Third Base Updated Rankings: September
Sniff, sniff… the last full month of the season, and the final installment of the updated in-season rankings is upon us. Third base has been a bit of a roller-coaster this season, starting out devoid of virtually any worthwhile candidates to plug in at the hot corner until today, when many players have resurrected their seasons and others have quite frankly resuscitated their entire careers. It’s not the deepest position to be sure, but it’s not quite the mess that it started out to be.
I want to be clear that this is not third base rankings should a draft be held today for 2012. This is a reflection of the slow, methodical meander which is a 162 game baseball season and where these gentlemen currently belong, give or take a few slots depending on your format.
Tier 1
There’s simply little to substantiate Bautista having room up here in the penthouse. His wOBA is .448 — the next closest is Aramis Ramirez at .375 (edit – Alex Gordon at .382). He hit as many home runs in July and August as Alex Rodriguez has hit all season. You could come up with dozens of these examples, but I’ll spare you.
Tier 2
Aramis Ramirez
Ryan Zimmerman
Alex Gordon
Pablo Sandoval
Kevin Youkilis
Evan Longoria
Adrian Beltre
Alex Rodriguez
Brett Lawrie
Michael Young
David Wright
Tier 2 becomes kind of a kitchen sink of solid producers in a variety of formats. Aramis Ramirez went simply bananas in August to the tune of .377/.429/.575 and pretty firmly occupies the pole position in this tier which is pretty surprising since it was only a few months ago that we were wondering if he was washed up.
It just wasn’t right to have Michael Young hanging around in the third tier anymore when he trails Jose Bautista by just one RBI for the league leader at third base and he has buoyed many squads with his .334 batting average . And yeah, Brett Lawrie is still pretty green and all, but wow – what a debut: .318/.381/.682, eight home runs, five stolen bases and 21 RBI. He’s given the position superstar production on par with Joey Bats since his call-up, and if this were a ranking of production in the last 30 days, he’d certainly be featured in the top tier.
Injuries have made a mess of this Tier, really – and several of these guys could be featured in Tier 3, but their overall counting stats keep them hanging on.
Tier 3
Ryan Roberts
Edwin Encarnacion
Mark Reynolds
Jhonny Peralta
Casey McGehee
David Freese
Ryan Roberts has turned into an awfully valuable player, contributing nicely in four categories and Edwin Encarnacion, coming off a huge August where he went .307/.407/.554, has gone from non-tender candidate to must-start. I wrote earlier about McGehee and his bounce-back this past month, and it has continued into September as well.
Although Peralta’s home run totals have fallen off, he’s still been valuable in runs scored, RBI, and batting average. Reynolds struck out 44 times in 28 games in August and did exactly what he did the previous two months: hit eight home runs. He’s been a little more consistent as of late, and is currently tied for 5th overall in home runs.
Tier 4
Chase Headley
Danny Valencia
Chipper Jones
Emilio Bonifacio
Martin Prado
After Bonifacio posted the highest wOBA of any qualified third baseman in July, with an eye-popping 27 runs and 16 stolen bases, he rather turned into, well, himself. Bonifacio has been good this year to be sure, but he’s really only useful in stolen bases and runs scored, although his batting average has been a nice surprise (artificially held up by a .370 BABIP, however).
Martin Prado, in 205 at-bats in the second half has gone .244/.289/.332 with just three home runs and two stolen bases. He has 50 total hits in the second half and only 11 have gone for extra bases. So Prado has really hurt his value after coming into the season with pretty high expectations.
You might not have noticed it, largely because he was (shockingly) on and off of the trainers table, but Chipper Jones actually had a fantastic August. He went .359/.391/.641 with five home runs, 10 runs scored, and 12 RBI all in just 18 games. And while I have such a hard time getting excited about four home runs and 40 RBI, Headley really is quite useful in OBP leagues and he’ll even swipe you a good number of bags.
Tier 5
Placido Polanco
Alberto Callaspo
Justin Turner
Blake DeWitt
Scott Sizemore
Kyle Seager
Willie Bloomquist
Greg Dobbs
Mike Moustakas
Chris Johnson
Kevin Kouzmanoff
Placido Polanco continues his descent into Tier 5 as he has a wholly vacant .286 batting average post-break. In 70 at-bats, Polanco has 20 hits — all of them singles (two of them being infield hits). Blech.
Kevin Kouzmanoff makes his triumphant return to the list of actual major league players and Kyle Seager joins him, probably playing over his head, but also playing about three times better than Chone Figgins. The big news is Willie Ballgame slides into Tier 4 because he’s gritty and plays the game the right way and he’s hard-nosed and all that.
The Rest
Lonnie Chisenhall
Jack Hannahan
Todd Frazier
Sean Rodriguez
Eric Chavez
Scott Rolen
Wilson Betemit
Maicer Izturis
Omar Infante
Brent Morel
Brandon Wood
Michael Martinez
Josh Harrison
Juan Francisco
Jimmy Paredes
Sean Burroughs
Jose Lopez
Miguel Cairo
Matt Downs
Ty Wigginton
Pedro Alvarez
Ian Stewart
Juan Uribe
Logan Forsythe
Taylor Green
Brandon Inge
Michael was born in Massachusetts and grew up in the Seattle area but had nothing to do with the Heathcliff Slocumb trade although Boston fans are welcome to thank him. You can find him on twitter at @michaelcbarr.
Wow the Jays have a player in each of the Top 3 Tiers… that has to be a record of sorts
Keepers for next season: Longoria at $40 and Lawrie at $7. Keep both and play one at Util or trade Longoria for an upgrade elsewhere?
so hard to lend advice on that not knowing the rest of your team. Off the cuff, I’d like to keep them both, but having a great option at 3b for just $7 bucks certainly makes Longoria expendable if you have other needs that $40 bucks could go towards.
Actually, Alex Gordon would be 2nd among 3b with a .382 wOBA. He is also tied for 2nd in steals at 3b with 16 (tied with Ryan Roberts and behind Eduardo Nunez.)
zing. multi-position players! Thanks.
I definitely understand Wright in Tier Two, but why does he have a red arrow? He wasn’t in tier one before was he? And if he was, what has he done since to warrant dropping him down? Its not like he’s done anything but hit since he’s been back. He may not be stealing bases (I suspected he might not push it with the Mets basically out of the race), but he is hitting .325 / .397 / .535 with 6 HR, 27 R and 31 RBI over 41 games since the all star break, and perhaps most importantly he’s not striking out nearly as much. His overall peripherals look more like vintage pre-2009 Wright than they have since before he was beaned by Matt Cain. I’m not sure what more he could do to reinstill confidence–if he’d been hitting any better he’d be verging on Bautista/Lawrie territory….and the improved strikeout and swinging strike rates are especially promising for his continued resurgence.
I knocked him down a couple in that second tier because his August wasn’t particularly inspiring with an OPS around .740, I believe. His second half is really held up by that silly July where his BABIP was darn near .500. I’m not sure he’s that .420 wOBA guy he once was, but maybe .380, and that’d be good for a high tier 2 ranking in my mind. September will be interesting. But yeah, maybe I was a little harsh.
Yes his overall line is buoyed by the strong week or two in July, but that’s not all that unusual, especially for a player of Wright’s ilk who historically has a high BABIP. You don’t put up a career .342 BABIP without a few absurd stretches of BABIP, and in the second half his BABIP sits at .349 overall which is right in line with his career mark. His BABIP in August was just as far below that mark (.287) as his BABIP in July was above it, but his 12% BB% and 18% K% are right in line with his career rates and much better than the numbers he put up last year. His LD% was down in August, but at around 19% not so far down that it was likely anything more than typical noise. He’s also off to a torrid start in September with a .448 wOBA, and the BABIP is much more reasonable during this big week-long stretch at .353.
Just to be clear: I agree with your assessment at the end–he’s more a .380 wOBA guy than a .400 (He was never really a .420 wOBA guy, but he was right around .400 for a quite a few years with one .420 year as the high watermark), and that is probably a high tier 2. I was just surprised he got a red mark, my understanding was those were reserved for guys who dropped tiers, and it seemed unlikely he dropped a tier, and even if not also unfair to single him out as having fallen off when he’s actually going through his most productive extended stretch in a while. If he’s really sorted out these peripheral rates as it appears, the difference between a .380 and .400 wOBA may mostly be CitiField vs. Shea at this point, his .191 ISO and 12.2% HR/FB explain most of the difference, being a bit below his career rates but well above his power starved 2009. Those weren’t a problem last year though, last year the problem was his walk rate dipped and strikeouts were way up, but he seems to have wrangled those back in again, and the final product is basically vintage David Wright with a slightly less forgiving ballpark (about which rumors persist the dimensions will be changing next year, I should add). I’d have no problem drafting him around the 1-2 turn again if next year (or if a draft was held right now for the final month for that matter) if he’s even going that early.
I’ll certainly not pay for Bautista’s quickly diminishing stat line next year. Someone else can make that mistake. Hitting more home runs than a guy that has been on the DL does not impress me over any time frame, so that’s a pretty bogus example. How about the difference in his stat line since the day that the BlueJays were accused of cheating?
A-Rod did it for nearly 15 years, Bautista is working on 2… and has slowed down significantly since the beginning of August.
As of right now, I wouldn’t hold him to a higher standard than someone like Aramis or Longoria (who have actually been playing well lately) until he stops batting .200
Hmmm. What specifically is diminishing? His wOBA in August was .427 and in all of 2010 it was .422, which was good four fourth in baseball, just narrowly ahead of Albert Pujols. His 2011 wOBA is .448, which is not very narrowly ahead of every other qualified hitter in the universe.
I understand skepticism, I was there with Bautista – and so were many others (look at the ranking archives of RotoGraphs in fact). But Bautista is clearly, clearly the very best 3b in the league.