Best case scenario: Ian Kinsler (TEX)
Similar players: Andrew McCutchen (PIT), Carlos Gonzalez (COL), Chris Young (ARI) with a better BA
Worst case scenario: Ryan Roberts (ARI)

Strengths

Minor league resume, HR/SB combo. Lawrie has been promoted rather quickly throughout the minors, but he’s performed at every stop. He hit 18 homers in just 69 games at triple-A last season and stole 30 bases at double-A in 2010. He’s done it before, and his HR/SB combo could be lethal.

Weaknesses

Experience, possibly Ks. With just 43 games of major league experience, it’s certainly possible that Lawrie might need a bit of seasoning before becoming a fantasy star. He may be ready right now, but you’re going to have to invest a high draft pick to get him. While his 18.1 percent strikeout rate in the majors last year wasn’t that bad, any higher might have some serious negative effects on his batting average.

ADP Report (55.9)

We had a nice little debate in the comments section of one of our Brett Lawrie fantasy posts a few weeks back where I projected Lawrie for 80 runs, a .273 BA, 23 homers, 80 RBI and 25 stolen bases. Those numbers would have been good for 64th overall last year, but there’s definitely a good amount of risk projecting a first-year player for those kind of homer and steal totals. I’m higher on Lawrie than the rest of the Baseball Professor staff, so I’d say this ADP is a good time to start thinking about drafting Lawrie, but it might be a bit too rich for my blood. But only a bit.

Best case scenario: Dan Uggla (ATL)
Similar players: J.J. Hardy (BAL), Josh Willingham (MIN)…usually we do a third but even these two are a stretch.
Worst case scenario: Carlos Pena (TB)

Strengths

HR and, by association, R and RBI. Reynolds has been an everyday starter since 2007. Since then, he ranks 12th in the league in home runs hit. He’s good for 80-plus RBI each year and should score 80-plus runs too. Both of those are by virtue of his ability to hit the long ball, but you read the intro so you know that already.

Weaknesses

Strikeouts, batting average, vs. Power Pitchers. Over that same five-year span referenced above, Reynolds has the highest strikeout rate of the 332 players with enough at-bats to qualify (I don’t know how many at-bats this is, but Fangraphs is never wrong). He’ll kill your batting average, and he’s exceptionally awful versus power pitchers. Baseball Reference classifies pitchers as power, finesse or somewhere in the middle, and power pitchers are those who finished in the top third of the league in walks plus strikeouts. Against power pitchers, Reynolds batted .147 last year, so bench him against guys that fit this mold. No amount of power can make up for that little production.

ADP Report (119.0)

I can get on board with drafting Reynolds this high if your team needs power in the worst way, but if you’ve already got a substantial amount of power, especially from power scarce positions like catcher (Carlos Santana) or shortstop (Troy Tulowitzki), then I’d absolutely pass on Reynolds at 119 and even at 127 (where we ranked him).

Now, fantasy experts have Moustakas being taken in the late rounds or falling to the waiver wire. Let’s dig in and see what we can expect from the Royals’ 2012 starting third baseman.

Moose was the second pick in the 2007 MLB June Amateur Draft by the Royals and ranked ninth on Baseball America’s Top Prospects list heading into 2011. He spent parts of five seasons in the Kansas City minor league system, playing in 439 games. In his minor league career, Moose slashed a line of .282/.337/.503 with 84 dingers, 21 steals and 335 RBI. The Moose got loose in three of his minor league seasons, hitting over 20 long balls three times and over 30 once.

So, what went wrong with Moose’s 2011 MLB campaign after he put up very respectable numbers in the minors? His walk rate of 6.9 percent in the minors, although lower than one would want to see in a hitter, translated to a 6.0 percent rate in the majors while his strikeout rate decreased since his call up (17.0% to 14.0%). His .296 BABIP was not overly impressive and could improve this year, but that wouldn’t be the telling factor. His HR/FB rate was an abysmal 4.2 percent, leading to just five homers in his shortened MLB campaign. With a HR/FB rate that low and a fly ball rate of 41.2 percent, one could only expect more long balls. His 20 percent line drive rate should translate to a better BABIP, too.

The best way to predict Moustakas’ future in the majors would be to compare him to his cross-diamond counterpart who traveled a similar path to the show, Eric Hosmer. Hosmer impressed with a .293/.334/.465 slash line in his rookie campaign with the Royals, stroking 19 long balls and driving in 78 runs in an up and coming Kansas City lineup. Here’s a comparison of the two future stars’ minor league statistics:

While Hosmer hits for a better average and gets on base more often, the thing that stands out to me is the power numbers. Moose has a higher slugging percentage, albeit not by much, and much higher AB/HR rate and RBI/GM rates. Then, when you compare the MLB HR/FB rate, one could only expect Moose’s major league numbers to rise tremendously and possibly surpass Hosmer’s in 2012.

