We have been touring the diamond here at Rotographs with our first round of positional tiers. Here are the ones that have been posted so far:

• Shortstops
• Third Basemen
• AL Outfielders, NL Outfielders
• AL Starting Pitchers

Some guys took some creative license with the naming of their tiers (specifically David w/the AL OFs and Mike w/the AL SPs) and I’ll do the same naming my 10 tiers after 10 characters from my favorite movie ever: Rounders, the 1998 Matt Damon and Ed Norton vehicle centered on poker just before the poker craze hit.

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With just a week to go before the 2015 baseball season is underway and my social life comes to an end as I hole up in my condo in front of my Extra Innings packaged up television, it’s time to shed some tiers. Starting pitcher tiers of course. And specifically, American League starting pitchers.

My tier rankings are based on projected value moving forward with no accounting for what the pitcher has already done (which of course is nothing at the moment, but is important to remember when perusing through my mid-season updates). Essentially, these represent my value projections if you were to draft a team on this very day. Though tier rankings are supposed to consider all pitchers within a tier as essentially interchangeable, this initial set of rankings is a straight copy and paste from my projected dollar values, so it will begin in order.

Before diving into the tiers, you must understand how heavy a role innings pitched plays when valuing pitchers. That would explain a lot of some of the more controversial ranks. Furthermore, do not mistake this list as a precise order in which I would personally draft these pitchers. This is certainly not the case. When it gets toward the later tiers, I tend to prefer a younger, potential breakout performer than an established veteran whose value is primarily driven by his 180-200 innings (propping up both wins and strikeouts), rather than strong ratios.

For your debating pleasure, my tiers have been named after the brilliant FXX show, Man Seeking Woman (of which I hope more than two of you readers actually watch).

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Hey y’all, I mentioned in my chat that I’d get a ranking update out there ASAP. I wanted to finish last night, but I couldn’t. This is a little dirtier than our original ranks for two reasons: 1) only three rankers involve and 2) I didn’t have time to weave the three together for a composite as Zach and Dan sent me files and I had mine on a separate file. Given the time crunch I’m in to get this out for y’all, I just put all of ours on one file, but separately. I can clean it up next week, but here it is for now! Oh and there’s no overall, but frankly I think positional rankings are much more useful. Again, I know it’s a little dirty, but I wanted to get something out for everyone.

Rotographs Late-March Update

Every year, we here at RotoGraphs publish tiered rankings for every position and update them throughout the year. What you will read below are, more or less, my end-of-season projections for National League outfielders, since the season hasn’t started yet. However, these rankings will change as the year progresses, and I would be a fool to tell you the tiers below will look the same in September.

No doubt, this is a contentious matter, and you can tell me how much of a moron I am in the comments.

Without further ado, here is the 2015 season’s first installment of tiered rankings for NL outfielders.

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I’m a dweller in general. In slow drafts, I am the ultimate dweller. In the past, I would have ten+ tabs open at a given time when my draft slots were approaching: FanGraphs player profiles; RotoGraphs consensus rankings; Brooks Baseball Player Cards; BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard; Rotoworld player news; the list goes on.

Then, prior to draft season, Jeff, Eno and I worked on these Arsenal Scores so that you can compare pitcher repertoires. You now have a go-to pitcher matrix if you’re dwelling on a cluster of pitchers.

Last week, Jeff Zimmerman furnished this glorious Hitter Analytics post, which provided us with a go-to hitter matrix when we’re dwelling on a cluster of hitters.

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This is meant to be less of an overly serious analysis as it is an exercise in projecting minor league players in a new and different way. Unfortunately, Chris Mitchell has largely done what I’m about to present, and with more sophistication at that, so I’ll have to strike out the new part. But different? Sure, to an extent.

