Changelog

• 12/15/2025 – First Release
• 1/8/2026 – Dalton Rushing and Sean Murphy updates
• 1/26/2026 – J.T Realmuto and Victor Caratini signings.
• 2/2/2026 – Projections and ADP update.
• 2/10/2026 – ADP Update.
• 2/18/2026 – ADP Update
• 2/25/2026 – ADP and Projections Update
• 3/3/2026 – ADP and Projections Update
• 3/19/2026 – Kyle Teel injury and Harry Ford demotion update

Ranking Methodology

• Updated ADP data from NFBC Draft Champions to NFBC Online Championships.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net.

Catcher Overview

The catcher position is about as deep as it’s been after an influx of young talent to the position over the last few seasons. The additions of young studs to the crop of older, aging veterans give the position some beef, but also add to it’s volatility as we have seen with a number of the players who entered the Majors over previous seasons have shown us.

The biggest issue with the position is dependent on the format you are drafting for. In shallower one catcher leagues, it’s often best to wait as long as possible unless a player you covet drops. In deeper two catcher formats, the back end the pool offers negative value giving you more reasons to draft one or both of your catchers early. Knowing how your format and league values the position is crucial to your draft strategy.

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Today’s Discussion

With the injury to Kyle Teel and demotion of Harry Ford, they move down the ranks as we head into the final drafts of the season.

Full Rankings Without Tiers

“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

Joni Mitchell may not be a roto savant, but even she might agree that the best part of the fantasy baseball season is research-and-draft season. Every day, from February until Opening Day, is so incredibly thrilling – nonstop spring training news, draft rankings adjustments, and player pool deep-dives – there’s always some rabbit hole of research to go down. As we continue studying and gaining confidence in the fresh player pool and a new year’s ADP, more questions arise, and the more work there is to be done.

Whether in NFBC or best ball contests, high-volume early drafters subconsciously form bad habits in draft rooms. We get too comfortable targeting and drafting the same players over and over. Conversely, we avoid players who have burned us in previous seasons and those we have some subjective bias against. Rarely do we deep dive and reassess those players because we’ve already made up our minds. That’s why it’s crucial to explore every nook and cranny of a positional tier. We have all fallen victim to draft room paralysis, where a decision between several similarly ranked shortstops or starting pitchers becomes gut-wrenching when we’re on the clock. This preseason column aims to help with those tough calls. We will explore some of the most confusing ADP clusters, by position, beyond the simple “I need to boost my batting average, so I’m taking this guy.”

Let’s dive into these ADP pockets logically and systematically, reviewing four analytical components of the players within each cluster.

• Playing Time (and Role)
• Health/Durability
• Skills/Categorical Contributions
• Context of Team Offense

ADP Cluster 1: Second Catcher

ADP from NFBC 12-team Online Championships (OC), February 1^st to 16^th

• Francisco Alvarez, New York Mets (ADP 168.1)
• Gabriel Moreno, Arizona Diamondbacks (177)
• Samuel Basallo, Baltimore Orioles (182)
• Kyle Teel, Chicago White Sox (189.2)

The top of the catcher pool is more robust than ever, as early drafters are prioritizing at least one of the top 10-12. Punting outright is less viable than last season – there are no true sleepers (Hunter Goodman) or studly, late-round prospects (Agustín Ramírez, Drake Baldwin) this draft season. Folks in two-catcher leagues who don’t address the position early end up with low-floor, fungible backstops like Freddy Fermin and Danny Jansen.

This intriguing cluster of catchers between Alejandro Kirk (ADP 156.3) and Carter Jensen (203.2) is packed with potential fantasy profit and serves as a fallback option for drafters in one-catcher leagues. Alvarez, Moreno, Basallo, and Teel are being drafted in Rounds 14 and 15 of NFBC OCs.

Francisco Alvarez, (ADP 168.1)

It’s been quite some time since Alvarez has been fantasy relevant. He popped onto the scene like the Kool-Aid Man, mashing 25 dingers as a rookie in 2023. Since then, Alvarez has spent over 100 days on the IL, mostly due to freakishly bad injury luck:

April 2024 (left thumb UCL tear)

• Broke his fall rounding first base; Missed two months after having surgery.

