For the first time this year, the RotoGraphs team introduced a formal, organized positional ranking series that we updated on a weekly basis during spring training and through the season opener. I chose to take ownership of the first base position and you should refresh your memory of my final rankings before the season began. Let’s now review those final rankings and how each of the hitters ultimately performed.
First Base Overview
This year’s group of first base eligibles is not your grandmother’s player crop. The depth here just ain’t great and feels thinner than during my younger years, before some of my hairs decided “salt and pepper” was the new brown.
What’s interesting here is how many first basemen also steal bases, as four of them are forecasted for double digits, and another three feature upper single digit projections that could easily end up higher. So fantasy managers now have more options — do you target an all-around contributor who essentially gives you contributions you might expect from an outfielder or the traditional masher to lock down 10% or more of your team’s home run total? The choice is yours, but hopefully these tiered rankings will help you make such an important decision.
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.
As we move into draft season, I will be updating these rankings occasionally, when there is news to justify changes. The original rankings will stay at the bottom of the article to maintain my player notes. The original 1B/U rankings were posted 1/23 and the most recent update is 2/26.
The Corner Infield Preview episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.
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12/18/23
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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.
After Jake, Lucas and I covered MI two weeks ago, Lucas got us started on CI Wednesday and Jake followed up this morning. Now, it’s my turn to look at my toughest CI decisions.
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Jeimer Candelario, 1B/3B
Salary: $3.00
Average Salary: $4.31
2023 P/G: 5.38
Proj 2024 P/G: 4.74
There are some caveats needed on all those numbers. First, I have Candelario in a 4×4 league, not FanGraphs Points, so the P/G (both past and projected) are less relevant, though they are still a good short-hand for his value, and his projections are worth about the same in both formats. Per Justin Vibber’s Surplus Calculator, Candelario is a $3 player in points and $3.30 in 4×4. By percentage, that is a big difference. But in terms of his actual value, it’s negligible.
The other caveat is that while the projected P/G represents a pretty big drop from 2024, it’s very much in with what he did after his trade to the Cubs (4.59 P/G).
Candelario appeared to break out in 2017, when he moved to Detroit and exploded for a .379 wOBA in a brief 106 PA. He improved his K-rate but mostly he hit for a really high BABIP (.392) and it wasn’t a huge surprise when the BABIP deflated the next season. More disappointing was the return to a 25% K-rate, losing almost all the gains he showed in 2017.
After down years in 2018 and 2019, he appeared to break out again in the shortened 2020. Again BABIP played a big role, but he also nearly doubled his HR/FB rate (thanks at least in part to doubling his barrel rate) and brought the K’s down a couple of percentage points again. And this time it mostly stuck. 2021 and 2023 were both good years – not quite to 2020 standards) but good enough.
Following his career, you can see the slowly improving K-rate and HR/FB rate, but you can also see how wOBA has followed BABIP.
The concerning thing from this chart is that Candelario lacks the power to overcome BABIP issues – top power hitters hit enough balls out of the park and draw enough walks that a low BABIP hurts but doesn’t kill. Candelario isn’t that kind of hitter and when the BABIP dipped to .257 in 2022, he became unusable in Ottoneu.
The positive thing is that with even an average BABIP, he is a pretty solid overall player – definitely better than what his projection. Candelario has been a .344 or higher wOBA three of the last four years, with the one exception being the year his BABIP dropped below .260. It was also the year he posted outlier chase- and swing-rates, leading to an equally outlier career-low walk rate. His hard-hit-rate and xwOBA were also well below the levels he showed in 2020, 2021 and 2023.
My read is that 2022 was an outlier season for him, but that 2020 was also an outlier on the other end. Over this four-year stretch he has a .331 wOBA but, as noted above, has been .344 or higher three of four years.
Keep or Cut?
All of that is enough for me to take the over on his projected .323 wOBA, with the caveat that we don’t know yet where he will be playing. And for Candelario, it is not as easy as saying, “I hope he lands in a good hitter’s park!” I am not sure, for example, that Yankee Stadium, with it’s AL-leading 116 park factor for HR, per Baseball Savant, is such a great fit given it’s low park factors for singles, doubles, and triples. Had he played all of his games at Yankee Stadium in 2023, instead of 22 HR he would have had…22 HR. I am planning to keep Candelario and I wouldn’t hesitate to do so at or even a little above his average salary, despite the projection. But I’ll be watching where he lands and adjusting.
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Vinnie Pasquantino, 1B
Salary: $10.00
Average Salary: $9.91
2023 P/G: 4.97
Proj 2024 P/G: 6.01
Oh baby, check out that projection. Easy call, right? That’s a $20 bat, even at 1B. Ok, it is more like $15-$20 in 4×4, but still, no-brainer!
