2024 Fantasy Baseball Positional Depth
A look at each position looking to see where we have depth and where do don't for 2024 fantasy baseball rosters.
This is a pretty boiler plate post to write, and you will find many instances of it around the Internet. But it’s written often because it is important. I think the best way to attack it to use projections and math heavily, and it just so happens that that’s what I’m best at! That’s kind of the whole purpose and theme of the MLB Data Warehouse!
Am I saying that my position analysis will be better than everybody else’s?
… … … … … … … Yes.
To draft a team near optimal, we need to know where there is depth and where there is not. This knowledge helps us differentiate between those close calls in the draft. There are plenty of players of even value, and positional depth can be a great tie-breaker when making your decisions.
I’m going to keep it really simple here. Using my own projections and the assumption of a standard 5x5 roto league, I will just let the numbers do the talking. If you play in another type of league, this won’t be the perfect analysis - but 5x5 roto tends to get us extremely close to other league settings, so the depth analysis won’t change significantly.
Another note is that I’m going to focus most of my content this year on the standard home league type situation. I think the majority of people reading this are just trying to beat their buddies rather than playing in crazy deep special leagues. With so many variations of the game of fantasy baseball, I can’t possibly satisfy everyone, but I think the most people will be helped if I focus on the more typical 10-12 team league that rosters fewer than 400 total players. So that’s where my focus will be, but I will have some additional pieces coming out about deep league targets and other stuff to try to check all the boxes I can.
Let’s start at the bottom with catcher. We aren’t going to talk about individual names, that will all happen in the position-by-position previews which we’ll get to probably in February. For now, we’re just looking at tiers and cliffs.
Catchers
The catcher position seems to warp every year, and this year feels really unique to me. The long time studs are aging out, and there was an uncommon infusion of young, exciting bats in 2024. I’d call the top tier five catchers deep, but it would seem that any of those top eight options are comfortable starters for your fantasy team.
There’s no clear #1 stud at the position like in past years, so I wouldn’t advice anybody being the first one to dip their toes into the catcher position in a standard leagues. Catcher is a unique position, and usually how it falls in your draft is determined by the first person to break the seal.
For a standard league, I’m calling it deep. If you’re in a league that starts 10-12 catchers (10-12 teams starting one catcher), I would be happy to be one of the last guys to pick a catcher and just grab a guy like Mitch Garver, Francisco Alvarez, or Logan O’Hoppe.
My advice: Be one of the last teams to draft your catcher.
First Base
The projection systems are having a tough time getting CES right. You can see the ADP does not at all match the $ projections, and I am much more of a believer in his ADP rank rather than the $ rank. I think he should probably be around Pasquantino rather than at the bottom.
There’s a clear top two, but the fall-off after that isn’t awful. You could make a case to put the top five there all in the same tier one, but all of those guys will likely go in the first three rounds of your draft.
The case for waiting at the position is pretty strong. We have the Spencer Torkelson and Triston Casas duo. They are both priced cheaper because of the lack of experience and results, but both guys are super talented and took a huge step forward last year. I think they’ll both beat their ADP and end up as a tier two guys next year, so that’s my favorite place to attack it. If that doesn’t work out, I also really like the taking the big discount on Rhys Hoskins or Christian Encarnacion-Strand.
I’m calling it a deep position as well. We should be careful with what we mean here, you’re giving up quite a bit from Olson/Freeman down to Torkelson/Casas, but I think the 100 pick difference in ADP is more than justified to let other teams take the top guys with those early picks.
My best advice: Wait until tier 3-4 and go after the youth.
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