The mantra of FanGraphs is “Do not put too much faith into small sample sizes.” We all have it tattood on our chests, just below a picture of the site’s founder, Dave Appleman.

In the world of fantasy baseball that mantra can be twisted a bit, as we will gladly ride a player on a hot streak as far as he will take us. That doesn’t mean we believe in the statistics the player is putting up – more often than not he’s dumped when the hot hitting ends. A lot of fluky things can happen over the course of ~100PA. It’s up to you to decide what is legitimate and what isn’t. Take Chris Coghlan for example.

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Today I am going to look at three 2B who had injury problems in previous seasons and see how they are doing in 2011.

Rickie Weeks – Besides missing just one day last week due to a finger injury, it has been almost 1.5 years since Rickie has missed a day due to an injury. Before 2010, he was a walking injury as seen by this list of time lost from 2006 to 2009:

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Our first trade! The FanGraphs/ottoneu Experts’ League has finally consummated a trade. I gave Andy Behrens my $1 Aaron Harang, and he gave me his $1 Placido Polanco. Early polling on the ottoneu Facebook page (like it! doooo it!) did not favor me, so I’ll do a quick defense. For your reference, the full post-draft rosters are listed in the introduction post here.

I realize that on value alone, I’d rather have Aaron Harang for my team. There, I’ve got that out of the way. Harang, perhaps finally healthy after two years where he only managed about 270 innings combined, is looking good. He’s got his trademark control back, and just enough strikeouts to make the package work. Polanco is also playing well, but his .128 ISO would be his best number in eight years, and his .375 BABIP will surely regress. I’ll take the ZiPs RoS and take a .300-ish batting average with 13-15 combined steals and home runs.

And that’s the key. I’ll take those numbers. I’m not sure Harang would have cracked my lineup too often. He’s still an extreme flyball pitcher – his 33% ranks 12th-worst among qualified pitchers and fits right into his career line (37.8%). As such, he’s probably a confident start about 60% of the time in mixed leagues. On my team, he fit in right behind Josh Johnson, Mat Latos, Ricky Romero, Jaime Garcia, John Danks, Wandy Rodriguez and Derek Holland. You have enough innings for about 6 starters’ worth of work, so basically I was betting that Rodriguez and Holland could handle that final starters’ worth of a workload. That’s a bet I think I can win.

We already looked around at the league and determined that there were only a few teams with extra MIs available. With Ryan Raburn looking like a platoon bat in real life and fantasy, I needed an MI. I offered Aaron Harang for Howie Kendrick (ZiPs RoS .280 with 24 combined HR and SB) and was quickly rebuffed. The best other deal I managed to find was a $5 Alcides Escobar for my $2 Matt LaPorta. I didn’t mind the deal, but my firstbasemen, in a 12-team league, are Gaby Sanchez, Mitch Moreland, Justin Smoak and Matt LaPorta. I think I need to keep all of those guys to see who works out – they’re all flawed.

So, in the end, I traded away a cheap superfluous older player to another team for their cheap, superfluous player. Kudos to user DScott for predicting Behrens as my trading partner. It seemed like a good match. Participant Chad Young (Amateur Hour), when writing about this league on his blog, agreed for the most part – even though it cost him a chance at Matt LaPorta. What do you guys think?

Today’s emphasis: versatility. There’s nothing better than a quality player eligible at multiple positions…

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Last week I looked at a few 2B that were getting more playing time than expected when the season began. I have continue on this week looking at 3 more 2B that weren’t expected to have much of an impact this season.

Jonathan Herrera: 39 PA/0.359 AVG/1 HR/4 SB – 36% owned – The 26 year old Herrera has been a pleasant surprise this season for the Rockies. Even though he didn’t start the season at 2nd base, he has only been benched twice since starting in game six and has taken advantage of the situation.

He currently has a slash line of 0.359/0.510/0.513. Along with getting on base half the time, he is showing some of his speed by swiping 4 SBs so far this season. Also, he is a nice source of runs, 10 in just 12 games played. The amount of runs scored should not really be a surprise for someone getting on base 1/2 of the time and has CarGo, Tulo and Helton hitting after him.

There is no way that he is going to continue to get on base at his current clip, but if he ends up batting 0.300, with 100 runs and 20 SBs, he may just be one of the top fantasy steals of the year.

Jayson Nix: 42 PA/0.238 AVG/2 HR/3 SB – 3% owned – Nix is qualified at second base, but is getting all his playing time this season at 3B. He is doing OK. The 28 year old currently has a slash line of 0.238/0.360/0.429 to go along with 2 home runs and 3 stolen bases. His 0.238 may look low, but it is actually a career high for him which is being helped by a career high BABIP of 0.308.

His major problem has been that he has struck every third time he come to the plate. He may regress a bit to his lifetime rate of striking out 1/4th of the time. His walk rate of 16% has help his baseball value, but for fantasy leagues that use AVG, those walks are of no help. Toronto has now placed him at the bottom of the lineup in 6 of the last 8 games, so he will have less at bats and chances to score or drive in runs.

