Last Updated: 2/15
A couple of things to note before reading:
- These rankings are for 10- and 12-team head-to-head category leagues with standard scoring and a starting lineup consisting of 1 C, 1 1B, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 SS, 3 OF, 2 UTIL, and a shallow bench, and were created by Scott Chu with input from Nick Pollack.
- These rankings do not contemplate keeper or dynasty rules, nor do they consider whether there is an overall prize beyond the league itself (such as NFBC).
- Within the write-ups, we will call out individual players who would see value boosts or drops in alternative formats, such as rotisserie leagues, deep leagues, or points leagues
- We are more than happy to answer your questions, requests, and counter-points in the comments or on Twitter!
Tier 1
1. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Toronto Blue Jays) – Very few things are as easy as rooting for Vladito. He made significant adjustments against offspeed stuff and clearly improved his pitch recognition, leading to a big uptick in barrels. In other words, 2021 was the epitome of a player “putting it all together” and having a big season.
His batted ball profiles, his plate discipline metrics, and the ol’ eye test all tell you the same thing—this is legitimate. Don’t overthink it with the subpar whiff rates, either. He can be aggressive early in counts, but he still limits strikeouts and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see his strikeout rate and walk rate get very close to even by the end of 2022. He’s the clear top dog at first base, but I couldn’t quite justify giving him his own tier, if only because of the consistency of the clear number two.
You know what’s wild, though? One of the most hyped prospects of the modern era just finished as the top batter in fantasy, hitting 48 home runs with a .311 batting average with legitimate underlying stats and a spot in the middle of baseball’s most exciting young offenses…and his ADP isn’t even in the top five. The top of the draft is deep. So very deep.
2. Freddie Freeman (Free Agent) – Am I supposed to care about where Freddie Freeman ends up in 2022? I mean, from a fantasy perspective? I’m pretty sure the answer is no.
Here is the list of seasons since the start of 2013 where Freddie Freeman finished outside of the top-10 at the position:
JUST KIDDING! That has never happened. Since the start of 2013, Freddie Freeman has been a top-10 fantasy first baseman every single year. In fact, he has been a top-two first baseman for three consecutive seasons. He’s a four-and-a-half tool player in the modern age thanks to his ability to chip in six to eight swipes a season, and being able to draft him in the second round is a very exciting thing, especially if you started off with an elite pitcher in the first.
Tier 2
3. Pete Alonso (New York Mets) – I’ve rearranged this tier about six times in my head before settling on this version, but I started realizing that I always had Pete in the top two or three, and he was the only one who I could say that about. In a tightly-packed tier, that’s how you get ahead.
Don’t let the old mythology of wanting to wait for one extra round just because this grouping of players are drafted very near each other and you’d be comfortable with all of them. This logic can make sense, but I also think it’d be a bit too simplistic as it overlooks Pete’s potential to hit 50 home runs as well as the significant improvements he made against breaking pitches.
His overall numbers are a bit tainted by a really rough stretch in late June, but the improved strikeout rate looks pretty likely to repeat itself to me, and I think he can hit closer to .270 than .250 with that big ol’ barrel rate.
4. Paul Goldschmidt (St. Louis Cardinals) – While he didn’t continue the nearly one-to-one strikeout to walk ratio he showed off in 2020, he did continue to hit for a .290 average for the eighth time in the last nine seasons with power and an unexpected burst of speed (12 steals).
I think asking for a second consecutive season with double-digit steals is pretty aggressive, but six or seven sounds about right for the 34-year-old veteran going into his twelfth major league season. That, combined with his primo spot in a somehow-always-competitive Cardinal lineup should be a pretty safe number to bet on when it’s your turn to draft (if you’re into that kind of thing).
5. José Abreu (Chicago White Sox) – I’m admittedly unsure of why Abreu seems to go so much later than the other players in this tier—often nearly two rounds later. I suppose his Statcast numbers took a dip in 2021, but they’re still pretty good. Plus, the man is an RBI machine in the middle of a lineup that should be much better than it was for much of last season.
I’ve seen that his max pick is after pick 100, which seems insane to me, but these are uncertain times. I would never advise on a strategy of targeting a specific player at a position for value because all it takes is one lunatic in the draft room to ruin your plans. From my experiences in large rooms with other fantasy baseball players, I can tell you that the chances of a lunatic being in your draft room are far too high to ignore.
