At the beginning of the year, I thought this might be the worst position in baseball. It might still be when all is said and done, but there are positive things you can say about this group, too.

There are actually some great young players at the position. Jason Kipnis has zoomed to the top. Jose Altuve probably won’t ever be a true-talent top three guy, but for batting average and speed, he looks like a steady contributor. Kyle Seager is a find. Matt Carpenter was a favorite of ours, but he’s outproduced even our more rosy projections. Jedd Gyorko has a nice compact, fast swing and looks like he’ll have a bit of power. Anthony Rendon, well we have to see about his strikeout rate, but he’s looking good too. Nick Franklin! And maybe even Jurickson Profar.

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It’s often said that almost anything in baseball can happen in a single month. We witnessed Yuniesky Betancourt compile a .848 OPS with six home runs and 21 RBI during the month of April, while Barry Zito began the season with 14-consecutive scoreless innings and had a 3.29 ERA in the first month.

Both players have since crashed back to reality, but their unexpected performance helps highlight the point outlined above. One month in baseball is a minuscule sample size. Literally, almost anything can happen in a single month, and when it happens to begin the season, it can fill fantasy owners with false hope and result in bandwagon-jumping at the expense of more proven commodities.

Gordon Beckham missed 47 games in April and May with a broken hamate bone in his left wrist. Since returning on June 3, he’s begun to turn heads with a .338/.361/.460 slash line and a pair of home runs. He’s quietly been the sixth-best fantasy second baseman over the last 30 days, and his .361 wOBA over the same stretch ranks eighth amongst all second baseman in the league. The fact he’s running a bit and has five stolen bases since returning from the disabled list certainly helps his fantasy rankings.

But what do we make of Beckham’s fast start? After all, we’re talking about the same guy who ranked 27th amongst second basemen last year — behind guys like Dustin Ackley, Mike Aviles and Chris Nelson. He’s also posted a measly .238/.303/.362 combined slash line over the last three seasons. Thus, for fantasy owners to discount the previous three seasons and begin to put some trust in the 26-year-old infielder, his numbers must illustrate something has changed. Something substantive in his approach or his peripheral numbers must have changed to make owners forget previous performance and place a modicum of trust in his bat.

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The Oakland Athletics currently lead the AL West by 0.5 games over the Texas Rangers. They haven’t made any splashes in the trade market this month, but they just made a substantial move on Sunday evening by promoting Grant Green — one of their top prospects — to the big leagues in an attempt to upgrade their offensive output at second base.

Slotting in Green at second base will give the Athletics the flexibility to shift Jed Lowrie to shortstop on a more permanent basis, allowing the organization to upgrade the offensive production of two positions simultaneously. When Lowrie had been playing shortstop, the Athletics were coping with Eric Sogard (.305 wOBA) and Adam Rosales (.268 wOBA) at second base. Green, who was tearing up Triple-A with a .385 wOBA in 81 games, has a chance to provide better numbers at the plate without being a trainwreck on defense.

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In each of the past four years, Ben Zobrist has hit 20 home runs or stolen 20 bases, but it is rather doubtful that he reaches either of those marks this season. At age 32, it is reasonable to ask whether Ben Zobrist is starting to hit his decline phase, which is important to consider in dynasty and keeper leagues.

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Excitement! Intrigue! Royalty! It’s a an all Royals edition of the deep league waiver wire which I am positive is the best thing you learned all day. A bad offense creates opportunities and has opened up playing time for two interesting names.

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Nearing the All-Star Break, fantasy owners are primed to make moves to prepare themselves for a second-half push. This tiered list should serve as a quick-reference guide as owners evaluate trades and ruminate on potential waiver-wire pickups. Some minor shake-ups have occurred in the second-base rankings, but the overall landscape remains intact.

(Note: This tiered rankings list may not include every single player who’s eligible at second base in every league. It’s primarily geared toward the ESPN positional eligibility guidelines.)

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Last week, I examined unlikely minor league stolen base leader Micah Johnson, whose 58 swipes in the Low-A South Atlantic League have propelled him past some better-known base thieves (Billy Hamilton, Rico Noel, Byron Buxton, Roman Quinn, and Delino DeShields Jr., just to name a few) to a double-digit lead in the category. By now, Johnson–ranked among Chicago’s top 30 prospects by Baseball America entering the season and also sporting a hefty batting line–has started to gain publicity. It is less known, however, that the SAL also houses the current minor league home run leader: Hickory’s Ryan Rua, who has amassed 24 blasts, one ahead of highly-touted teammate Joey Gallo and well-traveled minor league slugger Mauro Gomez.

As with Johnson, Rua’s ascent to the top of the homer leaderboard was tough to foresee. He was a 17th-round pick in 2011 out of Division II Lake Erie College, where he had 27 homers in a three-year career. In 126 career professional games before 2013, all at short-season levels, he had just eleven homers. He had a very good .191 Isolated Power in rookie ball and a more pedestrian .136 in short-season-A play.

That lack of a track record, as well as Rua’s somewhat advanced age (he’s 23), may lead some to dismiss him as irrelevant for prospecting purposes, let alone fantasy ones, if not for one very important fact.

He plays second base.

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When second baseman Brian Dozier lit up High-A and Double-A with a .320/.399/.491 slash line and 24 stolen bases in 2011, he started to rise up the Minnesota Twins’ organizational depth chart. Baseball America ranked him as the Twins’ 10th-best prospect coming into the 2012 season, and beginning the year in Triple-A, he was largely considered Plan B at the shortstop position. Unfortunately, he was unable to make anything but a negative impact at the big-league level in 2012, only compiling a .265 wOBA in 340 plate appearances and providing below-average defense at short.

This season, however, the Twins transitioned Dozier to second base and have essentially handed him the everyday role at the position. His overall numbers haven’t improved much, but he’s enjoying a torrid stretch at the plate. In fact, he’s performing so well that some fantasy owners have decided to jump on the bandwagon. His ownership is up to 20% in ESPN leagues.

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Entering the 2013 season, it was seemingly a foregone conclusion that Billy Hamilton would lead the minors in steals for a third straight season, assuming he was healthy and was not promoted to the big leagues. After all, Hamilton swiped 27 more bags than any other minor leaguer in 2011 and 64 (!) more than the second-place finisher (Delino Deshields Jr., who himself had 101) last year.

Hamilton has indeed stayed healthy and played the entire year in the minors, but his stolen base throne has surprisingly been usurped; his still-whopping 42 steals in 67 games ranks third in the minors (fourth if you count the Mexican League), a full dozen behind White Sox second base prospect Micah Johnson, who has blazed his way to 54 thefts in 66 contests.

Anybody who produces that sort of stolen base volume will pique the interest of deep keeper fantasy owners, especially when the player in question is a middle infielder with a robust .339/.422/.525 triple-slash. But how much of Johnson’s production is true substance?

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In ESPN leagues, the top three performers at second base shouldn’t surprise anyone. Dustin Pedroia, Jason Kipnis and Robinson Cano were expected to be the top three or four fantasy options at the position, and although each of them have experienced some hiccups in different ways, they’re still producing better than their counterparts.

Who’s fourth, though?

Despite his .383 wOBA and 148 wRC+, it’s not Matt Carpenter. Despite his double-digit home runs and 56 RBI, it’s not Brandon Phillips. The fourth-best fantasy second baseman this year has been 29-year-old Howie Kendrick.

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