Freddie Freeman in Long Term Leagues

by
August 12, 2013

With the fantasy seasons winding down and trade deadlines in many leagues being recently passed, a lot of fantasy advice at this point should be focused on next year and future seasons. As people who come to this site for fantasy news and notes, there is a high likelihood that you are the type of person who participates in long term fantasy leagues such as keeper and dynasty formats.

First base has been a quickly evolving position over the past few seasons. A serious injection of youth has jumped into the top few tiers of fantasy first basemen, and since most leagues have a utility spot and some have corner infield spots, loading up on quality first baseman is a sound strategy given the position’s notoriety in regards to having great hitters. Guys like Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Belt, Eric Hosmer, and Freddie Freeman have proven to be valuable fantasy first baseman at a very young age.

To me, Freeman seems to be an undervalued member of this group. Goldschmidt is certainly the class of the group, and I was wrong to have predicted Rizzo to be the top first baseman in fantasy earlier this season when I did. The combination of power and speed puts Goldschmidt well above the other competitors, which is what I expected from Rizzo and still do expect from him in the future. Freeman does not quite have the power of Goldschmidt and definitely does not have the speed that add value to Goldschmidt’s and Hosmer’s fantasy resume, but he does have a great line drive bat that hits in a prime spot in a top notch lineup.

Freeman has also shown consistent improvements in his game as he continues to mature. His walk rate has improved each year while his strikeout rate has dropped. This year his ISO is back down to where it was in his first full season, but he has focused on shortening his swing and staying up the middle which has led to a .313 average and the fifth highest line drive percentage in baseball. Even though he is not a prototypical masher at the plate, ZiPS does project that he will finish the year with 20 home runs which would be his third consecutive season crossing that barrier. With the improvements he has made and the fact that he will play next season at age 24, it is difficult for me to put Freeman behind anyone other than Goldschmidt in that group.

The likelihood that Freeman turns into a Joey Votto or Albert Pujols is slight, but his long term floor as a high quality producer given the type of hitter he is and where he has seen his production increase over his first three seasons has an immense amount of value. In dynasty formats there are not many first baseman with more value than Freeman.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Ben has been at RotoGraphs since 2012 and focuses most of his fantasy baseball attention toward dynasty and keeper leagues.

7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Andrew
12 years ago

I hope you’re right because I own him in my dynasty league, but I think he’s actually overvalued. That .373 BABIP has inflated his AVG. His power isn’t great for his position. He does seem to be improving, but it’s a stacked position. Again, I hope you’re right, though.

1