Jose Altuve

Thousands of teams signed up on Fantrax last year to play a wide variety of draft leagues, with even more expected to play this season. Leagues are filling up every day, and countless fantasy players will spend the next two months analyzing Average Draft Position (ADP) trends and hoping against hoping that they get the chance to own Mike Trout or Jose Altuve. I have a bit of advice for these people: You're doing it all wrong! You need to give the one of the salary cap challenge leagues a try. Join or start a fantasy…

This position is getting really interesting over the last few seasons. The second base position has long been thought of as a defense-first position, filled with a bunch of slap hitters. Not anymore. Nowadays we have power bats like Rougned odor and Jonathan Schoop along with speedsters like Dee Gordon. Not to mention the plethora of young talent set to bust out and a pint-sized hitting ninja leading the way. Yeah, I think this position will be just fine over the next decade or so. Other 2018 Dynasty/Keeper Rankings:   C…

It wasn't too long ago that the second base position was almost as boring and offensively deprived as the catcher spot. Not anymore. Gone are the days of half the league's second basemen being glove-first slap hitters. Sure, defense is still an important part of the game, but there's certainly been more of an emphasis on not having a black hole in your lineup. There's now a ton of power and speed at the position as you can see in the rankings below. A couple of Joses lead us off with a trio of youngsters rounding out the top…

Player Rater Report Each week this season, I have looked at ESPN’s Player Rater for the past 15 days to identify players surprisingly performing above expectations and to analyze the reasons for and sustainability of their overperformance. With the season all but complete, and nine of the ten postseason spots locked down, this presents a good opportunity to look back at the league’s top players this year as a whole. As for the predictive value of this exercise, it is worth noting that the position most accurately…

It can often be difficult to place into context how well (or how poorly) certain players have performed recently. A glance at ESPN’s Player Rater, which attempts to quantify a player’s overall fantasy value by analyzing their performance in each facet of the game, can focus targets for fantasy owners looking for help on the waiver wire. Of course, when dealing with small sample sizes, a player’s results can be fluky, but placement at or near the top of these lists could be indicative of a substantive change to a player’s…