Exploiting the Default Ranks - Fantasy Baseball 2024
I compare projected player values with default player ranks on NFBC, ESPN, and Yahoo.
No matter how hard you try or how much you train yourself, your fantasy league draft decisions will be influenced by the default ranks in the draft room. There is no way around this.
Even if beat yourself into submission enough to not care at all what the rankings in front of you are, you still then use them to decide when to take the players you want. If you know who the best available player is, but that player’s name doesn’t show up after several scrolls down the player pool, it makes a lot of sense to wait a round or two more to take them. And that’s a good draft strategy. You should not ever neglect the default ranks, you should use them to your advantage.
In this post, I’ll rip through all of the [hitter] positions and give you the details about where guys are mis-ranked on each site. We’ll do more than that along the way, this will sorta-kinda function as a position previews piece as well, but we will be getting to full, extensive position previews in February.
Let’s have at it, I will give catchers and first basemen free, but you’ll have to become a paid member to get the rest!
Some Considerations
The keystone here are the 5x5 auction values. Don’t worry about the individual dollar figures, they are just meant to be used in comparison with the rest. It’s based on a 350-player standard 5x5 roto league.
It’s also likely that some of these default ranks will have changed if you’re reading this in mid-February or later. I assume that some real-life draft ADP factors into the defaults, but the anchoring bias is real and chances are we’ll be looking at these default ranks being basically the same as now up until your draft day.
Catchers
Salvador Perez ✅
Projections aren’t super great at accounting for age and health driven risk. So that will be a common theme in these “mis-ranked” players. We first see that show up here with Salvador Perez. The projection systems still think he can hit bombs (ATC = 24, JA = 21, Steamer = 27), and that shoots him up to being the #2 projection-based catcher.
This isn’t to say that we should actually draft Perez as the #2 catcher. There is obviously the same kind of upside and much more safety with guys like Rutschman and Contreras. I think you could reasonably push Perez the whole way out of the top eight - but this is a signal to us that Salvy might have gotten a bit too cheap this year, and he makes for a really nice value pick if he does slide outside of that top 6-7 catchers in your draft.
Mitch Garver ✅
I wrote glowingly about Garver in the Mariners preview which will come out soon. The fact that he was a free agent until somewhat recently pushed down his ADP, but the landing spot was a pretty great one. Teoscar Hernandez is gone, Jarred Kelenic is gone, and that functions to open a bunch of PAs at DH for the M’s as things currently stand. Garver should get the majority of those, and that makes a huge positive difference to his fantasy value.
Keibert Ruiz ❌
Not sure what’s going on ESPN there with him listed as the #3 catcher. I even started a mock roto draft on ESPN’s website to confirm that he really is the third catcher in the pool. He’s outside of the top 10 on the other two sites, and he’s the #11 projection-based catcher, so don’t be the one to fall for that on ESPN.
Gabriel Moreno ❌
Same thing here as Ruiz, he’s six slots above the projection on ESPN. It seems to me that maybe ESPN’s defaults were based on points leagues or something. Both of these guys play a lot and take walks, so they should definitely be pushed up in those types of leagues, but it seems like these guys are going to show up high on the list even in roto draft rooms. They’re both skilled, young hitters with playing time locked in and some offensive upside, but they don’t project to be anything near a top-five asset at the position.
Sean Murphy ❌
Yahoo has him at #5, but the projections put him down at #15. I’m happy to take him well before 14 other catchers are off the board, but he’s not going to be an everyday player in this lineup and he really did struggle with the bat for a good portion of last season.
Buy: Perez, Garver
Sell: Moreno on ESPN, Ruiz on ESPN, Murphy on Yahoo
First Base
Christian Walker ✅
It’s not a huge difference, but Walker does tend to not get some of the respect he deserves from the rankings. There’s a big gap between the top 5 and the rest here, but Walker projects to lead that second tier, and he’s going at least a couple of spots further down on all three websites.
Spencer Torkelson ✅
Maybe some people didn’t realize what Torkelson did in the second half last year, but he was one of the better power hitters in the league after he got it going. The NFBC ranks seem to have it right, but there is a mis-rank on ESPN and Yahoo.
Rhys Hoskins ✅
My projection here doesn’t even account for his landing spot in Milwaukee, and that should add a couple of homers to his projection. It makes sense that people would be hesitant to draft a guy that missed the entire previous season, but we’re talking about a 31-year-old with a really nice history of power production. Take that discount everywhere.
Andrew Vaughn ✅
We’re well past the prospect hype with Vaughn, and he hasn’t had a must-own fantasy season yet. But this is what the projections are really good at, showing you the value of these more boring or forgotten hitters. He’s outside of the top 20 1B’s on ESPN and Yahoo, and he projects as a top 15 bat at the position.
Brandon Drury ✅
I don’t think anybody in the world will be excited to click on Brandon Drury’s name, but he’s a solid power bat with a locked-in role in an Angels lineup. He’ll probably be their clean-up hitter, and that could end up being fine if Trout is healthy and some of the other young guys come through.
Yandy Diaz ❌
Yandy is a much better real-life player than fantasy hitter, and ESPN doesn’t seem to recognize that. He’s the #6 pre-ranked first baseman there, while the projections have him outside of the top dozen. This again seems like a points-league thing, Diaz’s value skyrockets when you’re getting points for volume and walks, but the roto value on him is really not as high as it seems like it should be.
Spencer Steer ❌
There’s a little bit of over-hype on Steer after he burst onto the scene early last year. He over-performed a bit at the beginning and then really (and predictably) cooled off to finish the year. There’s also some fair questions about if he can even play everyday on this loaded Reds 25-man roster.
Isaac Paredes❌
A 30-homer season will get you some excitement, and I think Paredes is a fine option for a middle infielder, but him being the #12 overall 1B on ESPN is nuts.
Buy: Hoskins, Vaughn, Drury, Torkelson on ESPN/Yahoo
Sell: Steer, Diaz on ESPN/Yahoo, Paredes on ESPN/Yahoo
And that’s it for the free-loaders! I know there’s a bunch of free content out there for fantasy baseball, and you can even probably get this kind of analysis free of charge elsewhere, but … mine is better and you get all kinds of other stuff with your subscription. Projections, draft tools, dashboards, write-ups on every single player during the team previews series, and to finish this sentence with everything else it would take many more commas! Sign up today, if you’re serious about fantasy baseball I can promise you it’ll be worth your money. Check out the about page here for more information.