We’re a month through the season, and fantasy owners are already jumping to huge conclusions regarding the 2014 season. These tiered rankings attempt to capture the production from the first month of the season, moving some players up and down where I felt it was necessary, but largely, I attempted to refrain from getting too caught up in the ebbs and flows of single-month performance. There are five months remaining in the 2014 season. Lots will change, and I didn’t want to make the tiered rankings a simple “who is performing well right now,” as that’s not overly useful.

Anyway, here we go.

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Occasionally, the collective fantasy baseball community reflects on a productive single-season performance and sees a top-10 value that doesn’t really fit the underlying skills. The title of this column belies the vagueness of that opening line, but the upshot is something many people said last year and repeated ad nauseum over the winter. While Brandon Phillips was the sixth-ranked fantasy second baseman in 2013, many people were concerned with the declined skill set that lurked below the surface — a surface that was largely buoyed by his 103 RBI.

In 2013, his ISO dropped to .135, which was a career low. He only stole single-digit bases for the first time since 2005, when he only had nine plate appearances with the Cleveland Indians. He continued swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone, and his swinging-strike rate eclipsed 10.0% for the first time since the 2008 season.

Phillips essentially experienced a drop-off in many major peripheral statistics, and he people suddenly became concerned that he was on the wrong side of 30 and about to experience a precipitous decline. I ranked him as a fourth-tier second baseman coming into the season and noted significant concerns throughout the offseason.

Of course, the overarching point of this article is to illustrate that those concerns were fully justified. Brandon Phillips has been brutal throughout the month of April, and if we pull back the veil and peak at the underlying numbers, the picture becomes even more bleak and troublesome. Things aren’t getting better. They’re getting much worse, and as the title suggests, I’m turning my back and sprinting away from him as much as possible.

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It is hard not to at least like a player with a 112 wRC+ and that is dual eligible at second and third base, but I am starting to fall less in love with Matt Carpenter as a fantasy player.

My reasoning is not based on his numbers shrinking down from where they were last year, I think the power will come back a bit at least in the form of more doubles and I think he’s going to score a bunch of runs and hit for a high average. My problem with Carpenter lies in the lack of homers and lack of steals he provides a fantasy roster.
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Another week, another crop of injuries open up spots for two waiver wire candidates. Me thinks there’s a pattern here. As we snorkel amid the waiver wire waters, our first contestant is no stranger to deep league fantasy owners, though his awful 2013 made him persona non grata in the vast majority of formats entering the season. Meanwhile, a Tommy John snakebite has opened up a spot in the Yankees rotation, potentially opening the door for an intriguing left-hander to aid fantasy owners.

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Every season, unexpected players enjoy a huge April and either become hot waiver wire pickups or become surprise mainstays in your fantasy lineup. Guys like Chris Colabello, Emilio Bonifacio, Dee Gordon, Aaron Harang, and Alexei Ramirez weren’t high (or even present) on many draft boards during the offseason, but all five have been top-50 fantasy players in ESPN leagues to begin the year.

A year ago, we saw Yuniesky Betancourt, Lucas Duda, Carlos Gomez, Jean Segura, Patrick Corbin, and even Vernon Wells dominate in the early season. Some of those players sustained their respective performances and became above-average players throughout the year, but others quickly tapered off and became irrelevant. The goal in April is determining which performances are ones you can trust and which players you should bail on when the going first gets rough.

Brian Dozier has been overlooked this spring because he’s being dragged down by a .219 batting average, but he’s actually the second-ranked fantasy second baseman and has even more value in on-base percentage leagues. He is the only player in Major League Baseball with at least five stolen bases and at least five home runs. Furthermore, the 27-year-old currently benefits from batting leadoff for the Twins, which means he is also racking up the runs. He leads Major League Baseball with 19 runs scored.

That’s all beautiful, but again, the trick is sussing out whether he’s going to be a top-10 fantasy second baseman going forward or if he’s more a fourth-tier guy as he was last year. He was the 14th-ranked fantasy second baseman in 2013, ranking behind Martin Prado and just ahead of Howie Kendrick. In other words, if you’re a Dozier owner, should you be looking to flip him while his value is high or should you keep him plugged in your lineup everyday and reap the benefits?

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Today’s deep league waiver wire might bring back memories of seasons yonder. Don’t rush over to the calendar, we haven’t time traveled back to the past. The two men in this week’s recommendations are the short-term beneficiaries of injuries to the incumbents. Often times, this is what a deep leaguer needs to do — follow injury situations closely and just play the carousel rotating in hitters getting full-time at-bats to fill a weak spot on your roster. Admittedly, I won both these players through FAAB in AL Tout Wars this week.

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I get it – Dee Gordon probably burned you in 2012, when you took him as the 10th shortstop off the board, expecting 60-plus stolen bases and a Billy Hamilton-esque layup in the steals category.

Coming off a 24-steal performance in just 56 games the year prior, it was easy to look past the fact that Gordon only sporadically showed a good discipline profile in the minors. This guy can run. ZIPS wasn’t quite as friendly as public opinion but still saw a .271 average and a .310 on-base percentage that was good enough to afford Gordon 74 stolen base opportunities.

He failed. He stole you 32 bases, sure, but scored just 38 runs, appeared in only 87 games and had a pathetic .228/.280/.281 slash line.

It’s time to forgive him.
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On Mondays during the season, I generally focus on the second base position, whether that’s highlighting a specific player or breaking down my tiered rankings for the position. The tiered rankings ran last week and it’s too early in the season to meaningfully analyze individual player performance; however, I have noticed a couple things I wanted to touch on as we begin the second week of the season.

One of the more interesting aspects of the 2013 fantasy baseball season was the realization that the second base position was actually quite bad. It didn’t dip below the anemic level of shortstops, but its collective .305 wOBA wasn’t far behind and was worse than the league-average catcher. When discussing position scarcity and the shortstop position, fantasy owners should lump second base into the same group. In deeper leagues, the second base position can get ugly rather quickly.

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It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of year again — the start of a new baseball season and the return of the deep league waiver wire. Ownership rates are sometimes dramatically different depending on the league site, so it’s always a little difficult to determine what pool of players to choose from for recommending. Just like in previous years, I will only consider players owned in 10% or less of leagues on CBS.

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It’s Opening Day for the vast majority of teams, which means it’s also the day in which fantasy leagues begin in earnest. Let’s run down the tiered rankings for the second base position, with the kind reminder that not every player with second base eligibility will be named in this space and that rankings will certainly shift throughout the season. This captures a moment in time and serves as my rough rankings coming into the season.

TIER ONE

Robinson Cano
Jason Kipnis

Cano may not flirt with 30 home runs in his new pitcher-friendly ballpark — as Yankee Stadium was one of the best power parks for lefties and Safeco is below-average — but his fantasy demise has been slightly overblown. He’s still hit over .300 in seven of the past eight seasons. People are also placing too much weight on Cano’s switching to a “lesser” offense. The Yankees weren’t exactly a juggernaut in 2013. Cano compiled 100+ RBI for a team that only scored 26 more runs than the Seattle Mariners. Admittedly, he likely shouldn’t be expected to log 100+ runs and 100+ RBI this year; however, the 31-year-old didn’t do that in 2013 and was still the number-one second baseman at the end of the season.

Kipnis could very well be the top fantasy second baseman in 2014, but that’s more because I’m high on Kipnis, not necessarily because I believe Cano’s production will fall off a cliff in Seattle.

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