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We’ve finally come to the end of this long dance, and it feels good. The hope all along was not to impose our belief system on anyone with these rankings, but to show what a projections-based ranking system would look like: sober and difficult to budge. After all, true talent changes much less often than results do.

As for the major disagreements, they seemed to surround a few issues.

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Fridays used to mean shows and bars and friends, but they still hold the same excitement now that I’m a family man (and to tell the truth, they’ll mean shows and bars and friends again some day). The idea that I might have unstructured, unhurried time with my son, and maybe even time for a nap in the backyard with a beer by my side… that’s pretty exciting these days. When did I get this old.

Age has something to do with these ranks. It’s a double-edged sword. Have some years and a track record on you and we’ll give you more leash when you’re struggling. And yet you’ll have those that question if you’re done before your time. Be a young guy on the come and we’ll be tempted to have you number one with a bullet, but reason says that expectations should be tempered, especially those put upon teenagers.

Let’s look at the outfielder rankings, which have some high-profile movers and shakers and some interesting debuts.

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Just a month in and we’ve seen players like Danny Valencia and Lonnie Chisenhall lose their jobs, kids like Kyle Seager and William Middlebrooks defy expectations, and we’ve seen big guns like Evan Longoria and Pablo Sandoval go down to injury, among others. Third base has had a degree of volatility that has made it a particularly difficult position to manage.

While I’ve typically been more conservative in May in the past, there are definitely some movers early on. I wouldn’t say this is a list that represents “if the draft were held today” kind of a sentiment, it’s more a melding of injuries, expected future performance, but also performance to date.

Tier one is pretty unsurprising.

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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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For me, there’s nothing more fun about a fantasy baseball season than the constant trade chatter that goes back and forth between owners.  While the goal is, obviously, to walk away with a deal that you consider favorable for your team, I can feel just as good about a discussion that fails to culminate in a trade, but is still filled with good, old-fashioned baseball talk.  It’s like spending a whole day fishing, not having caught anything, and still feeling good about the time spent.  But nothing, I mean nothing, sucks the joy out of a spirited trade negotiation more than having to deal with a trade bully.

You know the guy I’m talking about.  It’s not just the fact that he believes that he has the best players or that his strategy is the best way to win the league.  It’s when you turn down an offer of his and, rather than try to re-negotiate the deal, he spends the rest of his time trying harder and harder to push you into it.

First, he’ll start by running down your guys.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an up and coming rookie or a multi-year veteran, he’ll find a dozen different ways to cut down your player and explain to you how trading him now is your best course of action.  Not for the value you think he’s worth but for some “realistic” value that he has somehow assigned.  The guys he is offering, on the other hand, are the absolute best and you are a fool for passing them up.  Usually that comes accompanied by some condescending comment about how you really should watch this guy play and if you knew anything about the game you would know the value he brings to the table.

You then try to counter his offer and rather than even listen to what you have to say he tells you that the players he’s offering are involved in other deals and you have to act now or he’s going to trade them away.  He’ll tell you that he doesn’t want to because he likes your deal better, but he’s not going to have a choice.  He has to act now.  That’s when you get the time limit — “I’ve got some stuff to do right now.  I’ll be back around three, so just let me know by then, otherwise I’m going to have to make the other deal.”  More often than not, there is some indignant tone aimed at making you feel bad for not jumping at his “once in a lifetime” offer.

Later that day, you’ll receive some sort of an email or text asking you if you’ve thought about the deal some more.  How it’s really the best move you can make for your team and that he hasn’t heard from the other guy yet, but he’s got to get a deal done today, so these players aren’t going to be available soon.  When you politely decline his offer again, you receive that immediate message telling you to have fun finishing in 8th place.

But just when you think you’re done and that this guy is out of your hair, he’ll make yet another run at you.  This is usually when he starts to endow his years of fantasy wisdom on you and explains the nuances of this particular league.  Doesn’t matter that you’ve been in the same league for multiple years, you apparently just don’t understand how to play or  see what this deal is going to do for you.

He’ll start telling you exactly what you need, how to run your team, and what you should be doing — all under the guise of friendship and good sportsmanship.  Suddenly he’s going to help you.  He knows more about your team and your strategy than you do and he’s going to help you finish in the money.  You guys will finish first and second.  But has he changed the deal at all?  No.  It’s still that same crappy offer designed at stacking his team and doing nothing for you.

When you decline again, you’re told you’re making a huge mistake.  Your team is going to flop.  You’re going to look back and wish you made this deal.  Are you sure you don’t want to do it?  This is the last chance because he’s going to have to do this other deal he’s been working on.  You decline one last time.

“Fine.  Good luck trying to get a deal done this year.  Thanks for your donation this year,” he says in his parting shot and you’re finally free from the worst trade talk possible.

Atleast until he comes back to you the following week with the same exact deal…..

Let’s take a minute all sitting right here to tell you how these rankings came to be. In West fantasylandia, born and raised, on fantasy leagues is where we spend most of our days. Chilling out, ranking, adding, dropping, all trading players with the dudes on the playground, when a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started asking “What about rankings for the rest of the season?” We got in one little fight, and the Dark Lord got scared, and he said “You good for nothings gotta get a consensus together.” So we pulled up our own rankings, each with our own methods, and we yelled to Appelman “Yo dude smell you later.” We looked at our blog, we were finally there, we had Rest-of-Season Consensus Ranks for all of our players.

Uh, so yeah, the point is, these are our consensus ranks for the rest of the season. Because of our methodology, they will move slower than popular opinion. They also don’t give a ton of credit for past work. Just enough we think. On to the second baseman.

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There’s a little more movement in these rankings.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that these guys are, you know, catchers. For one, their full-season sample size is smaller than that at any other position. If BABIP takes 500+ plate appearances to stabilize, you might get three catchers in a given year that achieve that level of playing time. It’s rough on the knees. Plus, since it’s such a defensively demanding position, catchers aren’t known for their sticks. Somehow that seems relevant here — maybe if the group isn’t known for their offense, as a whole, then a small ripple in their projections can mean that the rankings have to change in a big way.

Up second are the guys that most often touch the ball second on any given play.

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You can read all the books and blogs you want, but once you start the (wonderful, frightening) process of being a parent, most of it goes out the window. It’s immediately triage: HOW DO I GET THIS BABY TO STOP CRYING.

You can read all the books and blogs you want, but once you start the (wonderful, frightening) process of being a fantasy manger, most of it goes out the window. It’s immediately triage: HOW DO I FIELD A COMPETENT LINEUP WITH ALL THESE DUDES ON THE DL.

So it’s been a month of triage. Let’s look at the first base consensus rankings and see what happened. Then we’ll head down the line and update all the positions.

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Jayson Werth is down. Now that the surgery was ‘successful’ and they didn’t attach his kneecap to his elbow, it looks like he’ll be out twelve weeks. That means he’ll be trying to come back in August from wrist surgery similar to the one that once robbed an entire year from him. He’s droppable in most formats.

What’s left out there for those that are now less a Werth? Especially in OBP leagues, you won’t get a guy that combines the speed and power upside Werth had, but the options aren’t all worthless.

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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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