Moose’s Strengths

Power potential, position stability, lineup and high line drive rate. Moose can hit the ball hard on a line in every at-bat, which eventually will translate to higher totals in his power game and batting average. With a higher BABIP, this guy could hit .290 with 25 homers. He’s surrounded by a young and upcoming Royals lineup but has the comfort of staying in his position (unless we see an Adam Dunn-like collapse). He has the potential to hit at least 20 homers in 2012.

Moose’s Weaknesses

Speed and experience. Moose has a ton of potential, mainly in the power columns, however, having potential to succeed or surpass expectations also means expectations are probably low and there is potential to fail miserably. While Moustakas could hit 20-plus long balls and drive in 80-plus runs, he will not stand out in any category (especially steals with just 21 stolen bases in 439 minor league games). His inexperience is also cause for concern, as he could easily take a downturn and head back to the minors if the Royals choose to do so.

Prediction

.278/.333/.498, 20 HR, 77 RBI, 58 R, 4 SB

I have high hopes for Moose, and I’m going out on a limb and say he’ll be a top 10 third baseman this year. Third base could be one of the weakest positions, especially given how reliant the strength of the position is on the health of some historically injury-prone players, and if you can scoop the Moose up in the late rounds (especially in keeper leagues), why not take the chance on him? Save your draft picks early on, invest in other positions and take a shot on Moose. I know I will.

Best case scenario: Ben Zobrist (TB)
Similar players: Danny Espinosa (WAS), Chase Utley (PHI), Seth Smith (COL)
Worst case scenario: Neil Walker (PIT)

Strengths

20/20 potential, walks a lot (OBP). Roberts is cut straight from the Ben Zobrist mold, right down to his mediocre average given a rather impressive walk rate. Both guys are 20/20 threats and both have multiple eligibilities.

Weaknesses

AVG, vs. RHP, lineup slot. He’s probably a .270ish hitter. Last season his xBA was .272 but that was fueled by a 24.3 percent line drive rate that will surely come down. His .275 BABIP was likely a bit low. Roberts really struggles against right-handed bats in terms of both power and average (when compared to his splits against lefties). Roberts appeared all over the Arizona lineup last season, but the return of Stephen Drew to the leadoff spot and the presence of solid middle-of-the-order bats like Justin Upton, Miguel Montero and Chris Young make Roberts a six through eight hitter right now. If he ends up batting eighth he’ll be protected by the pitcher. That’s not a good thing.

ADP Report (193.6)

I love this ADP. When the team here at Baseball Professor initially ranked our top 200 I had Roberts at 168, higher than anyone else on our staff. The more I evaluate and re-evaluate players, the more that ranking rises, and the more that ranking rises the better this ADP looks. Last season Roberts ranked 106th in just 482 at-bats and this time around he’s their everyday starter at third base. I don’t see Sean Burroughs or Willie Bloomquist stealing those at-bats. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Roberts rank in the top 75 by the end of the season, but there’s risk here if you want to make him your everyday third baseman.

Brett Lawrie reminds me a lot of Ian Kinsler. He has 30-homer power, 30-steal speed and loves to hit fly balls. Thankfully you won’t need to decide between the two as Toronto made Lawrie their full-time third baseman at the time of his call up last season and Lawrie did not disappoint. In just 43 games he hit nine homers, stole seven bases and slashed his way to .293/.373/.580. That’s a small sample size, but those numbers would have ranked sixth, third and first, respectively among the 28 third basemen who recorded 400 or more plate appearances last season.

But you know that results aren’t the measuring stick by which success is judged. It does us no good if Lawrie played like a top-five third baseman last season if his peripherals suggest he won’t do the same next season, but with a 9.4 percent walk rate and an 18.1 percent strikeout rate (numbers in line with his minor league averages) his chances of repeating are good. As I said before, his 171 plate appearances aren’t an error-free total, but his walk and strikeout rates are encouraging.

By comparison, Kinsler has career walk and strikeout rates of 10.2 percent and 12.2 percent respectively. It’s a mystery to me why Kinsler’s career BABIP is just .275 (a semi-mystery because his high fly ball rate generally correlates with a lower BABIP) but my assumption here is that Lawrie won’t struggle to post a more league average .300 BABIP. In fact, last season, Lawrie’s BABIP was .313 with an xBABIP of .302. Given his power/speed combo I’m willing to accept the .270s average that he’ll likely tout by virtue of his moderate strikeout rate and high fly ball rate.

