2012 N.L. First Basemen

If you have any kind of memory at all, you'll remember that the biggest baseball story of the offseason from a fantasy perspective was the shift in first base talent from the National League to the American League. Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder hit free agent pay dirt. Ryan Howard's injury was going to keep him out until at least late May but more likely until July. The loss of Carlos Pena - trivial compared to those other bats - still meant the exodus of $17 worth of 2011 stats.

If you guessed that the average earnings of the best first basemen were going to drop, give yourself a gold star. If you guessed it would drop as far as it did, give yourself a constellation.

Top 10 N.L. First Basemen 2012

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	Paul Goldschmidt	$26	21	6	22	22	18	15	$8
2	Adam LaRoche	$24	11	13	14	11	9	13	$0
3	Garrett Jones	$21	9	12	7	10	11	11	$13
4	Joey Votto	$21	42	-20	44	40	41	41	$34
5	Freddie Freeman	$21	21	0	20	22	22	22	$22
6	Jordan Pacheco	$17	2	15	1		4	5	$3
7	Michael Morse	$17	25	-8	26	24	24	16	$29
8	Ike Davis	$17	21	-5	24	21	19	19	$7
9	Michael Cuddyer	$15	26	-11	24	27	28	26	$21
10	Brandon Belt	$15	12	13	12	15	19	15	$5
	Average	$19	19	0	19	19	20	18	$14

The Top 10 first basemen haven't earned less than $20 per player since I started tracking these values in 5x5 in 2009.

Top 10 First Basemen

Year	$	Sal	+/-	Prior Year	$30+	$20+
2011	$26	24	2	$20	3	7
2010	$26	26	-1	$25	2	8
2009	$29	27	3	$24	4	10

Out of context, $26-29 per player might not mean much. In 2009, $29 in earnings would have made you the 15th best hitter in the National League. In 2010, $26 was good for 23rd and in 2011 for 22nd.

So, yes, these guys were good. And because this was the status quo across multiple seasons, it was just a given that first base was going to be the second strongest position in the league (right behind outfield). Last year, this paradigm was turned on its head. Only the Top 10 catchers ($17 per player) earned less than last year's first base crop, with second base also pulling in $19 per player.

The expert market did push its spending down on first basemen, but even so couldn't tweak their values down far enough.

Ten Most Expensive N.L. First Basemen 2012

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	Joey Votto	$21	42	-20	44	40	41	41	$34
2	Michael Cuddyer	$15	26	-11	24	27	28	26	$21
3	Michael Morse	$17	25	-8	26	24	24	16	$29
4	Freddie Freeman	$21	21	0	20	22	22	22	$22
5	Ike Davis	$17	21	-5	24	21	19	19	$7
6	Paul Goldschmidt	$26	21	6	22	22	18	15	$8
7	Lance Berkman	$2	21	-18	21	21	20	21	$29
8	Lucas Duda	$10	20	-10	20	19	20	19	$13
9	Gaby Sanchez	$3	19	-15	17	20	19	20	$19
10	Carlos Lee	$14	18	-4	14	19	21	17	$21
	Average	$15	23	-9	23	24	23	22	$20

Instinctively, the first two columns I always look at to gauge whether or not the market overspent are the “2011” and the “$” columns. The previous season is always a strong jumping off point  to see whether or not the expert market was thinking lucidly or out to lunch.

A three dollar per player increase makes it seem like the market overshot the mark. However, that’s not the conclusion I would draw here.

·       Goldschmidt and Davis didn’t play a full season in 2011 and were expected to do so in 2012.

·       Four of the 10 players here – Morse, Freeman, Berkman, and Lee – took a pay cut of at least $1.

·       Raises from last year’s earnings are par for the course in Rotisserie

That last point is an important one. In the National League in 2011, every position saw a bump of $2 per player from 2010 earnings with the exception of second base. Owners pay more because the players they buy are the ones that are going to exceed expectations/prior earnings and do better than they did last year. Of course Paul Goldschmidt earned $26 in 2012 his buyers will tell you. They all just knew that Goldschmidt was going to be terrific.

The raises, then, make sense in historical context. The only raises that don’t fit contextually are the ones that Votto and Cuddyer received. This was and wasn’t part of the exodus of first base talent to the American League.

Owners were challenged by a lack of first basemen in the pool. But instead of overpaying the top first basemen they overpaid the top players. Guys like Cuddyer got raises, but guys like Votto got big raises.

It wasn’t just Votto and Cuddyer. The hitters at the top got paid because the market couldn’t see what was coming in the middle. Experts preferred to pay $42 for Votto and hope for a small loss than to pay $23 for Carlos Lee or $25 for Freddie Freeman.

I’ve been advocating paying big bucks for star players for years. But it took a weakened National League pool for the experts to start paying big bucks for the stars. Of course, they did it in a year where the stars were actually weaker and perhaps this wasn’t the best year to pay top dollar for top talent. But that didn’t stop the market from paying almost the same amount in 2012 for a lesser crop of players than they did in 2011.

Markets are reactive. Instead of thinking through what happened in the offseason, the market lurched and overspent on top talent. This year I imagine the market will go the other way…making Stars and Scrubs a decent proposition again in the expert leagues.