Archive for Second Base

The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 648 – 2B Preview, Pt. 2

2/21/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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Notable News

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The Sleeper and the Bust Episode: 645 – 2B Preview Pt. 1

2/15/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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GET THE SLEEPER & THE BUST T-SHIRT FROM ROTOWEAR!

Catching Up:

Josh Bell (4:30)

Positional Previews: Second Base

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Robinson Cano Returns to New York

It took a couple of extra days, but the Mets finally pulled off a blockbuster, bringing elite closer Edwin Diaz to New York and welcoming Robinson Cano back, albeit to a different borough. Despite missing 80 games thanks to a PED suspension, he still performed like typical Cano, posting a wOBA nearly identical to his career average. What might the move to Citi Field have in store? Let’s find out what the park factors have to say about it.

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What Went Wrong: Brian Dozier

Brian Dozier entered the 2018 season as one of the most stable power-speed options in the game. Among the 17 players with at least 50 HR and 50 SB from 2014-17, his 194 HR+SB placed him fourth behind only Jose Altuve (226), Mike Trout (216), and Charlie Blackmon (204). He only hit .254 during that four-year run, but 2016-17 were his two best seasons during the run and he actually hit .269 in those two seasons.

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The First Half All-Sell-High Team

The All-Star game has come and gone, but the festivities are ongoing here at RotoGraphs. It’s time to rank the first half’s “All-Sell-High Team.” These are players who had big first halves, but who aren’t necessarily the best bets to repeat that performance in the second half. Without further ado, let’s get right to the list: Read the rest of this entry »


Four Under 40%

Contrary to popular belief, the secret to rebuilding (and winning) your fantasy league is not hoarding prospects. This season, you could be waiting patiently for the arrivals of Michael Kopech, Willie Calhoun, and Luis Urias to save your team, or you could have jumped on pop-up producers like Max Muncy, Jesus Aguilar, and Ross Stripling. Last year, Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, and Charlie Morton were universally available if your timing was right.

The thing about prospects is that sometimes they pan out, and sometimes they don’t. Even a “successful” one like Ronald Acuña has just a 114 wRC+, with a rest-of-season projection slightly below that. In real life, that’s fantastic for a 20-year-old and Acuña is a likely future star. But in the meantime his production is nothing special.

And again: Acuña is a success story. Owners might wait years for the likes of Byron Buxton, Dansby Swanson, and Alex Reyes to carry their teams to relevancy. All the while, players like the following four who are owned in less than 40 percent (well, actually, 43 percent) of Ottoneu leagues have been quietly carrying contenders: Read the rest of this entry »


The Hail Mary Hitters: C, 1B, 2B

We’re about to flip the calendar to July and many of us have teams that are floundering in the middle-to-low end of the standings. If there’s any hope to contend, not only will your current players have to turn it around, but you’re going to need some gems to emerge either off the wire or via trade. Acquiring elite assets will cost elite assets and if you had those, you wouldn’t be in this position in the first place so it’s time to take some gambles. Here’s a list of affordable assets who could perform well beyond their cost based on previous performance, skills, and/or improved health.

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A Closer Look at 2B

We posted our 2B rankings today and I posted my commentary rankings of the position about a month ago. There are some differences between the two and I could’ve probably made even more as I really agonized over some of the slotting. It just speaks to the depth of second base. I can definitely see myself getting my middle infielder from 2B, too. Let’s take a closer look.

The Top

Jose Altuve obviously stands alone as the top dog and there’s no real need to delve too deeply into that. He’s entirely deserving on his slotting and has a very viable case for the top pick ahead of Mike Trout.

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March Composite Rankings – Second Base

Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re onto the middle infield with the keystone, a position I find to be remarkably deep. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

You can also check out my 2B rankings with commentary here and a closer look at the position here.

Key:

  • AVG– just the average of the seven ranking sets
  • Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings
  • SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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2018 Pod Projections: Whit Merrifield

The 2018 Pod Projections are now available! For the first time, the package includes NFBC ADP, along with all historical Pod-developed xMetrics. My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X 2.0, and the process continues to evolve and improve (thanks Statcast!).

2018 Pod Projections Index:
Shohei Ohtani
Tommy Pham

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