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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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 Boston infield practically has to hand out name tags this spring. Even the guys that are returning to their old positions are probably hoping for different results this year. There’s opportunity here in droves — with a nice home park and a lineup that could mash, the park and team effects line up well. Considering there probably isn’t a player that will cost top-50 prices in the bunch, you could call this a list of sleepers, even.

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So many things happened. Everyone was traded. Everyone was released. And everyone was signed. It’ll fuel RotoGraphs pieces for weeks to come. You’ll see more in-depth pieces on these guys. But, with the dust settled, it seems like a good time to run all through some of the players that changed addresses, and talk a little bit about how they may have changed their fantasy outlooks for the coming season.

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The Javier Baez era has begun. Perhaps it did so a bit sooner than most had anticipated. Baez came up as a shortstop, but someone named Starlin Castro had solidified himself at the position in Cubby Land. So in 2014, Baez was pushed over to second base to accelerate his path to the Majors. He had just defensive wiz Darwin Barney in his way there, so it was clearly the path with the least resistance.

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Anthony Rendon turned in an excellent 2014 season en route to a $26 valuation. His 111 runs were third best in the league, and his 21 home runs, 83 RBI, 17 stolen bases, and .287 average were all above average. He was the most valuable third baseman and third best second baseman. That flexibility only compounded his value. He cost just $3 on average according to FantasyPros, with a high of $12. Any way you slice it, he was a steal.

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