First-Year Player Draft Rankings for 2020 Fantasy Baseball

In dynasty baseball, the June draft is must-watch television and the July 2 international signing day is fodder for a million clicks. 

Months later, typically in February or March, dynasty leaguers select their favorite college, high school and international players in annual first-year player drafts. I have attempted to consider and rank this year’s player pool for your reading pleasure. 

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See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Thu 8/7
ATH | ATL | CHW | CIN | MIA | PIT | SEA | WSH | ARI | BAL | BOS | CHC | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | OAK | PHI | SD | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR

I’m usually not big on worrying too much about positional scarcity, but anyone who has competed in a variety of different fantasy baseball league formats knows that depth at a given position is one thing that can make a big difference in approaching a draft for a shallow league versus a deep one.  The last couple of years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to draft with less concern about a player’s position, and more towards getting the best value possible with every draft pick or auction purchase, regardless of league size.  But when approaching a draft this way, it’s even more important to know what your options are going to be at each position, which positions you can wait to fill later, and which players are actually worth reaching for if you do realize you’re running out of decent options at a given position.  Getting to the point of today’s post, let’s take a look at some third basemen for 2020, with an emphasis on how I’ll be approaching the position in deeper leagues.

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Donkey Teeth and B_Don are joined by Darik Buchar from SportsHub, that’s SPORTShub everyone. They discuss the various National Fantasy Baseball Chapmionship (NFBC) formats and it’s growth from only the main event to where they are now, with leagues from $50 up to $15k.

Darik walks everyone through the new Solo Shot game, similar to the Silver Bullet from football (NFFC), before they get into the Cutline and the modified Cutline format of… THE RAZZSLAM. Some old faces in new places, MLB free agency style wraps up the show.

 

P.S. If you play on NFBC platform, check out this FAAB tutorial, it’ll make your life much easier.

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One word about this top 100 for 2020 fantasy baseball, before I give you another 5,000 words. I’m going to avoid repeating myself from the position rankings in the 2020 fantasy baseball rankings. If you want to know my in-depth feelings about a player, then you need to go to his positional page, i.e., the top 20 1st basemen for 2020 fantasy baseball, the top 20 outfielders for 2020 fantasy baseball, the top 20 Patterns In Queso That Look Like Messages From Another Planet for 2020– Okay, but I almost got you. This post is meant to give you an idea where guys from different positions are in relation to each other. Since this post is only the top 100, there’s more players where this came from. 467 more, to be very exact. Next up, there will be a top 500 that will go to 567. Then, after that, there will be a top 7,500 that will go to 8,602, then a top 25,000 that will go to 28,765, then a top 600,000 that will go to 892,121, until we end up with a top kajillion in April that will go to a kajillion and one. Or maybe I’ll stop at the top 500. Yeah, that makes sense. Not to get all biblical on you, but this is the gospel. Print it out and take it to Mt. Sinai and it will say, “Win your 2020 fantasy baseball league, young prematurely balding man.” Projections were done by me and a crack team of 100 monkeys fighting amongst themselves because there were only 99 typewriters. Somebody please buy Ling-Ling his own typewriter! Razzball Subscriptions are also now open. Early subscribers get Rudy’s War Room, and you can go ad-free for a $9.99. Anyway, here’s the top 100 for 2020 fantasy baseball:

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You ever play Marco Polo? Marcooooo, you bellow out. Listen intently. Pooolllooooooo is the response. Move to where you think sound came from. Marcooooo, you yell out again. Listen more intently. Pooollloooooooooo. Each Marco with the subsequent Polo response should get you closer to tagging the idiot yelling Polo. For the non-swimmers chilling in the cabana poolside with the quizzical looks, the Hot and Cold game is more your speed. Get closer to the object in question, a Hot response is elicited. Mover further away and you get Cold. According to NFBC ADP data from January 1, 2020 to Februrary 3, 2020, Khris Davis is receiving the Cold response, as he is the 177th overall player being drafted on average. There is no Polo to Marco when it comes to Davis this season, but are the fantasy goodies dangling right in front of our faces? When Kross told Kris to warm it up and Kris responsed with, “I’m about to. ‘Cause that’s what I was born to do,” can we expect the same from Khris?

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Welcome to the 2020 Razzball Team Previews! (Our “2020” comes with more Jay and less Barbara Walters!) (That joke is probably older than you!) Sorry for all the parentheses and exclamation points, I just get so excited when I think about Barbara Walters, and don’t even get me started on Hugh Downs… Regardless, here, you’ll find everything you need to know about each team to get yourself ready for the upcoming fantasy baseball season, Razz-style. So while you’re stretching your lats and relearning calculus to get that upper hand on your fantasy peers, why not also check out what the Padres have in store for you and your fantasy team? (I’m sure it’s postpartum depression, but hey! “Life isn’t as sweet without the sour.” I’m pretty sure that’s what Wil Myer’s spirit animal told him.)

