Per usual, this is the rest-of-season thoughts on the American League outfield. All stats cited are through August 12, 2013.
Tier One
Mike Trout
We’ll be telling our children and grandchildren about how we remember Mike Trout’s first two seasons and hopefully his entire career. Right now he is simply in a class by himself. Trout fills up the stat line and is the ideal fantasy player. He does it all.
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Finally, we arrive at the final tier rankings update of the season. It’s okay, you could get out your box of tissues and let the tears stream freely down your cheeks.
Let’s do one last round of ranks for the rest of the season. Cause I know you guys are still in it and winning your leagues because we’re helping so much, right? Right??
In any case, the trade deadline is coming up and this might help you decide on a trade or two. And to help you even further, this time I’m putting in the rest-of-season projections from Steamer. One stop shopping.
And because I can, I’m using pale ales to name the tiers. Read and drink responsibly.
We’re done! We’re finally done!
With the pitchers we come to the end of another exhausting week of ranking pitchers.
Time to rank the closers!
Again, we’re going to the bullpen report guys to do the rankings — Alan Harrison, Ben Pasinkoff and Colin Zarzycki at your service.
Take a good look now, because any minute now things might change. The Brewers, Phillies, Mets, Astros, Marlins, Cubs, and Padres all look like they could sell a bullpen piece. Problem is, there are fewer identifiable buyers with that need. Detroit is obvious. Maybe the Braves could use a lefty. Maybe the Orioles would buy a closer. Maybe the Dodgers would trade for a reliever, Ned Colletti is crazy like that.
Third base has to be the group with the most movement.
But mostly I love the ones that don’t move. Like Michael Young, ending a nine-player chain of movement. Yeah, he’s still Michael Young. And was Michael Young last time we ran the third base rankings. And then David Freese and Chris Johnson, okay, they’re older fantasy role-players that might not move much, but Trevor Plouffe and Juan Francisco are pretty much what we thought they were,too?
There are some nice names on this list. Could be the best in baseball, relatively, at the end of the year. At least on the infield.
My ideal set of rankings has input from both human and computer sources. In our rankings, we have one set of ranks that are built on projections, meaning that overall our rankings are 25% computer. That’s low for me. But I know that our other three human rankers also use the computer projections to varying degrees, so the number is probably closer to 50% computer, which I like.
But, ostensibly, we have one computer ranker. Jeff Zimmerman uses a proprietary mix of ZiPs and Steamer projections, and then takes the plate appearance projections from our depth charts. Every once in a while a player won’t be updated on the depth charts — human error — but if we stay vigilant, this mix should produce the best computer-generated rankings you can find. The addition of depth chart information can do a lot to undo the biggest flaw in projections: they don’t always know who has the job.
One remaining avenue to deal with with respect to the computer rankings is what to do with the missing plate appearances due to projected injury. Zimmerman has done a lot to advance the state of injury projections, and some of that is now built into the various projections he uses. We know that past DL stints predict future ones, for example. And that age is a heavy factor. But once those PAs and IPs are gone, they can be replaced through the waiver wire.
There’s some decent movement in the shortstop rankings.
A lot of the movement was a long time coming. Larger samples have made the starts by Jean Segura, Everth Cabrera and Jed Lowrie more believable. Segura’s batting average came back to earth, but there are more reasons to believe in his power now. Everth Cabrera still doesn’t have any power, and is pretty bad with the glove, but his new contact rate now comes in a bigger sample now. Maybe he isn’t doomed to hit .250+ going forward. Jed Lowrie has managed to avoid catastrophic injury too. He’s one or two games away from a career high in plate appearances!
At the beginning of the year, I thought this might be the worst position in baseball. It might still be when all is said and done, but there are positive things you can say about this group, too.
There are actually some great young players at the position. Jason Kipnis has zoomed to the top. Jose Altuve probably won’t ever be a true-talent top three guy, but for batting average and speed, he looks like a steady contributor. Kyle Seager is a find. Matt Carpenter was a favorite of ours, but he’s outproduced even our more rosy projections. Jedd Gyorko has a nice compact, fast swing and looks like he’ll have a bit of power. Anthony Rendon, well we have to see about his strikeout rate, but he’s looking good too. Nick Franklin! And maybe even Jurickson Profar.
The king is dead. Long live the king.
That’s right, we have a new number one. For many of you, it’ll be far too late to move Albert Pujols off the top of the heap. But, given how his season went last year, and the excellence he’s shown his whole career, and his combination of contact and power, and his bad batting average on balls in play, it seemed like the good bet was on him to recapture some magic once he was healthy. Maybe the all-star break will help him, but now the mounting evidence about his decline (three-year declines in ISO and HR/FB in particular) is just too much to ignore.
The replacement top dog is not by consensus, however. It’s a pick em, so my ranking got the extra weight. It’s what the boss does in situations like this. But it is worth noticing that all four rankers had a different number one first baseman. Who’s your number one?
