RotoGraphs Consensus Ranks: Third Base
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.
It looks like I like Brett Lawrie, Mike Moustakas, and Pablo Sandoval better than most. That sounds right.
(The projections listed are the FanGraphs-Steamer projections and are not the basis for each analyst’s rankings.)
| RotoG | ES | JZ | MP | ZS | Name | PA | AVG | R | HR | RBI | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Miguel Cabrera | 672 | 0.32 | 105 | 35 | 115 | 3 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | David Wright | 651 | 0.282 | 83 | 21 | 81 | 10 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Adrian Beltre | 580 | 0.295 | 78 | 27 | 94 | 1 |
| 4 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 7 | Evan Longoria | 564 | 0.277 | 80 | 29 | 88 | 4 |
| 5 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 2 | Chase Headley | 673 | 0.264 | 79 | 18 | 77 | 11 |
| 6 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 12 | Hanley Ramirez | 614 | 0.269 | 78 | 19 | 74 | 16 |
| 7 | 9 | 10 | 6 | 6 | Ryan Zimmerman | 539 | 0.282 | 69 | 21 | 74 | 3 |
| 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 10 | Brett Lawrie | 545 | 0.267 | 66 | 16 | 67 | 12 |
| 9 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 5 | Aramis Ramirez | 521 | 0.275 | 65 | 21 | 76 | 3 |
| 10 | 10 | 7 | 12 | 8 | Martin Prado | 642 | 0.294 | 85 | 13 | 66 | 8 |
| 11 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 14 | Pablo Sandoval | 536 | 0.298 | 71 | 20 | 79 | 2 |
| 12 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 | Mark Trumbo | 502 | 0.255 | 63 | 24 | 74 | 3 |
| 13 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 15 | Kyle Seager | 628 | 0.254 | 68 | 16 | 68 | 9 |
| 14 | 16 | 14 | 14 | 11 | Will Middlebrooks | 498 | 0.259 | 59 | 20 | 67 | 7 |
| 15 | 12 | 15 | 17 | 13 | Mike Moustakas | 581 | 0.254 | 66 | 20 | 74 | 3 |
| 16 | 14 | 16 | 15 | 16 | David Freese | 502 | 0.281 | 58 | 15 | 61 | 2 |
| 17 | 17 | 17 | 19 | 17 | Michael Young | 569 | 0.288 | 63 | 12 | 62 | 2 |
| 18 | 18 | 19 | 16 | 18 | Todd Frazier | 502 | 0.242 | 55 | 19 | 63 | 7 |
| 19 | 19 | 18 | 22 | 19 | Pedro Alvarez | 578 | 0.24 | 67 | 25 | 76 | 2 |
| 20 | 20 | 21 | 18 | 21 | Manny Machado | 496 | 0.24 | 54 | 13 | 54 | 10 |
| 21 | 24 | 23 | 20 | 22 | Lonnie Chisenhall | 458 | 0.248 | 50 | 15 | 55 | 3 |
| 22 | 21 | 20 | 24 | 26 | Jeff Keppinger | 532 | 0.28 | 62 | 10 | 53 | 2 |
| 23 | 22 | 25 | 21 | 24 | Kevin Youkilis | 415 | 0.254 | 51 | 15 | 51 | 1 |
| 24 | 23 | 22 | 26 | 30 | Mark Reynolds | 531 | 0.225 | 66 | 25 | 70 | 2 |
| 25 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 23 | Trevor Plouffe | 430 | 0.235 | 47 | 17 | 53 | 2 |
| 26 | 26 | 26 | 31 | 31 | Jordan Pacheco | 323 | 0.275 | 32 | 5 | 34 | 3 |
