Way back in January and February, across the exhibition season in March, and upon the beginning of the 2016 year in April, there were some pretty standard predictions that accompanied the Philadelphia Phillies across that period of time. Everyone knew the Phillies were going to be interesting, but likely among Major League Baseball’s worst teams. And there was also a pretty steady movement behind Maikel Franco as a prime breakout candidate at the hot corner. As the calendar turns to June, though, neither of those predictions have been entirely correct. Not only have the Phillies been quite watchable through these first two months of the year, Franco hasn’t been the surefire breakout player that he was expected to be.

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The 2016 season obviously has not gotten off to the start that the Arizona Diamondbacks envisioned when they signed Zack Greinke and acquired Shelby Miller via trade. At the same time, there have been several success stories throughout the roster, particularly in the field. Paul Goldschmidt is his typical all-world self, for the most part, and we’ve touched on the emerging Jake Lamb. One player who could use some more notoriety, though, is Brandon Drury.

Drury is still clinging to third base eligibility despite the fact that the spot is largely held down by Jake Lamb. He came up through the minor league ranks as a third baseman, but has demonstrated impressive versatility in his time with the Diamondbacks. Lucky for us, we’re not worried about what he brings to the table in terms of his defense at this point, anyway. What Drury does present with the stick, though, is a source of great intrigue, especially as he begins to see a larger opportunity at the Major League level.

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If Pablo Sandoval’s shoulder injury, which cost him the entire 2016 season, didn’t put an unofficial end to his time with the Boston Red Sox, then the emergence of Travis Shaw very well may have. A player that was already set to supplant Sandoval at third base even before he went on the disabled list for the year, Shaw has experienced a quiet emergence for a rebounding Red Sox ballclub. As we begin to head into the final stretch of the month of May, he’s not only establishing himself as a quality starter at the position for the Red Sox, but is currently among the game’s best at the hot corner from a statistical standpoint. For now.

That was way more ominous than I may have meant for it to be. Nonetheless, we’re going to approach Travis Shaw with a sense of foreboding, as his regression would seem to be inevitable at this point.

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It was suggested that we should celebrate the day that stats stabilize. Today is Grounder Day! Eat a sloppy joe while sitting on a blanket. Drink one of these, or some of this, but I don’t know about having any of this. Grounder Day!

Well, we actually aren’t all the way there. Only about twenty players have officially reached the stabilization point for ground ball rate. But that’s fine. It actually serves as a reminder that stabilization is not something that magically happens at one point. Stabilization happens over a spectrum, and today we know a little more than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll know a little more.

But! Relative to *other* stats on our leaderboards, we know a good deal about a player’s ground ball rate by now. And the beauty of that news is that just knowing a player’s change in ground ball rate can tell us a good deal about what sort of power we should expect from them going forward.

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In 2015, Kris Bryant put together one of the better rookie campaigns in recent memory. He served as a catalyst for an upstart Chicago Cubs team that reached the National League Championship Series, while taking home National League Rookie of the Year honors. The numbers for a then-23-year-old were remarkable for a player pressed into his first big league action.

Bryant posted a slash of .275/.369/.500/.877, with 26 home runs, 99 runs knocked in, a .213 ISO, and a wRC+ of 136. He maintained a quality approach throughout the year, generating a walk at the plate 11.8% of the time. Of course, there were those who pointed to his outlandish .378 BABIP and frighteningly high 30.6% strikeout rate as potential cause for concern, or at least cause for something of a regression, heading into the 2016 campaign. But having established himself as one of the elite third basemen in baseball already, both in the fantasy realm and otherwise, Kris Bryant hasn’t done anything to scare off owners thus far in 2016.

And it’s thanks to some adjustments that were made over the course of the winter.

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Perhaps more than anything, the Kansas City Royals are a lesson in maintaining patience with your prospects. It was true with Alex Gordon, who got off to a slow start in his career and now represents one of the more consistent outfielders in the game, in a variety of ways. It was probably even more true of Mike Moustakas, who as recently as 2014 spent time in the minor leagues. And yet, here we are just a couple of years later, living in a world where Mike Moustakas has become a reliable presence not just for the defending World Champions, but for prospective fantasy owners as well.

