Thanks.

You're doing this late, though. You won't be done by my draft date.

Been really looking forward to these rankings. Any chance you roll a few out at a time? Drafting this week. Thanks,
Dan

Lots of people are in the same boat as DanDaMan, me included! I reupped my BP subscription specifically for the tier rankings again! I followed these last year (including value picks) to a tee last year and ran away with my league. Please let us know what we can expect.

I draft this Sunday also so I'm sol it looks like.

Glad you are doing them after all. Look forward to the rest and obviously time is of the essence. Thanks again.

I concur with everyone else. 5 days until my draft.. if the SP tiers came out by then that would be stellar. Either way, looking good, y'all. Thanks.

Not to pile on, but...my league drafted this past Sunday. Sure wish these happened sooner.

Will the rest of these be posted this week? This weekend coming up is a huge weekend for drafts and getting some of these positional tiers next week wouldn't really help as much. Will there be any cheat sheets or top 200 or 300 overall rankings? First year using this site...

I too re-upped to get these and draft next week. Yikes...

Let me make a general comment. We really appreciate your interest, and I'm sorry if the tiers weren't out before everyone's draft. I'd like EVERYTHING out immediately, but it can't happen. As I stated above, we provided a lot of other things along the way this spring that people kept asking for too...including numerical position rankings, ADP, player dollar values, dynasty lists, who to watch in spring training, chats, Twitter Q & A, etc. If you've had questions, we've been everywhere. You could always just ask. We put a ton of work into everything we do. Something will always be last in line unfortunately.

I'll post the rest of the tier schedule here soon.

Here is the tentative schedule for the remaining tier rankings:

Wednesday: 1B
Thursday: 3B
Friday: SS

Monday: OF
Tuesday: SP
Wednesday: RP

Guys,

I appreciate all of you do. I understand you can't do everything at once. I was just noting that this would have been useful earlier. I'm paying for these, and quite frankly, tier rankings after I draft have zero value.

I'm not in a dynasty league. I'm not interested in twitter Q & A's. I am sure someone out there enjoyed these--I know I am not the center of the universe, and I'm glad someone out there enjoyed the dynasty league list.

I wanted a tier list to use as reference for my draft, something I have used for a few years from this site. The dollar values are of some use, but when you need a SP, and you have one minute to make your online draft pick, an auction list is not as useful. I suppose I could spend a couple hours converting it over. I'd rather not--I used to get that from here without having to do that.

I appreciate you guys have been available on Twitter. I'm not sure how that will help me, though, when I need a SP and have 60 seconds to pick a player.

I was giving feedback,thinking professionals appreciated feedback and sometimes use it to make adjustments. Perhaps an acknowledgement that this was noted and would be considered for next year.

What most disappoints me is not that I won't have all the tiers by draft day. What most disappoints me is the apparent lack of interest in feedback. There is no acknowledgement of the problem; instead I'm told I'm given new features I do not want and could have asked a question on Twitter.

Okay, my apologies. I should have said more to be more constructive. I honestly thought the problem was obvious, and an explanation would seem insulting, not constructive. Here it is:

Tier rankings are used by people for their drafts. They lose value after the draft date.

The first part of preparing a series of draft preparation articles should be identifying by what date one expects, say, 75% of reader drafts to occur after, and have the series done by at least a day or two before that date. This is hard, because the earlier one does them in Spring Training, the less accurate they will be, so you have to balance it.

Most drafts happen a week or more before the season starts. Many happen on weekends.

When the season starts on Easter Sunday, that is a holiday weekend, and many people will not want to draft then.

So most drafts this year will happen on or before March 24.

A series of pieces presenting basic draft preparation information that completes after this date will not have value for many readers.

The optimal date--and I'm guessing here--to have the series done this year would be between March 13th and 20th. By the 27th, you've missed more than half of drafts. My guess is it would be 80% or more.

Now, I don't do this for a living. So maybe I'm missing something--but that is what I'm thinking after playing fantasy baseball and following it for 25 years. I sincerely admit you guys know things I don't, and I'm sure you make decisions based on information and deadlines I do not know.

To be fair, a large part of my job is putting up with people complaining, and I have to calmly and politely acknowledge the potential legitimacy for all complaints, even annoyingly stupid ones, and then process them. I'm very passionate about what I do, too, and part of that passion involves working hard to identify mistakes so I learn to be better at what I do. And I take complaints as a sign that I may need to alter my practices.

If I was you, how I would have responded to my complaint is like this:

"Thank you for the feedback. We work to do the best job we can. We understand that this was is too late for your draft, and we regret this. As we work on this next year, we'll work to offer features on the best schedule we can. I'm curious, readers, when do many of you hold your drafts?"

And then I'd see what the readers said, and I'd use this information when planning for next year. Maybe I'd learn that the guy complaining was a whining moron and an isolated case. Or maybe I'd learn that I had made a mistake for many readers and could do better next time.

Anyway, this is making a much bigger deal out of something that really, in the grand scheme of things, was a small thing--I saw it as a minor thing worth only a couple of sentences. You guys do nice work. If you're ever in Indianapolis, the first refreshing beverage of your choice is on me.

So I for one do appreciate all the other products BP has put out. Mike's bid limits, and their frequent updating based on actual market changes in expert auctions, were a great resource. And Jason and others have been really responsive to individual questions.