Where does all this rank him among third basemen? You can’t take Lawrie over Jose Bautista or Evan Longoria. But what about over David Wright, Kevin Youkilis, Alex Rodriguez, Pablo Sandoval, Ryan Zimmerman, Adrian Beltre or Aramis Ramirez? If you forced me to decide in the late-second or early-third round to take Wright or Lawrie I’d probably cave and take Wright but after the draft you’d find me curled up in a dimly lit corner somewhere cringing at the thought of owning Wright for another season. With no Jose Reyes and the perennial questions surrounding Wright’s ability to carry the Mets, he’s is a player I’d just as soon avoid. Everything in me wants to take Lawrie third overall at the position. I just can’t take him over Wright in one-year leagues. Keeper leagues? No doubt.

As for Youkilis, Rodriguez and the host of others, I am definitely taking Lawrie over them. They’re all threats to miss a month at a time while giving you just the power and almost zero speed. I don’t really think Lawrie versus any of them is even a question.

So yes, Lawrie is already the next great third baseman.

(Frantically tosses pieces of paper to the side)

Aha, here it is!

(Holds up white piece of paper with one line illuminated by a beam of light shining down from what seems like heaven)

32 G | 34 R | 16 HR | 27 RBI | 4 SB | .368 AVG | .520 OBP | .868 SLG

That, right there, is the fine work of Mr. Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays or as I like to call him—the modern day Barry Bonds (sorry if the title gave it away).

Bautista was one of the more interesting players to talk about during the offseason due to his sudden elite power. There were countless articles written about him and the conclusion was pretty much the same in all of them, including my preview:

Bautista is already a selective hitter, as he swings at only 41.7 percent of pitches, which is why he puts up very good walk totals. However, baseball is a game of adjustments, and Bautista will have to learn how to deal with pitches to the opposite field before he puts up another performance like he did in 2010.

Clearly Bautista reads Baseball Professor because so far he has fixed that problem of hitting to the opposite field, albeit in a small sample size, with a .714 ISO. Last year, his ISO was a mere .131 to the opposite field.

He has also improved what was already an exceptional approach at the plate with a spike in his walk rate (14.6% to 23.3%) and drop in his strikeout rate (20.4% to 16.7%). It’s evident that pitchers are afraid to give him anything to hit, but Bautista is patient enough that he will only swing at pitches that he can knock out of the park.

This is the transformation that Bonds went through after he starting hitting all those home runs. Pitchers avoided him at the plate and he avoided swinging at pitches off the plate.

I have to be honest, after Bonds left the game I didn’t think we would ever see anything like him again in baseball and here is Bautista just seven years later. I fully expect this continue and for this season only there isn’t another player that I would rather have than him especially given that he is eligible at the extremely shallow third base position. I am all in.

When I found out he was having a great spring I began to wonder if he had a chance to make the Indians roster since stop gap Jayson Nix is projected to be the Opening Day third baseman. Well my question was answered yesterday when Chisenhall was re-assigned to minor league camp. Apparently batting .478 with two home runs in 11 games wasn’t good enough.

I do agree with Indians general manager Chris Antonetti’s decision, however. Chisenhall is only 22-years old and has never played above Double-A. Plus, with Cleveland unlikely to contend this year it makes sense to delay his arbitration clock another year, much like they did with Carlos Santana last year.

Chisenhall will probably start the year in Triple-A and if I was a betting man I’d wager that he’ll have some success there. He showed good power in Double-A last year, hitting 17 home runs in 460 at-bats. He also showed above-average plate discipline with a walk rate of 8.8 percent and a strikeout rate of 16.7 percent. Those numbers indicate that he should be a fairly strong source of batting average once he reaches the majors.

While no general manager would ever admit to delaying a player’s call-up to limit service time (I’m sure the players union would have something to say about that), Chisenhall does need more defensive seasoning. The defensive questions are certainly one of the main reasons that he needs more development in the minor leagues.

Luckily, third base might be the weakest spot on the Indians roster. Behind Nix are the light hitting duo of Luis Valbuena and Jason Donald. With none of them part of Cleveland’s long term plans I anticipate Chisenhall getting the call to the majors sometime in June, unless Nix magically improves upon his .215 career batting average or his—6.3 UZR last year at third base. At the point of Chisenhall’s call-up he should immediately be installed as the starter since there would be no point in calling him up to ride the bench.

He won’t have the impact of someone like Pedro Alvarez last year so there’s no need to draft Chisenhall in mixed leagues, unless it’s a really deep league or a keeper league, but keep his name in mind as the year progresses as he could help your batting average and home runs down the stretch.

If you’re in a 10-team AL-only league however, here’s a look at the third basemen that four teams are starting: Danny Valencia, Edwin Encarnacion, Jhonny Peralta and Kevin Kouzmanoff. With the pool being that shallow, Chisenhall is definitely someone to target in the later rounds or spend a couple bucks on in auction drafts.

Chris Johnson is someone I’m avoiding.

Johnson’s batting average of .308 was supported by an unsustainable BABIP of .387. To find out how high his BABIP actually was, I decided to do a little research. I found out that there were 232 players with at least 362 plate appearances (the number of plate appearances Johnson had) and of those players, only two had a higher BABIP than Johnson. So that means Johnson’s BABIP of .387 was the third highest in all of baseball among players with at least 362 plate appearances.