Except in 558 career PA, Pasquantino has put up 5.34 P/G and suffered a serious shoulder injury that cost him most of 2023. And shoulder injuries are not great. Jeff Zimmerman covered this last year in relation to Fernando Tatis Jr. and basically found that shoulder surgeries and hitters don’t mix so well. Tatis followed the pattern, performing fairly poorly (.332 wOBA, a .067 drop from his career numbers coming into the year) in 2023.
On the other hand, Corbin Carroll missed almost all of 2021 with a torn labrum, bounced back well in 2022 and was a breakout star in 2023. And you can make the case (and I don’t think this is a crazy stretch) that we should downplay Pasquantino’s 2023 4.97 P/G because he was trying to play through shoulder issues – that isn’t a “healthy baseline” for him, it’s something he should improve from once he gets back to full health.
Given the short and messy MLB track record, Pasquantino should be a bit polarizing and it is hard to take a $20 projection as reliable. It’s not that it is wrong, but if that is the middle of his range of possible outcomes, I have much lower confidence/certainty that he will achieve that than I would for a seasoned veteran.
That has both positive and negative implications. Positive because Pasquantino is more likely to put up a breakout year than an older, more established player with a reliable baseline. Negative because Pasquantino is more likely to fall on his face than that more established player. Plus you have to worry about injury risk.
Keep or Cut?
It’s still a no-brainer for me to keep Pasquantino if my other option is to cut. I am not comfortable banking $20+ in value from him or even assuming he can lock down my 1B spot. I like him as part of a group with depth, where I can use him if he breaks out and absorb the hit if he doesn’t. And at $10 that is an easy keep. But if another manager is drooling over his $40 upside and buying hard on a $20+ projection, I am more than happy to make a deal.
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Pete Alonso, 1B
Salary: $31.00, $42.00
Average Salary: $34.51
2023 P/G: 5.77
Proj 2024 P/G: 6.21
I have Alonso in one FanGraphs Points league (at $31) and one 4×4 league (at $42) and they are both somewhat interesting choices. The Polar Bear is coming off arguably the worst season of his career (2020 was a little worse, but it was also much shorter) and those are some pretty steep prices.
Speaking of “worst season of his career;” that helps explain the near 0.50 P/G jump in his 2024 projection vs. his 2023 season. Alonso was at 6.1 and 6.3 in 2021 and 2022, and has a 7 P/G season under his belt, as well (the 2019 rabbit ball year, which maybe shouldn’t count). And even that 5.77 wasn’t bad – it was top ten at 1B in 2023!
But even a bounceback season as projected by Steamer, back in line with what we would have expected before 2023, is only worth $26 in FanGraphs Points and $31 in 4×4 (yes, he is one of the rare players worth more in 4×4, thanks to high OBP and prodigious power). After accounting for inflation, that makes both of those prices pretty fair, if I buy the projection. But do I buy the projection?
In short, yes. What happened to Alonso in 2023 is pretty easy to explain. He struck out and walked around his career norms, but he posted a .205 BABIP after coming in with a .274 career BABIP. Some of that can be attributed to a career-high FB-rate paired with a career-low LD-rate – when you trade liners for fly balls, your BABIP will go down. But, for a power-hitter like Alonso, seeing the fly ball rate increase isn’t major cause for concern. And given the fickle nature of LD-rates, I would bet on positive regression there.
He also increased his barrel-rate and xwOBA despite a lower hard-hit rate. In 27 fewer PA, he hit more balls over 110 mph in 2023 (61) as 2022 (60). If his drop in hard-hit rate were decline-related (or injury-related, or anything else other than mostly noise), I would expect to see every bucket get lower – some of his 115+ mph contact would turn into 110-114 mph and some of his 110-114 mph would turn into 105-109, and so on. At least for his top-end power, we are not seeing that at all.
The more I look, the more his “rough” 2023 looks like bad luck on BABIP resulting in underperforming his xwOBA and nothing more. In fact, if you buy the increase in FB-rate and believe the line drives will come back, you could make a case that he is primed for a career year.
Keep or Cut?
Keep. In league 13, that $31 price just isn’t high enough to want to cut him, especially given that team just won a championship and we can, effectively, run it back even keeping our highest-priced stars. In league 1199, I did a hard rebuild starting mid-2023 and Alonso is a perfectly solid keeper for me to either a) add some high-end talent to a young, inexpensive team where I can afford to pay up for a stud, or b) hold and trade with a loan in May if things go sideways quickly. In both cases, I am open to trading Alonso – in 13, I also have Matt Olson and while I plan to keep both, I don’t have to keep both and in 1199, I have youth at 1B that I like, and could move Alonso for help at other spots. But I expect I’ll still have them both in January.