That being said, I will be very happy if I see the draft shaping up in a way where Abreu falls past pick 70 to 75. It’s not like you can’t draft him before then, but it’s cool knowing you might not have to.
6. Matt Olson (Oakland Athletics) – I’ve seen Olson ranked all over this tier by analysts and projection systems alike. I think the first question to get out of the way is how much you believe in the impressive 16.8% strikeout rate—a very significant improvement from his historical numbers.
As per usual, the major projection systems are hedging their bets, thinking he’ll be somewhere around 20%, and normally I’d agree. After thinking about it, though, I realized that was pretty hypocritical after giving an entire presentation on the importance of using rolling charts to build better narratives. Sure enough, they told a better story:
That whole 2021 experience looks a whole lot different than the prior versions, and that’s strong evidence that this is more repeatable than it initially appeared. But wait, then why did I rank him at the bottom of the tier?
Well, because I think 2021 represents the relative ceiling we’ll see from Olson, and it still wasn’t enough to finish in the top-three at the position. On top of that, 2021 was the first time in his career that he finished inside the top-10 at first base. While I think he has the same potential as the rest of this tier, he doesn’t have the track record.
Tier 3
7. Max Muncy (Los Angeles Dodgers) – Compared to many of my peers, this will seem like an aggressive ranking, but as of this date, we have very little evidence to suggest much of anything about Muncy’s availability for Opening Day. Gut feelings are all well and good, but I think many would agree that but for the injury issue Muncy would be right in the thick of the early-middle rounds.
How you rank Muncy, who was without a doubt the most difficult player to rank at first base or second base, is all about your approach to offseason injuries. This whole labor thing complicates matters, of course, because teams aren’t even allowed to talk about the players. The Dodgers are notoriously silent on injury news even when they’re encouraged to talk about players, so don’t hold your breath for a clear update.
I’m not doing a ton of super early drafts this year, but in the ones I’m taking part in, I’m keeping Muncy in my back pocket and am even willing to pull the trigger after pick 100 or so (in recent NFBC drafts his ADP is about 153). This ranking is subject to volatility, of course, but there aren’t a lot of players at this point in the draft who are locked for 35 home runs and top-notch counting stats if they can play 80% of the season (something Muncy has done for four consecutive seasons).
If Muncy is someone you want to target, make sure to do a few mocks first—the gap between his min pick of 69 and max pick of 258 in NFBC drafts this year is pretty wild. No other hitter with an ADP in the first 200 picks has such a wide gap (the only others who are close are speculative closers or young starting pitchers). Knowing how to adapt to multiple points in that range could be a boost.
8. Ryan Mountcastle (Baltimore Orioles) – It was great to see Mountcastle rebound time after time when he’d encounter slumps. Making adjustments is essential to success for hitters, and Mountcastle showed he can make them during the season. As he grows as a player, I’d expect his slumps to be shorter and less dramatic while his hot streaks last longer and have higher peaks.
It’s important to note that many projections are accounting for the dimensional changes to Camden Yards, and while it will steal home runs away from right-handed hitters, I think he’s still a pretty good bet to hit over 30 home runs based on the late-season power numbers. You never want to “double-penalize” players by subtracting home runs from projection systems when they are already accounting for the variable you’re worried about (health, playing time, park factors, etc.).
9. Jared Walsh (Los Angeles Angels) – Truthfully, I think Walsh has the upside of anyone in this tier and even guys in the previous tier. Not only did he manage to recover from a rather nasty slump later in the season, but he should be hitting third in a lineup that will feature Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, and Anthony Rendon. It may be a bit ambitious to think all three of those guys will be healthy at the same time, but whoa would that be sweet for Walsh.
There’s definitely risk here, though—while Walsh absolutely mashed against right-handed pitching (166 wRC+), he could do little but harmlessly flail at left-handed offerings (46 wRC+). A single season isn’t necessarily a predictive sample for platoon splits, but it’s worth noting that there are a host of young players fighting for playing time in Anaheim, and that kind of split will make it all too easy to move him into a platoon. Sure, it’d be the strong side, but you need both sides to be a top-12 first baseman on a year-to-year basis.
10. C.J. Cron (Colorado Rockies) – So here’s the thing with Cron—11 of his 28 home runs came over the course of a 22-game stretch where he also drove in 31 runners with a .506 ISO. For reference, only three qualified hitters had an ISO over .300, and only 15% of qualified hitters managed to keep an ISO over .250 (full disclosure, Cron ended 2021 with a .249 ISO).
