Even after losing some time to injury, Jason Kipnis has managed 200+ plate appearances this year, and his fantasy line has not matched his work in the past so far. It’s a little too far into the season to just poo-poo it away with mentions of small sample size. But, jump into the numbers, and it looks like issues of sample and perspective are hiding the fact that he’s probably still a top-half second baseman in any league.

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When I compiled this month’s second base tier rankings, one concern I had was whether I ranked Ben Zobrist too low. I placed him at the bottom of the third tier, 14th overall — was this an overreaction to a slow start? After all, Zobrist was the No. 6 fantasy second baseman in 2012.

Last year, he slipped to No. 11, but in placing him 14th in this month’s rankings, I was essentially admitting that the 33-year-old Zobrist is on the decline, and that I don’t see his 2013 as an aberration. The further we get into 2014, the more confident I am that I wasn’t selling Zobrist short.

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Despite extremely low ownership rates (5% Yahoo, 3.5% ESPN, 14% CBS), Luis Valbuena has performed well enough so far this season to make himself mixed-league relevant. The 28-year-old currently owns a .289/.390/.461 slash line through 61 games, and is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s fantasy-eligible at both second base and third base, yet fantasy owners would rather own, for example, Kelly Johnson (24% Yahoo, 9% ESPN, 19% CBS), who is hitting .226/.299/.398 by comparison.

Maybe this is a product of the fact that Valbuena has never been good before. After all, even with his 210 plate-appearance sample from this season, he’s still just a .230/.313/.365 career hitter, with 33 homers and five steals in 1,710 PA. That doesn’t sound like a fantasy-relevant player to me. So what’s changed, and how sustainable is it?

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Today is the next installing of my updated Pod’s Picks, comparing my rank versus the other three RotoGraphers. We’re now up to the second basemen, of which the consensus rankings published two weeks ago can be found here. I’ll generally only consider those second basemen that I ranked within the top 20 for the bullish category and those the rest of the crew ranked in the top 20 for the bearish category.

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We just finished ranking week (find them easily on the right-hand nav bar), and since I’m apparently a masochist, I’m going to jump right back in and examine where I was different from the consensus. We’ll do as many positions as possible today — I’ll focus on those players that are most differently positioned in my rankings — before checking out the pitchers.

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The Brewers made a move last week to put Scooter Gennett in the leadoff spot and, while it doesn’t drastically help his fantasy stock, it does make him a bit more appealing.
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It’s not cool to cheer for injuries, but for us dumpster-divers, well, sometimes guys getting hurt is what it takes to unearth opportunities. As it happens, the Diamondbacks have seen a couple of guys knocked to the sidelines in recent days, and while that’s unfortunate, we’d be remiss if we didn’t look at two players who are stepping up — both of whom have potential value in NL-only leagues.
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Cleary the Yankees are not going to stick with Brian Roberts forever. Even if he stays with them the entire season, the Yankees will be looking elsewhere at second base after this season.
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The key word for second base is: close. When it comes to the top three, apparently the rest-of-season projections have changed the order daily over the past three days. Jeff Zimmerman had to call it, at some point, and it was Jose Altuve by the slimmest of margins.

For me, the closest rankings came later.

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This is my first month on the second-base beat, and I can’t wait to hear who I’ve ranked too high or too low, preferably in caps lock in the comments section below or on Twitter. Either way, caps lock is crucial here. Don’t let me down. Jokes aside, I’ve got over 40 players in these seven tiers, and I hope you find them useful.

TIER ONE

Robinson Cano

Even after two solid months of sub-.100 isolated power, I am still placing Cano in his own tier. The first part of my reasoning here is that, despite the fact that he hit just one home run in each of the season’s first two months, he did everything else so exceptionally well in May that he was still the No. 4 2B for the month. His batting line was a robust .355/.393/.458, he struck out just ten times while drawing eight walks, he swiped a couple bases, drove in 19 runs, etc.

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