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I came into this show fully expecting to be underwhelmed by the second base position the way I was last year. However, a little journey through Mr. Grey Albright’s tiers have me pretty excited about a handful of these key-stoners. With a nice tier of up and comers between 12-24. Who would have thought? Not me! Any the who, we per usual take you through 30 plus names with astute insights you can turn into actionable items in your 2020 Fantasy leagues. How awesome was that cliched business language sentence? Great, I know, I know. Now listen to the audio version of the Top 20 Second Basemen for 2020 Fantasy Baseball.

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With these top 100 starters for 2020 fantasy baseball, I’ve finished our (my) 2020 fantasy baseball rankings for positions.  Still coming will be a top 100 overall and top 500 to see how all the positions mesh together like your mesh Redskins jersey that meshes with your burgundy sweatpants. Trust me, when you see how long this post is, you’ll be glad I kept this intro short. All the 2020 fantasy baseball rankings are there. Here’s Steamer’s 2020 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2020 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers. Here’s all the 2020 fantasy baseball auction rankings. As always, my projections are included, and where I see tiers starting and stopping.  If you want an explanation of tiers, go back to the top 10 overall and start this shizz all over again. Anyway, here’s the top 100 starters for 2020 fantasy baseball:

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This week, I’d like to focus on the benefits of a contrarian mindset. It helps make clear life choices without needing the approval of others. It helps maintain an even approach to the highs and lows of life. Most importantly, it helps in predicting outcomes. One of my favorite contrarian principles is regression to the mean, the philosophy at the heart of this week’s finding aces segment. When I introduced the series and background group of pitchers, the term luck was mentioned regularly. Quantifying luck is a difficult premise. However, in leveraging regression to the mean we can increase our chances. If a pitcher suffered from poor luck in 2019, that same pitcher is more likely to benefit from good luck in the future. We hope that future is the 2020 season.

In order to identify young pitchers who suffered from poor luck in 2019 I performed the following:

  • Gathered all starting pitchers with over 50 innings pitched in 2019. Thanks, Fangraphs.
  • Removed any pitchers with more than 400 career innings pitched to isolate for Youthful Jumps.
  • Sorted to find only pitchers whose ERA was 0.5 greater than one of FIP, xFIP, or SIERA.
  • Eliminated any pitchers who did not have a metric under 4.5.

The result? 10 pitchers. I’ve removed 5 of those for reasons noted at the bottom. The rest of the group is evaluated below:

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In our first Ambulance Chasers post this season, we touched on some of the bigger names that were dealing with some off-season question marks about their injury status and health.  Now that we’re into January, we’re starting to get updates trickling in on some players rehab processes, and they’re not all good. We also touch on some late round names here and speculate on some situations that could change between now and the beginning of the season that would count some of these players as huge bargains for early drafters.

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With the top 80 starters for 2020 fantasy baseball, we are so close to the end of the rankings, I can almost taste it! Wait, that’s not rankings I taste, I bit my lip and it’s blood. I wonder if when Dracula bites his lip it’s like when Cougs goes out with her friends and I’m left at home while Emmanuelle is on Cinemax. I’ll go over exactly how to draft starters in a few days, but there are so many ways to skin a cat we should have PETA breathing down our necks. Also, I’m hoping to do the RCL signups next Monday. Stay tuned! Or not, your call. All the 2020 fantasy baseball rankings are there. Here’s Steamer’s 2020 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2020 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers. Here’s all the 2020 fantasy baseball auction rankings. At the top of that page there’s about 20 different league types to choose from. All projections listed are mine and I mention where I see tiers starting and stopping.  Anyway, here’s the top 80 starters for 2020 fantasy baseball:

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To see Anthony Rendon in the batter’s box is to see the personification of peace. Last year that zen lead to a World Series Championship for the Washington Nationals. At the beginning of the year he was what Simon and Garfunkel sang about in Central Park all those years ago: The Nationals’ rock, the Nationals’ island. Soon enough he transformed into Batman, with Juan Soto exploding into a high end Robin. Now Rendon has gone Mickey Mouse, signing a 7 year $245 Million contract with the Los Angeles Angels. After the signing Grey gave you his Anthony Rendon Fantasy, but what else can fantasy players expect in 2020?

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