2019 Positional Power Rankings: Second Base
On Monday, Jay Jaffe kicked off our positional power rankings series by evaluating first basemen. If you need a refresher on the process or the concept behind the series, Meg Rowley wrote a handy explainer. Today, we stay on the infield and tackle second base.
The stereotype surrounding second base is that these players aren’t good enough defensive players to man shortstop and aren’t good enough hitters to play third base. There are those that defy those conventions. Jose Altuve is one of the best players in the game. Javier Baez and Ozzie Albies can handle short. Robinson Cano has been one of the better hitters in baseball for a decade. Mike Moustakas probably should be a third baseman, but weirdly won’t be one this year. There are many, however, for whom those traditional designations fit. Only two teams have four-win projections at the position, with a bunch of high-floor three-win types. That doesn’t scream stardom, but there’s a lot of hidden upside in these projections. In addition to Albies, we see possible stars in Gleyber Torres and Luis Urias. Javier Baez only gets partial playing time at second. Scott Kingery, Carter Kieboom, Keston Hiura, Bo Bichette, and Nick Madrigal don’t play a huge role below, but they do represent talented young players who could help their teams to the top of these rankings in the years to come.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
What will be the first position with Orioles ranked above 30?
Batperson.
maybe they can hire a batdog and go for the number 1 spot
Mascot.
More seriously, it might be CF where Mullins isn’t entirely awful. They could squeeze ahead of MIA for starting pitching as well.
But if you included everyone’s AAA clubs, the O’s assuredly be lower than #30 at 1B, and quite possibly at least one OF corner as well.
What order are we going in?
Assuming that we do the infield first before anything else, it’ll probablybe third base, where Renato Nunez cannot be the worst starting 3rd baseman in the league.
That said, I am most confident that the Orioles will actually receive not-worst production at the outfield slots, where they have actual people who can play baseball and several teams (Giants, Marlins, White Sox, among others) do not.
Don’t forget the Indians outfield! Baaad.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure at least the Royals will project worse at third.
3B is up and (spoiler alert) the O’s are all the way up to #29!
woooooooooooo!!
I think the Hiura and Hampson plate appearances are drastically too low.
People have been obsessed with Hiura playing 2B for the Brewers this offseason, and I am not sure why. The guy did fine at AA last year, but it’s not like he was tearing the league up. The guy likely needs some seasoning at AAA because he’s not going to add a ton of value with the glove. He’s not already on the 40-man, either. Sure, maybe he gets off to a hot start in AAA and they figure he doesn’t have anything more to learn down there, and he’s up here in June. There is also a non-zero chance he doesn’t get called up until the rosters expand.
I like the guy but we are not talking about Eloy here, whose bat screams that he’s ready to play every day in the big leagues right now.
Was also notably the MVP of the fall league. Part of it is not believing Moose will be able to handle 2b. They might swap him and Shaw before they hand over the reigns, but I don’t think there is anyone else in between Hiura and the everyday 2b job. Even in your worse case scenario of not getting called up until rosters expand…that would yield more than 21 plate appearances. A season ending injury is the only way that’s a reasonable o/u IMO.
whoops, replied to the wrong sadtrombone post
I’m still a bit confused why Torres and Albies are so different. Their lines seem similar, but Torres looks like the better hitter. His defense sucked, so we’ll see if that changes I guess, but is that really enough to be worth 1.4 WAR? I mean, Ozzie just had a 305 OBP.
No I’m 100% with you, I can’t fathom how they get 4 wins projected out of Albies
Well he just put up 3.8 wins as a 21 year old. Surely you have the imagination to fathom him adding a 5% more value as a 22 year old.
Yea but my conceivable ceiling for him is not what I’d expect to see in projections, much less across the board. Surely you can fathom another 10-win season from Trout put he’s pegged 8.4-9.2. I can fathom Harper with 8+ wins but…you get the idea. Albies had the best month of his life, slashed around his career average for the rest of the season, and projections have him adding to that? They’re expecting the TWO greatest months of his life this year?
These projections arent his ceiling though?? He already outhit them his age 20 rookie season. Why do you get to discount his good month and only include his bad months? That last sentence is pretty funny though
I don’t think the offensive projections take into account park adjustments? Just guessing there. At least the triple slash lines listed, the WAR is adjusted.