March 2025 (left hamate bone fracture)

• Injured his hand on a swing in spring training on March 8. He returned one month into the season (April 25) and did not hit his first home run until June 8.

August 2025 (right thumb UCL sprain + left pinky finger fracture)

• Alvarez hurt his thumb on a headfirst slide to second on August 17. Just 10 days later, while on a rehab assignment, he suffered a pinky finger fracture on an errant pitch during an at-bat. Alvarez played through the pain in September, then had surgery on his right thumb after the season ended.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Alvarez’s thumb is fully healed, and he is back to mashing at Mets camp.

Per Laura Albanese of Newsday, Alvarez has lost “eight or 10 pounds by focusing on nutrition”. RosterResource projects Alvarez hitting seventh in this revamped lineup featuring potentially impactful veterans/newcomers Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien, and Luis Robert Jr. Though Alvarez managed only 276 plate appearances last season, his 93.1 mph average exit velocity was three ticks higher than his 2023 mark. Alvarez rocked a potent 57.9% HardHit rate from June 1 to August 17, the day of the right thumb injury.

To summarize, Alvarez is a pure masher who is just 24 years old, in one of the best projected offenses in the majors. He will whiff his fair share (25.9% career) and won’t help in batting average or stolen bases, but will benefit squads in the other three standard roto categories (R, HR, RBI), which should be enough to earn profit on his reasonable price tag.

Gabriel Moreno (ADP: 177)

Moreno is certainly no beacon of health either. He has spent over 140 days on the IL since 2023 with various ailments to his shoulder, groin, left thumb, and right hand. Moreno is nearly two years older than Alvarez. Like Alvarez, Moreno’s career-high games played were in his first full season (111 in 2023). Unlike Alvarez, Moreno is known more for his contact skills (career 82.8% Contact rate) than his power (.123 ISO) and is typically targeted for that rare batting average contribution from a catcher. Only Yainer Diaz’s .279 is higher than Moreno’s (.278), among backstops with at least 1,000 plate appearances since 2023.

Moreno projects as the Opening Day cleanup hitter – a true testament to the weak state of the Diamondbacks offense. Moreover, Corbin Carroll isn’t a lock to be ready for the start of the season, and the likely five-hole hitter against right-handed pitchers is #oldfriend, Quad-A’er, Pavin Smith, who I hope does not read this column. With 450+ plate appearances, Moreno can produce 10-15 HR, 60+ RBI, and a plus BA, but his lack of power and his team’s offensive environment reduce his appeal – especially in the context of the other catchers in this range.

Samuel Basallo (ADP: 182)

We have a rare situation with backstops in Baltimore, with two among the top 15 at the position. Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo had ADPs within 10 picks of each other in the NFBC Draft Champions (15-team, 50 rounds, draft-and-hold) for most of the winter. Rutschman’s 12-team OC ADP is at least two rounds higher (149.9, C11) than Basallo’s over the last two weeks. Rutschman’s role and playing time in the top half of the lineup are secure, while Basallo’s will depend on several factors, including his production during spring training and early in the season.

The Jason R.R. Martinez Effect is real, as his lineup projections influence the early draft market. RosterResource slates Basallo to hit ninth as the strong side DH, though this Opening Day lineup is many weeks away from crystallization. We can use Basallo’s small rookie year sample (.165/.229/.330, 118 PA) as a reason to avoid him in redraft leagues, but that would be cherry-picking to support a biased argument. Basallo’s massive power upside in the majors is not debatable, nor is his long-term future with the Orioles after signing an 8-year, $67M deal as a 21-year-old. No matter how talented, all young prospects are works-in-progress, and that progress isn’t usually linear. Perhaps the best approach is to let nature take its course by buying into potential greatness and taking part in the journey. It has been said that cream rises to the top. Basallo is the riskiest of this cluster but offers the most upside and profit potential.

Kyle Teel (ADP: 189.2)

The Boston Red Sox drafted Kyle Teel with the 14th overall pick in the 2023 amateur draft, but they had to part with their prized prospect to pull off the Garrett Crochet heist. Rumors of the Red Sox attempting to reacquire Teel have been afloat this offseason, and their FOMO is well justified after Teel’s impactful 297 rookie-year plate appearances (.273/.375/.411, 12.5% BB). Teel has been labeled a “high IQ player”, which is quite common for catchers, but not always ones with such limited major league experience. Spring training roommate Mike Vasil can surely attest to it, as I initiate a rumor that Vasil saw 16 FanGraphs tabs open on Teel’s laptop.

