Early Thoughts on NFBC ADP and Steamer Auction Values

In the past couple weeks, Christmas has come early for us fantasy baseball sickos. The initial pre-season Steamer forecasts were released, and NFBC leagues began drafting. This gives us two great sources of data to begin work on 2027 draft prep.

There are a couple things to keep in mind as you peruse NFBC ADP and Steamer auction values. First, NFBC leagues are a little different than mainstream. They have different position requirement rules and don’t allow trades. They are also weekly lineups for pitchers and twice-weekly for hitters, rather than daily. Generally, these don’t create substantial gulfs between the NFBC market’s evaluation of players versus other platforms, but there could be some differences.

To keep the below analyses’ scope from getting out of hand, I used auction values from standard leagues as I’ve done previously and compared them against expected pick values calibrated on industry aggregate sources. So, these comparisons aren’t going to be 100% apples-to-apples, but they will be closer to Honeycrisp-to-Fuji than Honeycrisp-to-oranges.

The other note is more minor: Steamer does not forecast saves for free agent relievers. As a result, players like David Bednar and Raisel Iglesias have poor projections that seem much worse than their market price. For this reason, I’m going to omit discussion on these types of guys. For now, though, here are a few broader thoughts about how the market is shaping up.

The first round is strong and balanced

Here are the top 12 players by NFBC ADP (as of Thursday, November 5):

You know this is a pretty decent crop when Aaron Judge’s $33 projection is at the bottom of the group. This year’s typical round one pick fares comparably well relative to recent drafts, a little below one standard deviation above the mean (mean = $39.71, std. dev. = $3.10) since 2015:

Given the relatively balanced nature of this pool, I’d feel pretty comfortable ending up in the back end of a snake draft. Looking at a five-pick centered rolling average through the second round, the typical value available drops $10 between the 14^th rank and the 16^th rank (it nudges back up to $30 in the early 20s mainly on account of Nick Kurtz’s projection):

So if you have an opportunity to choose where you pick, it might be worth looking at the turn; nabbing Jackson Chourio ($40) and, say, Cam Schlittler ($32) would get you about $72 of projected value. Picking Bobby Witt Jr. ($39) at 1.3 and Pete Alonso ($25) at 2.10 would project to be worth more than 10% less: $64.

As for some of the specific names, I went into this exercise a bit skeptical of Pete Crow-Armstrong as a 1.1 pick, thinking that he has most likely just had the best season of his career and that paying such a steep price for that would be unwise when he is likely to regress, potentially significantly. But the Steamer forecast bakes in a significant amount of regression, showing him reverting to his 2025 counting stats and maintaining only about half of his plate discipline gains. It forecasts 35 home runs, 35 steals, 202 R+RBI and a .258 batting average. Even after all that regression is baked in, that is a $44 projection. His place as the semi-consensus number-one pick therefore seems basically reasonable.

One player I remain skeptical of is Shohei Ohtani. I talked about him in my September dynasty fallers article, and my take here is basically the same. I don’t think it’s wise to count on him for $10 of pitching value, as Steamer thinks he will accrue, without significant damage to his $46 of projected hitting value. Ohtani is most likely entering the last year of his prime, if he hasn’t left it already, and injuries dogged him for months in 2026. If I’m sitting at 1.2, I’m probably looking more at Bobby Witt Jr. or Elly De La Cruz because I think they are a likelier bet to meet their projections.

Old guys can be had at a bargain

Age bias is real. Think back to 2021, when all of these players went in the top 15 of ADP, for a sobering reminder that Father Time always gets his:

That said, I think all of these players are being under-drafted. Going bottom-to-top, Freddie Freeman is the clearest opportunity for surplus value. Fourteenth rounders simply do not cost very much. Even if you’re bearish on Freeman hitting his projection, he only needs to be 70% as good as he was last season to recoup double the value of a typical pick in that range. If he repeats 2026, let alone meets his Steamer projection, that’s a great value. Consider other position-mates within his tier of ADP: Vinnie Pasquantino (rank 153), and Jake Bauers (157). In a dynasty draft, indeed you might choose either sooner than you would Freeman. But in a redraft format, I would place my bets on Freddie remaining steady.

