2019 Positional Power Rankings: Third Base
You’ve read the intro. You’ve read about first basemen and second basemen. You know how to count. You know what time it is. As our positional power rankings continue, let’s talk about third base.
This, friends, is a very good time to like watching baseball men play a good third base. Fully half of the top 10 players by WAR last year were third basemen, and only three of those five men make the top five of our rankings. The 8th-ranked player on this list, Nolan Arenado, is projected for nearly five wins this year, and the 10th-ranked player is the consensus top prospect in the game. Your mileage may vary, but I see roughly four tiers here: An elite No. 1-8, any one of whom can at times threaten to be among the best players in the game; a very strong second tier No. 9-13, the top of which contains players who have been in the past or could be in the future very good; a perfectly solid and mostly indistinguishable third tier running from No. 14 to No. 29, containing every possible diversity of age, experience, upside, and talent; and then the Royals. Let’s dive in. This will be fun.
Rian Watt is a contributor to FanGraphs based in Seattle. His work has appeared at Vice, Baseball Prospectus, The Athletic, FiveThirtyEight, and some other places too. By day, he works with communities around the world to end homelessness.
I really enjoyed reading this one! Great tone and writing. Thanks.
I’m so glad!
I agree. Rian so far wins the cup for funniest PPR write-up. I cracked up pretty much every entry for the first ten or so.
Let’s see if he can hang onto his trophy when it’s Dan’s turn.
80 grade Desperate Housewives reference!!
No bigs, but you have TJ Rivera listed for the Mets here and on the 2B list. I don’t think he’s a Met anymore, though he’ll always be a Met in the hearts of some fans.
Jose Ramierez really fell off a cliff last year in second half. Small sample size, or regression towards his previous norm? I haven’t dug into any of the under the hood numbers, so I don’t know what to make of it and thought ya’ll smarter stats guys could help!
Looking at it by month, August looked mostly like small-sample noise (April and June, he put up similar numbers), and September looks like he totally ran out of gas and overextended himself. Having also seen him play often both on TV and in person, he looked like he was doing a 2013 Matt Carpenter and pushing too hard to try and get to a milestone; Ramirez kept swinging over the top of balls he would normally either crush or lay off of.
Seems like BABIP (.208 in the 2nd half) and some HR/FB regression (21% in 1H, 10% in 2H) since his FB% actually went up in the 2nd half (they just didn’t leave the yard as much).
There is some change in his hard hit% but I didn’t see anything in his underlying plate discipline that stood out.
With Frazier out for possibly most of April and Lowrie likely missing all of April I see McNeil beating the 70 projected plate appearances at third base. I don’t see much of a rebound for Frazier coming as he’s a pop up machine, who has seen his power decline in 2017 and 2018 and his walk rate regressed to career levels last year and his body is starting to possibly break down a little. He has another year like 2018 and only a tanking team gives him a starting job next year.
I do believe in Lowrie being able to be a real good hitter but besides for the last two years he’s been injury prone and going into his age 35 season. I think if Lowrie can play 100 games and McNeil picking up a good amount of games early that the Mets can get middle of the pack type production from third base.
2017 Brewers 3B Projected: 26th, Actual 9th
2018 Brewers 3B Projected: 20th, Actual 10th
Looks like 3B is another position that helped the Brewers exceed expectations in 2017 & 2018.
2019 Brewers 3B Projected: 13th, getting closer I guess.
Unlike 1B, this one is easy to explain: Travis Shaw is awesome, and nobody (including the projection system) liked him but the Brewers.
And Travis Shaw!
Matt Duffy and the Rays and rated higher than Longoria.
Not sure what this means “a Cubs team that has come perilously close to wearing out its welcome, even with its own fanbase”
Care to elaborate?
Probably the fact that many would have pushed for more offseason moves to supplement an offense that fell apart last year, the incredibly poor 2018 free agent acquisitions (I think there should be a bounceback in at lease one of the three), and the negative ops caused by Russell and the personal emails of the Ricketts elder.
PECOTA projections did not help the growing sense among Cubs fans that the window is closing and management is doing nothing to prolong it.
Not my stance as a Cubs fan, but Cubs blogs are already starting to stand on the ledge, so that’s a pretty reasonable statement.
Having just got back from Spring Training I can say anecdotally no one cares about Russell (was getting lots of ovations) and the Ricketts email thing is a non issue for people who only care about baseball. I think this idea that Cubs fans are upset at the team is completely off base and is only a super small opinion by people who are “super online” and happen to complain about everything
Well I guess this counts as a position of strength for the Orioles so far…
I expected the Braves with Donaldson to place higher in a rank-order sense, but did not realize that this position is so stacked right now.
My first thought reading this: We are living in the golden age of third basemen.
So where are the Royals? The Stone Age?
You know that Jetsons vs. Flintstones car commercial? Yeah. It’s kind of like that.
I’m definitely taking the under on Donaldson’s projection.
I’d be surprise if Miguel Andujar doesn’t get more than 385 plate appearances at third base.
Rockies at 8? Seems a little low
Very low. wRC+ and Fangraph’s “Defense” metric downgrade a lot of Rockies players.
To be completely fair, the overall projection on Arenado is roughly equivalent to the four teams above him. All five of #4-8 on the list are practically interchangeable.
Hunter Dozier played 33 games in the minors in ’17 as he was hurt. His head was fine.
Re: Franco
“Spend a little time watching Franco play, and you’ll wonder why this guy isn’t having more success. He makes very little bad contact, and his strikeout rate (13% last year, 16% for his career) is low for a man with his outsized ability to whiff on pitches inside the zone, suggesting enough plate discipline to make the rest of his profile work.”
I think this might be backwards. If you look at the numbers, you’ll wonder why isn’t having success. If you actually watch him hit, you’re shocked whenever he makes good contact.