Projection models don’t peg Teel for much power – at least not this season. His minor league ISO never exceeded .200, and anything over 15 homers would be a bonus. Teel’s earning fantasy profit would come from 1) proving he can hit LHPs to avoid being platooned, 2) maintaining a strong OBP to lock in consistent work in the top third of the lineup, and 3) the overall bolstering of R/RBI production because of an improved offense around him. He should chip in with a few stolen bases as well. Teel certainly has that feel of a ‘fun’ fantasy draft pick, though it’s a realistic possibility that his fantasy ceiling for 2026 isn’t very high, and that he’s a better real-life player than a fantasy one.

Recap

• Francisco Alvarez – best overall value (expect an ADP rise out of this cluster)
• Gabriel Moreno – poor team context; BA category help; high floor if no IL stints
• Samuel Basallo – highest upside; playing time concerns; typical bumpy rookie ride
• Kyle Teel – moderately high floor for the price; potential five-category contributor (light)

Hope you’ve enjoyed my debut! For the next installment, I’ll attempt to shine some light on a cluster of boring, late-round second basemen.

As we continue our race against time (gotta get these in before you need to make final cut decisions!), Jake and I will turn our attention to catcher today and tomorrow. Catcher has been a weird position the last few years. Traditionally a weak fantasy position, it has gotten a lot stronger. But every year around this time, I feel like it is deeper than ever and every September, I look back at a slew of disappointments. And yes, it is deeper than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it is all that great.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the two largest position groups out of the way, the Ottoneu rankings push takes a breather with the smallest position group to finish this week. You can find all the information about the format and methodology for these rankings in Chad’s introduction.

Changelog

• 2/13/2026: Updated projections w/ ZiPS and OOPSY. Added player notes for all players in tier $1-$2 and above. Updated tier placement for eight players (green = moved up, red = moved down).
• 3/18/2026: Updated tier placement for four players based on 2026 draft results.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for Points Leagues: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for Points Leagues: C | 1B | MI | 3B |OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Tiered Rankings for 4×4: C | 1B | MI | 3B | OF | SP | RP

Here are few more notes about my process:

• Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of up to five public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, OOPSY, THE BAT, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player a wealth of data sources to form their projection. Currently, the projections below only include Steamer and THE BAT projections. I will update the rankings in February once ZiPS, OOPSY, and PECOTA are released.
• P/G vs P/PA. Points per game played is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating players in Ottoneu. I won’t argue with that. That measure does have some drawbacks, particularly for players who pinch hit, pinch run, or are used as defensive substitutions often. Those limited appearances can skew a player’s P/G lower than what they’re producing when they’re getting three or four plate appearances when they start a game. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’m projecting players using points per plate appearance. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.

Just to reiterate a point that Chad makes in his introduction: yes, these rankings are presented ordinally, but the tier a player appears in is much more important than if they’re ranked 16th or 28th. Within tiers, players are generally ranked by their projected Pts/PA but that doesn’t necessarily mean I think one player is significantly more valuable than another in the same tier. I’ve got notes on the top 20-ish players below and I’ll add more notes when I update the rankings next month. Let’s get into it.

As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

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The Catcher episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ron Shandler

Fantasy Reconstructed

Strategy Section

• How do you prepare for fantasy baseball drafts?
  • Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS)
    • BABS Risk Budget
  • Should you make a “do not draft” list?
• Risk
  • Precision vs. imprecision of fantasy baseball pricing
  • Evaluating player uncertainty
• Auction tactics – Ariel vs. Ron
  • DEBATE !
  • Pricing methods
  • Nomination strategy
• Drafting
  • “ADP Chicken”
  • How closely do you look at other teams’ rosters during drafts?
• Catchers
  • The catcher “bump” in pricing
  • This year’s catcher player pool and value distribution
  • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Where should you take Cal Raleigh in drafts?
  • Strategy differences between 2 catcher and 1 catcher leagues

BREAKING NEWS

• Kyle Tucker signs with the Los Angeles Dodgers

ATC Undervalued Catchers

• Salvador Perez
• Will Smith
• Alejandro Kirk
• Ryan Jeffers
• Bo Naylor

Injury Update

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Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

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By now you are probably getting used to the cadence, but after sharing my tiered catcher rankings for 4×4 leagues yesterday, today you will get my FanGraphs Points leagues tiered catcher rankings, as well as thoughts on the position for other Ottoneu formats.

