RADIO
The first three months of the 2013 fantasy baseball season are in the books, and now we’re really starting to get a feel for the fantasy baseball landscape. RotoBaller will be updating our positional rankings over the next week. Today, we’re revisiting the third base rankings we initially published in April and have updated in May and June. All the ranks below are compared to the FantasyPros ECR (Expert Consensus Rank), which will show you where RotoBaller differs with the expert community and by how much. Check out our tier-by-tier analysis below the rankings, and let us know where you agree or disagree with us!
Tier 1: I really don’t think I need to explain why Miguel Cabrera has a tier all to himself, but I do want to point out that he’s on pace to exceed last season’s Triple Crown winning numbers, by quite a lot! Simply put, the guy is incredible.
Tier 2: No changes in this tier. If I could rank Evan Longoria, Adrian Beltre and David Wright 2A, 2B and 2C, I would-- they’re that close in value. You could argue that Wright even has a slight edge over the other two due to current health concerns with Longoria (plantar fasciitis) and Beltre (hamstring). We shall see if that has any influence on next month’s rankings update. Note: Edwin Encarnacion has 3B eligibility on some fantasy sites. For what it’s worth, I would rank him #2 ahead of Longoria, Beltre and Wright if I had included him in these rankings.
Tier 3: Hanley Ramirez is ‘en fuego’ right now. If he keeps this up, he will move up a tier in the next rankings update. You might think I’m crazy for ranking Josh Donaldson this high, but he has been an incredibly consistent performer this season (over .300 BA with plenty of HR and RBI in each month). Not bad for someone who went undrafted in most leagues. Manny Machado’s on-pace numbers are similar to Martin Prado’s 2012 season-ending totals, which were good enough to be top-10 third baseman. Matt Carpenter is awesome - ‘nuff said. I wish I could say the same for Ryan Zimmerman, who I haven’t touched for years on any of my fantasy teams. To be fair, he’s not bad, he’s just not the fantasy superstar that everyone thought he was going to be. Pedro Alvarez had a monster June. Not only did it help him earn an NL All-Star nod, it helped him jump up a tier in these rankings. We’ll see if he can maintain a ranking this high for the remainder of the season, though.
Tier 4: Chase Headley was just awful in June. So was Aramis Ramirez. Pablo Sandoval spent most of June on the DL and is over-weighted...err... I mean, -rated. On a brighter note, I can’t wait for Jedd Gyorko to return. I love the multi-position flexibility that he, Kyle Seager and Anthony Rendon have. Speaking of which, it’s about time that Martin Prado started turning his season around. He didn’t hit well in June, but I’m confident that he’ll be an asset to fantasy teams moving forward.
Tier 5: There are some decent options in this tier. Mark Reynolds has endured a rough couple of months and the slump seems to be carrying over into July. He’s the type of player, though, that can turn things around in the blink of an eye. It will be interesting to see if Brett Lawrie can stay healthy rest of season, as he can give you a little bit of everything when he’s in the lineup. You could do worse than Nolan Arenado, David Freese or Mike Moustakas in your lineup. All three should post much better numbers in the 2nd half of the season than they did in the first half.
Tier 6: The best of the rest. Deeper league options only.
