The first tier to the third base keeper rankings was decidedly small, featuring only Evan Longoria and Jose Bautista (for those of you wondering, yes, Jason Catania and I have decided that he’s awesome enough to be top keeper at two positions). There was a moderate degree of discontent regarding the decisions revolving around the first tier, although I’ll admit I was expecting a greater degree of vitriol.

Many of you seem to have concluded (as several of us around here have), that third base is riddled with land mines relative to keeper status and it’s hard to use one of your few keeper picks on guys that are either old, ineffective, or so young that predicting future performance remains rather tenuous. Nonetheless, the second tier features some first tier talent based on 2011 performance not to mention some formerly high-ranked players who didn’t live up to expectations in 2011. The second tier, in fact, is long enough to consume two posts, featuring (in no particular order) Brett Lawrie, Adrian Beltre, Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Zimmerman, David Wright, Pablo Sandoval, and Kevin Youkilis. I’ll take a look at half that batch today.

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In most years, there is an unlikely postseason hero, a non-elite player who has a big series or two, maybe wins an MVP, and gets people talking. Since the playoffs are on the biggest stage where games could be watched by all, these surprise performances carry great weight for more casual fantasy owners heading into the following season’s drafts. This postseason we have seen David Freese illustrate this concept perfectly, as he posted an AVG/OBP/SLG line of .545/.600/.1091 in the NLCS, bringing his total 2011 postseason performance to .425/.465/.850 over 43 plate appearances.

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I have a bit of an undesirable task of trying to make some kind of sense out of the third base mess from the past season. On the one hand, we have guys like Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright who are typically top shelf third basemen heading into the season. However, if you’ve looked over the FVARz database, you’ll notice their actual fantasy value relative to on-field performance was keeping company with Danny Valencia and Daniel Murphy. So what a top tier at third base for keeper value looks like is probably open to a great deal of debate.

Fortunately, what’s not debatable is who leads off the first tier, and that’s quite obviously Jose Bautista – who ranks a country mile (or should I say country click to honor our friends to the North) ahead of the rest of the pack. The big question after Bautista’s breakout 2010 is what he would provide as an encore, and to my surprise, he was every bit as good in 2011 (in fact, he was better if you count WAR at night to put you to sleep like I do). Bautista improved his batting average, his walk rate, and lowered his strikeout rate and while he was a little dinged up, he still managed to be the only player to hit better than .300, record 40 or more home runs and drive in and score more than 100 runs. He is one of the no-doubters in terms of keepers, certainly considering the dearth of talent at third base.

And now it gets interesting.

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I have to admit that I’ve been highly suspicious of Ryan Roberts all season long. Maybe it’s his spotty performance history, perhaps it’s my aversion to one-hit-wonders (I’m looking at you, Fernando Tatis), perhaps it’s the neck tattoos (sarcasm). Whatever the case, Roberts was unintentionally shoved under my radar for much of the season relative to his actual value. I concede that I prefer a larger sample size before I start to recommend a player, and perhaps that’s a shortcoming I need to think about.

Whatever the reason, Ryan Roberts was hard for me to like this season. It wasn’t until I started to come around about June that he made the third tier for my third base rankings and I defended his late season struggles as recent as September. But I concede that I kept waiting for him to turn into a pumpkin, and he just refused to do so, to his credit.

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My colleagues Michael Barr and Howard Bender did a very thorough job this year outlining the relatively weak crop of third baseman, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version: Just 13 teams had their 3B get enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, nearly a quarter were more than 10 percent below league average in terms of wRC+ at what is typically considered a premium position for offense.

Casey McGehee’s wRC+ of 68 was the worst of the qualifiers at 32 percent below league average, but he was not the worst at the position — take a bow, Chone Figgins and your wRC+ of 34 — though that’s a fairly low bar by which to judge success. McGehee wasn’t even the worst of the remaining four third baseman, that would be Brandon Inge, who posted a wRC+ of 48. But while Inge is hitting .333/.444/.600 in the playoffs, McGehee has been relegated to a pinch-hitting role and is just 1-for-5 in his limited opportunities.

Jerry Hairston Jr. may have unseated McGehee in the short term, but it’s unlikely that the Brewers will go into 2012 banking on 140-150 games out of Hairston, meaning that they’ll either give McGehee another look or they’ll dig into the free agent market. There are some interesting names in that bunch — Aramis Ramirez chiefly among them — but not many of them stand out as definite upgrades over McGehee, especially since he’s just in his first year of arbitration and therefore likely to be cheaper than a free agent. Read the rest of this entry »

Thirteenth place. That’s where Alex Rodriguez finished among third basemen in my most competitive fantasy league this season. That was behind the likes of Emilio Bonifacio, Jhonny Peralta and Ryan Roberts. Hell, even the oft-injured Chipper Jones finished above Rodriguez in my league. To add insult to injury, both Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright finished lower than Rodriguez due to injuries limiting their playing time. Heading into next season, that’s unlikely to happen again. Of course, Rodriguez dealt with injuries as well — so perhaps he should be cut some slack. At the same time, Rodriguez is getting older and hasn’t reached 600+ plate appearances the past four seasons. Heading into 2012, is Rodriguez a good sleeper candidate among third basemen — or is this finally the year he drops off considerably?
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Have you caught your breath yet?

Days like Wednesday remind us that while baseball is sometimes derided as being slow and boring, it is the progression of games and stories that make the this time of year so incredible. It felt almost indulgent, like a well written requiem, from Stephen Strasburg’s dominant start in the mid-afternoon to the crowd of Rays waiting around home plate just after midnight on the east coast, everything felt orchestrated for maximum emotion. The three minutes that elapsed between Robert Andino’s gut punch to the Red Sox and Evan Longoria’s walk-off was just enough time to catch our collective breaths before the amazing happened again.

It was somewhat apropos that Longoria was the man to cap the Rays’ comeback. This season has been one of the worst offensive seasons of Longoria’s admittedly short career. His wOBA and wRC+ were both at career lows heading into Game 162, and while .243/.353/.483 is certainly a solid line — especially when backed up by top class defensive work — it isn’t an accurate representation of Longoria’s talent. Players have down years, teams have down years; it was ever thus. Fortunately for the Rays, his malaise wasn’t a season-long affliction. Read the rest of this entry »

Third base has been rather unspectacular in 2011, in both fantasy baseball and spikes-on-the-ground baseball. With the playoffs just a few days away, I remarked to a colleague just how terrible third base looks for two of the six teams that we know will be in the post-season and how it’s a testament to the talent that surrounds them. Those two teams are the Milwaukee Brewers and the Detroit Tigers, but their third base situations aren’t quite the same.

Just how bad are their respective third basemen? What follows is a quick history of ineptitude at the hot corner for playoff-bound teams and a brief fantasy analysis for 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure which would make for a better intro here:  From Rookie of the Year, John Candy flipping out and saying how this is for all the marbles, the whole magilla, the whole enchilada, etc. or from The Waterboy, Dan Fouts adamantly repeating, “last game of the year, can’t hold anything back.  Either way, I’m sure you get the gist of it.  There are eight games left in the regular season and if you can grab someone now who is hotter than someone you have in your lineup, it might be time to make a change.  You want to play the hot hand here and finish strong.  These guys may help if you’re in an AL-only or deep mixed league… Read the rest of this entry »

With the season swiftly coming to a close, I thought I would take a look back at some of my deep league waiver wire recommendations from early in the season. This exercise is not to gloat, but to examine the players and if their performance this year changes their future outlook and role for next season. Upon reviewing my recs, most did not do much, but two guys really stood out: Ryan Roberts and Chris Heisey.

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