Right now Nix looks like an replacement level option at 2nd base in deep or AL only leagues.

Chris Getz: 57 PA/0.263 AVG/0 HR/2 SB – 2% owned – Getz has started all but 2 games at 2nd base for the Royals this season. Getz is mainly known for his defense and that is why he has been playing quite a bit. He has little fantasy value though. He will probably hit around 0.260 and generate no home runs. He does steal a few bases and since he is usually in the 1st or 2nd spot in the lineup, he may score a few runs this season.

Another problem is that his playing time is not assured. The Royals right now have Getz, Aviles and Betemit swapping between 2nd and 3rd base. Getz started the season hot compared to Aviles, so he has gotten more playing time recently. Getz has sense cooled off, so Aviles may be seeing more time at second. Betemit and his 1.010 OPS looks entrenched at 3B for now. This situation becomes even more jumbled once the Royals call up top prospect Mike Moustakas to play 3B.

Right now Getz is a possible option at 2nd base in deep or AL only leagues for owners that are needing some SB help.

At the beginning of the season, the authors here at Fangraphs created a preseason composite ranking of 2nd basemen. Since then several 2B, not included at all on the original list, have emerged as fantasy options and here is a look at a few of them.

Owned % is from Yahoo
Stats are AB/AVG/HR/SB

Angel Sanchez – 15% owned – 43/0.395/1/1 – Sanchez stepped in once Clint Barmes (hand) went on the DL. He has been a nice spark for the Astros, but his production will not continue at this clip. First, Angel has never hit over 0.305 in the minors or the majors. Also, his 0.444 BABIP can not be maintained. Finally he is not a SB (20 total in the last five years) or HR (12 in the same 5 years) threat. I could see the Astros continue to play the hot hand when Barmes returns, but I fully expect him to be a backup soon.

Orlando Cabrera – 28% owned – 39/0.333/1/0 – Orlando has moved to 2B in Cleveland and help solidify the the position for the Indians. Most of his current value is from his 0.333 average. The high average is being fueled by a 0.353 BABIP. His previous highest BABIP was 0.319 in 2007, so I expect this season’s value to regress some. He used to be a decent source of stolen bases, but that number has steadily declined since 2006 (27 to 20 to 19 to 13 to 11). Also, he hasn’t hit over 10 home runs since 2005. Orlando isn’t going to win an owner any leagues by himself, but with his versatility in playing both the 2B and SS position, he could be a nice injury plugin.

Jose Lopez – 14% owned – 29/0.241/2/1 – The season started good for Lopez when he got the first 5 starts of the season at 2B. Since them Jonathan Herrera has gotten the rest of the starts at 2B (4). In two of those starts Lopez did get the start at 3B. Playing time for him is just not assured at this point in Colorado.

Lopez seems to have gotten some of his power back that he lost last season. He is currently 2nd on the Rockies with 2 home runs behind Toluwitzki who has 4. He could be a nice source of power if he can continue to get plenty of playing time. Also owners can probably expect his 0.241 AVG to rise as he currently has a BABIP of just 0.208

In last week’s article on 2B, I discussed briefly a method I use for ranking players by talent. This week I will show the method along and the rankings. I loosely based this method on the the Mayberry Method introduced in the 2010 Baseball Forecaster. The Mayberry Method looks at the player’s talent and expected playing time to give them a fantasy value. I stripped the analysis down further to just look at the player’s talent.

Here is the method that is used. The original Mayberry Method looked at a hitter’s projected AVG, HR, SB and PA and ranked each player according to a formula. To get the player’s hitting ability, I stripped plate appearances from the equation because a player has no control over plattoons, batting order and talent around them. Also plate appearances directly effect the number of Runs and RBI’s the player will generate in a season.

Besides stripping out PA, I didn’t want HR and AVG to be given the same weight as SB. I feel that HR and AVG should be weighted more as each contributes directly to RBIs and Runs. So I weighted AVG and HR twice that of SB. Next, I converted HRs and SBs into rate stats, HR/PA and SB/PA.

Finally I took the 5 categories and plugged them into our own Zach Sander’s formula for finding fantasy above replacement values. For the values, I went with a Wisdom of the Crowds approach and used a weighted average of 4 different projection systems.

After following the above method, here are the pre-season rankings I came up with:

When compared to the list that we put out at the beginning of the year, here are a couple interesting tidbits.

– Using this method for ranking players, Aaron Hill and Dan Uggla are nearly the same player, all HR, no SB or AVG. Uggla is being drafted about 70 spots earlier in the drafts compared to Hill, mainly based on increased opportunites to drive in and score runs.
– Eric Young, Jr. looks to be a fairly productive fantasy player based mainly entirely on his SB, but may not be given a chance to start since his teammate Jose Lopez is entrenched at 2B.

