This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

The Mariners seem to be doing a variation on a theme here. The theme? One could argue that it’s “Recent Vintage Tampa Bay Rays.” Or, one could argue that it’s “Recent Vintage Seattle Mariners.” They have a lot of moving parts and some potential platoons. One might find it interesting, or one might find it a cause for concern. The difference between the 2015 Mariners and a team like the ~2012-2014 Rays is that the former have some very expensive veteran players—signed as free agents—slated for full-time roles. Again, cause for concern, or optimism?

The Mariners’ big move this offseason was signing Nelson Cruz to a four-year, $58MM deal.* Cruz could play some OF, but he’s likely to be the full-time DH for his stay in Seattle. Rickie Weeks was a late addition and could end up seeing a lot of time against left-handed pitchers, though that might mostly come in the form of a left field platoon with Dustin Ackley. Other than Cruz and Weeks, the names below are familiar, if not exactly household ones.

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I already took a look at some of the risky upside picks in the outfield. Now I’ll tackle the middle infield.

The Javier Baez story if fairly familiar by now. The 22-year-old brings massive power along with huge strikeout totals. That power comes in the generally-weak middle infield and is coupled with solid speed for a potential smorgasbord of fantasy goodness.

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It is much easier to get excited about a player than it is to see the negative. Sure, if a guy has a rotten injury record, it is pretty easy to knock him down. But most fantasy players are eager to identify to the next set of sleepers or breakouts or whatever term you feel is adequate to describe middle-round guys who will explode into early-round assets. What about looking at some of the flaws of those early-to-mid round guys we’re all so certain will explode this year? There are certainly reasons to love these guys (and several of them are guys I’m quite high on coming into the season), but let’s at least be aware of the shortcomings and what could possibly hold them back from that big time season we’re banking on.

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

The world champs might be without their longtime hot-cornerman, but they have enough impact players to keep them competitive in real life and relevant so far as fantasy owners are concerned. Up the middle the team flashes the game’s best catcher and an emerging double-play duo, while first base belongs to a solid sleeper candidate.
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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

There aren’t too many infields that can match the Indians’ selection of quality options at typically hard-to-fill positions, including a catcher coming off a breakout season, a corner infielder with solid power capability and a second baseman ready to return to his all-star form. As a bonus, there are several interesting depth pieces as well that owners in deep leagues might find useful.
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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions. 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.

By now, we all expect the Phillies to be bad this season. The only question is where they fall on a scale of bad to abominable. Despite the ugly outlook, there are things to like about this team. They still own Cole Hamels. Ditto Cliff Lee. The bullpen, with or without Jonathan Papelbon, could be one of the strongest units in the league.

Run prevention may be a strength of this club. It won’t be enough. The Padres allowed the fourth fewest runs last season en route to a 77 win campaign. They also scored the fewest runs – hence the lousy record. San Diego has pivoted as a franchise, but the Phillies still look like a weaker version of last year’s Padres.

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In our last séance together, we confided to you our passion for Ender Inciarte. That passion was sparked by our attempt to identify hitters who, over the course of the 2014 season, figured out something new about hitting, and were recognized as such by opposing pitchers. In doing that, we also came across hitters who appear to have been tamed during the season, in that they were both seeing better pitches and chasing more bad ones, with declining results. We provided lists of the top- and bottom-20 hitters, according to this metric. One of the top guys was Ender Inciarte. Now we’ll interrogate (as they used to say in Deconstructionland) those lists, see how they answer, and try to separate signal from noise.

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The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

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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.

The Blue Jays enter the 2015 season with high expectations, which is a common refrain from recent seasons that has yet to turn into a playoff berth. Despite that real-life disappointment, many of the team’s moves in recent seasons have created fantasy success. Elite players Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion anchor their lineup, and some new additions offer fantasy potential to varying degrees, especially in the infield.
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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

As Eno examined a couple of weeks ago, the Red Sox infield has seen some changes this offseason. (The same would hold true for the Red Sox’s rotation and outfield for that matter.) But no team in the league has seen more changes to their infield than the Oakland A’s, whose 2015 opening day lineup projects to return exactly zero starters from the 2014 version.

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