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Alec Bohm, 1B/3b
Salary: $7.00, 6.00
Average Salary: $9.34
2023 P/G: 4.98
Proj 2024 P/G: 4.95
Bohm is another I have in one FanGraphs Points league (league 13 at $7) and one roto (1443 at $6) but in this case the roto league is 5×5. This matters because Bohm’s high average and nice batting slot in a strong offense makes him a pretty solid 5×5 contributor. We often look at speed and power for 5×5, but a guy who offers high average while scoring and driving in a decent number of runs is a pretty solid option.
The challenge is that Bohm isn’t great in either format. These prices are pretty close to how he projects and how he projects is pretty close to his 2023 and his 2023 looks like a pretty fair progression for his career without a lot of reason to think it’s an outlier. It’s just not exciting.
You can see that progression looking at his plate discipline over time.
The walk rate has been steady, though you can kinda see an uptick from 2022 through 2023, but his K-rate has been in decline. His first full season, in 2021, strikeouts were an issue. By 2023, they were a strength, helping that high average. Statcast sliders are pretty imperfect, but they can be a useful shorthand and this is pretty telling:
Bohm does not hit the ball super hard, but he makes contact at a high rate, avoids strikeouts, puts the ball in play and is better-than-average and finding the sweet spot, leading to a high line-drive rate.
That all means we can and should expect more of the same from Bohm, which is what Steamer is seeing, as well. That makes him – in both points and 5×5 – a solid 3B option, maybe not a guy you want as your starter but certainly a guy you can live with.
Keep or Cut?
Honestly, I am not sure. Right now, keep. Come January, I sort of hope I have better options – either a legitimate stud starter who is clearly better than Bohm or someone with more upside I can dream on (or both!) and Bohm isn’t a necessity. I still might keep him in that case – he is a solid insurance policy at 3B – but I am not sure I feel all that good about it.
A few weeks ago, the Ottoneu+RotoGraphs team — Chad Young, Lucas Kelly, and myself — ran through some tough keep or cut decisions at middle infield for our Ottoneu teams. This week, we’ve moved on to corner infielders. I’ll run through three players on my bubble and where I think the keep line could be for each of them. All P/G projections are from the 2024 Steamer projections.
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Ryan Mountcastle 1B
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $11.3
2023 P/G: 4.99
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.09
Ryan Mountcastle had a really weird year in 2023. He started off producing one of the most unlucky batting lines in the league; through May 13, his wOBA-xwOBA was -.067, the fifth lowest in the majors among qualified batters. On that date, he was placed on the IL with a wrist injury and had another stint on the shelf with a bout of vertigo a month later. Upon his return, his results finally caught up with his expected stats and he wound up posting an overall line right in line with his .335 wOBA from his first full season in the majors in 2021.
Under the hood, his plate discipline improved ever so slightly; his strikeout rate dropped by 2.5 points and his walk rate was up slightly to 7.9%. With a selectively aggressive approach that produces plenty of hard contact, he won’t have the solid floor of a player with better on-base skills, but his approach moved in the right direction last year. And despite the weird batted ball luck that plagued him early in the season, his contact peripherals all fell within his established career norms.
So what’s the problem? It’s his home park. Mountcastle struggled last year when the Orioles expanded the depth of the wall in left field to its current cavernous dimensions. During his first full season and the last season Camden Yards had its old dimensions in 2021, Mountcastle pulled a little under 40% of his batted balls. That pull rate has dropped significantly the past two seasons and it’s a big reason why his actual results lag behind his expected stats.
| Year | Pull% | Hard Hit% | Barrel% | wOBA | xwOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 38.70% | 40.10% | 9.50% | 0.549 | 0.425 |
| 2022 | 32.10% | 48.90% | 14.50% | 0.483 | 0.505 |
| 2023 | 31.30% | 46.50% | 10.90% | 0.409 | 0.435 |
In 2023, Mountcastle’s wOBA on pulled batted balls dropped dramatically despite producing similar contact quality. Some of that is related to his elevated groundball rate — that metric jumped up five points over where it was in 2021 and 2022 — but those deep dimensions in left field certainly affected his results. Rather than trying to pull the ball in the air like he did so successfully a few years ago, he adjusted his approach to try and hit up-the-middle more often. Of course, a batter like Mountcastle is going to do the most damage on pulled and elevated contact so seeing him diverge from that type of contact is a little worrying.
Keep or Cut?
