Rolling In The Deep: Polarizers

Greetings, friends! If your week has gone anything like mine, you’ve realized that your RCL drafts are suddenly upon you, and are cramming to prepare. For me, it’s always a bit of a shock to go from the slow drafts I’ve been doing all winter and jump into a live draft where I have little time to make decisions. My brain also gets confused going from a deep or mono league format to a twelve team mixed league, and I usually end up drafting at least a couple guys that have no business being on a shallow re-draft team. Anyhow, I hope your draft prep is going well, as I’m just now realizing that this is the last post I’ll be writing before the baseball games start counting — crazy!

Speaking of the RCL format, this week I thought we’d take one more break from our traditional deep league content. Thanks to MattTruss’ spectacular RCL ADP spreadsheet, we have scores of beautiful raw data that tells us everything we could ever want to know about who’s being drafted when here in Razzball Nation. I thought it’d be interesting to see which players have the biggest value discrepancies and who, as a community, we’re having the hardest time projecting. I’m not going to include closers or catchers since I think individual draft runs on those positions will skew things too much, and am also omitting players who are notably injured (e.g. Zach Wheeler, who’d make this list otherwise) since I think injury risk tolerance is a whole different discussion.

We’ll focus on “middle of the draft” guys, since I think that’s the section where I, for one, am most likely to make a panic pick and let my draft start to go off the rails. We’ll look specifically at players whose overall ADPs are between 96 and 168, which basically corresponds to rounds 9 through 14. So, here are some of the guys who we’ve been disagreeing on the most… it’ll be fun to see which side is looking correct in another couple weeks, another couple months, and of course at the end of the season:

Michael Harris II, pick differential: 68 (ADP 104, high pick 63, low pick 131) and Brandon Nimmo, pick differential: 68 (ADP 107, high pick 68, low pick 136). I’m gonna group Harris and Nimmo together here, since their draft data is almost identical. They also have both been around long enough to have had some major swings in fantasy value, and I think the variation here probably comes in large part from your personal past relationship with these fellows. If you were on Harris’ bandwagon early, you probably have fond memories of how he helped you win a fantasy championship; if you bought in a couple years after that, not so much. Nimmo, meanwhile, was a fantasy afterthought for what seemed like forever, but once he decided to be a power hitter, he was a guy who could also carry a fantasy team for weeks at a time, IF you happened to grab him during a hot streak. I’m not averse to drafting either in the right league at the right time, and thought I’d have at least one share of Harris by now, but so far my teams are both Harris-less and Nimmo-less. I’ll be watching to see if their fantasy value this season mimics their ADP and stays similar this season, or if one of the two emerges as the “correct” pick at this point in a draft.

Trevor Story. Pick differential: 80 (ADP 117, high pick 82, low pick 162). I’m not expecting Story to repeat what he did last year, which I have to say still surprises me when I see just how good his 2025 numbers were. That being said, I’ve already drafted him a couple times. As usual, there are a bazillion great shortstops to choose from this year, but I like the potential value anywhere near his low pick. Yes, there’s the risk of injury and a complete collapse of the hit tool that would destroy your ratios, but the renewed power/speed upside intrigues me for at least one more year.

Andy Pages. Pick differential: 73 (ADP 126, high pick 97, low pick 170). I think the high opinions and low opinions on Pages can be pretty easily compared to the highs of most of his regular season in 2025, versus the lows of his poor playoff performance. For those who remember his World Series-saving catch but have blocked out his atrocious hitting, he ended the playoffs as a bench player. I have one share of Pages, which I grabbed rather reluctantly, but I just didn’t want to be left out in case the offensive breakout was real and the post season struggles were not. I think part of my hesitation to draft Pages was the James Outman-vibe I was getting, but that probably is neither wise nor fair to make that comparison just because of their similar circumstances with the Dodgers. I’m also wondering if Pages’ unintentional involvement in the Emmanuel Clase scandal is at least subconsciously keeping me from buying in here. Watching Pages flail at a pitch that Clase had thrown so far out of the strike zone that he thought he’d guaranteed that a seven year old Little Leaguer wouldn’t even be tempted to swing at it was one of the more humorous moments of a depressing baseball story.

Gavin Williams. Pick differential: 119 (ADP 139, high pick 91, low pick 210). I’ve just never been on board the Williams train, so he’s not really on my radar at his current ADP, let alone at that high pick number. Even when you get down to that 200 mark, there’s too many pitchers I’d rather take a shot on. I know many ‘perts have been laying in wait for his breakout for a couple years now, so it wouldn’t shock me if it happens to some degree, I suppose, but personally, I’m not buying in at this price.

Chandler Simpson. Pick differential: 74 (ADP 122, high pick 122, low pick 196). This one’s not much of a surprise. I can see a lot of folks just holding SAGNOF-strong and not even considering drafting Simpson, and others maybe taking advantage of that philosophy and diving in on what they hope will be a category-winning player. I’m not super high on Simpson, but I do have one share. It’s in a draft and hold league though, so no waiver wire which means no speed to be picked up mid-season, which means I didn’t hate drafting Simpson (closer to this low pick number than the high one) when I did.

Konnor Griffin. Pick differential: 111 (ADP 163, high pick 111, low pick 222). Will he be the Pirates opening day shortstop, and cruise to an uncontested rookie of the year award? Or will he start in the minors, come up later and struggle, and spend most of the year in triple A trying to re-group? I think more and more folks are leaning towards the first option, and as someone with no shares of Griffin, I’m just gonna have to grab my popcorn and watch it all play out.

Kazuma Okamoto. Pick differential: 105 (ADP 167, high pick 108, low pick 213). This wouldn’t be a list of players who are being ranked very differently by some fantasy folks than others without a fresh face from overseas on it. The general consensus seems to be that, when compared with fellow NPB crossover Munetaka Murakami, Okamoto’s floor is much higher and his ceiling much lower. I just checked NFBC overall ADP for the last week of drafts, and Okamoto has finally overtaken Murakami, though they are basically being drafted at the same spot, with ADPs of 200 vs. 202. I haven’t drafted either, but if I had to pick one straight up, I’d go with Okamoto at this point. Lots of at bats in a solid lineup, no matter what, and if some power emerges, he could end up being a steal at the surprisingly-weak third base position this year (and he also qualifies at first in some leagues).

Matt McLain. Pick differential: 145. (ADP 171, high pick 82, low pick 227). I’m including McLain on this list even though his ADP is just outside the 168 threshold I quoted earlier, partly because I think it will be within that top 168 by the time you read this. I’m also including him because a real-life chat I had about McLain the other day is what led me to write this post in the first place, as I’d wondered aloud if he was the most polarizing player of draft season this year. Whether the believers are buying in because of the fact that he’s clearly healthy for the first time in a while or just because they can’t stop drooling over his video game like spring numbers, or a combination of both, I’m not sure. I know I’d love to go back in time and draft him anywhere near that 227 low pick, but I suspect he’ll get scooped up closer to the minimum pick for the rest of draft season, and I don’t think I’m willing to pull the trigger quite that soon at this point.

That concludes this week’s episode; thanks for reading, happy drafting, and tune in again next week when we’ll be able to talk about players playing actual Major League Baseball games!