| 27 | 30 | 29 | 30 | 25 | Alberto Callaspo | 383 | 0.265 | 41 | 7 | 39 | 3 |
| 28 | 25 | 24 | 38 | 39 | Jedd Gyorko | 391 | 0.269 | 42 | 13 | 59 | 4 |
| 29 | 29 | 28 | 38 | 32 | Jamey Carroll | 485 | 0.275 | 51 | 1 | 37 | 7 |
| 30 | 32 | 32 | 34 | 29 | Josh Donaldson | 388 | 0.242 | 43 | 13 | 45 | 6 |
| 31 | 33 | 34 | 29 | 38 | Brett Wallace | 370 | 0.253 | 41 | 12 | 44 | 1 |
| 32 | 34 | 42 | 23 | 35 | Maicer Izturis | 254 | 0.263 | 27 | 3 | 24 | 7 |
| 33 | 37 | 38 | 28 | 33 | Adeiny Hechavarria | 397 | 0.235 | 32 | 5 | 34 | 6 |
| 34 | 31 | 30 | 38 | 41 | Chris Johnson | 342 | 0.259 | 35 | 9 | 40 | 2 |
| 35 | 28 | 31 | 32 | 51 | Chris Nelson | 304 | 0.274 | 33 | 8 | 37 | 2 |
| 36 | 36 | 45 | 35 | 27 | Matt Dominguez | 339 | 0.242 | 35 | 9 | 36 | 1 |
| 37 | 42 | 36 | 37 | 28 | Donovan Solano | 411 | 0.248 | 34 | 3 | 34 | 5 |
| 38 | 39 | 35 | 38 | 40 | Steve Lombardozzi | 298 | 0.252 | 27 | 4 | 27 | 6 |
| 39 | 42 | 39 | 38 | 34 | Luis Cruz | 346 | 0.249 | 30 | 6 | 37 | 2 |
| 40 | 40 | 40 | 38 | 37 | Juan Francisco | 277 | 0.249 | 29 | 11 | 36 | 1 |
| 41 | 35 | 33 | 38 | 51 | Matt Carpenter | 317 | 0.259 | 33 | 5 | 33 | 2 |
| 42 | 42 | 37 | 38 | 45 | Placido Polanco | 384 | 0.268 | 37 | 3 | 31 | 2 |
| 43 | 42 | 41 | 38 | 47 | Daniel Descalso | 380 | 0.247 | 34 | 4 | 35 | 3 |
| 44 | 38 | 48 | 38 | 49 | Ian Stewart | 328 | 0.235 | 36 | 12 | 40 | 2 |
| 45 | 42 | 51 | 36 | 44 | Alex Rodriguez | 187 | 0.259 | 23 | 7 | 24 | 2 |
| 46 | 41 | 51 | 38 | 46 | Mike Olt | 170 | 0.231 | 19 | 6 | 20 | 2 |
| 47 | 42 | 49 | 38 | 48 | Ryan Roberts | 286 | 0.236 | 30 | 7 | 29 | 5 |
Others ranked by one analyst: Wilson Betemit, DJ LeMahieu, Eduardo Nunez, Ryan Wheeler, Jerry Hairston, Sean Rodriguez and Greg Dobbs.
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.
After this one and SS from earlier, I’m finding Mr. ZS to be highly unreliable! A breakout season makes Headley #2, and Hanley is outside the top 10… behind Middlebrooks… ummm, ok!
Seriously, Zach Sanders has some bizarre rankings. He also does not follow his own rankings. In the mock draft, he takes Longoria in the 2nd round, as the 4th 3B taken. Headley, Ramirez, and Zimmerman were all available when he chose his 7th ranked 3B. Why would you go against your own rankings in a draft?
Hold on. That mock was a long time ago.
Perceived value?
I have lost all respect for Zach Saunders and I believe he no longer has any credibility. Fangraphs is a fantastic website with fantastic writers and they deserve someone better than Zach Saunders. He honestly won’t be hard to replace.
Really? Dismissing someone because we don’t agree with their opinion? I mean…really???
Overreact much?
he clearly isn’t ranking roto value (as many of us are expecting this exercise to convey).