Another area that troubles me about Johnson is his plate discipline. He struck out more than a quarter of the time, 26.7 percent to be exact. He also walked only 15 times, good for a rate of 4.1 percent. Even more alarming is Johnson’s O-Swing%. He swung at an astronomical 43.1 percent of pitches thrown outside the strike zone. To put that in perspective, the average major league player only swings at pitches outside the strike zone 29.3 percent of the time. There’s no doubt that Johnson’s poor plate discipline will be on his scouting report next year and pitchers will exploit this weakness until he proves that he can lay off bad pitches.

If Johnson was in his early twenties I wouldn’t be that concerned, but since he is already 26 years old, I don’t expect a lot of improvement in the plate discipline department. And since he struggled with these issues in the minors, I don’t think last year was out of the norm for him.

Many people are going to draft Johnson expecting him to build off of his rookie campaign. With a full season of at-bats they’ll think Johnson is destined for 20-plus home runs (even though his highest total in the minors was 13) and 90-plus RBI with a .300 average. That would make Johnson a borderline top 10 third baseman.

I’m telling you not to fall into that trap.

2011 Fantasy Projection

.272 AVG | 58 R | 16 HR | 69 RBI | 3 SB

Ryan Zimmerman

Pros

• Averages the past two years: .299 AVG | 98 R | 29 HR | 96 RBI | 3 SB
• Career highs in BA, OBP and OPS last year
• Increased walk rate and decreased strikeout rate last year
• Better supporting cast this year with veterans Jayson Werth and Adam Laroche and youngsters Ian Desmond and Danny Espinosa
• At 26 years old, entering his prime power years

Cons

• In five-year career has only eclipsed 30 HR once, 100 RBI once and a .300 AVG once
• Power dropped off last year
• After stealing double-digit bases in 2006, has not come close since
• Swung at 25.9% of pitches outside the strike zone in 2010 compared to 21.3% in 2009

Alex Rodriguez

Pros

• Averages the past three years: .286 AVG | 85 R | 32 HR | 109 RBI | 12 SB
• 13 straight seasons with 30 HR and 100 RBI
• Bats in the middle of one of baseball’s most potent lineups
• Plays half his games in a hitters park
• Totaled 125 RBI last year in only 137 games
• Takes care of his body well

Cons

• Will start the season at 35 years old
• Has played in fewer than 140 games for three straight seasons
• Stole only four bases last year after stealing 14 bases in 2009 and 18 the year before
• Batting average has declined for three straight years

While it is clear from the list above that Rodriguez is on the downswing of his career and Zimmerman is on the rise, I’d still rather A-Rod for 2011, unless it’s a keeper league of course. The main reason is A-Rod’s power advantage. Even though he’ll only play 135-140 games, he is still a strong candidate to hit 30-plus HR, and with Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira hitting in front of him the RBI opportunities will once again be plentiful. Zimmerman, on the other hand, had only 25 HR and 85 RBI last year. He should improve upon those totals but they’re unlikely to reach A-Rod’s power totals.

Another reason I like A-Rod over Zimmerman this year is the stolen base potential. Although A-Rod had only four last year, that’s the most Zimmerman has had in any year since 2006. I’m not expecting A-Rod to steal 20-plus or even 15-plus bases ever again, but since he’s a good base runner I don’t see why he can’t steal 10 bases.

As a result of A-Rod’s advantage in the power and speed categories, Zimmerman needs to be much better in runs and batting average to close the gap between himself and A-Rod. While Zimmerman does have a decent sized advantage in runs due to the fact that he plays in more games, he’s not decidedly better in batting average. His .307 AVG last year was buoyed by a BABIP of .334 (the highest of his career), which wasn’t supported well enough by his LD% of 17.6 percent. In actuality, Zimmerman is more of a low .290s hitter.

At this stage of his career, A-Rod is not much worse than a low .290s hitter, likely falling around the mid .280s, which was where his batting average was in 2009. Although A-Rod batted only .270 last year, his .274 BABIP was by far the lowest of his career. Add in the fact that A-Rod struck out only 18.8 percent of the time (the first year in his Yankee career that he struck out less than 20 percent of the time), and it’s safe to say that he should have a better batting average than he did in 2010.

To sum it up in basic terms, I’d rather have A-Rod’s HR, RBI and SB totals and only Zimmerman’s R total and AVG. I know I will draft Rodriguez over Zimmerman if presented with the choice, but which one will you draft?

Check out our other articles pitting two players against each other:

Hanley Ramirez vs. Troy Tulowitzki

Miguel Cabrera vs. Joey Votto

Ubaldo Jimenez vs. Clayton Kershaw