First Base Rankings: RotoGraphs Consensus
Consensus Ranks: OF, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, and RP and SP.
Tiered Ranks: C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, NL OF, AL SP, NL SP, Holds.
Our consensus ranks may have suffered a bit from positional shenanigans. Sure, you can rank Mike Napoli and Carlos Santana at first base, but why would you ever play them there? Is Billy Butler a first baseman in your league?
When we all ranked a guy, we agreed for the most part — well one of us really likes something about Michael Cuddyer that the rest of us don’t see. And Paul Goldschmidt inspires consternation wherever he goes, so it was no surprise that he wasn’t ranked the same by all of us. But Carlos Lee? Must be something about .270 and 18 homers at first base that tickles Podhorzer’s fancy. Then again, he liked James Loney more than the rest of us too.
Take a look and pick your poison.
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| Player Name | Eno Sarris |
Mike Podhorzer |
Jeff Zimmerman |
Zach Sanders |
Staff Consensus |
FantasyPros All Experts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albert Pujols | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | view |
| Miguel Cabrera | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | view |
| Joey Votto | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | view |
| Adrian Gonzalez | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | view |
| Prince Fielder | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | view |
| Mark Teixeira | 5 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | view |
| Eric Hosmer | 7 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 7 | view |
| Pablo Sandoval | 12 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | view |
| Paul Konerko | 8 | 11 | 10 | 8 | 9 | view |
| Michael Morse | 9 | 12 | 11 | 14 | 10 | view |
| Billy Butler | 21 | 10 | 9 | 10 | 11 | view |
| Lance Berkman | 13 | 14 | 13 | 11 | 12 | view |
| Michael Young | 16 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 13 | view |
| Mike Napoli | 11 | 16 | 12 | 17 | 14 | view |
| Freddie Freeman | 14 | 21 | 15 | 13 | 15 | view |
| Carlos Santana | 10 | 19 | 17 | 19 | 16 | view |
| Ike Davis | 17 | 15 | 21 | 20 | 17 | view |
| Michael Cuddyer | 22 | 9 | 23 | 21 | 18 | view |
| Kevin Youkilis | 15 | 17 | 22 | 26 | 19 | view |
| Mark Reynolds | 23 | 24 | 16 | 18 | 20 | view |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 26 | 18 | 20 | 25 | 21 | view |
| Gaby Sanchez | 19 | 22 | 26 | 23 | 22 | view |
| Adam Lind | 25 | 25 | 25 | 22 | 23 | view |
| Lucas Duda | 28 | 26 | 29 | 24 | 24 | view |
| Joe Mauer | 20 | 28 | 19 | – | 25 | view |
| Carlos Lee | 37 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 26 | view |
| Mark Trumbo | 31 | 37 | 30 | 15 | 27 | view |
| James Loney | 38 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 28 | view |
| Kendrys Morales | 18 | 23 | – | – | 29 | view |
| Ryan Howard | 24 | 30 | 34 | 35 | 29 | view |
| Justin Smoak | 33 | 42 | – | 16 | 30 | view |
| Brandon Belt | 27 | 35 | 32 | 41 | 31 | view |
| Edwin Encarnacion | – | 29 | 33 | 34 | 32 | view |
| Justin Morneau | 29 | 31 | 37 | 42 | 33 | view |
| Carlos Pena | 32 | 32 | 38 | 37 | 34 | view |
| Mike Carp | 40 | 33 | 35 | 32 | 35 | view |
| Mitch Moreland | 34 | 34 | 39 | 33 | 35 | view |
| Howard Kendrick | – | – | 18 | – | 36 | view |
| Adam LaRoche | – | 36 | – | 31 | 37 | view |
| Adam Dunn | 30 | 43 | – | 38 | 38 | view |
| Daniel Murphy | – | – | 28 | – | 39 | view |
| Luke Scott | – | – | – | 29 | 40 | view |
| Todd Helton | – | – | – | 30 | 41 | view |
| Derrek Lee | – | – | 31 | – | 42 | view |
| Garrett Jones | 39 | 38 | 36 | – | 42 | view |
| Aubrey Huff | – | 40 | 40 | 36 | 43 | view |
| Nick Swisher | 35 | – | – | – | 44 | view |
| Brandon Allen | 36 | – | – | 40 | 44 | view |
| Anthony Rizzo | – | – | – | 39 | 45 | view |
| Chris Davis | – | 39 | – | – | 45 | view |
Fantasy Baseball Rankings powered by FantasyPros
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
No Carlos Pena?
no ryan howard.
issues on this end solved.
working on showing 30-40, should be up shortly
yeah i don’t like howard but i’d probably rank him over justin smoak…
agreed
One dude has Smoak ranked 16th. LOL
I don’t appreciate you laughing at me, Adam.