This is pretty minimally important to the article, but didn’t the Mets release TJ Rivera?
This may be the most unevenly distributed set of talent out there. Some teams are running out a third baseman at 2nd or are relying on guys like Devon Travis, and other teams have Jeff McNeil and Brandon Lowe and DJ LeMahieu scrapping for utility roles.
I think the NY teams really screwed up the leaguewide talent distribution this offsesason by collecting all the above average second basemens.
Well, two positions down and my Braves are looking to be in good shape for this year. Yes, I know we started with two of the Braves strongest positions and we are very likely to go downhill from here.
They should also come in top 3 in left, top 3 at 3rd, top 10 in center, and maybe around average or somewhat below at short and catcher. The only position they’re really punting is right field.
The lineup isn’t the issue; it’s the pitching, which has a whole lot of uncertainty.
It has uncertainty, but a ton of depth, at least? Some of those kids will surely stick, and one or 2 may even step forward big time.
Never mind on third base! I seriously underestimated the depth at third right now–a really stacked position.
part of that is health though, give donaldson a full season 650 ABs and the braves jump into top 5 3B. Granted, trusting 33 year players to stay healthy and productive for an entire season is quite risky.
” In the last decade, the only players to put up an at least average batting line at age-21 were Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Correa, Starlin Castro, and Freddie Freeman. ”
Harper and Machado weren’t at least average?
Machado had a 97 wRC+ in 2012, when he turned 21 halfway through the season. He had a 102 in 2013. So it seems like he and Harper (137 wRC+ in 2013) should be on the list.
At least he got the Platinum glove in ’13
Harper only made 395 plate appearances in 2014, his age-21 season, so I’m guessing he was ruled out because he didn’t qualify for the batting title that year, but I’m confused about Machado, since he split his age-21 season between the 2013 and 2014 seasons, and he put up at-least-average wRC+s in both seasons.
For analysis purposes a players age on July 1st is what we use
So Machado was 3% below average in his age 21 season.
Is 2B the most shallow position? Catcher?
It’ll be interesting to see how the Rockies actually distribute the PA’s at 2B. They have totally mismanaged Ryan McMahon to this point, largely due to the Ian Desmond Contract mistake, and with Desmond still on the roster that looks like it will continue.
Craig,
Listing the great consecutive seasons by second basemen in Altuve’s writeup missed the fantastic five year stretch by Joe Morgan. From 1972-1976 he was the best player in baseball, each season earning 8.6 WAR or better.
I find it fascinating that the words include wrc+, but the stat lines don’t…….I’d consider adding those in.
I’d be surprised if Kike Hernandez isn’t the Dodgers primary 2B rather than Taylor.
“Given that Mr. Wendle’s development towards the major leagues was of the arrested variety, …”
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I wouldn’t get too excited about Flores’ projection if you are a Dback fan. His knees are shot and getting worse so I think his lack of range/baserunning are legit bad and only going to get worse.
Seems bizarre that they are expecting his defense to be better at 2B than 1st, and that they are explicitly discounting baserunning metrics based on, what, a gut feeling that they can’t be right? I love Wilmer, but…
I should add, I really enjoyed the tone of this writing a lot…….some serious, some humor of various kinds.
Is there a way to tease apart positional value? Looking at the 2018 leader board the Cubs had 10WAR at 2B, which of course they didn’t. How can I see what Baez and Zobrist individually contributed to 2B last year while filtering out their other positional value?
The way to get at this information is to select “2B” from the “Split” menu that’s in the middle of the page.
I’ve run into this problem myself previously. Selecting “2B” (or any position) from the list that runs horizontally across the page will provide *all* stats for any player who played that position for the team during the season, which leads to odd results like the 10 WAR total that includes the value from Baez, Zobrist, etc. when playing positions other than 2B.
Not sure you’re aware, but Kike’ Hernandez will start at 2B for Dodgers, he’ll get a lot more starts than Christ Taylor. The Dodgers haven’t announced it, but he’s going to kill it there this year. Just an FYI
Am I reading this incorrectly, or is this projecting Gleybar Torres to be the worst defensive 2B in baseball? Significantly worse than Mike Moustakas, who’s never played the position?