I get nervous when I see a player’s production all happen in such a short period of time if only because players who are like that don’t actually provide the value you’d think for a team. This is amplified in head-to-head leagues due to the fact that Cron wasn’t contributing in a lot of your weekly matchups and when he finally did contribute, you may not have had him in the lineup until it was half over. Heck, Cron was cut in many 10- and 12-team leagues due to his utter lack of power in the first few months of the season.
Shallow leagues can adapt to this in most cases due to the high replacement level, but that would mean they’d need to get Cron back on the wire right when he heats up, and that’s not guaranteed. Maybe if you have a deep bench and a shallow starting lineup it could be worth it, but I just can’t manage that way when I have so many other options.
11. Rhys Hoskins (Philadelphia Phillies) – If I wanted to be a shock jockey, I’d just tell you that Rhys Hoskins has only actually hit 30 home runs in a season one time, and has only two seasons in his career where he’s played 150 games.
That’d be misleading, though, as he looks and feels a lot older than he is, and in the three seasons where he has at least 100 games, he has 90 total home runs (34 in 2018, 29 in 2019, and 27 in 2021).
His classic lefty-handed home run hitter profile features a really high pull rate and a really high fly ball rate, which lends itself to lots of home runs and a hard cap on his batting average upside. While he could easily repeat his 34 home run season (his 150-game pace in 2021 was about 38, and he has 37 in his last 148 games), he’s going to struggle to hit higher than .245 or .250 in any given season.
Unlike a lot of other hitters with this batted ball profile (Kyle Seager, Joey Gallo, Rougned Odor, Mike Zunino), Hoskins keeps his strikeout rate at a very reasonable 20% and puts plenty of balls in play, so his batting average floor is a lot higher than those other names that probably seemed very scary.
While Hoskins did have abdominal surgery in the offseason and played through some back issues, there’s nothing to suggest he should have any trouble being ready for Opening Day. With the elevated barrel rates we’ve seen since the start of 2020, it’s not altogether unreasonable to expect a 35-40 home run season and a run at the top of this tier.
12. Joey Votto (Cincinnati Reds) – After finishing as the second-best fantasy first baseman in 2017, Votto was outside the top 20 at the position three years in a row before his eighth-best finish in 2021. The 38-year-old face of the Reds regained his peak power stroke and stayed healthy enough to log 533 plate appearances.
This wasn’t a full-season transformation, though. Through his first 64 games, he was outside the top 20 first basemen in home runs, runs scored, and batting average, and was exactly 20th in RBI. His best attribute was OBP, and even that only ranked 14th!
Of course, from July 19th to the end of the season, Votto was first in OBP home runs and RBI, fourth in runs scored, and eighth in batting average among all first basemen (minimum 200 plate appearances). I wasn’t quite as sold on this transformation, though, until I saw his hard-hit rate rolling chart:
This is…unusual for a 38-year-old hitter with 8,128 major league plate appearances. I can’t exactly explain the why of this yet, but I can tell you it’s really compelling. Guys don’t just start hitting the ball at 95 mph or more at rates significantly above their previous career highs when they are 38 years old.
13. Josh Bell (Washington Nationals) – Do you all remember that one time when Bell hit 37 home runs and finished as a top-40 hitter (top-25 in OBP formats)? It was just in 2019, but these are darker times.
His first as a National wasn’t a failure by any stretch—he finished just outside the top-12 first baseman, but a power hitter who can also bat better than .260 isn’t always easy to come by after pick 100.
While it’s easy to talk yourself into liking Bell more due to his excellent plate discipline, you just can’t expect him to threaten 30 home runs again until he can stop putting more than 30% of his batted balls into the dirt. His power was prevalent when he sported a fly ball rate somewhere near 35%, and he’s been down near 25% over the last two seasons.
As far as lineup context goes, the Nats are still a team in transition, and the lineup is pretty meager outside of Bell and Juan Soto. That puts a bit of a damper on his counting stats, meaning I’d take the under on 180 combined runs and RBI if I really wanted to place a bet, but I won’t argue with his plate skills.