Haha sorry but come on man, that’s a pretty indefensible ranking. Even if you project a full breakout his value will be seriously hurt by hitting in the worst lineup in the league. He scored 38 (!) runs last year. You have Youkilis ranked 10 spots below Smoak? Youk has health concerns but he could outproduce Smoaks entire season by the all star break.
I hope Smoak proves him right. Overall I agree with Zach far more than his peers. Pujols I have ranked 5th at first this season in my own personal rankings. I have a 15 year streak in 5×5 fantasy were my average ranking is 2nd out of 10. Cabrera I have second overall and first at first. These rankers are completely forgetting Pujols having had his stats fall several years in a row, and last season his stats were much weaker than top 5 at firstbase. I project he wont finish top 5 anymore in his career, so I ranked him 5th. granted being the 5th best hitter at firstbase is still outstanding when your well past 30.
once again, it’s really goofy how the consensus is calculated. Podhorzer chooses to rank players only at their primary position. that’s fine, but don’t calculate the consensus as if he’s ranking them outside the top ~30.
look at Sandoval…
Agreed. You would think a website full of guys that work on numbers all day could figure out how to average something together.
Mike’s rules make sense, but it’s ridiculous that they aren’t all working on the same page, whoever’s page that is.
Yeah, these rankings would be more useful if you guys were using the same pool of players in your systems. The fact that one guy considers Napoli while another guy doesn’t, well, really hurts the value of the overall final rankings. You are better off not even looking at that column.
that isn’t how this was done. please see below, FP responded.
If 29th gets 2 points, 30th gets 1 point, and players who one of you don’t consider first basemen get 0 points, how is that functionally different than “ranking them outside the top 30?” The FP post you site even indirectly criticizes this whole “different sets of eligibility requirements!”
“Again, all of the above assumes all experts are on the same page regarding position eligibility. When that’s not the case, the data will be bad no matter what system we’re using to determine the consensus.”
Aw shoot, now Mike has rankings up the same as everyone else. Sorry I didn’t check to see if you fixed it. Good work. Sorry again.
And I spelled “cite” wrong like a true winner.
Billy Butler counts as 1B in yahoo so he does for sure in some leagues. Ranking him 21st is criminal too~. Pod is right to not rank random weird guys at 1B, I’ve never understood why people do that. No reason to include a player at anything but his most premium position, especially the C/1B guys.
Yeah, but they are calculating their overall ranks based on “0 entries”, rather than eliminating it altogether. If you don’t want to rank multi-position players properly, then don’t. Don’t half-ass it like this.
Sorry to be thick here, but… why wouldn’t you play Napoli or Santana at first? If the production is the only thing that matters, and you miss out on the topmost first basemen… what’s the harm?
There is no harm, so long as you acquire an equally valuable catcher.
why pay a premium for a catcher, only to stick him at 1B? if, for example, you are able to cheaply keep him and someone like McCann, then it would make sense.
This series would be much more helpful if you could agree on the player pool for each position. For instance, Mike did not rank Napoli or Butler, presumably because their primary positions are C and DH, respectively. This skews the rankings and makes them less useful.
Otherwise, this series is interesting and helpful.
I actuallyed LOLed at some of these comments. You guys are not wrong though. Position eligible shenanigans aside, quick Carlos Lee and Cuddyer comments:
Lee- I projected a slight batting average rebound to .282, and like I keep harping on in previous posts/comments, batting average is undervalued. Especially now since league-wide average was just .255 last year, its lowest mark since 1989. Plus, Lee still hits in the middle of the order, so 90+ RBI should be a lock, as well as about 20 HRs and a couple of steals.
Cuddyer- COORS! And out of Target Field. I’m actually not projecting much of a HR spike, only to 23, but a nice jump in batting average to .294, a mark he has never actually reached. All those stats, combined with my projected 6 steals, yields a higher value than Paul Konerko.
It’s always the projections. I have Lee at .255 with 16 HR, Loney at .284 and Cuddyer at .280 (21/6), so that explains all of it.
Where would you place Cuddyer among these 2B?
Uggla, Cuddyer, Weeks, Utley
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/second-base-rankings-rotographs-consensus/
Oh and James Loney, there’s that batting average again, plus 5 steals from your 1st baseman helps.
If Cuddyer > Konerko in 1B rankings…he’s got to be right behind Kinsler in 2b rankings.
This ^
Hey guys, as you probably guessed from my username, I’m from FantasyPros. I just wanted to address some of the good feedback in this thread…
Position Eligibility: “Pick your poison” is probably a good way to describe our options here. Ultimately, we’re going with Yahoo’s standard because the vast majority of people play there. The most important thing has been mentioned a few times already…all experts have to rank with the same eligibility assumptions to make this useful.
