August Second Baseman Rankings

Best to ignore Luciano in mixed-leagues

Connor Rogers breaks down Giants recent call-up, Marco Luciano, and while the SS boasts exciting power potential, there are too many questions that make him worth an add in mixed fantasy leagues.

Welcome to the post-trade deadline edition of the rankings. As always, players are ranked for the rest of the season based on how I see them performing for the rest of the season.

Click to see other August rankings:
Top 300 | SP | RP | OF | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | C

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Second Baseman Rankings

Dropping off: Brendan Donovan (33rd), Taylor Walls (57th), Rougned Odor (58th), Tucupita Marcano (59th), Owen Miller (63rd), Mauricio Dubon (68th)

• An oddity of the second base rankings is that, because of the additions at the position, most of these guys who seem to be dropping – or at least not moving up as much as I’m sure some would like (yes, Ha-Seong Kim fans) – aren’t falling in the overall rankings. Gleyber Torres is actually higher in the top 300 now, as the No. 21 second baseman, than he was as my No. 9 second baseman at the beginning of the year. The top 22 players here are all among my top 100 position players.

• As for Kim, he’s certainly been plenty valuable this year, and as long as he continues to occupy the leadoff spot in the Padres lineup, he is worth more than this ranking suggests. Kim’s success, though, does seem to be rather fluky. His 15 homers have come on a total of 16 barrels (the average player would have nine homers with 16 barrels). His hard-hit rate is actually worse this year than in his first two seasons in the U.S. Statcast has him with an xAVG of .248 and an xSLG of .384, compared to his actual .284 and .458 marks. Maybe it won’t matter much; even if he slips some, he’d still be quite valuable as a leadoff man stealing at least one bag a week. But I don’t think he’s a vastly improved hitter.

• It’s rather interesting that the Red Sox gave up a solid prospect (RHP Bradley Blalock) to Milwaukee for Luis Urías, only to immediately send down the infielder. Betting on Urías’s future doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, but the 26-year-old appeared way off after returning from a hamstring strain in June and it’s unclear if he’ll turn it around this season. It complicates things that he was already making $4.7 million in arbitration, meaning the Red Sox will have to spend about $5 million to keep him around next year. I think he’ll prove worth it – we’re talking about a guy who posted a 111 OPS+ and played above average defense while playing regularly at ages 24 and 25 – but one imagines he’ll have to show something down the stretch here to avoid getting non-tendered.