2024 Fantasy Baseball Second Base Preview
Previewing the second base position ahead of 2024 fantasy baseball draft season. I give you tiers, projections, analysis, and strategy for how to handle second base in any league type.
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Bringing back our overview image:
Second base is top-heavy with one guy standing out, and then a trio of guys that you still feel pretty good about. After that, however, things get ugly pretty quickly. The average value of the top 18 is the worst of any other position. That makes it pretty costly to miss out on the top guys, but not as costly to miss out on the middle guys.
So the first hunch here is either
Go after the top guys
If you miss out, wait awhile
Let’s see if we agree with that take once we go through all of the tiers and ranks in detail.
Top 20
The screenshot is ugly, but if you’re a paid sub you have access to this Google sheet, so load that up if you want to see the numbers and filter and search and whatnot (it’s called @JonPGH 2024 Position Previews, so to find it go to sheets.google.com and search for that).
Tier 1
Mookie Betts
He’s a second baseman now! He played 70 games there last year, and then 107 more in the outfield, and even threw 16 appearances at shortstop for good measure!
Betts has gone in the top eight picks every single time this year. The only way he gets pushed out of the top five is if someone goes for a pitcher early on.
Acuna is the clear #1, but after that, there’s this group that goes in different orders behind him:
Witt Jr., Rodriguez, Carroll, Betts
Tucker and Tatis can mix in there sometimes, but generally, there’s a clear top five, and Betts is a part of it.
If Betts were only an outfielder, I would probably much prefer any of those other names before him since he doesn’t steal many bases anymore, however, the second base eligibility is huge here given the lack of depth at the position. That’s enough about Betts, let’s go to the more controversial tier two.
Tier Two
Ozzie Albies
Marcus Semien
Jose Altuve
We don’t view any of these three as fantasy studs anymore. Semien and Altuve have the age thing going on, and Albies has some of his slight issues. They are clearly in a tier below, but all three of them are very good roto fantasy players.
My ranks are as you see in the bulleted list. I like Albies the best because of that Braves offense and his age (27). The projections are all pretty similar overall, but Semien does win out if you’re drafting on raw projections and nothing else.
ADP wise, the best price on Altuve.
Player | ADP | Min | Max
Albies | 23 | 16 | 34
Semien | 29 | 21 | 43
Altuve | 40 | 27 | 54
They project similarly, making Altuve the best target here since he often goes past pick 40. That said, I’m more likely to end up with Albies on my team because I really like locking in those R+RBI from a young player with upside in the second round. And if he’s there for me in the third round, it’s really hard for me to pass him up.
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