Consensus Calculation: We use a system of “rank points” to determine the consensus. If RotoGraphs is ranking their top 40 first basemen, we give 40 points to each expert’s top player and go down a point per rank until the 40th player, who receives 1 point. We then add the points across the experts to come up with the consensus. We feel this system is better than using an average because averages have issues when not all experts rank the player in the top 40. You either have to assume a rank for the expert when they’re not in his top 40 (e.g. something arbitrary like n+1, where “n” equals the last rank), or you simply average the experts that do rank the player, which artificially bumps him up. When an expert doesn’t rank a player in his top xx, we have no idea where he would have ranked him, so using “rank points” to determine consensus is cleaner than using an average (in our opinion).
Again, all of the above assumes all experts are on the same page regarding position eligibility. When that’s not the case, the data will be bad no matter what system we’re using to determine the consensus.
Thanks again for the feedback!
what if you just treated Podhorzer as if his rankings are the average of the others? the consensus doesn’t HAVE to be bad. there are plenty of ways around it.
I love your site though, especially for football start/sit decisions.
In terms of using an average of the other experts to determine Mike’s rank, that’s probably the solution we would use if we had to. However, we just never want to assume a rank for an expert…even if it’s an average of the others. It’s also a complex undertaking when you’re doing custom consensus rankings for any combination of experts on the fly, across all the experts we track. My partner (the tech guy) would probably kill me if I made that request.
As long as all experts rank to the minimum and go by the same position eligibility assumptions, I think our rank points method is a solid approach. I know that’s a lot of “ifs” though. : )
Thanks for the feedback on our football start/sit tool. We’re actually launching a similar thing for “who should I draft?” in baseball. Should be live by tomorrow.
fixed the issues
Are these rankings in addition to the Tiered Rankings like were done last year?
The positional guys will still do their tiers and rankings, this consensus approach was a way to give you consistency across positions as well. Hopefully it’s the best of both worlds.
Gamel isn’t a top-50 option at 1B? I don’t play AAA fantasy so I’d take him over Rizzo, at least.
We did not have Gamel as a option at Fantasy Pros to rank at 1B. Sorry.
Shocking, Konerko is underrated while of course Hosmer is way overrated because in many peoples minds “young” is the 6th hitting category.
What is the justification for Hosmer over Konerko?
Stolen bases and PAs for me, typically things that come with youth.
Just using the consensus ranking system I used, I have them at:
Eric Hosmer,0.297,86.1,22.4,93.5,13.2
Paul Konerko,0.280,82.0,29.0,94.7,1.0
Konerko’s extra HRs are not able to over come a different in AVG and SBs. RBIs and Runs are a push.
Link to my rankings: http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/2b-rankings-process-and-thoughts/
Adam Dunn had a historically awful season. Sure he should bounce back some, but if I am Todd Helton, Derrik Lee, or any of the 10 other guys ranked below him, I have got to be pissed. Dunn will hit like .230 with zero speed and very few runs.
I hope the rest the fantasy world thinks like this. I’m going to cherry pick the crap out of Kendrys Morales. I’ll grab him in all 4 leagues (I shouldn’t admit I have 4 leagues).
Forget Trumbo, Abreau, Wells, Trout, etc. That glut will make way for Morales. You can’t sit that guy. He’ll be top 10 by the end of the year and I’ll get him on sale. Sweet.
Brandon Belt looks like another possible steal. How many first basemen can run? Oh, right. Brandon Belt.
Morales has both massive injury issues and massive playing time issues. He has to share the DH spot with Abreu and Trumbo, at a minimum, and both of those guys can hit… so they won’t be ignored. Plus you figure that Hunter and Wells will also get some run at DH. It’s tough to see Morales getting enough ABs to be of use in most standard sized leagues. Maybe if he goes bananas he can force Mike’s hand to let him have 80% of the at-bats, but what are the chances of that? 5-10%?
I like your Belt recommendation, though. He has a hell of a pedigree and unlike the Angels, the Giants are dying for anybody who can swing the bat. He’s not slated to be a starter but it won’t take much for him to outplay either Huff at first or one of Milkman or Schierholtz in the OF.
You’d think that…but who knows what the hell Bruce Bochy is gonna think.
LaHair?
If there are any nerds out there, I’ve got a question: so my nerdy experiment this year is to use the ZiPS projections and calculate Z-scores for each projected fantasy category for each player, adding all the category Z-scores together, and then using that ranking as my basic draft order. The thing I’m having a hard time figuring out though, is how to deal with positional scarcity. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with that? I could calculate Z-scores based on positional averages and standard deviations, but that doesn’t seem quite right to me for some reason.
See my series last year and the update this offseason
“podhorzer liked loney more than the rest of us.” what? you mean, YOU disliked loney more than everyone else.