Check out last month’s rankings here.

I am, if nothing else, a man of the people. This month, I am integrating reader feedback to improve upon both the helpfulness and the overall fun factor of this feature. Regarding the helpfulness, as commenters pointed out last month, I should probably rank Mookie Betts, even though he’s not eligible in all formats.

As commenters also pointed out last month, I could have just ranked him instead of explaining why I am or am not ranking him, thus saving myself both time and effort. Still, I felt compelled to account for my actions, and here we are, several possibly unnecessary sentences later.

Now, the fun factor. I was encouraged to come up with clever names for the tiers, as opposed to my previous yawn-inducing numerical system. Therefore, I am this month grouping players into tiers based upon the relative subjective quality of cities I’ve visited. I enjoy travel almost as much as baseball, and I have strong feelings about the places I’ve been — both good and bad — that are quite suitable for comparison to second basemen. Why not.

TIER ONE – ANNECY, FRANCE
Jose Altuve

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I’ve been receiving lots of questions about Rougned Odor lately, in the comments section of my weekly second-base posts. Being the fool that I occasionally am, I wrote up an entire post about Odor, without realizing that Ben Duronio did so less than a week ago. Thankfully, my views on Odor are at odds enough with Ben’s that I was able to retool the post you’re reading now into a counterpoint of sorts.

Like I said, I’ve been fielding plenty of questions about Odor, and understandably so. He’s off to a putrid start, slotting in as the No. 37 fantasy second baseman through the season’s first few weeks. He has just eight hits, good for a .140 batting average that has many owners in early-season panic mode.

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Rougned Odor, slight of frame and young in age, impressed in his debut last season despite playing just 62 games above double-A. Forced into a role due to injuries to Jurickson Profar, a 90 wRC+ is not world beating but he did hit nine homers and steal four bags which is certainly appealing for fantasy purposes given he played in just 114 games.
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Just two weeks into the season, it’s still mighty important to not overreact to any small samples. Still, we can draw some conclusions based on things like playing time and batting order position — and perhaps a little bit on performance — to identify players who will be on the rise in next month’s second base tier rankings. Below are three 2B-eligible players who were buried in my April rankings, but await healthy upward promotions.

Devon Travis (53% Yahoo, 80.4% ESPN, 83% CBS)

For this month’s tier rankings, I included the following note regarding Travis: “If he can hold down the starting job, he’ll likely jump up a tier next month.” The 24-year-old is tearing the cover off the ball, to the tune of a .356/.408/.644 slash, with three homers. There’s no way he’s losing his job to the likes of Steve Tolleson and Ryan Goins, and Maicer Izturis’ eventual return from a groin strain doesn’t seem like a threat to Travis’ job either.

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This is always the most challenging time of year for me as a fantasy writer. Every statistical sample size is way too small to analyze. I haven’t been to any minor-league games yet, so I don’t have any scouting reports to share. There’s just not a whole lot to write about yet.

Point is, this is a great time to discuss more general topics, because that’s far more interesting for me — and hopefully you — than my hot takes on Ian Kinsler’s awesome first week. With that in mind, let’s dive into a topic that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately, that of the lightly owned super-utility player.

There’s nothing sexy about the lightly owned super-utility player — to be henceforth referred to as a LOSUP — but the ability to use that player to plug multiple lineup holes is a somewhat underrated commodity. In relatively deep leagues with a reasonable number of bench slots, I always like to have a LOSUP floating around.

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I’m entering my first full season doing second-base tiers, after a midseason call-up last year. One small housekeeping item to get out of the way is that I prefer to only include players who are more or less universally eligible at the position. For example, Mookie Betts played 14 games at 2B last year, making him eligible on some sites and ineligible on others. Thus, he does not appear on this list. Additionally, I only ranked players who are currently on Major League rosters.

One thing that was interesting for me as I assembled these rankings is that I don’t have particularly strong feelings about the specific order within some of the tiers, but I have a considerable amount of conviction regarding the tiers themselves. In other words, this year’s 2B crop has some pretty clear-cut groups of elite, near-elite, above-average, etc. With that, let’s get to the rankings:

TIER ONE
Jose Altuve
Robinson Cano

I quite nearly gave Altuve his own tier, but I believe enough in a Cano bounceback that I made room for him too. I wrote about the Houston infield a few weeks ago, so you can check that out for more of my thoughts on Altuve. Short version: I absolutely love Altuve, and do not expect much regression in 2015.

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It’s my favorite time of the year here at RotoGraphs, the season of bold predictions. (My least favorite time, naturally, is late September, when I have to atone for these forecasts.) As usual, the trick here is to balance imagination against reality, the impossible versus the attainable, the speculative against the demonstrable. It’s a tough task that, for me, often results in happy predictions, but then again, it’s March — ’tis the season to indulge in some fantasy baseball fantasies, right?
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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

This might be the last time I rap at y’all wearing my depth chart hat. I put off discussing my home team, not because I feel that I’d be any more biased in my examination of them than I would be with other teams; rather, it’s because I wanted to avoid being depressed by what appears to be a closing window. But we’re talking fantasy value here, not playoff odds, so I’ll save my pouting for another post, or for another website altogether.

The 2014 Brewers infield produced a mixed bag for fantasy owners. Jonathan Lucroy continued to improve and was a top-three catcher; those that owned him likely had him at a bit of a value. Scooter Gennett proved to be a viable second base option, at least against right-handed pitchers. On the other hand, Jean Segura took a huge step back. Aramis Ramirez missed a lot of time and put up his worst season in years, even by rate stats. And then there was first base. To say that the Brewers failed to produce a first base option for fantasy players is putting it lightly. Without Mark Reynolds’s 22 homers on the books, it would look even worse, but Reynolds batted under .200 and finished with a .302 wOBA. To think that the team actually got significantly more production out of the first base position than they did in 2013 says more about how historically bad Brewers first basemen were in 2013 than anything about the 2014 squad. This past off-season they traded Marco Estrada to the Blue Jays for the rights to a year of Adam Lind. Lind should provide something of an upgrade, but we’ll get to that a bit later.

First, here’s an overview of what the Brewers infield is likely to be on opening day:

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

It has been a whirlwind offseason for the San Diego Padres, who made blockbuster trades for a brand new, brand name outfield of Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, and Wil Myers. Between the new outfield, the free agent acquisition of James Shields, and the incumbent rotation talent, the Padres will make a play for their first postseason berth since 2006.

If they do reach the postseason, it will likely not be because of the exceptional player of their infield, which was left largely intact after a disappointing 2014 season. In fantasy, that unit is similarly unenticing, although there are a few bounce back candidates who could become fantasy relevant.
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… if this nonsense with his agent(s?) ever clears up.

I feel like Debbie Downer from the classic Saturday Night Live sketch. I found reasons to dislike Yasmany Tomas, and now I’m here trying to find reasons to dislike Hector Olivera. It’s largely because I’m stubborn and would rather die by own fantasy baseball sword than someone else’s. But I haven’t seen any assessment of Olivera’s Cuban National Series (CNS) statistics beyond he hit an impressive .323/.407/.505 in his 10 years in Cuba, so I’ll attempt to expand on this.

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