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As we hit the beginning of draft season, it is important to monitor where players are being drafted on a regular basis. Throughout draft season, I will be doing that work for you with regular updates on the Average Draft Position on NFBC up until Opening Day. You can read all the Market Reports here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Ottoneu keeper deadline is quickly approaching. There’s about a month and a half left to make your roster decisions before the January 31 cut deadline. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be going through a handful of difficult keep or cut decisions at every position group. I’ll start with the four infield positions this week and move on to the outfield and pitchers next week.

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Bryce Harper, 1B
Salary: $49, $42
Average Salary: $45
2025 P/G: 6.25
Projected 2026 P/G: 6.45

While Bryce Harper probably isn’t going to hit like he’s one of the top 5 batters in baseball again, he’s still extremely productive as he enters his age-33 season in 2026. A wrist injury in June cost him about a month of the ‘25 season and he’s averaged a little under 130 games played per season over the last five years. While he might not be an iron man, he’s been productive while he’s on the field, putting up a 146 wRC+ during that same five year period. His batted ball peripherals all looked in line with his career norms; his 47.5% hard hit rate and 12.3% barrel rate both look good and his .368 xwOBA was right in line with his actual results on the field.

While his strikeout and walk rates look good on the surface, there are a few yellow flags in his underlying plate discipline stats. His chase rate has significantly jumped over the last few years and it was up to 36.0% in 2025, the second highest mark of his career. He’s being forced to hunt for pitches out of the zone because pitchers simply refuse to give him anything to hit. Since winning his MVP award in 2021, he’s seen the fewest pitches in the strike zone of any batter in baseball by a pretty wide margin. This year, his zone rate was just 42.9%, the lowest in the majors and three points lower than the guy right ahead of him.

Steamer is predicting a bit of a bounce back season for Harper in 2026, though it’s mostly fueled by a jump in BABIP. He’s at the age where power starts waning a bit and the projections see him essentially holding his power numbers steady next year. I guess that’s what worries me. Harper has already slipped a bit from his peak and he’s not getting any younger (no matter how many weird blood procedures he wants to try). If you’re paying a premium in the hopes that he’ll get back to his MVP caliber seasons, you’re likely going to be disappointed.

Keep or cut?

I think Harper’s current average salary of $45 is reasonable for the projected production you’re hoping to get from him in 2026. Like with any aging slugger, there’s some risk involved in paying that much for the downslope of a career. I’m keeping at $42 and I’m shopping my $49 Harper, hoping to pass the buck for that decision to someone else.

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Willson Contreras, 1B
Salary: $15, $14
Average Salary: $14
2025 P/G: 5.24
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.14

Now that Willson Contreras finally lost his catcher eligibility, he’s lost a ton of his fantasy value. A catcher who can put up 5.2 P/G is quite useful — just six other catchers surpassed that mark in 2025 — but a 5.2 P/G first baseman is quite another matter. Fifteen other first basemen surpassed that mark this year and eighteen are projected to be better than that in 2026. Instead of being a top tier option at catcher, Contreras is now a third or fourth tier option at first base.

To be fair, his batted ball peripherals all looked good during his first full season out from behind the plate. The biggest reason why his overall value took a hit in 2025 was because his walk rate dropped nearly five points, down to 7.8%. There was nothing amiss in his underlying plate discipline metrics; his chase rate, contact rate, and swing rates all looked normal. The biggest difference, then, was a higher rate of pitches seen in the zone — the highest zone rate of his career — and a corresponding increase in called strikes seen.

