I don’t know about you all, but I’m kind of over 2024 when it comes to fantasy baseball. Yes, I still love it and am committed to it and love writing and talking about it. But even the best relationships hit a rough patch from time to time, and I think fantasy baseball and I might be in the midst of one right now. I have a few teams at or near the top of the standings, and a few others that I’ll be trying to grind into a money finish over the next few weeks, but overall I’m feeling rather exhausted by injuries and the continued reminders of bad decisions when it comes to guys I didn’t draft (Jackson Merrill is the one who’s been haunting me the most of late). While I still encourage everyone out there to keep paying attention to what’s happening in real life baseball as a form of advanced fantasy scouting, if nothing else, I’m ready to move on to some reflection this week. It may be too early to start preparing for 2025 drafts, but in my book, it’s never too early to start thinking about preparing. So, let’s take a look at what next year’s top 10 picks would be (along with their 2024 NFBC Main Event ADP), if we were going by this year’s fantasy value according to rankings in a 15-team, standard 5×5 CBS Sports league up until this point in the season. Along the way, we’ll also toss around a few thoughts as to whether or not this ranking is likely to align with next year’s draft price, as well as whether or not it should.
#1: Shohei Ohtani (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 11). Not much to say here, other than to contemplate just how much the DH/Utility only designation that Ohtani comes with in most leagues should nerf his value. For me, something fairly extraordinary would have to happen to make Ohtani anything other than the obvious #1 pick next year in any of my variously formatted leagues in which he is eligible to be drafted. When you think about the fact that he is likely to add the whole pitching thing back to his game next season, it almost makes me worry that he could end up being a human cheat code for whatever fantasy team rosters him that will make many leagues unbalanced and frustrating from the get-go, but we shall see.
#2: Aaron Judge (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 13). I basically faded Judge this year, which was looking like a decent decision around late May, and of course, is looking like a horrible one now. Will the consensus be that he should get drafted as high as second next year? I’d have to guess that his ADP will end up closer to mid first round, as folks may well go back to worrying about injury risk. And I’m already kind of thinking that anywhere in the top 5, let alone #2, is too high a price for a guy that hasn’t been a big SB contributor this year (he has 7 as I write this), and who is unlikely to repeat his current .323 average or .455(!) OBP. But that’s exactly why we are doing this exercise now, so we have time to contemplate whether that line of thinking would be repeating this year’s now-obvious mistake of avoiding Judge.
#3: Bobby Witt Jr. (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 3). First of all, I’ll point out that the only reason Witt’s ADP wasn’t #2 is because that spot was taken by Spencer Strider — sure, there were other non-pitcher injury busts in the top ten this year, but since we’re spending a moment reflecting, we may as well reflect on how that worked out for those drafters. I think #3 is a good guess as to where Witt’s ADP falls next year, and if anything he may be a #1 or #2 pick in some leagues. He’s the 2024 poster boy for a fantasy player who gave you exactly what you hoped for and paid for.
#4: Jose Ramirez. (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 15). I honestly thought I was looking at the wrong year when checking Ramirez’s stats; dude is simply a machine. He’s at 31/34, with a sneaky-valuable .273 average, and we’re still in the first week of September?! I think there’s a possibility J-Ram could actually be a value pick again next year if his ADP is closer to this year’s 15 than his value ranking of 4. No one wants to be the guy who finally drafts him when he finally falls off a cliff, but at this point, I think we have to assume the guy is going to produce first round value until he doesn’t.
#5: Elly De La Cruz. (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 20). Whether or not you rostered him, it’s hard not to appreciate a player whose ADP was soundly mocked by almost every fantasy analyst out there, ending up with a ranking this much higher than said ADP. Feels like #5 is close to where he’ll end up when ADP starts coming in. Some may avoid him because they don’t want a first-round player whose value is tied so strongly to one category, but I can also envision seeing him being taken first overall. He’s simply one of the few players (along with Mr. Ohtani certainly) that is so fun to watch, root for, and feel like he’s part of your squad, where the emotional boost alone of having him anchor your team is worth a bump in your rankings.
