2014 Baseball Rankings: First Analysis

If it wasn't clear enough already that the completion of the Super Bowl signals the unofficial start of the baseball season, MLB.com on Monday released its 2014 Player Preview. This comprehensive list ranks more than 850 players who can be expected to contribute to a major league team in some way. Needless to say, as soon as the list was released, I was hard at work crunching these numbers with an eye toward maximizing the value in my upcoming fantasy draft, since at the end of the day, these rankings really cater to fantasy managers. (At least I hope no real life general managers have to rely on them for player evaluation...) Based on my first run through the data, here's a preliminary position-by-position breakdown of how I will try to fill my roster come draft day.

But before we get into the actual positions, let's go over the top-ranked players overall. When making your first round pick in the draft, you generally want to grab whichever top 10 (or 12) player is available without worrying too much about positional scarcity. It's in the later rounds where you have to look more carefully at what's out there, what positions you need, and how you can get the most value in those picks. So firstly, here's a look at the "ideal" fantasy lineup, consisting of the top-ranked player in each position.

On a side note, this will likely be very similar to my first user-generated lineup on MLB 14: The Show, at least until I get a feel for the controls and all that. That will be followed by an All-Acquired team for each league (the AL squad being headlined by Robinson Cano, the only player on this best-of chart to have changed teams in the off-season), then Divisional All-Stars, and finally Astrology teams, if I'm feeling bold. But moving back to the chart, I've done two things for the sake of comparison. On the left side of the chart, I've put each player's 2014 ranking next to his 2013 ranking as of Opening Day (in italics to avoid confusion). On the right side, I've put each player's actual 2013 points (in bold) next to ESPN Fantasy's projected points for 2014.

Starting on the left side, a couple trends are evident at first glance. One is that things at the very top haven't changed much since last year: Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera are still firmly entrenched as the most talented players in the sport, with three other members of last year's top ten remaining in the top ten. Another is that pitchers have taken a significant jump forward in draftability from last year. The recently richly rewarded Clayton Kershaw was the top-ranked pitcher both years, but this time around he's squarely in the top ten, while his 2013 rank (21) would have placed him FOURTH among all pitchers in 2014.

But after the top guys are off the board, who should you go for first (aside from NOT catchers)? To try to shed some light on this problem, I looked at the top potential starters at each position and did a little averaging. For the infield positions, of which there are usually only one spot per team, I looked at the top 30 players, one for each Major League team, as opposed to one for each team in the typical fantasy league (10 to 12). For outfielders, I took the top 90, with a special insert for the top 30 center fielders, as I know some leagues differentiate between them and the corner spots (as they should, in my opinion). I modeled the sample size of pitchers after the info given in the Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview issues in recent years: five starting pitchers (for a total of 150, with inserts for five groups of 30) and two relievers.

So without further ado, here's a breakdown of the baseball positions organized by draftability. Analysis to come later:

1. Outfield
Average Rank: 184.5
Median Rank: 194 (Michael Brantley)
Range: 1 - 369 (90 players)

2. First Base
Average Rank: 190.3
Median Rank: 221 (Brandon Moss)
Range: 3 - 427 (30 players)

3. Shortstop
Average Rank: 227.9
Median Rank: 222 (Andrelton Simmons*)
Range: 13 - 472 (30 players)

4. Second Base
Average Rank: 232.5
Median Rank: 218 (Chase Utley)
Range: 7 - 502 (30 players)

5. Third Base
Average Rank: 236.3
Median Rank: 245 (Todd Frazier)
Range: 2 - 547 (30 players)

6. Starting Pitcher
Average Rank: 250.0
Median Rank: 241 (Travis Wood)
Range: 6 - 510 (150 players)

7. Relief Pitcher
Average Rank: 272.1
Median Rank: 257 (Huston Street*)
Range: 42 - 473 (60 players)

8. Catcher
Average Rank: 295.5
Median Rank: 340 (Russell Martin)
Range: 53 - 500 (30 players)


First of all, outfielders are a little tricky because they comprise three distinct roster spots, but since they are all three taken from the same player pool, I grouped them all together above. But suppose you wanted to look at each outfield spot individually, ordering them by total rank, we can do that too:

1a. OF1
Average Rank: 44.4
Median Rank: 40 (Jose Bautista)
Range: 1 - 102 (30 players)

1b. OF2
Average Rank: 189.7
Median Rank: 194 (Michael Brantley, you guessed it)
Range: 103 - 263 (30 players)

1c. OF3
Average Rank: 319.4
Median Rank: 318 (David Murphy)
Range: 272 - 369 (30 players)

A pretty consistent distribution: the gap between the median overall rank and the median top 3rd rank is 140, while the gap between the overall and bottom 3rd is 135. What these a, b, and c numbers should tell us is that your first outfielder should absolutely be a top priority - no surprise given that four of the top ten players are outfielders. Also, to speak to another point, three of those top four are center fielders, a position with a better average ranking than all outfielders taken as a whole (171.3), albeit with a much smaller sample size.

Again, keep in mind that these ranks deal with the depth of the real Major Leagues rather than the depth of a fantasy league (it's hard to imagine a fantasy player being content with Michael Brantley or David Murphy on their opening day squad), but I think it's important to keep track of the bigger picture.

It makes sense that first base is next, given that it's the easiest position to master defensively, leaving the door open for offensively-minded players, and good shortstops generally have a lot of value for the exact opposite reason (i.e. positional scarcity). But the rest of the infield and the entire starting pitcher category are grouped fairly close together. Perhaps we can get into more detail if we break down the starters from 1-5:

6a. SP1
Average Rank: 65.8
Median Rank: 64 (Anibal Sanchez)
Range: 6 - 119 (30 players)

6b. SP2
Average Rank: 156.8
Median Rank: 158 (John Lackey)
Range: 122 - 189 (30 players)

6c. SP3
Average Rank: 241.2
Median Rank: 241 (Travis Wood, sensing a theme?)
Range: 190 - 297 (30 players)

6d. SP4
Average Rank: 341.1
Median Rank: 333 (Trevor Cahill)
Range: 301 - 389 (30 players)

6e. SP5
Average Rank: 445.1
Median Rank: 444 (Jake Arrieta*)
Range: 392 - 510 (30 players)

This breakdown seems to suggest that your staff ace should be your next priority after a slugging everyday outfielder to build your team around. And why not, after all? Based on the huge numbers put up by the top pitchers each year, I've been a big proponent of making my second overall pick a pitcher, even when they were ranked in the 20's rather than the teens. I'm not sure if the system scales properly as we go down the starting rotation, because there's no way I'm taking my second pitcher before a top tier first baseman. But then again, maybe I should be... I mean, the numbers are there, right?

Just to finish it off, here's the breakdown of the two reliever spots, just so we can insure that every roster spot (except DH) gets a blurb:

7a. RP1
Average Rank: 148.4
Median Rank: 134 (Addison Reed)
Range: 42 - 257 (30 players)

7b. RP2
Average Rank: 395.7
Median Rank: 398 (Luke Gregerson*)
Range: 273 - 473 (30 players)

Look, obviously any set of data as vast and complex as fantasy rankings requires more than a cursory look through the numbers before any conclusions can be drawn, and the rankings are changing every day. But luckily, we still have a couple months until the baseball season gets started in earnest. Let the statistical geekiness commence!