It’s a little crazy how deep third base is this year. Perusing the NFBC average draft position list, there are nearly twenty players whom, in most years, I’d be happy to roll with in standard leagues. Most surprising though was seeing Nick Castellanos languishing all the way at 19^th off the board in NFBC drafts (Note: I had originally considered anointing him just The Greek God of Contact but unfortunately that moniker implies a certain frequency of contact that the 25-year old simply cannot be bothered with). Castellanos won’t win any OBP-titles but in 2016 he did one thing well. And that’s hit a baseball really, really hard.

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Across the network recently, we’ve featured writers sharing their bold predictions for the impending 2017 season. Since I’m more of a follower than a leader with little sense of individuality, this is a path that I will also be traversing. However, I’ll be limiting my bold and sweeping declarations to the spot where I make my living on this site: the hot corner. Let’s look at a few potentially terribly, and very likely, misguided opinions that I have about the third base position heading into the new season.

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Yesterday, I shared my picks and pans at the catcher position by comparing my ranks to the consensus ranks after excluding my own. Continuing through the infield, we’ll combine first and third base together so I can finish these before the season begins. These were the March updated first base rankings and here are the third base rankings.

Unlike catchers, I’m going to restrict my picks to those that made my top 20 and my pans to those that made the consensus top 20.

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We are updating our rankings for the stretch run of draft season! Today we’ll have third base and catcher.

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:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Brad Johnson
• Justin Mason
• Al Melchior

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.

March Updates:

• OF
• SP
• 1B
• SS
• 2B

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In what was expected to serve as a breakout season, Maikel Franco’s 2016 campaign was riddled with disappointing aspects. His 1.4 WAR finished 21st among 24 qualifying players at the third base position, the same ranking in which his -7.4 Off rating fell when it was all said and done. There’s still plenty of upside there, though, and certain elements of his game indicate that it isn’t quite time to give up on Franco becoming an impact player at the hot corner before long.

Franco’s 2015 season indicated big things potentially on the horizon for him last season. He finished with a slash that featured a .280 average, a .343 on-base percentage, and an .840 OPS across 335 plate appearances. His ISO came in at .217, while he finished with park-adjusted offense that came in at 129, painting him as a well above-average offensive player.

Obviously we’re comparing 335 plate appearances to 630 in 2016, but his average fell to .255, his OBP came in at .306, and his OPS lost over 100 points, down to .733. The ISO that was a source of encouragement in 2015 came in at only .172, a significantly lower figure than that of the previous season. It all culminated in a wRC+ of 92, a far cry from where he was in that first real taste of the big leagues. So what just happened to Franco that he experienced such a regression from 2015 to 2016?

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The 2017 World Baseball Classic has been riveting thus far. Many of the teams are loaded, and the players and fans have been wildly into it. Saturday’s game between the Dominican Republic and the United States was perhaps the greatest heavyweight match-up the game has ever seen. The lineups on both sides were absurd, and the game lived up to the hype. The Dominicans overcame a 5-0 deficit to win in dramatic style, 7-5.

The Dominican lineup could be the best ever, but the United States gives them a run for their money. Since the majority of FanGraphs readers are, presumably, American, and pulling for Team U.S.A., it struck me that it would be fun to analyze the roster from a fantasy perspective. Although many on the roster are undisputed stars, there are overrated players, players to avoid for other reasons, and potential bargains mixed in. Let’s get right into it, analyzing the starting position players on Team U.S.A.: Read the rest of this entry »

Early Average Draft Position is such an astounding thing, as typical and interesting draft tendencies are widely reflected in it. Rookies and inexperienced players being taken too high, quality performers being limited because of a smaller market, etc. Also, Josh Donaldson as the fourth third baseman on average? Come on. With that in mind, it makes sense to look at some of those ADP figures and examine who could be a potential sleeper in drafts as the month of March continues to barrel toward the regular season. Those identified as “sleepers” here are based primarily off of their ADP more so than name recognition.

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There are elements of baseball that the casual fan pays attention to and there’s the Tampa Bay Rays. The lack of notoriety that the Rays experience, as an organization, likely resulted in a lack of attention toward what was actually a stellar year for third baseman Evan Longoria, in terms of the power game. While he experienced some regression from the previous couple of years in certain aspects, his ability to make impact contact ranked among the game’s elite at the position. The concern moving forward, in addition to the regression he experienced in those certain areas, is whether we should expect the power to remain intact.

In terms of ownership, there were some drawbacks to Longoria’s game in 2016, something that was an obvious result of a change in approach. His walk rate dipped for the fourth consecutive year, falling to 6.1%, the lowest of his Major League career, as his 48.8% swing rate was the highest mark of his career. His Contact% fell to 75.4, his lowest mark since 2009. Subsequently, his on-base percentage dropped to the lowest in his career as well, at just .318. His strikeout rate wasn’t an overwhelming concern, though, as at 21.0%, it came in less than a full percentage point above his career average, even with that newfound aggressiveness at the plate.

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Last week, I wrote a reaction piece to Yahoo’s average auction values at second base. This exercise helped me identify some trends regarding underpaid and overpaid players at the position heading into the 2017 season. One such discovery was that of Matt Carpenter’s budget-friendly $16.2 average auction price.

Considering Carpenter’s prodigious power production over the last two seasons, it surprised me to see that owners were spending more on 11 other 2B, all the way up to Jose Altuve’s steep $49.0 price tag. Specifically, I’m wondering why Carp costs about ten bucks less than anyone in the Robinson Cano/Brian Dozier/Jonathan Villar/Daniel Murphy/Rougned Odor tier. All of those players are going off the board for $25-$28.

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It’s that wonderful time of year where preliminary positional rankings starting pouring out for the upcoming season. Because I needed another reason to look like a fool by the end of it. The third base position opens 2017 with plenty of intrigue, with a couple of newish faces to the mix and one notable name departing for a new position. Let’s all pour one out for Matt Carpenter. My goal is to be far more consistent on the rankings side in 2017, which means more opportunity for folks to ponder, “Just what in the world is this guy thinking?”

Let’s get to it with some cleverly named tiers:

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