For Moustakas, 2015 featured career highs across the board. He hit 22 home runs, knocked in 84, with a slash that went .284/.348/.470/.817. His ability to hit for extra bases was reflected in his .186 ISO, which ranked eighth among big league third sackers. His 124 wRC+ also, unsurprisingly, represented a career mark and trailed only names like Josh Donaldson, Matt Carpenter, Kris Bryant, and Manny Machado in that regard. So exactly what changed for Moustakas, and how has he furthered that development into what could be another career campaign in 2016?

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As we approach the end of the first month of the 2016 Major League season, there’s obviously plenty to dissect. From a third base perspective, we’ll unpack a lot of that when we get to the first set of real, actual, less-leaning-upon-conjecture rankings in the coming days. But nothing says we can’t look at some things just a touch early.

For the most part, the top guys have been the top guys. If there was a “Stock Right Where It Was Expected to Be” category, these guys would fit the bill. Manny Machado leads the category, while Nolan Arenado and Josh Donaldson aren’t too far behind. Kris Bryant is right in the mix as well, keeping all of the top tier players from those initial rankings in that upper tier, just perhaps with some reordering. Beyond that top tier, though, there’s certainly going to be some shakeup. Some guys have emerged, some guys have fallen off the map almost completely, and some guys are just there. Looking at some of these stocks will give us a better idea of what the next set of rankings could look like.

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When the Arizona Diamondbacks lost A.J. Pollock for what is very likely going to be the year, panic obviously ensued. Not only did they lose one of the top players in the National League, but they did so without a clear source of secondary offense beyond Paul Goldschmidt. Players like Nick Ahmed and Jean Segura have come through in ways that were not at all expected, but the guy that I’ve been following since before the season started is Jake Lamb. Perhaps more than anyone else, Lamb has emerged as that guy behind Goldschmidt, and is suddenly becoming a viable fantasy option at the hot corner.

In my preseason draft experience, Jake Lamb was a guy who was stowed away on rosters in deeper leagues, or left hanging around in waiver wire limbo altogether until a team was in dire need of a plug-and-play option at third base. Overall, he was largely a guy left off of rosters because of the obvious uncertainty as to what he actually could bring to the table. But as these first couple weeks of the season have worn on, Lamb has provided consistency at the plate to the point where he’s leapt up to no. 2 in the Arizona batting order. This type of production isn’t going to be a surprise for too much longer.

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I’ve been an admirer of Brock Holt for some time, and it probably goes beyond his last name. In reality, there is nary a super utility player in Major League Baseball that isn’t a source of my affection. He’s gained notoriety, at least locally, over the past couple of years thanks to his ability to play just about anywhere in the field, and provide a little bit of pop at the plate when he does. As such, the Boston Red Sox have continued to find increased at-bats for him, regardless of position, over the last calendar year. And it’s about time the fantasy world took note.

As an offensive (and subsequently a fantasy) performer, Brock Holt is here to stay. My colleague Scott Strandberg touched on Holt earlier this week, as he examined the hot starts at second base. He noted that Holt’s versatility, even in fantasy, can be a tremendous asset. That’s part of the beauty of Brock Holt. We can talk about him in relation to second basemen, third basemen, outfielders, and even at first and short depending on the medium on which your fantasy game is played.

Regardless of that medium, Brock Holt has maintained a grip on third base eligibility, which allows us to discuss him here. He’s played at third on four occasions already, though none have been starts. And our opinion on Brock Holt is this: buy this hot start. Sure, say what you want about six games and 26 plate appearances, but this isn’t some outlandish start that can’t be replicated as the season wears on. In reality, it’s a lot of what Holt has done over the course of the last two years.

Across 129 games last year, Holt slashed .280/.349/.379/.727. His ability to get on base was thanks, in part, to his approach at the plate. He maintained a 9.0% walk rate, good for 44th among qualifying position players across Major League Baseball. He ranked 18th among that same group in pitches per plate appearance, at 4.10. This year, he’s off to a start that has him at a 15.4% walk rate. Expect more of the same from him in his ability to reach base thanks to his approach.

