Coors Field: god’s gift to fantasy sports. If you were to sort a typical FanGraphs leaderboard by offensive production, Nolan Arenado is eighth, sandwiched between Matt Carpenter and Evan Longoria. If the exercise is to grade fantasy production, Arenado outpaced Kris Bryant as the top third baseman by a full $3. As we all know, the real and fantasy worlds do not have a 1:1 relationship.

In case you’re just tuning into this series for the first time, I recommend going back in time and starting from the beginning. Luckily, you won’t need a time machine. The post on catchers has notes on important methodological changes. 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.

I already teased the top two, let’s see where the chips fall.

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Last month, I put up my early pitcher rankings and I’m going to go position-by-position along with Brad’s “Way Too Early” series starting with first basemen. I’ll circle back to catchers at the end since he already did his two weeks ago. I usually put my initial lists together in preparation for my trip to First Pitch Arizona coming up later this week where I compete in the first half of a 50-round draft and hold NFBC league. Jason and I will actually be doing a live episode of the podcast at the same time of the draft this year so I won’t be able to participate, but I’ll share my first run of rankings instead.

(I’m including a couple DHs because there aren’t enough DH-only guys for their own set of rankings unlike 2016)

Paul Goldschmidt | Diamondbacks – He’s still the best of the bunch as one of the few 5-category first basemen in the game. His career-high 32 SBs this year gave him his fourth season of at least 15 SBs in the last five. It likely would’ve been 5-for-5 had he not missed the last two months of 2014 with injury. Goldy was hitting .223 through the first 40 games of this season, but no one seemed to bat an eye as it was tied to an uncharacteristically low BABIP of just .258, nearly 100 points lower than his .356 career mark.

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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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