Presently, you are reading the third part of a continuing series, the title of which can be found above this paragraph. Catchers and first baseman were already covered. Yesterday, we peered into the misty past to evaluate 2016 performances at second base.

As a reminder, these rankings represent my first reactions rather than a truly rigorous approach. I’ve used an absolutely objective technique called mental math to compile the lists. I’m assuming a standard 5×5 format.

The purpose of this exercise is two-fold: to get an early start on 2017 rankings and to crowdsource missing or misranked players. That’s where you come in. Let your thoughts and feelings be known in the comments.

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It’s time to slide over to second base in our 2016 End of Season Rankings series. In case you missed the first two installments, check out catchers and first basemen. You can also dive straight into the auction calculator. It’s an easy way to estimate player value for your league.

For these articles, I’m going to assume a 12 team, 5×5, standard deep roster with a pitching cap of 1475 innings (most leagues are 1450 or 1500, I split the difference). I set the batter split at 65% because that produces what I consider to be the most realistic position adjustments.

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In 2015 Manny Machado finished the season as the #1 overall shortstop with 1,040 points, and it wasn’t really close, as Xander Bogaerts finished a distant 2nd with 787 points. But raw points aren’t everything, and since all Ottoneu leagues are auction leagues, true player value has to be measured as the result of production and cost (salary).  So which players were the most valuable to their owners in 2016?

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Last night I had a nightmare. I couldn’t get into a draft room because it was on a new site and Battle.net wanted me to complete a quest first. I had the fifth pick and the first guy was already on the clock. It was the most stressful dream I’ve had in years.

I think it’s pretty clear what Freud would say about it – my subconscious believes I’m not prepared for my fantasy drafts. Fortunately, I have another five months to get ready, and I’ve already built my Way Too Early Rankings. I started last week with catcher. We’ll move on to first base today. Oh, here’s what happened in 2016 at first base.

As a reminder, these rankings represent my first reactions rather than a truly rigorous approach. I’ve used an absolutely objective technique called mental math to compile the lists. I’m assuming a standard 5×5 format.

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Last week, we kicked off our review of 2016 with the ever-exciting position of catcher. Somehow, we accidentally tagged Roberto Perez with a negative $8.10 price. That was supposed to be a positive $81. At least, that’s the case for your weird postseason fantasy league. Where did you even find a postseason league?

Today, let’s shift over to the cold corner for some real actually interesting players. If you missed the first post in this series, I recommend giving it a quick skim. It has notes on methodological changes between this season and last. You can also go straight into the calculator to tweak values for your league.

For these articles, I’m going to assume a 12 team, 5×5, standard deep roster with a pitching cap of 1475 innings (most leagues are 1450 or 1500, I split the difference). I set the batter split at 65% because that produces what I consider to be the most realistic position adjustments.

Here we go…

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Well, it wouldn’t be much fun if the ball just rolled to the wall every time the pitcher threw it, so obviously the game needs a catcher, even if robot umps take over. But my impression of trying to draft stud catchers from year to year is that it’s folly.

Maybe because the position is so demanding defensively, my impression of their ability to hit is somewhere between ‘American League pitcher’ and ‘Defensive Replacement’. The numbers say that catchers debut later, but even that finding is muddied by late-career backup catcher debuts. Aging for catchers seems about the same, and finding value in a catcher is easy even if they hit 13% worse than league average as a group this year, worse than any other position players — you still need to fill the position, so even an okay batter should be valuable.

Still… am I crazy? It seems that catchers are more volatile, year to year, and I just want to shop in the bargain bin for the most part. Let’s jump in and see if I am loony tunes.

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When I started this series which attempts to determine the projected fantasy value for prospects, I knew today’s step would be the hardest. The issue was converting various pitch grades (and control) into a workable framework for a pitcher’s overall production value. I thought I may not end up with a workable answer, but the following results have promise beyond just grading pitches.

I was able to piece together work from various articles and gave each pitch a grade based on the ERA scale. Combining per-pitch-ERA’s with a control value, it looks like we can estimate a pitcher’s overall value.

A pitching prospect is usually given a value on each of their pitches and a command and/or control grade. For example, the MLB.com’s grades for their top rated pitcher, Lucas Giolito, are:

Pitch: Grade
Fastball: 80
Curveball: 70
Changeup: 55
Control: 55

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Now that we’ve evaluated how catchers performed in 2016, it’s time for some way too early 2017 rankings. These represent my first reactions rather than a truly rigorous approach. I’ve used an absolutely objective technique called mental math to compile the lists. I’m assuming a standard 5×5 format.

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With the regular season over and the postseason rumbling along, it’s time to look back at the top performers of 2016. As is usually the case, we’re starting at the catcher position. For those of you who are familiar with this series from previous offseasons, we have a major change to the way we’re calculating values. Let’s talk about that first before diving into the numbers.

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We’ve done a good thing for those of you that still care about fantasy baseball right now. The Auction Calculator now has 2016 stats as an option so that you can look backwards at what has just happened. That’s going to be part of our effort, on the way to the end of the year, to look at last year to learn more for next year.

This is an important part of fantasy that usually gets ignored. Not only does the league itself change year to year, so retrospection is important in that way, but we can learn things about fantasy itself that will improve our ability to value players going forward.

The fourth-best player in the game last year, by this list, has already inspired a possible change to the auction calculator going forward. Let’s see what else it jars loose.

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