Our midseason rankings update continues. We have the outfield today, the starting pitchers tomorrow, and then wrapping it up with the reliever on Wednesday.

This is one of the most interesting positions just by the sheer volume of it. The fantasy community at large seems to consistently overrate the depth of the position, confusing the quantity for quality. Most leagues use five outfielders right out of the gate, but then you have to consider the OF-eligibles being used at other fielding positions as well as the UT/DH position. I don’t think there are any easy answers with the slotting of these guys after Trout, Harper, & McCutchen as the top three in some fashion. From there, we all seem to go in different directions creating some interesting totals.

For this update, you will have the rankings from me, Zach Sanders, Jeff Zimmerman, and Dan Schwartz. Mike Podhorzer is currently on vacation. A 121 from me is essentially an unranked, it’s 95 for Zach, 108 for Jeff, and 90 for Dan.

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While shortstop has been a wasteland, third base has been the infield oasis. Third base has turned out to be remarkably rich this year with some established guys taking another step forward and a strong core of young guys jumping a couple levels and arriving ahead of schedule.

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Continuing the positional rankings, we move over to shortstop. It’s been something of a barren wasteland this year. Thankfully, the unquestioned top two – Tulowitzki and Hanley – have been the unquestioned top two (with Hanley leading the way). but it’s been pretty jumbled from that point on. The landscape has really opened up with a lot of new names emerging as some former stalwarts have sunk further. I wasn’t even sure Correa would be called up in 2015 and now he’s looking like a game-changer at SS.

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Not only are you getting the keystone rankings today, but the Catchers and First Basemen are also updated with the guys missed the first time around. So Carlos Santana and John Jaso are in with the catchers and guys like Todd Frazier have been fully ranked at 1B by our rankers.

Remember when I ranked Kinsler over Kipnis? That was rich. I’ll take my heat for being wrong there, but I still remain a touch skeptical on trusting Kipnis fully. This upcoming portion of the season – the second half – has long been a problem for Kipnis. He hasn’t been great at holding up in the dog days and delivering the frontline production we expect and have seen in previous first halves.

His career .683 OPS in the second half is well off the All-Star level .816 he’s amassed in the first half over the last four seasons. All that said, I’m still more in on Kipnis than I have been previously and ranked him quite highly, though still came in last among the quartet of rankers. Hilariously, despite feeling better about Kipnis as a player, he’s actually a spot lower than those May rankings where I had Kinsler ahead of him. Don’t worry, Kinsler is well behind him now (though still a starter in all formats). 

For this update, you will have the rankings from me, Zach Sanders, Jeff Zimmerman, and Dan Schwartz. Mike Podhorzer is currently on vacation.

Other positions:

• Catcher
• First Base

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We’re back at it again today with our midseason rankings. After covering Catchers yesterday, we jump to First Base today. I put my rankings in last and added some names that were forgotten on my initial list and the guys haven’t been able to update theirs to include these guys just yet. I’m sure you can expect some dissent on Frazier, but for now I left him in that two spot despite having just my ranking. I think of Frazier more as a 3B, but the incredible depth at the position means you could realistically have two of the superstuds over there at third, pushing Frazier to your 1B where he definitely still holds up.

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This is the worst time of the sports calendar year. With baseball off enjoying its All-Star break, there are no major professional sports being played right now. Worse yet is that the intriguing new Home Run Derby might not even get done because of weather. Thankfully, we here at Fangraphs have got you covered. Over on the front page, Dave Cameron is unveiling his Trade Value List which began with the honorable mentions so-to-speak and then numbers 50-41. Over here at Rotographs, we are rolling out our midseason rankings by position.

Today, we start behind the dish.

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An even-thinner-than-normal shortstop position got some reinforcements in June with Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor getting the call. If you’re not convinced that shortstop is as shallow as ever, consider the following, which shows that a steadily declining position has seen a big decline this season. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rankings update time! We’re coming up to the midpoint of the season, which means there are only a couple of months left of baseball to be played ::sad face::.

My usual caveat on how I rank pitchers follows:

It’s essential to remember that ERA is not a skill. It’s just a result. So I don’t really care what a pitcher’s ERA is at the moment. What I’m really interested in is their peripherals and any changes in pitch mix and/or velocity. And even if their peripherals have changed, you then have to ask yourself if its sustainable. Again, more likely is that what we initially forecasted is what is going to be posted the rest of the way, though obviously this is not always the case.

As a reminder, the tiers are named after the best characters from the FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.

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NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

I’ll own up to it: ranking Carlos Gomez first last month was careless of me. I blindly assumed production from him when his peripherals advised otherwise. Josh Shepardson recommended cutting bait in keeper and dynasty leagues. Frankly, the long-term outlook at this moment isn’t great.

Also, I’ll own up to undervaluing Justin Upton. That was also a strangely careless oversight. Frankly, I love five-category contributors, and so should you, so I don’t know why he didn’t excite me more.

I’m going to undertake the impossibly difficult task of creating tiers by Coen Brothers films. This will probably be harder than ranking the outfielders, so go ahead and have your “so the guys in the bottom tier are actually the best?” jokes locked and loaded.

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With July nearly upon us, it’s tier time here at Rotographs. Following up on my previous themes of Kurt Russell movies and vacation destinations, I have decided to assign hard rock bands to this month’s tiers. This idea came to me at about 3am on Friday night, and I haven’t thought of anything better, so here we go.

Before we get into it, please fight off the temptation to flood the comments section with “DUDE YOU DIDN’T RANK [insert band here] WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU” posts. I’ve only got seven tiers to cover the very broad genre of ‘hard rock,’ and I had to save two of them for Creed and Nickelback. Give me a break.

TIER ONE – LED ZEPPELIN
Brian Dozier
Jose Altuve
Jason Kipnis
Dee Gordon

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