The good news is that Mountcastle was able to post a wOBA within a couple of points of his .335 mark from 2021 this season. He has the raw power to overcome the deep dimensions of his home park but they’re certainly a hindrance to him reaching his full potential. Without a high ceiling to reach for, his value is capped around $7–10 I think. That kind of production could be an option to use at UTIL, but it’s not good enough to be your full-time 1B. And because he doesn’t have any positional flexibility whatsoever, he’s actually not that great an option at UTIL anyway. I’m probably cutting.
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Andrew Vaughn 1B
Salary: $9
Average Salary: $13.1
2023 P/G: 4.53
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.38
With José Abreu out of the picture, Andrew Vaughn finally had a full-time role at his natural position at first base in 2023. Getting him off the outfield grass helped his defensive value tremendously, but it didn’t have any positive benefit for his production at the plate. His wOBA dropped six points though he was able to post the best power output of his young career. All of his batted ball peripherals look good and he was even able to put the ball into the air more often this year.
Vaughn’s Steamer projection is particularly rosy. The computer sees another pretty significant step forward in power output for him next year plus a slightly higher walk rate which results in a projected wOBA higher than what he’s produced in any of his three seasons in the big leagues. If he hits that projection, he’ll easily be worth his average salary. The projection plus the batted ball quality point to a player who will likely be on a number of “breakout” lists this offseason.
I’m not totally convinced, however. The White Sox really screwed with Vaughn’s development, first by calling him up before he had even accumulated 250 minor league plate appearances and then by sticking him in the outfield for two years. He’s had solid batted ball peripherals all three seasons in the majors but his results have been rather lackluster nonetheless. And now that he’s lost outfield eligibility, the onus to produce at the plate will be even higher.
Keep or Cut?
That Steamer projection is really enticing; the Auction Calculator believes that projection will be worth somewhere between $13 and $15. It’s probably worth the risk to keep him at $9 to see if he can really take that big step forward, but I’d want to have a backup plan in place just in case he sticks around the production level he’s already established.
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Wilmer Flores 1B/3B
Salary: $7
Average Salary: $4.5
2023 P/G: 5.21
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.33
There are a bunch of competing factors that make Wilmer Flores somewhat overlooked by fantasy players. He’s old-ish and has been around forever — he’s entering his age-32 season and his 12th season in the big leagues — he’s more of a part-time player than someone you can count on everyday, and he’s a right-handed batter who mashes left-handed pitching. All of that contributes to glossing over the fact that he produced a career-best .368 wOBA this year.
Those factors also make this keep or cut decision a little tricky. Flores only played in 126 games in 2023 and only missed 10 days to an IL stint for a foot contusion in June. When you isolate the games he started and ignore the games he entered as a pinch hitter or defensive replacement, his points per game jumps from 5.21 up to 6.19. That’s a tremendous improvement in production, even if it’s a little intermittent. Rostering him means you absolutely need to have a second option to rotate into your lineup when Flores is on the bench which makes roster and lineup management a little more intensive.
The other complicating factor is that Flores lost 2B eligibility which really hurts his flexibility and potential value as an option at MI. He certainly can have some value as a part-time 3B in your lineup since that position is a lot shallower these days. And if you’re only using him when he starts, there’s a possibility that he’d even be an option at 1B provided you have another option to pair with him there.
Keep or Cut?
I don’t mind the headache of keeping tabs on when Flores is starting and the deep rosters in Ottoneu make platooning a viable fantasy strategy. $7 is probably the upper limit I’d want to invest in a part-time player, but Flores’s production definitely makes it worth it.
What is a breakout? There are different definitions depending on who you ask. Can someone be a breakout if they’ve already broken out? For the purposes of this article, a breakout is someone I have projected well above their current ADP. They are going to “break out” from their draft slot and deliver more production than the market thinks. I guess I could’ve just titled this “3 First Basemen I Like More Than ADP”, but that’s a clunky title so work with me here!!
Here are 3 first basemen I like this year:
Wil Myers | CIN
My Projection: .265/.343/.493, 24 HR, 66 R, 71 RBI, 7 SB in 505 PA
I’ve been banging the Myers drum since he signed with Cincinnati so I’m sure no one is surprised to see him included here. I’d be interested in a slightly below average bat in Coors Lite aka Great American Ballpark let alone someone who has been a positive bat over his career (110 wRC+ in 4149 PA), only twice dipping below average. Health has certainly been a challenge for the 32-year-old 1B/OF, but that risk is covered in his price tag. Myers is going at pick 240 on average in the 19 Rotowire Online Challenge (henceforth referred to as “OCs”) drafts from March 1st-10th making him the 27th 1B off the board (58th at OF… I promise I won’t include in the 3 Breakout OFs, too!).