Personally, I hold the old-school belief that the well-rounded player with speed and defense is the best selection for the MVP hardware, but that’s of no concern until I have a vote. In the meantime, I’m left wondering what this debate means for fantasy.

We fantasy-obsessed know that this debate foreshadows a more important one: who should be the number one pick next year. Maybe the things we know about the players now can help us make that decision a little easier, but the conversation can still tell us something about the things we value in the fantasy game.

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There were certainly some compelling candidates for the 2012 Fantasy Zombie in the hitters division, but after the top choices, the field wasn’t actually all that deep. Plenty of hitters surged to great seasons, but of those that did, very few were coming back from either bad injuries or the true pits of previous poor performance. There is no such problem with the pitchers.

More of these candidates are coming back from major injuries than are simply rounding back into form after a trip to the abyss, which makes sense given that it’s easier for an injury to cost a pitcher a full season than it is for a hitter to miss the whole year. Four of the five have had Tommy John surgery at some point in their career, and three earned their spot on this list with their performance following that procedure. Jake Peavy, the only one of the four not to have his UCL replaced, could have been on this list last year as well, since he was working his way back from a detached lat, which remains one of the most painful injuries I’ve ever encountered.

Irrespective of what put them under the knife, here are five strong contenders for the pitching edition of Fantasy Zombie 2012, but there are surely others who deserve a nod and a handshake. As before, if there’s someone you feel I’ve missed, leave it in the comments! Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the Melky Cabrera saga, the 3.1 PAs per team game a player needs to qualify for the batting title is firmly ingrained in our collective conscious. I’ll admit, I had to look up the qualification for the ERA title — 1 IP per team game, for those who also didn’t know — and while it isn’t as easy to parrot on command, it makes sense even if it’s a bit arbitrary. Rookie of the Year criteria are a little odd as well, but again, more or less make sense, but what about Comeback Player of The Year?

It’s never really been clear whether a player has to actually come back from something specific or if being rotten one year and then excellent the next qualifies as a comeback. The introductory press release offers no help, stating only that “This exciting new MLB-sanctioned award, which will be presented annually to one player each from the American and National Leagues, will recognize those players who have re-emerged on the baseball field during a given season.” The Sporting News, who present the more well-known version of the same award, seems to have similar criteria for their prize. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is behind us but there were very few moves made with real fantasy impact at the first base position. Due to popular demand, the catchers — Buster Posey, Carlos Santana, Joe Mauer, and Mike Napoli — have been left out of the first base rankings just because they’re so much more valuable behind the plate. The same goes for guys with middle infield eligibility like Howie Kendrick and Michael Young. Here are our preseason, May, June, and July tiered rankings for reference, as well as our consensus second half rankings.

Tier One
Miguel Cabrera
Albert Pujols
Prince Fielder
Paul Konerko

These four remain the game’s truly elite first base producers, a position where monster numbers are expected. Konerko has cooled off a bit in the power department, which likely has something to do with the minor wrist procedure he had a few weeks ago. The rest of his production is top notch though.

Tier Two
Adrian Gonzalez
Edwin Encarnacion
Mark Teixeira
Mark Trumbo
Billy Butler
Allen Craig
Paul Goldschmidt

Gonzalez has finally started to hit as expected after three down months to start the season, a welcome sight for fantasy owners. Goldschmidt now has a clear path for playing time with Lyle Overbay being removed from the roster, though he still does most of his damage against southpaws. Craig also has a clear path for playing time, but he’s a little banged up himself at the moment.

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Tier update week is upon us again and it’s time to check in on the American League starting pitchers. Check out the July rankings to refresh your memory and rememember that these rankings only reflect how I expect the pitchers to perform over the rest of the season.

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I’ve been slacking on my pimping: It’s been a long time since I’ve tiered my National League outfielders. After a long discussion of rankings every time we produce ranks (our late July ranks are up on the main page), I realized that I think in tiers. Too often a reader would react to one player that was right below another, and I would be surprised. Would I take this player for that player in a trade? Dunno, what does the rest of my team look like. What are my needs.

Instead, I find it more rewarding to think of players in tiers. Is there much sense in wondering if I would trade Carlos Gonzalez for Matt Kemp straight up anyway? Much more interesting to me is the idea that I could trade away Jay Bruce in a trade that netted me Justin Upton, and my outfielder’s tier wouldn’t be affected.

So, your tiers:

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Recently here at Rotographs, we released our rest of season rankings for starting pitchers, I had Tim Lincecum rated as the sixth-highest fantasy pitcher. To say the least, I took a little heat for that ranking. I will try to justify the ranking today.

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Stephen Strasburg is possibly the best starting pitcher so far this season. Here is a quick sampling of his stats:

11.6 K/9, 32% K%
2.6 BB/9, 7% BB%
2.82 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 2.60 xFIP, 2.60 SIERA

These numbers are good enough that I have him ranked as the best fantasy starting pitcher without taking the number of innings he pitches into account. The only knock against him is that he is not a ground ball pitcher with has led to a career BABIP 0.308. When he is on the mound, he is arguably the best fantasy pitcher in the in the game.

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Starting pitchers. Man, there are so many of them. And every week, there’s a no-name that throws a shutout and burns bright for a few days. Those matchstick burns very rarely turn into anything substantial.

And yet we have to wait five days between starts, wondering what the next heaping pile of information will tell us. Imagine if a position player got 30 plate appearances every five days, we’d spend a lot of time thinking about them in between, too. Maybe this is the appeal with fantasy football, eh?

Off-topic. Point is, information about starting pitchers comes in leaps and surges. That makes them particularly tough to rank, but it also provides opportunity.

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Rankings week is mercifully drawing to a close, with only the pitchers left for Monday. It makes sense to close the offense with catchers, in a way — they are the least likely position to make an offensive impact on your fantasy team. Sure, middle infielders hit for a worse batting line, but catchers are close, and they accrue fewer plate appearances. Their teams need to watch out for their knees and always employ a tandem at the position — only five catchers are projected to accrue more than 500 at-bats this year by the updated ZiPs, and that’s not a ton. By contrast, there are three first baseman that might crack 600 at-bats, and 21 that should cross the 500 at-bat threshold.

Catchers: not only are they doing it worse, they’re doing it less often. Maybe that’s a boon, actually. Sometimes, especially in two-catcher leagues, it makes sense just to leave that space unfilled. Many of these guys are just going to hurt your team more with every plate appearance.

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