A new season beginning means a new set of tiered rankings. As usual, I’ll be sharing with you lovely readers my American League starting pitcher ranks. All my rankings lists are based on projected value moving forward with no accounting for what the pitcher has already done (which of course is nothing for the majority of pitchers at this point). I am extremely patient before moving a pitcher up or down, mostly ignore ERA and focus primarily on a pitcher’s underlying skills. Though tier rankings are supposed to consider all pitchers within a tier as essentially interchangeable, this list is a straight copy and paste from my projected dollar values, so it will begin in order. For your debating pleasure, my tiers have been named after Parks and Recreation characters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s ready for some tiers? National league pitchers have been hit particularly hard in the lead-up to the season, creating some interesting situations within the tiers. Where should you value Mike Minor now? What about Cole Hamels? A couple notes about tiers before we begin. You’ll notice this is the NL post, so you won’t see Justin Verlander ranked. Despite this, someone in the comments will say “where’s Justin Verlander, you idiot?” Don’t do this, don’t even do it ironically. The tiers should be viewed as tiers, not straight rankings. If I have Minor and Hamels in the same tier, but Minor is ranked higher in his tier, that doesn’t matter. Being in a tier means I perceive those players to have similar value. Finally, I’m going to rank players according to my favorite Game of Thrones characters (topical!). There will be no spoilers, I promise. On a final note, don’t even try to argue with the rankings of Game of Thrones characters. You will be wrong! Off we go.

Read the rest of this entry »

With one day in the books, you’ve already got one prediction right when it comes to the shortstop position: Yes, Jose Reyes will get hurt at some point this season. On the first at bat of the season, to be precise.

While Reyes’ injury history was surely priced into his ranking and projections already, his opening-day-uhh-why-did-he-play-on-the-weekend-at-less-than-100-percent injury serves as a reminder that things can change quickly. Chris Owings is a full-time starter, Alex Gonzalez surely earned himself some additional early PAs, and Hanley Ramirez is the bustiest bust to ever bust.

It’s technically a day too late, but here are the moment-in-time shortstop tiers for the 2014 season.
Read the rest of this entry »

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!

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.)

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »