Thoughts on First Base Consensus Rankings
Esteemed full-time employee Eno Sarris has been rolling out our consensus position rankings over the last week or so, with first base being published one week ago today. Three of our four experts consider Albert Pujols to be the fantasy’s best option at the position, which is certainly a very reasonable and safe choice. Pujols has been so great for so long that it’s hard to bet against him, but I happen to be in the minority.
Miguel Cabrera is the best fantasy first baseman (and overall player, really) for me. It’s easy to forget that he’s still just 28 years old and right in the prime years of his career. He’s hit fewer than 30 HR just once in his eight full seasons and posted an average lower than .320 just once in the last six seasons. Miggy is also insanely durable (150+ games all eight years) and piles up the RBI and runs scored. I like his chances of remaining super productive in 2012 more than I do Albert’s, who battled some injuries and had his first bout with mortality last year (meaning a .385 wOBA after ten straight years of .400+). I don’t think park effects matter much with elite guys like this, and I do like Cabrera’s surrounding cast more than I like Pujols. There’s nothing wrong with ranking Albert as the best fantasy first baseman, I just happen to disagree.
The four players following Pujols and Cabrera in the consensus rankings — Joey Votto, Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, and Mark Teixeira — are pretty much no-brainers as far as I’m concerned. All four are elite in multiple scoring categories, and frankly you could list them in any order from 3rd through 6th and it would be tough to argue. I love me some Eric Hosmer, but I think Paul Konerko is the safer play this year. Pablo Sandoval, Mike Morse, and Billy Butler are right there for me as well.
Lance Berkman at 12 and Kevin Youkilis at 19 struck me as a little off. I think they’re both just as likely to spend time on the DL this summer even though Puma made it through all of 2011 without a problem. Youkilis is a few years younger and significantly outperformed Berkman from 2008-2010. I would still rank Fat Elvis ahead of Youk, but I think the gap in their fantasy value is much smaller than our consensus rankings suggest.
A little further down the rankings comes the young trio of Freddie Freeman, Carlos Santana, and Ike Davis. Santana is obviously more valuable at catcher, but I still like his production at first more than Freeman’s given his big power. I think the gap in batting average will start to shrink in 2012 as well. I’m a bit of a Davis fanboy — hence my 7th bold prediction — and think he’ll outproduce his Atlanta Braves counterpart. I understand the injury concerns, so I’m not going to argue this point much.
Michael Cuddyer ahead of Mark Reynolds? I’m not so sure about that. Power is becoming harder to find and Reynolds is one of only seven players to hit 30 homers in each of the last three years. There’s not much difference between #18 and #20 in the rankings, but I would have them flip-flopped at the very least. I also think Carlos Pena is criminally underrated at #34 despite his utter lack of batting average. It’ll take a really great argument for me to believes he’s an inferior fantasy option to Adam Lind (#23), James Loney (#28), Kendrys Morales (#29), Brandon Belt (#31), and Justin Morneau (#33). Morales and Morneau have significant health concerns and the Giants just seem to have no interest in playing Belt.
I like Lucas Duda (#24), Edwin Encarnacion (#32), Mike Carp (#35), and Daniel Murphy (#39) as late-round bench player types, though I suppose Duda’s ranking suggests our experts see him as a little more than that. All four players are eligible at other positions as well. First base is probably fantasy’s deepest position, at least when it comes to impact talent. There are useful players throughout our rankings, but I’ve always felt getting an elite player at the position was a requirement for success.
Mike writes about the Yankees at River Ave. Blues and baseball in general at CBS Sports.
Duda is an intriguing guy because he’s huge (6’4″/250), yet he makes excellent contact (almost exactly 80% total career) – those two traits don’t usually go hand-in-hand. If he can recapture some of the incredible power he showed in AAA in ’10 and ’11, slugging .597+ at both stops, and still maintain the contact and plate discipline, he’ll be a hell of a hitter.
What about Goldschmidt in ARI?
More HR’s than Freeman and similar numbers.
Yeah, Paul Goldschmidt outside of the Top 20 here looks like a potential upside play to me due to his power. I think he’s a nice target as a CI in deeper leagues or somebody worthy of targeting a little early in NL only formats. I like him.
The Giants are very high on Belt. I think he may well win a starting job out of spring training, but if he doesn’t, it does not negatively impact their long term optimism about him. To simply say they have no interest in playing him is a gross oversimplification if not a misrepresentation of the issue.
Well, haven’t you heard? It wouldn’t be a fantasy article that talks about Brandon Belt without adding to the fantastic story that Bruce Bochy is hellbent on stunting Belt’s career by any means necessary. Of course you’re probably right, but the phenomenon I mentioned is pervasive.
The fact that Belt is listed behind Aubrey Huff, Angel Pagan, Melky Cabrera and Nate Scherholtz on the official SF depth chart at 1B and OF pretty much tells us what we need to know about the organization’s opinion of Belt.
I can’t wrap my head around the Yoooooouk ranking. Sanders has Gaby Sanchez and Duda above him, and he’s one slot above Loney.
my only guess is that the guy are looking at raw stats. it’s fair to project him to miss 1/4 of the season but it’s not as if you cannot replace him while he’s on the DL.
Esteemed full-time employee Eno Sarris
Well if he’s that, don’t forget the April 17th filing deadline for Form 8941 to take your Credit for Small Employer Health Insurance Premiums. Never leave money on the table, it’s un-American.
And Ned Colletti said on the radio that James Loney is a break-out candidate this year, which I interpreted to me that Loney’ll break-out from completely irrelevant to mostly irrelevant.
Matt Gamel will outproduce quite a few names you mentioned. I’d gladly take him over the likes of Carp or Murphy.
Dunn.
Big Donkey is too dumb to remember what he was doing wrong last year. He’ll get back to doing his thing. .250-35, book it.
The thing about Cabrera is that by April 15 almost no one will actually have him slotted at 1B. Time to start talking about ol’ boy as a 3B. I suspect the Tigers are going to shop Victor Martinez if he can show he’s healthy next winter, but even then, we get 2012 and 2013 with Cabrera being primarily a 3B. This is likely also be the last year for a while that he’s even 1B-eligible.
“Youkilis is a few years younger and significantly outperformed Berkman from 2008-2010″…
Just for the record, Berkman outperformed Youkilis in 2008. Yes, Youk has 2009 and 2010, but Berkman had the better year nearly across the board in 2008.