Mookie Betts likewise does not have a high bar to clear in order to recoup neutral value. He projects for 24 home runs, six steals, 174 R+RBI, and a .271 batting average across a full season of plate appearances. As with PCA, that seems fairly reasonable, no? It’s basically giving him some batting average gains on his 2025 line, which was worth $9. If you’re going to bet on anyone’s bounce-back in old(er) age, future Hall-of-Famers are probably the best place to look.

Jacob deGrom’s 2026 line is being dragged down by a huge stinker in his final start of the year. All of his ERA estimators point to a season that was basically in line with 2025, when he was worth $30. He actually accrued more WAR this year than last (4.3 vs. 3.4), despite throwing fewer innings. He’s been healthy for two seasons in a row now, and nothing really seems wrong under the hood. So all in all, his draft price is a great hedge against performance deterioration, injury, and potentially even some combination of both. Consider rotation-mate Cal Quantrill’s $11 season garnered by running a hot ERA in 110 innings with significantly worse strikeout numbers. If you think 2027 Jacob deGrom has a good shot at exceeding 2026 Cal Quantrill, his draft price is at least a break-even proposition.

Betting on Francisco Lindor is probably the riskiest move, given the price involved, but also the likeliest to return an elite (or mostly elite) performance. He is the youngest of this bunch, and averaged $36 from 2023 to 2025. His $29 projection essentially puts him back on a typical aging path with a bit of skills regression. Eighty percent of 2025 Lindor – not an unreasonable expectation for a healthy 2027 – is a $26 player and roughly a second-round value. Finding a player with his track record in his current draft round is not common. If you end up with a relatively high-floor early draft, I think drafting Lindor at his current price is a great bet.

The catcher pool is deep, flat, and falls of a cliff

My colleague Vlad Sedler went over catchers in more specific detail last week, so in an effort to not step on his toes I will speak more about the market here than any individual player. Steamer projects six catchers to accrue more than $18 of value, all in the top 90 or so ADP:

Last year there was just one, three in 2025, and none in 2024. In fact, the only recent year with more was 2023 when seven backstops were projected to crest that mark. 2022 and 2021 each featured only two. This year’s top eight are also unusually clustered together:

The typical standard deviation among this group is around $7.50. This year’s is a full $2 lower at $5.50. So, we have a crop of players with quite similar projections being drafted at various points in the first eight rounds. A few weeks ago I wrote that I will not be using meaningful draft capital on catchers in 2027. The market is perhaps nudging me in a different direction. Of course, not all of these players will meet their projections. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if few did; in 2023 when all those catchers were projected for high values, only two actually finished above that threshold.

But the projected drop from the last catcher in the eighth round (Iván Herrera) to Dillon Dingler is stark. If I were committed to leaving a draft with one of these top eight catchers, I would probably wait until four go off the board, rank the remaining, and take the highest with my next pick. In a chalk draft, that means you get to bet on a nice flight of potential options: steady (ish) production from Gabriel Moreno, a bounce-back from Cal Raleigh, an up-and-comer in Carter Jensen, or a partially non-catching catcher in Iván Herrera. If your draft to that point has been relatively high floor, maybe Raleigh is the best fit – I think he’s the likeliest of this group to pop a $30 season, even if his mean projection is the lowest of the bunch. If your earlier picks were on the risky side, maybe Herrera, who will DH his way into everyday at-bats, is a better bet. In any case, given how stratified the catcher projections appear to be, it will probably be worth building a plan to nab one of the top eight.

Parting thoughts

Stay tuned for later in the week where I have more of a traditional buy/sell style article based on these data.  As the offseason rolls on – and more projections and ADP data are released – I will take similar looks and see what nuggets we can glean.