Third base has been challenging enough this season with injuries and ineffectiveness, so I find it extra-super-duper important to try and keep my thumb on the pulse of trends at the position. And despite the fact that we’re finally starting to pull out of that terrifying black abyss of the small sample size chasm, I frequently check the last couple weeks for trends in production. And trends there are (stats current as of Thursday evening).

After starting the season going .329/.387/.576 with six home runs and 24 RBI, David Freese has felt the cold snap of BABIP-reality. His BABIP during that stretch was darn near .400 and while we may all want to hug and cuddle the 2011 World Series darling, it just couldn’t last. Well, the lights flashed about two weeks ago and the bar is about closed. Since May 4th, Freese has hit .155/.219/.310 with a BABIP of .171. That has brought his overall BABIP down to a tidy .300, and we suddenly have something that looks a little more like what we expected from Freese at .265/.323/.490. His power numbers still look pretty good of course, but his strikeouts are up and his 24.3% HR/FB rate isn’t likely to stick. So if you own him it’s time to decide whether you might want to shop him while he’s still got that new car smell or if you’re comfortable with the David Freese that we saw last year for the rest of the season. He’s still likely going to have a career year in terms of overall counting stats, but then again he’s never played in more than 97 games in a season.

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When an organization decides to give a player an opportunity to play every day and take over a starting position, fantasy owners need to stand up and take notice.  Especially if the player qualifies at a position that is either thing to begin with or has been decimated by injuries through these first two months of the season.  Here are two prime examples that are likely sitting on your waiver wire just waiting to be claimed.

Josh Bell, ARI  |3B|  Ownership:  ESPN – 0.5%  Yahoo – 1.0%

Right on the heels of my last Kicking Rocks piece which clamored for Bell’s call-up, the Diamondbacks finally said enough to the Cody Ransom/Ryan Roberts platoon they had working the hot corner this season.  With little or no legitimate production at the position, it made perfect sense for the team to give Bell a shot, if not for anything but to at least just kick the tires and see what they had.  It’s not like things could get worse, right?

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It’s that day of the week again, time for another walk along the waiver wire. Do you make it safely to the end or fall off and fail miserably with your free agent pickups? Luckily, you have the Mike Podhorzer guide ropes to help you keep your balance.

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In terms of Yahoo! ranks, Martin Prado has been the seventh most valuable fantasy third baseman, one behind Adrian Beltre and one ahead of David Freese. Despite having just two home runs, Prado has seen a big bounce back from his poor and injury riddled 2011 season, and should be able to sustain solid numbers close to his career averages for the remainder of the season.

In comparing Prado’s .307/.350/.459 All-Star season in 2010 to his current .314/.384/.450 mark this year, the first thing that is noticed is an improved command of the strike zone. In seeing a near identical amount of pitchers per plate appearance (3.94 in ’10 to 3.98 in ’12), Prado has turned his walk-to-strikeout ratio from 0.47 to 0.88. The big improvement in both his walk and strikeout rates points to his performance being sustainable, which is obviously a good sign for any current or prospective owner.

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I’ll be honest with you. Rankings week is a tough week. It seems that everybody zooms in on the rankings of their players and wants them to be better. Most want more reactionary rankings than a site like RotoGraphs is going to give. The difficulty is that it is much more likely that a player’s true talent is the same as it was a month ago, and we do our best to find that true talent.

Of course, there are breakouts. There are role changes. There are injuries. And that’s where most of the movement will come. Third base should provide more movement than most, considering the fact that the position has had more breakouts, role changes and injuries than most. Let’s take a look at them.

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Third base has been hit pretty hard by injuries recently. Evan Longoria, Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Zimmerman, and now Pablo Sandoval are on the shelf, and a couple of them are going to be there long enough to collect some substantial dust. So it’s likely that there are many of us scrambling for answers at third base while we work the phones for any trade possibilities (okay, nobody talks on the phone anymore, but I can’t really say while we work the Google can I?).

When I was interviewed by the intrepid Carson Cistulli on Fangraphs audio a couple weeks ago, he asked me if I thought third base was a deeper position that it was a year ago and at that time, I still said no. With so many of the typical top 10 struggling to produce, when you start looking down the list, it gets ugly pretty darn fast. Now that we’ve lost several of them to the disabled list, it makes third base a particular challenge — so you might want to get creative. Or perhaps you have to.

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Pablo Sandoval has been slayed by a hamate bone again — this time on the other hand. The good news is that he came back strong after his six-week absence last year, so maybe he can do it again. The bad news is that his owners are now looking for a third baseman on a waiver wire that just was just raided by Ryan Zimmerman, Kevin Youkilis, and Evan Longoria owners.

On the Giants themselves, it’s likely that callup Conor Gillaspie gets much of the playing time at third. Second base is still a (craptacular) Ryan Theriot / Manny Burriss mashup, and those two dudes are needed over there, and also to backup Brandon Crawford. Against left-handers, the team has the option of moving Brett Pill over to third base — he’s faked the position before. That still leaves a little under 3/4 of the at-bats at third base for the next six weeks available for the rookie.

What can he do?

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When he slid into second and immediately grabbed his knee, my heart dropped.  The sickening taste of bile crept up my throat and into my mouth as I anxiously awaited for him to stand up, dust himself off and signal to the trainers that he was fine.  When that didn’t happen and he gingerly limped off the field, immediate thoughts of a torn ACL raced through my head.  In three different leagues I grabbed Evan Longoria at the tail end of the first round and until that moment, I wasn’t giving third base another thought.  Now, with news of a partially torn hamstring and a six to eight week recovery period, I’m left here staring at my computer screen, feeling like Kramer when the Kenny Rogers Roasters sign was finally turned off. Read the rest of this entry »

Between all of the injuries and slow starts, it’s expected that everyone in your league is scouring the waiver wire and looking for players to fill in the gaps.  The trick though, is to do it on the cheap this early in the season.  There are far too many people blowing their FAAB budget too soon or wasting a decent waiver priority on a quick-fix band-aid that won’t be playing in a month’s time, so while you need to stay active, you need to be smarter than the next guy in the way you do it. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems every team I’m running this year has a glaring issue. I have some with issues at catcher, others with some pitching issues, but there’s one in particular where I have just no solution at third base. We’re just a handful of games deep into the season, but there might already be fertile ground for trying to cherry pick brutal starts to the season by few old dogs. Yes, the small sample size applies throughout, but I like these guys as fantasy targets early on since there were enough question marks about age, health, and/or production before the season began which likely gave their current managers pause when they ultimately selected them. Now that the stats count, you might find a second-guesser willing to listen.

Aramis Ramirez

Ramirez has been a slow starter for the last few seasons, but he’s taken it to new levels so far. His .114/.179/.182 line is so bad it makes it hard to see beyond the fact that it’s just 39 plate appearances. He’s hit no home runs, two doubles, and he’s struck out eight times and generally been useless on the real and the fake field. He’s had little fortune from the bouncing ball with a paltry .143 BABIP, his swinging strike rate isn’t completely out of control at 11%, his contact rate is down a tick, but not overwhelmingly so. Aside from having a detached retina or something, I’d fully expect the proverbial pendulum to swing the other direction and he’s either going to start getting a little luckier, he’s going to start driving the ball, or both. It has typically taken him until June to really put things together — and that has been exacerbated in the last couple of seasons — but another week of falling on his face and you might have a real opportunity on your hands.

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