The Market and Me 2025: Comparing My 3B Ranks to ADP

Two things can happen when your opinions differ from the fantasy baseball internet majority. One, you prove to be right and get to “Nah-nah, nah-nah, boo-boo!” all over the place. Or two, you look foolish in front of all your computer friends and have to live with them, not being mad, just disappointed. This time last year I wrote the first episode of The Market and Me and will forever have to live with being higher on Patrick Wisdom than most. He finished 2024 as the 75th-best third baseman at -$32.40. Wisdom wasn’t the only one. Anthony Rendon finished even worse at -$35.40, the 88th-best third baseman in 2024. I was “higher” on both of those players than the market, but the market didn’t have to “rank” 40+ third basemen. I wasn’t necessarily high on Wisdom and Rendon, they were at the very bottom of my ranks. Still, they fell far outside of the imaginary line you can draw through the blue points that make up the relationship between ADP and my rank order, like the way Matt Shaw and Justin Turner do below. The “Market and Me” is an exercise in analyzing my own rankings, looking for where I may need to correct, where I may need to erase and re-order, and where I may plant my flag in the ground.

The ADP on the y-axis reflects the “average draft position” as recorded on the NFBC. Instead of scaling the ADP so that it reflects only third basemen, I chose to keep it at an overall draft pick scale so that you can see how far off a player is from the top rounds. The blue dots in the bottom left corner of the scatter plot above are my top third basemen (3B ranks) and some of the top players overall (ADP), players like José Ramírez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Rafael Devers, (<- Oxford Comma) and Austin Riley. Josh Rojas is represented by the very last blue dot to the right, my 44th (and last) ranked third baseman. Players highlighted in red fall below the trend line indicating I’ve ranked them too low. Players in yellow stand out as players I may be too bullish on. Let’s analyze the players who fall into each category.

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Where the market is higher:

Royce Lewis‘ ADP of 129 is likely to fluctuate throughout the draft season. Right now, people are scared of the incredible injury risk that he brings to fantasy teams, but his talent is too good to keep him at that ADP. Already this is true as the graph above was created on last week’s ADP. As of this writing, it has lowered to 114. Someone was confident enough in his health to draft him at 25 (Min) and someone else was lucky enough to draft him at 156 (Max). Didn’t we talk about this last year? Royce Lewis has a high upside but a big-time risk. His plate appearance totals have increased over the last three years (2022: 41 -> 2o23: 239 -> 2024: 325), but he’s never even hit the 350 mark. This is why analyzing your ranks can be so helpful. Maybe I’ve discounted him too much. Every projection has him hitting 20+ home runs and slugging over .440 while also baking in his playing time risk. Pick him later than an overall ADP of last year’s 128 mark and you’ve done well. Pick him earlier than that and you’ve taken on a lot of risk. That much hasn’t changed.

The hype around Jordan Westburg is no surprise. In a 2024 season shortened by a broken hand after being hit by a pitch, he improved in nearly every dashboard statistic. His batting average increased, he hit more home runs, slugged .481, struck out less often, increased his OPS, and barreled the ball up more often. Yesh! That’s great. It’s difficult to find anything in Westburg’s two-season sample to be upset about. Maybe it could be his over-average and fickle HR/FB rate. The 2024 MLB average was 11.6% and Westburg produced homers on 14.5% of his fly balls. Could it be that career .315 BABIP? Maybe luck has been on his side. It’s also possible his end-of-season line was inflated by an incredible first half where 15 of his total 18 home runs were hit:

1st half: .271/.318/.496

2nd half: .233/.282/.411

Here’s to Westburg avoiding injury in 2025 and playing a full season. Here’s to you drafting him slightly lower than his overpriced 92 ADP.

José Caballero will steal anywhere from 25 to 30+ bases in 2025 if the projection systems are accurate. But so might the other 36 baseball players projected by OOPSY and 28 projected by Steamer, to steal 25 or more bags this coming season. Caballero has nothing but stolen base potential, all his other roto categories are not worth rostering. Don’t forget that Ha-Seong Kim 김하성 is now a Ray and will certainly be higher in the pecking order than Caballero. When it comes to players like Caballero, they should only be drafted if you look up and realize you have no stolen base potential on your fantasy team and if that’s the case, god help us.

Who knows what will happen with Noelvi Marte? He seemingly has more competition for playing time with the Reds’ acquiring Gavin Lux in a trade, rostering a healthy Matt McLain, and every once in a while floating Spencer Steer around the infield just to show everyone they can. Then, there’s the fact that after Marte’s 123 BABIP-charged plate appearances in 2023 (.316/.366/.456) he followed it up (after being reinstated from a PED suspension that is) with a far, far worse .210/.248/.301 slash line in 242 plate appearances. Other aspects of his 2024 performance are concerning including a lowered BB%, an increased K%, a significantly lowered wOBA, and what looks like some real difficulty hitting breaking and offspeed pitches. He’s only 23, but he’ll have to showcase tremendous improvement in a short time during the spring to make me go near the 127 ADP where he’s currently being drafted.

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Where the market is lower:

Ryan McMahon’s stability makes him among my favorite ranked third basemen for 2025. As I pointed out in his rankings blurb, he’s played in over 150 games in each of the last four seasons and hit 20+ home runs in each. His slugging percentage was consistently better than average in those four seasons, he still plays at Coors Field, and he has virtually no defensive competition. You can sort leaderboards all you want, calculate “diff” columns from expected and actual stats, and point out McMahon’s flaws in his elevated strikeout rate, but you can’t argue with three years’ worth of performance data supplying a projection. In fact, it’s more like four and a half years if you go back to include 2019 and 2020.

Justin Turner is still unsigned and if that changes it’s likely he will start being drafted a little earlier because of it, but admittedly, he needs to drop in my rankings. I’m not promoting drafting JT as your starting third baseman, but I do believe he can still contribute to fantasy teams. Yes, he’ll be 40 in 2025, and yes his contact quality statistics have declined over the last few seasons, but his wOBA and OBP have stayed consistently above average. They are declining and his wOBA line in the chart below is getting awfully close to the MLB “Avg line”, but I think there could be at least a partial season of above-average production from a veteran hitter:

Every season there is a player like Matt Shaw who the fantasy community touts. Some traditionalists scoff and say he’s nothing more than a last-pick flier. Others place their chips in the center of the table and call “All in!” Que the sound of poker chips clinking and clanging off the pile. No matter which camp you’re in, you can’t ignore the fact that Shaw hit 21 home runs and stole 31 bases in the minors last season (AA and AAA). It goes without mentioning he must have a keen intellect and academic prowess that is matched only by other graduates of the University of Maryland. Whether those great things will translate to major league success remains to be seen, but maybe I’m getting a little caught up in the hype.

Lastly, Jace Jung is listed as the Tigers’ third baseman by RosterResource. Jung’s playing time is highly dependent on whether the Tigers sign Alex Bregman or not and whether Jung can improve his plate discipline in Spring Training. In the 94 plate appearances he earned in 2024, his K% was an outrageous 30.9%, but his 16.0% BB% was nearly double the major league average. He slashed .241/.362/.304, but that batting average was too low to match his incredibly high BABIP (.380). Jung is a player I need to adjust. There are a lot of stats in Jung’s small MLB sample that classify him as a minor leaguer, including below-average Z-Contact%, Barrel%, HardHit%, and ISO performances. Jung is a perfect example of why this exercise is valuable.