Fantasy rankings are often broken into tiers, which give context to lists. But tiers also lack nuance. They clump players, but how far apart are players within clumps and between them? We can improve on the concept of tiers by turning them into shapes and creating maps.
Here, I will use Fangraphs’ auction calculator to get a value for each player and use those values to create a map of each position. In this iteration, I’ll focus on the corner infield, but be sure to read about the middle infield positions in my previous column. Like most maps, this won’t tell you where to go; it will just show you the landscape so you can better navigate the terrain.
Projections have their quirks, which we will partly mitigate by using ATC, which averages many projection systems, weighting them to favor their various strengths. That will smooth over certain extremes of each system. I set the values based on a league size of 12 teams, with $260 to play with in building a roster of one catcher, four outfielders, two UT spots, one MI and one CI.
Your values will vary a bit based on your settings, but the main adjustment to make is at catcher if you play in two-catcher leagues, which we’ll cover in a future post. The other caveat is that projections don’t always think much of your favorite prospect.
Now, let’s look at our corner infielders — players who have us trading mobility for thump — sorted by projected value.
Unlike the middle infield, here we have two evenly matched positions. Among the first 19 players, we have nine first basemen, nine third basemen, and one player, Jake Burger, who is eligible at both corners. The similarities continue for the first five in each CI position, with one stud followed by four stars. From there, the paths diverge, and suddenly, we’re looking at very different landscapes. Let’s zoom in on each.
First Basemen: The step-step-slide
(Note: I’m excluding Salvador Perez from this analysis. You’re not using him as a first baseman, and if you are, he doesn’t radically alter the picture, ranking in the mid-teens at the position around Paul Goldschmidt and Yandy Diaz.)
The market and the projections are mostly aligned here, but some subtle differences could affect your early-round strategy. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is your clear top guy, but if you don’t get him, you have a shorter jump than most other positions to the next group.
Weirdly, how you navigate the next part may depend on your thoughts about one of the steadiest players in the game.
Freddie Freeman had a relative down year in 2024, which means he was only 37% better than the league average as a hitter after posting wRC+ figures of 157 and 162 in 2022 and 2023. The thing is, he’s 35, and last year’s dip came with corresponding drops in his Barrel Rate and expected stats. Some projection systems see this as the beginning of a slide, while others, ATC included, predict a partial bounce-back. ATC’s more optimistic scenario (plus some light regression on Vlad) has Freeman as the second-best first baseman and not so far behind Vlad.
On the other hand, OOPSY sees a full repeat from Vlad and more of a slide from Freeman, knocking him all the way down to fifth among first basemen and less than half Vlad’s value. If you believe Freeman has at least a partial return to his elite ways, he’s a good value as someone who typically goes after Bryce Harper. If you don’t, he’ll end up on someone else’s team. If you lean more toward OOPSY and its bat-speed-loving system, then Vlad is the underdrafted one and should be a top-10 pick.
Harper, Matt Olson, and Pete Alonso fill out the upper shelf, along with Freeman. They represent some of the best power in the sport, and there is a steep drop-off from them to the next pair: Josh Naylor and Christian Walker. Waiting is always tempting at first base because there tends to be good power hanging around in the later rounds, but it’s worth noting that the $9.2 drop from Alonso to Naylor is one of the biggest intra-position drops in the entire draft, according to ATC.
If you take the plunge, there is still plenty to work with. Naylor and Walker are fine options. ATC has Vinnie Pasquantino, Burger, and Cody Bellinger a few bucks behind them. The market gives Bellinger a sprinkle of that Yankee magic and has him just behind Naylor, but I lean more toward Vinnie and Burger. Triston Casas is also in this group by ADP, though the projections are a bit lower on him.
Continuing down from there, the projections show a gently declining slope, but the previous group is where you want to jump in if you don’t want to deal with questions like, “What does Goldschmidt have left at age 37?” or “Will Yandy ever start lifting the ball?”. Then there’s Spencer Steer, who’s hard to trust after a .402 SLG (.379 xSLG!) season; Michael Toglia, who could have a breakout but still strikes out over 30% of the time; and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, coming off a lost season.
I’m a longtime Yandy fan, and I’m in on Toglia at the right price, but I’d rather have more certainty than most of those names offer. These later options give you something to work with, but if you’re shopping here for your team’s top first baseman, I hope you scooped up a bunch of value elsewhere on the way because you might have to juggle this one midseason.
This is one of the more stratified positions: Vlad … big drop … four solid sluggers … big drop … a group of acceptable guys … and then a patchier group with risks.
The projections say you should probably snag one of the top five to avoid the cliff after them, but I’m willing to wait for the next group on the theory that one of them will drop too far. In shallower leagues, your waiver wire will have a nice high floor, but if you’re league is deep enough that you might have to run with who you select on draft day, I recommend getting in before you’re forced to wishcast. It’s better to save that dreaming for your center infielder spot.
