Entering his second full season of major league play, most projection systems have Kyle Seager taking at least a minor step back in terms of his overall fantasy production. ZiPS and Steamer have him dropping to 15 and 14 home runs respectively, while Bill James is the only system held on FanGraphs that has him matching his total stolen base output from last season.
Yeah, I just used a Pat Benetar song for a post title. If that song was playing, I feel like I should be at the Skate Deck, tube socks pulled high, just praying Tracy Piercy would come over and say hi to me. I’ve hit rock bottom. And third basemen are entirely to blame for my condition.
I have third base as kind of my “beat” here at RotoGraphs. I’ve written a lot about third basemen for the last two seasons. I’ve grown quite fond of many of them. And this year, they’re breaking my heart.
When we do this thing where we categorize players into tidy little compartments it tends to bring out the monsters in many of you. Had I given more attention to some of my cultural anthropology or experimental psychology courses, perhaps I’d have an explanation as to why. But nonetheless intrepid reader, I’ll attempt to put forth my best tiered assessment of the available third basemen to you on draft day.
As you no doubt know, the tiers shift. They move like like an Omar Vizquel with Arthur Rhodes on the mound. But I know that many of you like to aim for top three tier material at as many positions as possible, so perhaps this will help you assuming you haven’t already put together your squads. If you already have and your guy is in tier five, well, condolences.
A couple weeks ago, I covered C, 1B, 2B, and SS. Since then, I have also shared my rankings spreadsheet. Today, we cover 3B, OF, SP, and RP.
The lessons are going to remain pretty similar – guys with high walk rates rank higher, guys with a lot of speed rank lower – and will extend to the pitching sphere nicely – closers lose some value, guys projected for close to 20 wins lose some value, pitchers who keep the ball in the yard gain value. But it is still informative to look position by position and see where the differences manifest.
The third base position just took a hit with news that Chase Headley is going to be out 4-6 weeks due to a thumb injury. I was actually the least optimistic about his performance given my ranking, so looks like I will be closest before the season has even begun. Victory! For the hot corner, I will only look at those I ranked in the top 20 as bullish picks, while the bearish group will include those in the consensus top 20. Inside that top 20, there really aren’t a whole lot of players I am particularly bullish on compared to the rest of the rankers.
My how times have changed. Four seasons ago the Yankees rode one of the best infields in baseball history — combined 23.5 WAR out of their starting catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman — to the World Championship, but when 2013 opens they will have one bonafide superstar, one major question mark, and three guys either hurt or coming off injury on the infield. You have to see it to believe how ugly it is:
| C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Chris Stewart | Mark Teixeira | Robinson Cano | Derek Jeter | Alex Rodriguez |
| Backup | Francisco Cervelli | Dan Johnson | Jayson Nix | Eduardo Nunez | Kevin Youkilis |
| Depth | Austin Romine | Corban Joseph | David Adams |
There are probably six players on this depth chart that are more important than Evan Gattis. But it’s fine if you want to read about Evan Gattis, I won’t be bitter. I promise.
Last week was all about the consensus ranks. This week, you’ll see some tiered ranks as we also try to finish up the depth chart discussion. But before we move on too quickly, I thought it would be interesting and informative for me to pick out the players that I liked and disliked more than the other analysts involved in the consensus ranks. Hopefully I’ll have a short, concise reason for my rankings in each case. Hopefully.
It’s time to finish up the infield. Surprisingly perhaps only to me, third base ended up being the deepest position more years than it wasn’t in my FanGraphs+ auction strategy analysis.
There’s probably more agreement at the top of this position than most, at least more than the shortstops. Once you get past the top three or four, the agreement stops, but then you also have a scrum that looks like it could be one single tier, all the way down past twelve. This could be a position you wait on if you miss the top guys in a mixed league. But don’t wait too long in deep league. It gets dicey again in the late twenties.
We are entering year two of the post-Albert era in St. Louis and after an 88-win season that resulted in a wild card berth and a trip to the NLCS that fell just one win short of a World Series appearance, the Cardinals are returning with a largely unchanged infield configuration. For better or for worse, the St. Louis brass opted to leave things as is and let other teams play the free agent market this season. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy is in play here and for fantasy purposes, it’s not bad, but the upside is just as limited now as it was just a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »