Before we take a deep look at the 2015 Fantasy Baseball Second Basemen Rankings, I thought it would be smart to look back at what happened to the second base position in 2014.
Entering the season, Michael Beller and I had a Fantasy Debate on Sports Illustrated about which second baseman should be drafted first: Robinson Cano or Jason Kipnis?
But instead, it ended up being guys like Jose Altuve, Anthony Rendon and Brian Dozier atop the second base rankings. So what happened to those guys?
Where’d You Go, Cano?
Let me first begin by telling you that I had Cano – and I was the winner in that debate. (We won’t mention Beller beating me in the Carlos Santana vs. Joe Mauer debate.)
Once Cano left Yankee Stadium to play in the cavernous Safeco Field, it was obvious his power numbers were going to dip some. But really, many of Cano’s home runs from 2013 would have been hit of Safeco Field, also, so I did not think the drop off would have been that significant.I was wrong.
(Somebody mark down the time and date that I just admitted that!)
Cano went from 27 home runs in 2013 down to nearly half (14) last season, and that just crushed anyone that took a chance on him in the first or second rounds of their Fantasy drafts last spring.
The smart fellas over at FanGraphs pointed out that Cano’s power outage could be blamed on his age, as their “ISO Component Aging Curve” shows, in spite of their bad spelling. Jeff Zimmerman points out that Cano’s drop in bombs was age related, and it just happened to coincide with the fact that he changed teams. Going forward, Zimmerman also believes that the drop in power will also mean a drop in IBB (20 in 2014), and that could hurt his on-base percentage overall.
2015 Fantasy Rankings:
C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | SP | RP
2015 Fantasy Baseball Second Basemen Rankings
These rankings were built for Rotisserie leagues, but a good hitter is a good hitter, so most of it can be translated over into Head-to-Head leagues, as well.
2015 Fantasy Rankings:
C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | SP | RP
Good luck this season – and we hope these 2015 Fantasy Baseball second basemen rankings are good enough to put you ahead of second place!
Robinson Cano Photo Credit: Keith Allison