Archive for Draft

Fantasy baseball is a drama. And as such, it follows Freytag’s pyramid. Naturally. 

For the uninitiated, think of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy, not unlike most of our seasons. 

The exposition sets the scene. Rising action builds your interest, as the characters you’ve been introduced to start moving and shaking. Then the climax. Violence, betrayal. Injury and breakouts. From there, the falling action is lines you up for the third act, by which point, you’ve already tuned out. Because you’re not making the playoffs. Or getting in the money. 

Fantasy baseball is entertaining because it’s set up the same way. 

The Exposition takes place within the span of a few minutes as you mourn the end of your season. We already know all of the players. The Rising Action is the rest of the offseason. The anticipation that feeds your late nights of research, making you closer to an angsty teen than you’ve been since high school. Draft prep is your studying now. This all leads up to the Climax. Draft Day. Nothing during the season lives up to the Draft. 

That’s why the rest of the season is Falling Action. Your expectations for your team fall. The slope is steep. You stumble through May, rumble through July as your team stretches for its last gasp, and crumble in September, when illusions of this being the year finally fade. 

Since we’re in the Rising Action of draft prep… “Already?” some of your leaguemates may respond. But since we, you and I, are already in draft prep, it’s time to use our neatly wrapped 2026 and see what lessons we can take away. 

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Earlier this season, in the midst of Davis Martin’s ascent, Fernando Tatis Jr.’s slump, and after more than two months of Cal Raleigh’s big dumper of a follow up season, I wrote an article pointing to an interesting trend. 

Through May this season, hitters were busting more frequently than pitchers relative to their draft cost. More specifically, ADP was less predictive of hitter performance than it was starting pitcher performance. This goes against a premise analysts and casuals alike repeat throughout draft season, that “pitchers are riskier than hitters.” 

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I have a fairly small portfolio of fantasy teams – prior to joining the staff here at RotoGraphs I had pared down over the years because managing daily teams on different platforms is a bit of a slog. Going into next year, I might explore joining some leagues with weekly adds. But in any case, I’d rate my season as successful overall.

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I’ve written a couple of late-season articles on overperformers and underperformers based on projected versus earned value. As someone who spends plenty of time examining pitchers, my fantasy teams admittedly struggled in pitching points. My team’s pitching ratios exploded due to blowup outings from Jack Flaherty, Luis Castillo, Logan Webb, and others.

On the hitter side, I rostered plenty of veteran players that might be seen as boring ones. Common hitters on my roster included Trea Turner, Jose Ramirez, Dansby Swanson, Ian Happ, Bryan Reynolds, and Seiya Suzuki. In one 12-team league, I started with Ronald Acuña Jr., Garrett Crochet, Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, and Geraldo Perdomo.

On another 12-teamer, I went with Shohei Ohtani, Treat Turner, Ketel Marte, William Contreras, Hunter Brown, Suzuki, Carlos Estevez, Corey Seager, Alex Bregman, and Spencer Strider with my first 10 picks. Unsurprisingly, that team struggled across the board.

I’ll walk through a few lessons from my draft and in-season strategy from the 2026 fantasy baseball season.

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“No one cares about your fantasy leagues,” but: I am your 2026 Tout Wars 15-Team Mixed On-Base Percentage (OBP) Auction champion. I’m not sure how helpful draft and/or league recaps are for most people, but I figure debriefing a victory is as good a use of this time as any.

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Last week, we covered hitters who outperformed and underperformed their projected value. We’re doing the same exercise for pitchers, focusing on starters. We won’t discuss all these pitchers below, but here is the list of pitchers who outperformed their expected value by a least $10 this season.

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We’re following up on an earlier article about hitters who are outperforming their projected value this season. But there’s also the other side of that coin: 19 hitters among the top 200 picks who are underperforming their projected value by at least $20. Unsurprisingly, the hitters drafted within the top 50 picks who were injured or struggled have been the biggest busts.

The visual below shows hitters who have lost $20 or more this season.

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In 12-team leagues, 37 hitters earned $20 or more on the Player Rater. Of those 37 hitters, 24 were drafted within the top 100 picks. Meanwhile, four hitters went undrafted or were past pick 400: Jake Bauers, Jake McCarthy, Jordan Walker, and Liam Hicks. We want to hit on these breakout hitters in the draft or acquire them during the season. These are the waiver pickups that turn into regular starters on our fantasy squads.

The 37 hitters who earned $20 or more are seen below.

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After a detour writing a couple articles with cheeky little bits and also a much more extended effort to develop a model for dynasty rankings, I wanted to return more explicitly to my bread and butter: the Asset Valuation series. After my first teaser article, my next three in this series showed how scoring settings can affect player value, and how you can exploit knowledge about these dynamics for your gain.

Those analyses, though, held one thing constant: the value of draft picks. To get those points across, I assumed a standard 12-team redraft setting, and flexed the value of players based on scoring scheme. Here, I’m doing the opposite: I’m messing with the timeline draft pool while keeping scoring scheme constant to show you how the value of a draft pick itself can change based on league size, keepers, and whether you use projections or actual realized dollar value.

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If you’re a nineties baby playing in the majors, I think your time has passed. Make way for Gen Z. The 2000’s babies. Even the 2005 babies are starting to make a real impact. 

Bye bye Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and hello Junior Caminero. So long Juan Soto and welcome Pete Crow-Armstrong. Sal Stewart, yes you’ll be taking over for Mr. Manny Machado. And Fernando Jr. of Tatis fame? The McGonigle and Wetherholt party will take it from here. 

So many of our favorite young stars from the last five years have aged out of rising stardom and seem to be either plateauing or, even worse, skiing down the final hill, and fast. 

Here’s a quick collection of players I’d consider consensus picks to become generational stars a few years ago who are currently between 27 and 29 years old. To me, this captures the players many of us would have confidently said were entering the primes of their careers as recently as two years ago. Not yet on the hill, and surely not over it.  Read the rest of this entry »