While Chris’ KATOH predicts a hitter’s probability of major league success by projecting career wins above replacement (WAR) thresholds, my model predicts probability of future success in the context of various career accomplishments: Will he be a better-than-replacement level starter? An All-Star? A future MVP? Ultimately, the exercise is simpler and more qualitative, evaluating strictly AAA stats (rather than all minor league levels, as KATOH does) and making predictions according to various marginal changes in common statistics such as isolated power (ISO), stolen base rate (SB/PA) and age. Think of the model as a series of player comparisons. Also, please think of the model as not a replacement or substitute for KATOH but a complement to it, albeit a less intense one. I will use this tool for analysis, but only infrequently; I recommend you keep up with all of Chris’ KATOH posts (as well as Kiley McDaniels‘ prospect coverage) to fulfill your prospect consumption needs.

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Last week, we came out with our Top 300. The outcomes looked excellent and I would not hesitate simply using the presented composites for your drafts.

CoolWinnebago asked if we would present our approaches. I provided a high level summary under bago’s comment, but I’ll summarize and then embed my personal rankings (without all the highlighting of my targets of course).

Feel free to skip toward the bottom for my embedded rankings, but here is the context/approach:

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The baseball community — owners, scouts, fantasy analysts et al. — is slowly learning how Cuban hitters plucked from the Cuban National Series (CNS) perform in Major League Baseball. Unfortunately, the sample size is not increasing very quickly. The common fantasy owner is helplessly resigned to rely on a) scouting reports, and/or b) his or her own eyes, probably via a batting practice video uploaded online. Ideally, a Cuban hitter’s salary would serve as a proxy for what one could expect offensively and defensively from his imported bat and glove, but the market, and the information that defines it, is far from perfect.

The market for Cuban hitters is a pendulum, but rather than coming to rest, it is in full swing: hitters such as Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu, who are all but locks to fulfill the value of their modest contracts and then some, have plumped up the market for international signees. The Diamondbacks’ Yasmany Tomas, therefore, should not be compared to Abreu simply because the average annual values (AAV) of their contracts are almost identical. The dynamics of this particular market are nebulous, changing with every transaction.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t compare Tomas and Abreu statistically. Comparing the CNS and MLB performances of hitters more recently signed out of Cuba can still give us at least a faint idea of how we can expect Tomas to perform. This is my hope, at least. I’ll be the first to admit the analysis that follows is not as rigorous as I wish it could be, as the sample of contemporary, fantasy-relevant Cuban hitters who recently played in the CNS simply lacks breadth.

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We published our Top 300 lists today and it was a fascinating project for me. I’m more accustomed to doing positional rankings so this was somewhat new for me. I’ve made overall lists before, plenty of times, but only for myself so I could eyeball adjustments very easily in the midst of a draft. This required more precision because I couldn’t just assume the adjustments. I want to discuss five players where I really diverged from the final group ranking.

Dellin Betances, RP, NYY

(My Rank: 62, Group Rank: 130, Difference: +68)

I’ve completely bought in on the Yankees reliever. Obviously if he doesn’t get announced as the closer ahead of Andrew Miller, I’ll have to adjust, but I’m betting on him getting the role and excelling with it. I know he’s not just going to repeat last year with 35 saves. First off, he won’t get 90 innings as a closer and his crazy ratios are set to rise because it’s hard to maintain that kind of historical rate.

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On Friday we released our positional rankings with the promise of a Top 300 forthcoming. It is now available on the spreadsheet which you can find in the original post here. Our own Dan Schwartz has embedded the Top 300 for us below:

UPDATE: I’ve adjusted the rankings for instances were one or more rankers didn’t include a guy as pointed out in the comments. Now those guys get a last ranked+1 for that particular ranker. (ex. I ranked 345, so everyone else gets a 346 for the purposes of this rank). It’s not perfect since we didn’t all rank the exact same set, but at least this skews on the side of bringing the guys down to where they belong instead of artificially inflating them within the average.

Rankings based on 5×5 roto, 12 teams, single-catcher with Middle Infield and Corner Infield spots, 14 hitters and 9 pitchers. Each ranker had their own mix of projections and intuition. 

Last Update: 2/17/15