First Base Overview

It was a weak year overall for first basemen in 2024. We now head into the 2025 season with a clean slate and fresh optimism that this year’s crop will return more value, and perhaps include a number of young breakouts and veteran rebounds. There isn’t as much category selection needed this year, as just two hitters on this list are projected to earn positive value from stolen bases. So that means we’re back to rostering mashers who need to make a good dent in your home run total goal as you fill out your team.

Today’s Discussion

It’s the final rankings update for the 2025 season! Given the rash of injuries over the last week, I’m almost afraid to set these in stone, knowing there are still a couple of more days until the stateside Opening Day.

This week, the man whose face adorns the top of this post, Vinnie Pasquantino, left Saturday’s game with a hamstring strain. As I type this, there hasn’t been an update on his condition and how severe the strain is considered. I felt obligated to drop him in the rankings, but it’s impossible to know where he should ultimately be ranked without an idea of how much time he might miss, if any. At least he doesn’t rely on the running game to drive his fantasy value, so we shouldn’t expect the injury to affect his performance when he returns.

The other two rankings changes I made were more about a better understanding of the new Rays home park, rather than any underlying change in expected skills or playing time for the hitters upgraded. The Rays are playing their home games at George M. Steinbrenner Field, a minor league ballpark with dimensions that mimic Yankee Stadium. The park switch should be a boon for left-handers, who go from a park with an 88 left-handed home run factor to a 119. That’s a massive bump! Letting that really sink in motivated me to upgrade two left-handed Rays on these rankings, as I’m not sure whether the projections are accounting for the park factor changes.

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This past Saturday morning, I hopped on the NYC subway for the quick trip to Hotel Edison to participate in the annual Tout Wars live auction and defend my championship. It’s one of the most exciting days of the year, and it’s always bittersweet when it’s over, knowing that I’ll have to wait an entire year to auction with these lads again.

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On Feb 25, the competitors of the LABR Mixed draft virtually congregated for our annual February 15-team draft. Drafts this early are challenging. On the one hand, the early timing benefits the prepared and the more highly skilled. On the other hand, there remains a great many unknowns that we need to make educated guesses on at best, and complete shots in the dark on at worst. Position battles either haven’t begun or just began and all the excitement about pitchers throwing new pitches and the velocity spikes they are experiencing typically aren’t even known yet, taking away information we would normally use in our player evaluations. In addition, the longer time between the draft and opening day means more opportunity for injuries to decimate your roster before the season even begins (Gerrit Cole’s new owner, who drafted him 48th overall, is already shaking his head)!

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Auction day is one of my favorite days of the year. So what to do when you love auctioning, but your first event of the year isn’t for another four days? Fake buy players from auctions that did actually take place! For fun, last week I decided to check out the NFBC average auction values and build a standard 14-player offense for $14. That’s right, every player I selected had to come with an average auction value of just a buck. This week, I’m going to flip over to pitchers, building a $9 staff. Unlike in years past, I’m just going to choose from starting pitchers only and not speculate on saves from relievers this time. Discussing more cheap starting pitching is more actionable than naming a bunch of middle relievers who might net some saves.

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Auction day is one of my favorite days of the year. So what to do when you love auctioning, but your first event of the year isn’t for another week and a half? Fake buy players from auctions that did actually take place! For fun, I decided to check out the NFBC average auction values and build a standard 14-player offense for $14. That’s right, every player I selected had to come with an average auction value of just a buck. Imagine the pitching staff you could assemble with the $246 you would have remaining!

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Last week, Alex Bregman finally found a new home, signing a three-year contract with the Red Sox. After spending his entire nine-year career with the Astros, it’s going to take a while to get used to him donning a different uniform, and calling a new ballpark home. So let’s consult the park factors to see how the move might affect his performance.

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Welcome to the 2024 edition of the RotoGraphs Matchmaker Service! No, I cannot find you a date. However, I could hopefully facilitate the marriage of league owner with leagueless owner. If you are seeking an owner to fill your fantasy league or are the owner hoping to be seeked to join that unfilled league, this is your new home.

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We know that batter wOBA has a relatively higher correlation than many other metrics. However, it isn’t even higher because there are still many factors outside a batter’s control that influence the final mark. So let’s review the hitters who both underperformed and overperformed their xwOBA marks last year. If we assume a similar level of underlying skills and performance, this makes for the quickest list of hitters who will either enjoy a wOBA surge or decline this coming season.

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About two weeks ago, Jordan Rosenblum introduced us to his new projection system, OOPSY, which is now available on every player page that has received a forecast. The system incorporates Baseball Savant data, along with Stuff+, which made me very curious to see which players it was more bullish and bearish on than the Depth Chart projections (which are now 100% matching Steamer, since ZiPS haven’t been published yet). So let’s review the names that fall into each of these groups.

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We learned last year that Barrel% is still the most highly correlated Statcast metric with batter HR/FB rate, even more so than the newest metrics such as Blast Per Bat Contact and Fast Swing Rate. Of course, Barrel% does end up underrating extreme ground ball hitters and overrating extreme fly ball hitters, but because these hitters live in the extremes, they are the rare exceptions. To account for the fact that Barrel% is prone to being skewed by a hitter’s batted ball type distribution, let’s instead use a slightly better metric — Barrels per FB + LD percentage, or Barrels/(FB+LD).

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