Josh Bell probably won’t be a “league-winning” pick on draft day, but I certainly see the appeal. His ADP among first baseman is still a bit too high for me to wind up taking him, as Muncy, Hoskins, and Votto often go about a round later than Bell. That usually means I’ve got more than one of them still on my board when Bell gets drafted. If I don’t it either means we’re REALLY late in the draft or that someone even better (like Cron, Mountcastle, or Walsh) is still out there.
Tier 4
This is a pretty hard tier break as far as I’m concerned, so I’d be making sure I grab someone in these top three tiers for my starting first baseman whenever humanly possible.
14. Trey Mancini (Baltimore Orioles) — The power completely faded out by the end of the season, as Mancini hit just two home runs from July 29th to the end of the season with a line of .230/.301/.321. That’s awfully scary, albeit understandable from a cancer survivor’s first season back.
On the bright side though, we saw Mancini hit a very respectable .268/.339/.488 with 19 home runs and 60 RBI through his first 97 games. If he had done that over 150 games, it would be a 30 home run season with over 90 RBI. In other words, he’d have looked a lot like Ryan Mountcastle, Nelson Cruz, or Jared Walsh.
Now don’t let my extrapolations be confused with projections—projections are about what we think will/could happen in our reality, while these kinds of extrapolations show what would have happened in a specific reality (a reality where he was that good for 150 games). It’s a nuance, but it’s an important one.
15. Jake Cronenworth (San Diego Padres) — He just is a weird fit in 12-teamers, you know? In deeper leagues, his ability to play in the corner and middle infield gives him great versatility and he performs comfortably above the replacement level.
In leagues like the Yahoo standard format, though, where teams don’t need a corner or middle infielder and instead have two open utility spots and two fewer outfield spots and IL spots, Cronenworth ends up in this sort of purgatory where he’s just about exactly replacement level at most positions, and therefore the lift his versatility provides is somewhat pointless.
Of course, it looks like he just might bat third this season between Tatis and Machado, which should do wonders for his counting stats. If he can balance those out by hitting third or fourth, I could see him sliding up these ranks slightly.
16. DJ LeMahieu (New York Yankees) — When 2021 started, I had no idea I’d be dropping LeMahieu so far down my rankings in just one year, nor did I ever imagine I’d be talking about him as a risk, but here we are.
Let’s get one thing out of the way—LeMahieu played with a sports hernia in 2021 that has now been surgically repaired. While I am not a medical professional, I imagine that playing baseball without a sports hernia is easier than playing baseball with a sports hernia (I apologize, but I do not have a study I can reference on this topic so you might just have to take my word for it).
I can’t help but think that the power LeMahieu showed in 2019 and 2020 was very legitimate and that he can get back to 20 or more home runs if he is healthy. I mean, is it really a “fluke” if you are the best second baseman in baseball for two consecutive seasons? While I don’t expect a return to the top of the first or second base rankings, there is potential for a top-10 finish for sure hitting at the top of what should be a healthier and stronger Yankee lineup.
So why rank him 16th? Because he’s not the only guy with that kind of upside, and if for some reason the power doesn’t come back, it’s hard for him to even finish in the top 20.
17. Ty France (Seattle Mainers) — He won’t post the gaudy exit velocity or stat totals you expect from a prototypical first baseman, but France has gotten the job done in Seattle. In 175 games as a Mariner, France is slashing .292/.367/.446 with a dramatically improved strikeout rate (just 17.2% in 2021), and as a result, he appears to be the starting first baseman if the season started today.
While the exit velocity numbers suggest that there’s probably a ceiling of about 20 or so home runs for France, 160-170 combined runs and RBI are in the cards if he continues to make consistent contact and if the Mariners can recreate virtually any of the magic they found in 2021. Deep league players (like those who play NFBC or use those types of rosters) will find a lot of utility in France’s versatility, and 12-team managers can lock down some batting average and counting stats if they missed out earlier in the draft. Don’t expect a big breakout, though—that’s what 2021 was for. A big win would be more or less doing the same thing he did before.
17. Luke Voit (New York Yankees) — A knee injury impacted his play during 2021, but supposedly he should be ready for the start of 2022. Injuries are always a huge concern with Voit, as he hasn’t played in 140 games in a single season at any point of his professional career.
While Voit has shown flashes of power and theoretically hits in the middle of a theoretically strong lineup, he just can’t stay on the field enough for me to get very excited. Hitting 22 home runs in 56 games last year was cool, as are the 33 home runs over his last 124 games, but the .239 batting average (the knee probably played a big part here) hurt, and it’s really hard to bet on him playing more than 120 games.