I wouldn’t say it’s that clear, and it’s obvious to me, as his boss, that he did rank them according to his perceived roto value.
Id like to see mr zs projections to back up some of these rankings…
Really like these rankings, although I have Hanley a bit higher. 16 steals seems a bit low, considering his career low was 20 when he only had 385 PA’s
I can’t wait to see what wildcards sanders will throw into the outfield rankings.
Will there be an overall top 100 or 200 after the positions are done?
headley as the #2? are you guys sure sanders was taking this completely seriously?
The xHR/FB work on this site suggests that Headley will outperform his Steamer-projected HR/FB next year based on his batted ball gains in 2012. If you add just four or five home runs to his total, give him a stolen base more than his Steamer projection, and project David Wright — thirty-year-old David Wright — to regress, why is it so crazy to put Headley ahead of Wright? He believes, you don’t. And Sanders’ rating drove Headley’s consensus ranking all the way up from … six to five.
it’s about him being ahead of beltre AND wright AND longoria AND zimmerman AND…. sure, dig deep enough into his batted ball stuff and it looks more legitimate, and yes, the PETCO fences are coming in. now, it isn’t shown the margin by which sanders has headley ahead of everybody else, maybe there’s a big cluster and he’s just barely ahead. the way these rankings appear don’t really show that, though.
I’m not saying that I agree with Zach’s rankings, but if he had ranked last years class as Headley, Beltre, Wright, Aramis Ramirez… you would have said he was crazy, right? wouldn’t have made him any less wrong. Just because you disagree with his rankings doesn’t necessarily make them wrong, and even if you feel they do, just take them out and recalculate the consensus rankings. I do have to say however, I would like to see something by Zach sometime in the near future explaining some of these, or showing his numbers, I certainly dont find some individual disparities odd, but crediting the same attributes would still, for instance, put Longo or Beltre ahead of Headley, ahead of Wright… right?
*any less right
Eno, would you rather take a 3B early and a 2B late or vice versa? For example would you rather have Longoria/Phillips or Pedroia/Headley? In early mocks I was targeting a 3B early but I’m starting to think the depth and talent still available in the 7th/8th round such as Headley/Sandoval Lowrie could allow me to target a Pedroia or Kinsler early while still getting a good 3B later.
I’d rather have the early 2b and late 3B. Look at those guys around #10 here, they look fine.
Thanks. Just wish I had a beer question for you too, sadly I’m a bud light man.
In all of my leagues I’m waiting on 3B and so far I’ve been able to snag Pablo Sandoval in rounds 10&11. A lot of the 3B going ahead of him have question marks (health or one year wonder). I’m expecting 290-300, 80-90 runs-rbi, 20-25 hr with potential for more. Good value in my opinion
Even more damning than his top of the chart rankings is Zach listing Matt Dominguez at 27 and Solano at 28 and not ranking Matt Carpenter or Chris Nelson. I get we all have different opinions and that it’s good to have many viewpoints, but I’m not sure someone who has Descalso and those aforementioned stiffs ranked higher than Carpenter or Nelson should be taken seriously.
Surprised those players are your bellwether players. Carpenter could easily not make it as a second baseman, and Nelson is on a crowded infield with a hot prospect behind him. Zach is betting that Descalso starts at second or short, and that Solano is needed all year in a terrible Miami infield. Nothing people have brought up seems crazy to me, most is based on different ideas of plate appearances, and these examples certainly don’t bother me.
C’mon Eno…it’s getting a little sad at this point to watch you defend those terrible ZS rankings. No logical person would draft Hanley Ramirez (pre-injury, mind you) after WILL MIDDLEBROOKS. At best, this is just his attempt to be different for the sake of drawing attention. At worst, his rankings will sway those who follow fangraphs for expert analysis. It’s obviously bringing down the credibility of these rankings and the site in general. Rankings are extremely important to a website and ZS is throwing Fangraphs under the bus. Don’t give me the “they don’t affect overall rankings that much”…that’s a terrible excuse.