Welcome to our 11th season of fantasy baseball coverage. We will help you get ready for your drafts and prepare for the upcoming season so you can become a champion.
As a refresher for those who have followed our coverage throughout the years and to any new readers, there are different league formats used in fantasy baseball, but the traditional is the five-by-five rotisserie league format. That is what I will base my opinions on.
For those who are not familiar with what that means, there are five hitting categories consisting of batting average, home runs, runs scored, RBIs and stolen bases. For pitching, the categories are wins, strikeouts, ERA, walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) and saves.
On-base percentage (OBP) continues to become more popular as a replacement to batting average, so I will refer to that stat as well since it could change how we evaluate certain players.
I personally feel fantasy baseball continues to be at a crossroads with the current format. Major League Baseball teams are not valuing starting pitchers and closers anymore and we need to adjust as an industry. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened.
Even though roto leagues are still the standard, I encourage commissioners to think about implementing head-to-head formats along with total points. Adding more categories and getting the fantasy football feel of going against an opponent every week will only help enhance the fantasy baseball experience.
DRAFTING MULTIPLE-POSITION PLAYERS
Flexibility is crucial in fantasy baseball. Having multiple players you can move around to different positions will set you up for success. This is especially important for those who are in leagues that require daily moves.
Mookie Betts is eligible in the infield and outfield, which is why the Dodgers star is a first-round lock in 2025. Oneil Cruz is also eligible in the infield and outfield and can be targeted in Round 4. Fantasy managers can round out their rosters later in drafts with Ceddanne Rafaela. Though he may bat in the bottom of the order for the Red Sox, he is eligible in the infield and outfield and will be a versatile piece throughout the course of a long season.
This may be one of the most important strategies, so I can’t stress it enough. Targeting players who can help at multiple positions is paramount.
It is important to know the rules of the site you play on. Some players are eligible at a position on one site but may not be on another. Other sites grant eligibility quicker during the season than others. Knowing your league rules goes a long way to building a championship roster.
DRAFTING MULTIPLE-CATEGORY PLAYERS
In order to build a well-rounded team, we need to target players who will help in every category. Fantasy managers tend to fall in love with players who hit a ton of home runs and drive in a bunch of runs but don’t help in other ways.
I would draft a player like Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. The projected leadoff hitter will score 100 runs, hit around 20 home runs, drive in more than 70 runs and steal close to 30 bases. He is as well-rounded as they come and will help in every category.
The perfect strategy is to draft the elite hitters who will finish in the top 10 in many offensive categories in the early rounds. And then in the middle rounds, attack hitters who will help you in each category even if they don’t perform in the upper echelon of those categories. A balanced roster allows fantasy managers to compete throughout a long season and helps minimize the possibility of making mistakes on the waiver wire or through trades.
Pirates outfielder Bryan Reynolds fits this profile and can be taken after Round 7. The 30-year-old has proven to be durable throughout his career, playing at least 145 games in each of the last four seasons. Reynolds will hit for a solid average, slug more than 20 home runs, score more than 70 runs, drive in more than 80 runs and chip in with double-digit steals. He gives fantasy managers a nice floor of production and has an average draft position over 90.
POSITIONAL TIERS
In case you aren’t familiar with positional tiers, it simply means ranking players by position who you think will put up similar value. It helps you avoid drafting players based on overall rankings. The elite players at their position go in the first tier, the next level in the second tier and so on.
Some positions may have five elite guys in the first tier and others may have two. Some positions may have a strong second tier, while others are deep and have three tiers of players who make sense to draft. Instead of targeting a certain player, target a certain tier.
Fantasy owners get so caught up in drafting a player based on their average draft position, they lose sight that they could fill that position later with another player who could provide similar value.
If you’re drafting solely on player rankings and not positional rankings, it’s more likely than not that you’re going to reach on a position that you probably could have drafted later and gotten similar value from as a player you drafted a couple of rounds earlier.
WINS AND SAVES
Two of the main pitching categories are wins and saves. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to achieve either in fantasy baseball.
In 2019, 26 starting pitchers had 14 or more wins. That number dipped to 13 in 2021, rose to 19 in 2022, dipped again to 12 in 2023 and rose once more to 17 in 2024. Why are we still using this as a category?
A lot of this can be attributed to pitchers just not pitching deep into games. Starting pitchers are not even averaging six innings pitched the last few seasons.
In order to earn a win, a starting pitcher must pitch five innings. In order to qualify for a quality start (another popular category), pitchers must throw six innings and allow three earned runs or fewer. Both of those categories have been hard to reach in recent years.
The fantasy industry is finally catching on to this trend. There are only five pitchers (counting Shohei Ohtani) being drafted in the top 30. I have preached for years to wait on pitching and it appears the masses are following suit.
I would recommend eliminating the win and quality start stat and adding another category like strikeouts per nine innings.
As for saves, this is always a category we chase on the waiver wire because the position is extremely volatile. Teams aren’t relying on one pitcher to close out the ninth anymore. In 2015, 21 pitchers finished with 30 or more saves and 84 pitchers finished with at least one save. It only took a handful of seasons for a huge shift to occur and fantasy baseball has yet to catch up.
In 2023, just 12 pitchers finished with 30 or more saves but 214 pitchers finished with at least one save. In 2024, eight pitchers finished with 30 or more saves and 223 finished with at least one save.
Our strategy has remained the same in recent years. We recognized this trend early and there is no reason to change. Fantasy managers don’t need to reach, but we would like to draft a closer on a good team with a solidified role. We will attack the waiver wire throughout the season and ride the hot hand in order to compete in the category.
I can’t stress enough that this is a category that should be gone. Fantasy leagues should use holds plus saves to expand the player pool for that category.
THE RETURN OF STEALS
We have preached the return of stolen bases for the last couple of seasons. Twenty-four players stole 30 or more bases in 2024, up from six players in 2022.
Fantasy managers have been known to reach early in drafts on players who provide stolen bases or use their last few picks on players who will help in that category. That doesn’t need to happen anymore since there are many players who can provide a strong floor throughout the season.
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