#6: Juan Soto (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 10). Another superstar where fantasy owners got exactly what they expected, and maybe even a tad more, when they spent a first round pick on him. Perhaps his price will remain stable or even fall slightly heading into next year, however, pending his future contract situation, which will no doubt be covered obsessively by those following both real life and fantasy baseball.
#7. Gunnar Henderson (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 36). All season I’ve been regretting not drafting Gunnar at that now ridiculously cheap looking price, sigh. This is another situation where I’ll have to spend some time thinking about how high I’d draft him next year since I feel like this mid-first round ranking is likely to be a decent approximation of where he’ll be drafted. I do think it’s worth noting that both he and Elly will lose their 3B eligibility next year, and it will be interesting to see if that ends up knocking either of them down a few pegs once drafting begins. The other question, of course, is should it? That’s another one I’ll have to think about over the fall and winter, because depending on the league format, I do think that SS/3B dual eligibility lended a pretty significant value boost to both players.
#8. Francisco Lindor (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 29). Lindor was one of my top targets this year, and a big part of why a few of my teams that are doing very well, are doing very well. Will this year’s MVP-type numbers propel him from the late second round in a 15-team league, to the first round next year? And will I still want to draft him there? For now, my answer is possibly, and possibly. One thing that’s clear in making this list is that you don’t need to be a mathematician to see that 40% of the top ten are shortstops, and as noted above, only shortstops. With a position so top heavy, do you do whatever you have to in order to get an elite one? Do you go big or go home, and fill in the spot with a late sleeper if you miss out at the top? Or do you have a short list of middle-range targets and make sure to get one of them? Something to already start thinking about when it comes to 2025 roster construction.
#9: Jarren Duran (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 108). For me personally, this one hurts. A lot. It’s a different kind of frustration when you are incorrectly out on a guy that emerges (and still, very frustrating!), but another thing when you targeted a player and still somehow did not end up with him on a single team. I had Duran grouped with two other potential speed/power combo outfielders to draft middle/late depending on the format, namely Chas McCormick and James Outman. Hindsight is better than 20/20 in terms of seeing which one of these guys doesn’t belong in this group, but I think I’ve learned two things I did wrong here beside just “pick the guy who’s actually going to be good” next time. The first is that I should have spread my shares of the three out a little more, so that if one (or in this case two) were complete and total busts, I was at least a bit protected. The second is that I probably should have upped the price I was willing to pay for Duran earlier in draft season. Duran helped me win a league in 2023 and I knew I wanted him on a few of my teams in 2024, but as his price rose I didn’t like feeling like I wasn’t getting a good enough value, and instead pivoted to one of the lesser options that I erroneously put in his tier. This is a situation where what seemed like a slight reach at the time would have worked out very, very nicely for me. Will he go as high as #9 in next year’s drafts? That seems highly unlikely to me at this point, which means I already have to start recalibrating his value for next year in my head to figure out if he’ll make sense as a target once again in 2025.
#10. Marcell Ozuna (NFBC 2024 ranking by ADP: 167). We already touched upon whether or not a utility-only designation significantly affects a player’s value… obviously it depends on the league, but I will definitely say that I made a mistake of passing on Ozuna late in multiple draft and hold leagues where he would have been a game-changer, because I was worried about clogging that spot. Even aside from how much his DH-only status affects drafters’ opinions of him, he seems the most likely of those on this list to have a significant drop off from this #10 ranking to whatever his ADP shapes up to be next season. He’ll be 34 next year, plus I for one am not inclined to draft a player who hasn’t stolen a single base this season in the first round. It’s also difficult not to look at his current .305 average, which has helped fuel a roto ranking this high, as somewhat of an outlier. That being said, that 2025 ADP is going to no doubt be leaps and bounds higher than last year’s 167, so no reason not to start thinking about where you think players like this should fall next year, to help you decide if they are on your overvalued or undervalued list as prices materialize over the offseason.
Thanks for reading, and here’s to hoping you still have a team in the hunt for fantasy glory!
