By Robby Wellington – Staff Writer
Both Dalton and Tim Dierkes over at Rotoworld have recently written articles analyzing position scarcity (Dierkes’ article can be found here), and I wanted to weigh in with my own, somewhat different, opinion on things.
The true value of a player is determined by how much better his stats are when compared to the statistics of the last player at that position worthy of a starting spot. You should not be comparing Chase Utley’s numbers to the next best second baseman but rather to the worst starting second baseman in your league. Let’s call the aforementioned worst starting player the “baseline player.” For the sake of simplicity I am going to pool all of the supposedly talent rich positions together (corner infield and outfield) and combine shortstop and second base together into middle infield.
In a standard 12-team league that starts three middle infielders and nine combined outfielders and corner infielders (note: I am including the utility/DH position with the OF/CI slot), the baseline players are going to be the 36th-ranked middle infielder and the 108th-ranked CI/OF. The 12th-ranked catcher and 24th-ranked catcher are the baseline players in one and two-catcher leagues, respectively. So, who are these baseline players and what are their stats? Without further ado…
The 36th ranked middle infielder from last season, by virtue of Yahoo’s somewhat nebulous ranking system (I used ‘ranking’ which purports to rank based solely on last season’s statistics, as opposed to the overall rank) is none other than the great Jeff Kent. Kent is ranked 296 with a line that reads 61-14-68-1-292. Solid production from the last middle infielder worthy of a starting spot.
The 12th ranked catcher is another old time favorite, Jason Kendall, who is ranked 326 overall with a stat line of 76-1-50-11-295.
So, who is the 108th corner infielder/outfielder on the board? It’s Monterey (CA) hometown hero, Xavier Nady, ranked 328 with a line of 57-17-63-3-280.
That’s right, the baseline player at the deep positions is actually ranked lower than both the baseline middle infielder and catcher. Now two factors in my number crunching mitigate this surprising result. First, I assumed that all utility/DH positions were filled by outfielders and corner infielders and also assumed that any player who was eligible at a “weak and “strong” position would be played at the “weak” position (e.g. Howie Kendrick was not counted as a first baseman because it was assumed that he would be played at 2nd). So, in an effort to be more accurate, let’s go ahead and assume that four out of twelve of the teams in the league are using a player designated as a middle infielder at one of the “strong” slots. Our new baseline players are now:
“Strong” Player – Eric Chavez 74-22-72-3-241 Yahoo! Ranking – 309
Middle Infielder – Nick Punto 73-1-45-17-290 Yahoo! Ranking – 322
So that’s a bit more like it. The bottom line is, while the disparity between “strong” and “weak” positions appears to be pretty significant at the top of the draft, the truth is there is little or no difference at the end, which is where it really matters. The only time this isn’t the case is in two catcher leagues.
The baseline catcher in two-catcher leagues is Jason Varitek, the 570th ranked player on Yahoo with a lowly line of 46-12-55-1-238. This is a huge drop off from the other baseline guys and puts a huge premium on good catchers. Instead of deserving to go in the 5-7 rounds, Mauer, Martinez and McCann should all go in rounds 2-4. Otherwise, you really shouldn’t worry too much about position scarcity.
Leave a Reply