Rest of Season Ranks - First Base
A summer series of posts re-ranking players by position
We’re onto first basemen today. These first five infield positions are pretty easy, but I’m a little anxious about having to rank all of those outfielderers and starting pitchers… yikes! But we have some time, so here we go let’s bang out first base!
Tier One
Freddie Freeman
Freeman is 127 points ahead of Matt Olson for the first spot. He is scoring 2.32 fantasy points per PA, 9th best in the league overall. He’s hitting .323/.392/.558 with 14 homers and a 17% K%. The barrel rate is high at 13%, he’s doing everything. Fantasy stud, STILL!
Tier Two
Pete Alonso
Paul Goldschmidt
Matt Olson
The next three were close to Freeman in the pre-season but fall here. Alonso and Olson lead the position in homers (23 for Alonso, 21 for Olson), but they’re both hitting under .240 and not running much - so that does hurt them pretty significantly in a roto situation, but the power and counting stats are among the best in the entire league.
As for Goldy, it’s another really solid season with a .287/.373/.493 line, but he’s not exactly up there with the league’s best home run hitters (13) and the Cardinals aren’t doing him many favors offensively this year.
Tier Three
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Christian Walker
By what has happened so far, I’m being a little generous to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. here. He has just a .768 OPS with 9 homers (a bad 35.2 PA/HR rate). He doesn’t run, so he’s really not doing much for fantasy teams right now besides being in the lineup every day and racking up runs and RBI because of that. There’s obviously massive upside if he starts elevating the ball more, so I have to leave him in the top five because of that.
Christian Walker is having a nice season somewhat quietly. He’s slashing .271/.330/.513 with 15 homers and a 17% K%. He’s really not striking out, and has massive raw power - and the Diamondbacks are a very good lineup.
Tier Four
Ryan Mountcastle
Nathaniel Lowe
Justin Turner
Anthony Rizzo
Yandy Diaz
Luis Arraez
Then a good dip down here. A lot of people probably think Luis Arraez deserves a better rank, but to me, this feels almost aggressive to me. He’s hitting nearly .400, sure, but he’s doing nothing else. You’d think he’d be scoring a bunch of runs, but he’s not at all (31 - the league leaders are in the 60’s).
I almost had Ryan Mountcastle in tier three, but I can’t really justify it given his sub-.700 OPS. That park is just killing him, but I do think there’s more upside than people think with his great barrel rate and lower strikeout rate.
I could see Anthony Rizzo and Nathaniel Lowe having really nice second-halves, but this tier is pretty low-upside overall. Nobody steals bags here, and then you’re either giving up batting average or power - one or the other - in most of these cases.
Tier Five
Spencer Steer
Josh Naylor
Triston Casas
Rowdy Tellez
Ty France
Jose Abreu
Spencer Steer has been quite good with an .824 OPS this year on an 18% K% and a 6.1% Brl%. There’s not a ton of raw power here, but there’s enough to matter in Great American Ballpark - and he could get better and better as we go.
I really like what Josh Naylor and Triston Casas have been doing under the hood, and in both cases I think there's skill-improvemnet upside as well given the ages of those players.
The biggest fallers at the position this year have been Rowdy Tellez and Jose Abreu, both have been miserable - but I’m not willing to fully give up yet.-
Tier Six
Andrew Vaughn
Brandon Drury
LaMonte Wade Jr.
Ryan O’Hearn
Isaac Paredes
Harold Ramirez
Luke Raley
Ryan Noda
Spencer Torkelson
Miguel Vargas
Joey Meneses
Seth Brown
Huge list of names here. The Rays have all these guys that perform well, but they don’t play full-time and there are all kinds of weird things in their profiles that makes you doubt their consistency (like Paredes and his 19.8 PA/HR despite a very low 4.6% Brl% - it just doesn’t make a ton of sense).
The guys I could see really surging here would be Spencer Torkelson and Miguel Vargas. Those guys are both making a good amount of contact, but they just haven’t been able to hit the ball over the fence and they don’t steal a ton of bags - so that really crushes their fantasy value, but with some tweaks and improvements they could really blow up, I think.
Tier Seven
Josh Bell
Joey Votto
Brendan Donovan
Alec Bohm
And here’s four more just to get us over 30. I really have no idea what we’ll see from Votto since he’s been all over the map the last few years. He could be quite good, or he could be quite horrible and play himself out of the lineup altogether as the Reds surge toward the playoff.
Alright, I did my best in a short amount of time - roast me in the comments, I can take it!
Cron?
Freddie is the biggest steal in the 1st round. He consistently puts up top 5 production but rarely is drafted before pick 10ish.