Archive for Joe Panik

We all have guys we like more than others. That’s just the nature of the beast. Whether it’s guys coming off down years we expect to rebound or ones we’ve done extensive research on to forecast a much better than expected season, we all have our favorites. Sometimes, we even have them for even less legitimate reasons.

As we get knee deep into draft season, I thought I’d share with you some of the guys I like more than most at each position:

C- Yasmani Grandal (NFBC avg. 145, No. 8 C)

Scoring just 49 runs while hitting 27 home runs seems crazy fluky, but I like what Grandal brings to the table overall. He does a little bit of everything — though the average might hurt — and brings the kind of pop we don’t usually see associated with the catcher’s spot. He’s still young enough (28) to be reasonably on an upswing, and he was markedly better in the second half last year (.245/.356/.521) than before the break (.212/.323/.434). He had nothing much in the way of platoon splits last year as well. Right now I like him better than Salvador Perez, who is going about 14-15 picks earlier in drafts. Further down the list, I’m intrigued by Devin Mesoraco (No. 21 catcher, No. 298 overall) after seeing a video of him testing out his bum hip doing some pretty wild plyometric drills. He could be a huge value. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this third installment of Deep League Draft Targets, an exploration of each position’s middle and late tier players. Where mediocrity abounds, value is found. Where one man’s trash is another man’s backup left-handed platoon option.

In previous editions, we covered first base, touching on Fangraphs-favorites, Tommy Joseph and Justin Bour. The week before, Tyler Flowers, Mike Zunino, and Andrew Susac, called for our attention behind the dish. Today, we move onto second base, a position that in past seasons drew the ire of many a fantasy owner but that the roto community has lately characterized as “groin-grabbingly deep.” But is it really?

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I always enjoy a quality theme when composing these tiers. From Kurt Russell movies to hard rock bands to vacation destinations, I’ve had a healthy variety of themes. With WrestleMania coming up this weekend, I considered some sort of wrestling theme. However, my writing is frequently littered with wrestling references — both obvious and subtle — on a regular basis, so using it as a tier theme could amount to overkill.

For this first set of tiered rankings, I decided on the theme of Final Four teams. The main reason I settled on this theme is that I’m only splitting the players into four tiers this month. As the season gets underway, more clear delineations will likely develop within the tiers, and I’ll probably add more to reflect that.

As of right now, however, there’s just not much separating most of these guys right now. My second tier stretches all the way from No. 6 to No. 20, with much of the tier separated by extremely small gaps. For example, would it be surprising at all if Josh Harrison (No. 14) outperformed Ben Zobrist (No. 9), despite the fact that I have Zobrist five spots higher? That’s a pretty good illustration of how tightly grouped the players within these tiers are heading into the season.

If I forgot any players who you think should be on this list, please let me know in the comments section below and I’ll update it. For reference, I used Yahoo’s position eligibility requirements.

TIER ONE – NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS – (No. 1-5)
Jose Altuve
Dee Gordon
Robinson Cano
Ian Kinsler
Brian Dozier

Being the sole 1-seed remaining, UNC is obviously the favorite to take home the title. Of the Final Four teams, the Tar Heels are the one squad that was largely expected to be here all along, and they’re the total package. They should cruise to the championship game with little resistance. HOT TAKE: When you rank No. 2 out of 351 teams in both offensive efficiency and rebounding, you’re going to win a lot of games.

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Check out last month’s rankings here.

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No more bland, rote tiers from this guy! Thanks to the urging of commenter “Urban Shocker,” my eyes are now open to the fun that can be had with ridiculously labeled tiers. You see, I used to just write these monthly second-base columns with boring old numbered tiers. That is, until Urban Shocker convinced me in the comments section of my April rankings to name my tiers from then on.

To be perfectly honest, the task of doing these monthly rankings can get rather stale — for both me and you — as the season wears on. Eventually, it gets to the point where the rankings barely change, because 30-day samples don’t substantially change the way I/we think about a certain player.

Furthermore, there’s only so many ways I can say “Jose Altuve had a good month again,” or “Dee Gordon steals lots of bases,” or “Holy crap, Dan Uggla is so incredibly terrible!” (Actually, never mind on that last one. I will never get sick of making jokes about Uggla, who got paid $13 million last year to post a weighted offense 72% below league-average.)

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