I guess I’m cool with Voit as maybe a utility guy or a gamble late in drafts (he should be available well after pick 200), but I can’t imagine relying on him in any meaningful way as part of my primary team-building strategy.
19. Alex Kirilloff (Minnesota Twins) — If I felt certain Kirilloff would play every day and hit in the top two-thirds of the order, he’d be ranked a lot higher than this. He has a plus hit tool, which I love, and with any luck, that hit tool will parlay itself into more power as he develops. I’m not worried too much about what a full season from Kirilloff might look like—a .275 batting average and 22-ish home runs—but the question is how and when he has a 140-game season.
As it turns out, it may not be in 2022. The Twins are bursting at the seams with bat-first ballplayers who can only play in the corners. Between Kirilloff, Miguel Sanó, Josh Donaldson, Trevor Larnach, and Brent Rooker, it’s hard to see how any one of them gets to more than 120-130 games, but then again, that’s probably by design based on the durability concerns with their roster in general. A full-time role between DH and the outfield would make Kirilloff interesting in most leagues, but I just don’t see that in the cards quite yet.
20. Brandon Belt (San Francisco Giants) — Isn’t it weird that Brandon Belt, a man who has 1,232 career games played, 4,781 plate appearances, and a .264/.358/.464 batting line, only just now had his first 20-home run season? He reached his previous career-high (18) in both 2015 and 17, Injuries have derailed much of his career, including issues with joints, concussions, and just about everything else under the sun, but his last 148 games have shown that the old dog is learning new tricks.
In those 148 games since the start of 2020, Belt has a whopping 38 home runs, 90 runs scored, and 89 RI. That’d be a heck of a season, though projecting Belt to play in anywhere close to 148 games in 2022 is a fool’s errand. He’s played in just 520 games since the start of 2017, and while that seems like a lot of games, it’s less than 75% of the potential games he could have played.
In 12-team leagues, this is the kind of guy you always have on your watch list because he’s useful whenever he’s playing, even if he’s not playing very often. Projection models will probably like him a lot more than I do because they’ll project more playing time. He’s a utility or bench guy for me in those leagues due to the risk, but not at all a player I’d avoid due to the higher replacement level in that format. He’s probably too much of a playing time risk to be a target for me in deeper formats.
Tier 5
21. Yuli Gurriel (Houston Astros) — It’s hard to see Yuli as a source of excitement in 12-teamers as much of his value comes from his consistent (if a bit lackluster) performance as a middle-of-the-order bat for the Astros. A .290 batting average is basically a lock at this point, and if he shows the nearly one-to-one K:BB ratio, it could be more like .300 with a .370 OBP.
In other words, Yuli is the budget version of LeMahieu or France, a solid compiler with excellent plate skills who also happens to be 38 years old and has light power. Instead of 20-25 home run upside like DJLM and France have, it’s more like 15-17 home runs. The runs and RBI should be strong while batting fourth or fifth for Houston, especially if the Astros grab another shortstop, but like the others, his value comes from dependability that you just don’t need that much at this stage of the draft in shallower formats.
22. Anthony Rizzo (Free Agent) — What an enigma. It’s not every day that you see a left-handed slugger with over 250 career home runs have his numbers go down when he goes to Yankee Stadium, but here we are. A starting role on a good team is obviously the ideal, but it’s also hard to imagine that happening. If Freddie Freeman were to leave Atlanta, that’d probably be the ideal place for him, as would his original home on Chicago’s north side.
The 30 home runs seasons are likely lost forever, but there’s just enough contact ability, speed, and pop to make him a decent safety play in deeper leagues, though it’d also likely shoot up his ADP.
23. Bobby Dalbec (Boston Red Sox) — Dalbec is a large human who can swing a stick really hard. Yes, he swings sticks at things he shouldn’t swing sticks at far too often, but when he finds one, he puts the thing into orbit.
As you likely suspected with a young 6’4″ lefty masher, strikeouts are a common problem. That said, Dalbec made some real improvements to this area as the season went on:
The strikeout rate went from an unholy 50% or worse in 2020 but managed to work it down to a number just north of 30% by season’s end, in large part due to his growth in making more contact with balls he swung at out of the zone.
Players with this kind of profile can be extremely volatile and maddening to have on a roster, but there’s certainly a boatload of power potential if you can pull it off.