This method by itself should not be used to fully evaluate players in fantasy baseball because it doesn’t take into account playing time. Increased playing time allows a player to accumulate more of the 4 counting stats normally used for hitters. It is though a good method to find talented players not playing everyday and if they are given the opportunity to shine, they could out produce other players.

So the 2011 season is underway and after pitching a whopping 1.1 innings, a closer has already lost his job. It must suck to be Fernando Rodney right about now. I could continue this rant about how sometimes managers seem to show such little understanding of the concept of sample size, but I have digressed enough. On to this week’s deep league waiver wire options for fantasy teams already fishing for some free agent bait.

Juan Miranda, ARI, 1B | 5% Owned

Despite only accumulating eight at-bats over the team’s first four games, manager Kirk Gibson reported today that Miranda will probably get most of the starts at first base early on this season. Of course, the emphasis should be on early. If Miranda is not hitting, the job will likely go to Russell Branyan, unless of course Brandon Allen is tearing it up at Triple-A, at which point he may get the call. Bottom line is if Miranda hits, he should see the majority of the playing time. Will he hit is the question though. In his minor league career, the 28-year old has shown solid power and an above average walk rate, while making acceptable contact. He has also shown a good propensity to hit fly balls, generally hitting them over 40% of the time. Unfortunately, according to his splits, he has typically had trouble with lefties, with the exception of his 2009 season when he posted an uncharacteristic .291/.371/.507 slash line. In addition, this same splits page shows some unimpressive MLEs, which gives us less reason for optimism. However, playing half his games in a ballpark that favors left-handed power (114 LHB HR park factor), and on a team likely going nowhere, the D-Backs should exercise plenty of patience with him. He won’t be making fantasy owners rush to the waiver wire to add him anytime soon, but Miranda could provide some cheap power.

Jayson Nix, TOR, 2B/3B | 2% Owned

Filling in temporarily while Jose Bautista takes a short leave of absence, Nix is expected to fill a utility role for his new team. With the ability to fill in at second and third base, and enough power to at least be considered to start at designated hitter if necessary, he should find enough at-bats to contribute in the counting stats. Nix’s biggest attributes are power (.172 and .184 ISO rates the last two seasons) and tons of fly balls (nearly 48% FB% last two seasons). Sounds like a perfect fit for the Jays, huh? Unfortunately, all those fly balls find gloves more often than the average hitter, keeping his career BABIP at an ugly .247. Nix has played in hitter’s parks most of his career, and he finds himself moving to one that inflates right-handed home runs by 16%, so he should continue to enjoy hitting at home. Though he only stole one base in three attempts last year, the 28-year old has shown better speed in the past, with 10 steals in 2009 and double digit totals during his minor league days. The extreme fly ball ways and low LD% means his batting average is going to be of no help, but the power should be enough to generate some value in AL-Only leagues.

Chase Utley

I was a huge fan of Utley coming into the 2011 season. He had all of the off season to get his thumb healed. Generally it takes around a year for a player to get back to around 100% after a lower arm injury and it was getting close to being a year later. Then he went and got a bum knee. Reports currently vary from 4 to 12 weeks for the injury to heal, so when/if he comes back is uncertain. I drafted him in way too many leagues before the injury was known, so I will be keeping a eye on his progress and let you know of any updates.

Neither of Chase’s replacements, Luis Castillo or Wilson Valdez, will breed fear into the hearts of your enemies, but may be worth picking up in some deeper or NL only leagues.

Some interesting 2B that are owned in less than 10% of all league (ESPN or Yahoo).

Reid Brignac (5% ESPN) 2B/SS eligible – Reid is barely owned, but could be a nice backup middle infielder if one of your players goes down with an injury. Also, he could be a nice infield sub if one of your other middle infielders has the day off.

Dustin Ackley (1.3% ESPN) – Dustin looks to start the year in the minors, but may be called up in late May or early June (to avoid Super 2 status). It is time now to pick him up, especially in keeper leagues and wait for him to be called up. An owner can take a chance and try to get him right before the call up, but ownership rates will begin creeping up a few weeks before then, so don’t take a chance and miss him.

2B On the Move

One trick to see how players are falling and gaining in popularity is to rank them by ADP in ESPN and then look at the percentage owned. Usually, and especially at the beginning of the season, the two normally match up perfectly. When doing the comparison with 2nd basemen, only one player is out of order and that is Omar Infante.

ESPN shows that his ownership is up 6.4% to 80%. Two reasons look to be fueling this move up. One, he is a super sub with position eligibility at 2B, 3B and OF. Second, he could be a decent source of runs as he looks to be batting 2nd for Florida just ahead of Ramirez and Stanton.

While the season hasn’t started yet, it’s never too early to get familiar with your league’s waiver wire.  Situations are still changing on some teams and by keeping up with the news, you’ll be better prepared to pounce on a potential quality pick-up before your competition.  The waiver wire articles you’ll find here focus on players owned in less than 50% of Yahoo! and ESPN leagues. Read the rest of this entry »