My only comment would be that the positional rankings previously released only went 15 deep in the IF and 50 deep in the OF. In a standard mixed league with a CI, MI, 5 OF, and a UT, they should go at least 18 and 60 deep and probably more to account for the UT. The pitcher rankings reflected this w/ 80 starters and 40 relievers.

I will say that the tier rankings Marc Normandin use to compile were a really efficient draft prep product. It's nice to incorporate PECOTA's projections into the rankings, and a discussion of where PECOTA's numbers were coming from. Also I recall (perhaps inaccurately) that series having more extensive commentary than this year's positional rankings. On the other hand, this year the rankings seemed to be a real team effort with a variety of voices in the mix, which was a positive.

Overall BP continues to produce great fantasy content and it is all appreciated. In fact it's so appreciated I wouldn't mind seeing as much of the tier rankings as possible before my draft this Saturday.



Overall though BP puts out great fantasy content

I can't believe all the whinging and complaining going on in this thread. There is info and rankings for all relevant players for each position all over the BP site. Is it really that hard to deduct that Matt Wieters is a tier above Sal Perez who in turn is a tier above Salty or Jaso. Use the find player tool atop the page, take a look at the projection and use your brain for half a minute fools. If your real smart you could scroll down and check what each player has done in his career and possibly come to a conclusion yourself.

Sure we pay our bucks to read all this stuff but do you really need BP tiers or anyone elses to hold your hand for a draft.

Take a spoonfull of cement and harden up!!!

I just want to complain about one thing or offer criticism.

I don't have Twitter. I don't like it. I understand that it can have value in general, but I'm not signing up for it.

So for you to say, just hit us up on Twitter, is worthless to me, and possibly others.

To be blunt, if we pay for a BP subscription, why should I have to use some other platform in order to communicate with BP authors? And no, Twitter is not the same thing as shooting you guys an email, which is technically another platform. The difference is that it's a safe assumption that EVERYONE has an email account, but not everybody has a Twitter account.

For those of you interested in asking more player questions, Cory Schwartz, VP of stats at MLB.com and fantasy baseball expert, will be chatting today on BP at 11:00 AM ET http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=1024

Sleeper - Wilson Ramos

I too am disappointed about this late release and had contacted Mr. Carty via twitter about their release, not knowing he wasn't with BP any longer. I just assumed it was his project and we wouldn't get them anymore. I am glad to now see them coming out, however I'm in the same boat as many others having a draft this weekend.

My suggestion for the future is this; the previously released top 10 positional ranking have very little value to those who play in deep dynasty/keeper leagues. The tier rankings however, cover both styles of leagues providing info on super stars as well as the deep roster fillers. It would much more useful to all leagues to have this released early followed by the other content, which fills in the gaps nicely.

Thanks,
Justin in Minneapolis

I know I am late to writing this but I first thought about this a week ago and life got in the way. So I am just posting now:

I agree with everything Tarakas said. And here is my perspective, I have never have written a comment before on anything on the internet and I have certainly never spent money on a subscription to anything on the web before. Matter of fact I was about to stop playing fantasy since I was losing every year to people who spend hours a day on the ‘net researching. But then the 2012 elections happened and some guy named Silver dominated it and rocked the establishment with his eerily on-track predictions. So, of course, when I found out he got his start in predicting baseball players and his baby is now run by BP – I said let me give this fantasy thing one more shot. Let me see if I can sit back and just win without spending tons of time by just using what the model says of who is the best and taking out the inherent subjectivness/emotions that certainly comes with picking players. So I signed up and quickly became overwhelmed by the morass of PECOTA. After hours and days of frustration of trying to figure out what the heck was going on I finally wrote to BP with a lengthy list of questions. I am happy to report I got some great feedback from them. Honestly I am not happy with everything they answered, but I was impressed with their customer service. I truly felt they care about the subscribers, but I am clearly not in the sweet spot of the population who they are targeting. This seems a shame since the infrastructure is there is build a truly great/impactful tool for the masses of fantasy players and not just for a much smaller slice of fantasy players who have the wherewithal to spend hours digesting arcane stats. So bottom line, I am on the fence if I will use BP again next year. Here is what would need to happen for me to pay again: a) ‘Dummies’ guide to using PECOTA and PFM (easily findable on the website) b) tiered rankings coming out before my draft – not afterwards (my draft is always right around st paddy’s day, (BP - give yourself that date as a deadline to get everything draft related done) c) will Dickey really suck this year, will De Aza and Arencibia really come out the blue and become top tier? In other words is PECOTA really the bomb? d) every Fantasy article should somehow relate back to PECOTA – the writer should talk about why their rankings/tiers/etc differs or agrees with PECOTA. If this doesn’t happen then you are just another of the dozens of fantasy sites – why should I use BP or another that probably is free?

My take on what happened is the vast majority of BP resources are being spent on the book – but seriously BP, do you really think in the next 3 to 5 years anyone is going to buying the book? You guys are in danger of becoming Kodak, record labels, Borders, etc. That business model is over (selling hard copy books) – throw it out --- devote all of your resources to making the best digital product ever for fantasy player out there – experts and the casuals…. Now I know you probably have some nice, fat contract with a publishing company (which is why is can’t see your player cards for the current year – WTF!) but rip it up! Once day that contract will expire and do you really think the publishing company is going to provide anywhere close to what you are currently getting? Time to double down on the digital assets.