24. Jonathan Schoop (Detroit Tigers) — Schoop played a full season for the first time in a long time, and rewarded fantasy managers who sc(h)ooped him up off the wire in 2021 with 22 home runs and a plethora of runs and RBI. While OBP leagues will always be unfavorable to Schoop due to his unwillingness to walk, his ability to make contact and send the ball to the gigantic gaps in Comerica Park should help him hit closer to .280 rather than .260, and the Statcast data on our player page suggests what we saw in 2021 was legitimate.
Tier 6
25. Spencer Torkelson (Detroit Tigers) — I just want to see him play consistently in 2022. I think he has a decent shot of breaking camp with the club if the Tigers hold off on signing more infielders, but even if he does, his 12-team relevance is heavily capped by the fact that Detroit doesn’t really need him on the field quite yet.
While my Tigers are going to be an exciting team to watch, and while Tork figures to be a big part of that, I just can’t get on board for 2022 unless free agency works its magic and the Tigers head to camp without someone else in the way for playing time.
26. Nathaniel Lowe (Texas Rangers) — There might be a sneaky little sleeper here in Texas in Lowe, who has five to seven stolen base speed and a bat that could hit 20-25 home runs. Seeing Lowe return to the type of disciplined hitter we saw in the minors was a big plus, as it should give ownership confidence that the 26-year-old southpaw is worth holding as part of the core for the team they aggressively tried to improve early in the offseason.
As long as Lowe is getting on base, he shouldn’t have any issues holding off Sherten Apostel, who had knee surgery in the offseason and who needs a lot of work on limiting strikeouts if he wants to sniff the majors in 2022. I like Lowe as the last hitter on a bench just to see what happens, but he’s probably best utilized in deep formats for the playing time and handful of steals.
27. Frank Schwindel (Chicago Cubs) — If Chicago signs any other first baseman, Schwindel will likely shift to a completely part-time role, but until then he’s penciled in the heart of the lineup as an everyday player. Schwindel was the surprise of the fall with his explosion of power as the Cubs played out the rest of the season, and with a full-time role, it’s easy to see 30-home run upside with a.270 batting average.
That aside, it’s hard to put too many eggs in a basket held by a collegiate draftee who took nine seasons to reach the majors. It’s been interesting to see teams acquire, cut, then reacquire Schwindel over the years, but if he gets a shot this year (which is a big “if”), he could push to be a back-end starter. Or, of course, he could shrink back into obscurity like the legendary Bryan LaHair, who set the world on fire in 2012 only to never be heard from again.
(I don’t think Schwindel is the same as LaHair, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to drop a Bryan LaHair reference).
28. Miguel Sanó (Minnesota Twins) — I have nothing new to say here besides the fact that all of the usual analysis we do every offseason on Sanó still applies, except now it comes with bench risk, too. He’s still one of the very few players who could consistently hit 40 home runs, he gets hurt a lot, and he strikes out way too much. None of that really changed, and despite setting a new career-high in games played by 19, he only set a career-high in one of the five roto categories—stolen bases. He stole two bases, which was a new record for him.
The truth is, we’ve now had two relatively healthy seasons from Sanó and he finished 19th and 21st at the end of the season. Seems like a really bumpy ride for such a nominal payoff.
29. Jesús Aguilar (Miami Marlins) — Are the Marlins more interesting now than they were a few months ago? Of course they are. It’s a unique mix of B-list journeymen and their incoming class of rookies and young players, and Aguilar should be hitting right in the middle of it. I doubt he scores more than 50-60 runs given a whole season, but he could drive in 80 or more with 20 home runs.
Of course, he’s already going to give up a game or two a week to Garrett Cooper and even with the addition of a DH, any signs of faltering will likely just lead to a messier platoon, especially if Lewin Díaz is hitting well in Triple-A.
30. Rowdy Tellez (Milwaukee Brewers) — I really thought the addition of the DH would have me pushing Tellez up these ranks, and in deep formats that might be the case due to stability in playing time. In your standard 12-teamer, though, I just don’t see how Tellez presents anything that isn’t already provided by someone else in this tier or the one above it, or any reason why I’d target him before them.
He looks like a 20-home run guy with a .250-.260 batting average, of which there are seemingly infinite on a 12-team waiver wire. It’s enough to make the article, but not enough to get me to find a rolling chart or anything.
Featured image by Doug Carlin (@Bdougals on Twitter)