Third Base: The Guardian of the Galaxy
Take Vlad, add 30 steals, and you have Jose Ramirez’s projection. He’s good, is what I’m saying.
Just like with first base, after the singular superstar, we have a group of four followed by a big drop. The big difference is that we have a mercurial speedster mixed in with the sluggers. We know who Rafael Devers, Austin Riley and Manny Machado are: reliable stars (Riley’s dip last year notwithstanding) who are all projected for around 30 homers and a .260 average. If you’re in a Yahoo league, you have the deluxe version of that profile in Vlad, who is eligible here as well.
Then there’s Jazz Chisholm Jr. Sometimes he looks like Ramirez. Other times, he’s useless against lefties and is barely playable. His 46 games as a Yankee at the end of the last year were superstar-level, so there’s plenty of hype and a high price on him now. The inconsistency makes me jittery, but he just turned 27, he’s no longer in a pitcher’s park where he’s being asked to carry a weak offense, and he may be putting all the pieces together to get to a high level and stay there.
Even if he’s more like the guy we saw in Miami the past couple of years, he looks good for at least a 20-30 ADP season, as long as he stays on the field. He’s also likely to be second-base eligible early in the season. So, he’s very capable of earning his draft price, but he will have an ongoing effect on your roster because you’ll suddenly have a lower batting average and way more steals than you expect from the position.
ATC thinks Riley and Devers are the better values and puts Machado just a dollar behind Jazz, so by projections, the others in this group are the real values. But projections don’t tell you about upside.
First base and third base continue their uncanny parallels from there, with a giant drop from the fifth to sixth player. However, that’s according to projections that bury Junior Caminero as a $7.5 player behind almost everyone of interest at this position. The market, of course, is salivating over the 21-year-old with some of the best raw power in the sport and a better hit tool than generally comes with that kind of thump. His bat speed is equal to Aaron Judge’s, so we can use OOPSY to quantify the upside.
Junior Caminero 2025 projections
- ATC: 558 PAs, 22 HRs, .262 BA, 65 R, 75 RBI
- OOPSY: 630 PAs, 31 HRs, .273 BA, 79 R, 91 RBI
Basically, ATC thinks he’s Nolan Arenado, and OOPSY thinks he’s Devers. He absolutely has the tools to be Devers, but ATC is the less jubilant reminder that prospects usually don’t deliver on the full optimism of their boosters.
He’s not the last high-variance player at the position either. Mark Vientos is the next guy off the board. None of the projections see him fully repeating his 2024 breakout, but you can’t fake your way to 14% Barrels, though it comes with a 30% K rate, which puts a ceiling on the average. The projections put a wide range on his average (.232 to .250) and RBI total (81 to 102). I love betting on big power, but I don’t love paying for the full breakout. Still, if you can deal with a .240 average and no steals, the rest of the package is star level.
Or you could just get a nice high floor and let everyone else try to box each other out for the young power. Your top options by ATC after Machado are Alex Bregman and Matt Chapman, both of whom fall way too far. I know Bregman wasn’t quite his vintage self last year, but he’s now being drafted next to Luis Rengifo.
You can also really wait and pick up mini-Bregman, Alec Bohm. Yes, Bohm fell apart at the end of last year, and the power is less than you’ll get from most others here, but he balances that with excellent bat control. ATC projects a typical season of 16 homers and a .273 average and gives him equal value to Vientos. In a shallow enough league, you might chase more upside at that spot (Matt Shaw, perhaps), but if you could still use some floor, Bohm’s got a high one.
Speaking of upside, there’s this guy named Royce Lewis. In 152 career MLB games, he has hit 33 homers with a .268/.327/.497 slash line. The only problem is that it took him three seasons to amass one season’s worth of games. If you could give him a healthy season, he’s Manny Machado. He gets drafted around Chapman, which gives you a classic floor vs. ceiling choice. Chapman and Bregman give you solid production and are both athletic enough to find a groove and have a fantastic season. Lewis is 25, and I’m not giving up yet, but the vets feel like the smarter choice here for most builds.
Thinking high-level here, you need at least three corner infielders, and snagging a top-five guy from one of these positions lets you get creative with the other. Going off the cliff after the fifth player in both positions means leaving a lot of value at a level that will be hard to recoup in the mid-rounds. That said, the middle of these positions is fun, and it’s good to have a CI or two left on your shopping list for those rounds. Both first base and third base offer the option of going sneaky-boring. Push for the shiny objects at other positions and end up with some combo of Pasquantino, Nate Lowe, Diaz, Chapman, Bregman, Ryan McMahon, Connor Norby, etc. at the corners.
That’s your map and a few paths you can take. Be familiar with all your options so you can zag to the value whichever way your draft goes.
(Top photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Jazz Chisholm Jr.: Adam Hunger / Getty Images)