Steamer sees a bounce back in walk rate next year, but his BABIP takes a hit, leading to an overall projection a little worse than what he accomplished in 2025. I don’t have any qualms with the projection — it seems like it’s pretty reasonable — so my issue is with his positional eligibility. Right now, I’ve got him ranked in the same tier as Kyle Manzardo, Spencer Torkelson, and Christian Walker. Each of those players is useful in their own way, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with any of them as my primary first baseman in 2026.

Keep or cut?

I’m cutting both of my shares of Contreras. Paying up to $10 for him in next year’s auction is probably reasonable, but getting up to the mid-teens seems like an overpay.

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Alec Bohm, 1B/3B
Salary: $11, $9
Average Salary: $11
2025 P/G: 4.66
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.90

An abysmal first month of the season is bringing down Alec Bohm’s overall numbers from 2025. From May 1 through the end of the season, he posted a .308/.356/.453 slash line, good for a 124 wRC+ and 5.4 P/G.

That’s the kind of production we’ve been expecting to see from Bohm since his exciting debut back in 2020. The unfortunate thing about his excellent finish to the season is that it wasn’t really fueled by a change in any underlying batted ball metrics. He was the same hitter he’s always been, just really unlucky for the first month of the season and then a little luckier than normal over the next five months.

So which version of Bohm can we count on in 2026? Probably the same one we’ve come to know over the last few years — the same one who posted around 5.0 P/G in 2023 and ‘24. That’s a useful corner infielder, but not necessarily a high quality starting option. That’s what Steamer sees as the most likely outcome. If there’s one thing to latch onto as a source of hope, it’s that he ran the highest contact rate of his career this year. With his above average hard hit rate, putting the ball in play more often should lead to more positive results. Unfortunately, his ceiling is capped by how often he puts the ball on the ground and his correspondingly low barrel rate. Unless he can make a significant adjustment to start lofting the ball more often, his hot streak from the second half of this season will likely be the best version of Bohm we’ll see.

Keep or cut?

I’m really on the fence about Bohm. He fits better as a third baseman where the pool is a lot shallower than at first base but the roster where I have him rostered for $9 already has third base covered by José Ramírez. I’m not sure I want to keep him at $11 either, but that’s probably about what he’s going to be auctioned for if I end up cutting him. I think it’ll ultimately come down to my salary cap situation on both teams — if there’s room to roster a premium bench CI, then Bohm seems keepable. If not, he’ll end up a casualty of being good enough without a high potential ceiling to boost his value.

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Adley Rutschman, C
Salary: $30
Average Salary: $21
2025 P/G: 3.79
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.03

I have no idea what to do with Adley Rutschman. To be fair, I don’t think the Orioles know what to do with him either. He had such a promising start to his career and then suddenly collapsed partway through the 2024 season. There was some hope that an offseason would help him get healthy for this year and he’d find a way to bounce back. That obviously didn’t happen. He suffered through two separate oblique strains, and even when he was healthy, he wasn’t producing at the plate.

The weird thing is that his underlying batted ball metrics aren’t out of whack, his plate discipline is still excellent, but he simply isn’t seeing the results that he enjoyed during his first two seasons in the big leagues. Some of that is a dramatic drop from his BABIP but it’s also a deterioration of his plate approach. His strikeout and walk rates aren’t affected, but his ability to hunt for pitches to do damage against has diminished over the last two years — his SEAGER dropped from 21.1 during his rookie campaign to 11.6 in 2025.

Steamer sees a pretty significant bounce back from Rutschman in 2026, but the projection has hedged against his ceiling based on his struggles these past two years. Like I mentioned with Contreras above, just seven catchers crossed the 5.0 P/G threshold this year. If Rutschman can get back to that level of production, he’ll be one of the best hitting catchers in baseball. There’s so much risk in paying for that projection knowing that he’s been a below average catcher for a season and a half now.

Keep or cut?

I’m obviously cutting at $30. That’s simply far too expensive for any catcher unless his name is Cal Raleigh. I’d be open to keeping Rutschman around $15, but even at that high a salary, you really need him to figure things out next year and hit his projection.

Catcher Overview

Catcher is a much better fantasy position than it used to be, but it still has pretty big drop offs that fantasy managers need to be aware of. The position is filled with a plethora of interesting young players and older vets to pick from, but the deeper the league you are in, the tougher the position becomes.

Today’s Discussion

New year, new catcher ranks!

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