In what should hopefully be the final update to the draft ranking spreadsheet that you can download here — thanks to Blake Murphy, Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Podhorzer and Zach Sanders for their work on it — we’re now adding the top 300 as a tab and a post.

I will say it felt sorta nonsensical by the second half. In most drafts, by the time you’re in the 15th round, your needs have overtaken any value-based picking you could do. It might be great that there are first basemen available for cheap, but if you have first, corner infield and utility already lined up, you won’t be looking at that position. The good news is that we still have the deep positional rankings on the same sheet, now with updated composite projections.

The bad news is that we had to try and figure out the relative value of a flier setup man that might close or might not versus a position player too deeply ranked to actually expect to play on a mixed league team. Enjoy!

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It may not be in time for all drafts but hopefully this latest update is in time for your draft. Because that’s all we care about – you.

What you’ll find in this spreadsheet is the consensus rankings by position, as ranked by Eno Sarris, Mike Podhorzer, Zach Sanders and Jeff Zimmerman. You’ll also notice an accompanying stat line, which is the average projection of the Zips, Steamer and Fans projection systems (and just Steamer and Zips where a Fans projection wasn’t available).

You’ll also notice “composite” tabs for batters and pitchers, showing these average projections for a larger pool of players. Finally, there is a “sanity consideration” tab which simply shows the sum of each system compared to the 2013 reality – in short, be wary of the Zips playing time projections, which also work to slightly inflate the playing time for lower-ranked players (note that this can be useful as an “if they play” exercise, it’s just worth keeping in mind).

Click here to download the spreadsheet, and happy drafting!

Important Note: Until 9 a.m. Eastern, the sheet pulled BB for pitchers instead of K. It has been fixed and re-uploaded, sorry for the temporary inconvenience.

Now that the RotoGraphs consensus positional rankings have been published, it’s time for the 2014 edition of Pod’s Picks! Once again, I will be identifying the players at each position in which my rankings differ most from the consensus. This year, I have removed my rankings and recalculated the consensus rank to paint a more accurate picture of what the other three are thinking. This new consensus is what I will be comparing my ranking to.

First, I will start with catchers. The bullish section will only include players from my top 24, while the bearish group will only include those whose consensus is in the top 24.

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I think we’re the last ones to finish up. We’re so slow, Eno apparently already dropped the full spreadsheet. But, really, don’t you just want a thread where you can bag on how the Rockies claim that LaTroy Hawkins may open the season ahead of Rex Brothers on the depth chart?

Reliever rankings come courtesy of the guys (Alan, Ben, and Colin) who’ll once again be on Bullpen Report duty. You aren’t going to quibble with the top six or so (although you might want to shuffle up the order). Where things get really interesting is wading into the quagmire of guys past RP20 or so. As always, relievers look to be a volatile breed. Do you look for guys with weaker peripherals but have the tentative “closer” tag or do you draft for peripherals and assume your guy will float to the top as the season grinds along? And who knows who Houston is going to tab as their next closer? Are you going to be the one rolling the dice on Josh Fields, Chad Qualls, or (insert reliever X here)? (Aside: it’s not me.)

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Hope this is just in time for your draft!

Our ranks, plus Steamer projected hitter numbers and ZiPs projected pitcher values, all in one downloadable place.

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Starting pitchers are the best. For whatever reason — perhaps their true talent changes more year to year, or they have less control over their results than hitters, or injury is more pervasive — pitchers are harder to project than hitters. I personally believe it’s because the power of changing your pitching mix can make you a new pitcher.

Look at Dallas Keuchel. He used to have a meh curve, he ditched it for a good slider. How relevant are his past stats now? You move a pitcher from the tougher league to the easier one, and you have to guess at how much that will matter, to some extent. Because the defense behind them will change too. In Doug Fister’s case, it always seemed like he’d get better defense at his new stop. Is that the case? Or consider the case of Jose Fernandez and the lack of major league sample size. You regress him, and he’s still great. Or Masahiro Tanaka, the complete lack of major league stats.

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The Outfield. It’s a bear. If you’re in a three-outfielder league, it’s easy: wait. There are so many outfielders that actually play the outfield, and then when you add outfield-eligible players, there’s even more. Most leagues have responded by going to five outfielders to create a little positional scarcity, so we rank with five outfielders.

There’s a consensus number one, but that’s where the love between our rankers ends. That’s being a bit dramatic, but since we rank 1-105 on these, you’ll see wider disparities in the raw numbers of our rankings. The difference in opinion is about the same.

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As you are no doubt keenly aware, Eno has been furiously posting the RotoGraphs rankers’ position rankings over the past week. This is always an interesting and sometimes surprising exercise as I find players I didn’t think I liked ranked higher than the others, whereas guys I thoughts I liked are ranked lower. Trying to figure out why such was the case is the fun part. But rather than explain why each player I ranked differently was ranked at such spot (don’t worry, Pod’s Picks will soon be upon us!), I thought it would be helpful to explain the various general reasons a player is ranked dramatically differently than others rank that same player. Or, in simpler terms, what leads to a difference in ranking?

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Now we’re talking. You can keep my interest all the way down to the high twenties on this list of third basemen. I love Chris Johnson’s line drive game as much now as I used to distrust it. Todd Frazier grips it and rips it, but has power. Anthony Rendon is on the cusp. Matt Dominguez finished strong. Nolan Arenado makes contact and has power. Cody Asche even has something going in his favor — a little bit of everything.

I don’t even have many questions about the top six or seven. Sure, Josh Donaldson broke out, but most of his rates are right in line with his minor league numbers. Ryan Zimmerman has the health thing and the throwing thing, but otherwise, he’s good when he’s in.

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You’ve been told position scarcity doesn’t exist because you can get a shortstop late in the draft, he’ll be there for you, he’ll exist. Position scarcity never meant an abject lack of players at a position to me, though. It just meant, to me, that finding useful players at that position gets really hard late in the draft. Just because there was once a Ben Zobrist or a Jean Segura available late in the draft, just because Yunel Escobar exists at the plate for a full season and has some value in a deep league, doesn’t mean the position doesn’t suck pretty hard core once you get about 18 deep.

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