His ability to reach base can also be attributed to a high rate of contact. Holt ranked 19th in the league among MLB position players in 2015, with an 86.5% overall contact rate. Not only did he make a lot of contact, but he made a lot of solid contact (no surprise due to his approach), with a linedrive rate that came in 26th among that group, at 23.8%.

Small sample size be damned, Holt has laid off of offspeed and breaking pitches considerably thus far. This is well-illustrated by the following from Brooks Baseball:

Again, minuscule sample size, but that could certainly bode well for him continuing to make that solid contact, if not improve it and make it consistently harder. Considering he’s coming out of a field of 141 qualifying players from 2015, his walk rate, contact rate, and LD% are all already very solid figures for a relatively disregarding superutility guy out of Boston.

Of course, those factors also tie in to his value as a fantasy player as well. Across almost exactly 1,000 plate appearances in the two years prior to this, Holt has posted BABIP figures of .349 and .350, respectively. Those may seem quite high, but that LD% certainly helps them to remain sustainable. In those two seasons, he’s hit .281 and .280, also respectively. With identical figures of 98 in regard to his wRC+, he’s been almost exactly what that statistic would define as average in the last two years. Not only is he an average offensive player, he’s an extremely consistent one, based off of his production in 2014 and 2015.

It’s that consistency that has us very easily buying Brock Holt’s start to the new season. Through those 26 plate appearances, he’s slashed .333/.462/.714/1.176. He’s already on pace to eclipse his career highs in homers, runs, and RBIs, while also striking out at a four percent decrease from last season. His increase in power could absolutely be attributed to a 35.3% hard hit rate, easily the highest mark of his career. Going back to the above graph from Brooks, a continuing trend like that could certainly play well into Holt’s favor. It remains to be seen, however, if that is a sustainable number. Given the approach, though, he could certainly look to make harder contact on a more regular basis. Of those figures, though, the high average and OBP, as well as even the decreased strikeout rate, are certainly believable, if not very possibly sustainable, figures based off of Holt’s past performance.

In a couple of very specific respects, Brock Holt is certainly a fantasy asset. He walks quite a bit and gets on base beyond that thanks to his ability to make contact. His fantasy arsenal also includes some swipes as well, with 20 steals combined over the last two years. Unfortunately for Holt, his RBI opportunities will be somewhat limited, as it’s tough to see him moving up too far past the seventh spot in a pretty potent Red Sox batting order. It’s particularly unfortunate, because Holt isn’t the type that is going to generate too much of his own offense, beyond getting on base.

And that’s the one real drawback of Brock Holt: a lack of power. His ISO in the last two seasons has featured figures of .100 and .099. With a pair of homers already this season, and an unsustainable .381 mark to date, perhaps we could see an uptick in his power this season, but we’ll need to see a larger sampling of his ABs before making that type of assessment. Nonetheless, an increase in power would certainly contribute to him becoming even more of a fantasy asset.

Even without that aspect of his game, though, Holt is still a reliable fantasy player, even in leagues that aren’t quite as deep. He provides value in his versatility, where he can be a plug-and-play type at at least three different spots, at minimum. He provides a steady on-base presence thanks to his ability to draw a walk and make regular, solid contact. There’s a speed factor there that can also be taken into account. These aspects make him valuable alone, even in a situation where RBI opportunities are limited for him.

If that power does actually increase, though, we’re talking about Brock Holt in an entirely different context, as an entirely different type of asset. Here’s hoping.

It’s easy to be tempted to overreact to the small sample size of strong performances very early in the season. Like many fantasy pundits before me, I’ll continue the tradition of preaching patience with your best players and your preseason evaluations. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should be sitting on your hands. Three things I keep tabs on especially closely in the first few weeks of the season are PITCHf/x data, lineup constructions and playing time distribution. Colleague Scott Spratt tackled fastball leaders in the bullpen and Jeff Sullivan discussed velocity in depth relating to King Felix’s first start. I wont’ tackle PITCHf/x data in this piece — as others have done so already — but I will look at a few playing time situations that might be sorting themselves out as well as a few players whose stock is on the rise as a result of their lineup spot.

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