depth chart discussion. But before we move on too quickly, I thought it would be interesting and informative for me to pick out the players that I liked and disliked more than the other analysts involved in the consensus ranks. Hopefully I’ll have a short, concise reason for my rankings in each case. Hopefully.
Paul Konerko has defied the odds. At an age where most players a clearly past their prime, Konerko is posting some of his best offensive seasons. Even with the late-career resurgence, Konerko continues to be a risk because of his age. That’s a fair criticism, as 37-year-olds are rarely still exhibiting numbers anywhere close to their prime. Given what he’s been able to do over the past couple of seasons, there’s reason to believe Konerko will be just fine this year.
Over the last few days, my compatriots four of my compatriots have begun presenting you with an extremely valuable draft tool: consensus positional rankings. But for those of you who play ottoneu, things differ a bit, especially if you are in a 4×4 or Points League.
Starting today, I am going to take a look at those rankings and let you know where ottoneu players should take a different stance.
