Fantasy Baseball State of the Union: First Base

Should managers target 'safe' starting pitchers?

In the wake of injuries to starting pitchers and a higher league ERA, D.J. Short and Eric Samulski discuss whether fantasy managers should pursue reliable starting pitchers in the draft or rely on the waiver wire.

Only four teams remain in the 2023 MLB season, and while we gear up for exciting playoff baseball, it's also a good time to look back at the fantasy season that was.

With all the talk about the rule changes heading into the season (and all the evidence-less blame they're getting for Tommy John surgeries), it makes sense to look back and see if this "new" version of the game we love had any meaningful impact in fantasy. Of course, some of the stuff you can already imagine, like the increase in stolen bases and the higher batting average without the shift, but what does that mean for each position? Did it create more value in certain spots? How does that impact our 2024 draft strategy? These are the questions I'm looking to answer in this State of the Fantasy Baseball Union series.

We're going to start at first base. I sorted by players who accumulated 200 plate appearances both this season and in 2022 and looked to see if there was any meaningful change in the standard 5x5 offensive categories (batting average, home runs, runs, RBI, and steals). Then I tried to dive into WHAT that change was, WHY it may have happened, and HOW likely it is that we see it again.

This is where we saw the biggest jump at the position in 2023. While we can argue about whether this has to do with the banning of the shift or not, the important part is that batting average was up across the league and we saw it most prominently at 1B and 3B (which is a discussion for another article) with 40 qualified first basemen hitting over .240 in 2023 while only 29 were able to do it in 2022.

So what does this mean for us? Well, it means we no longer need to roster a power-first player who will hurt our batting average. Obviously, you still can, but rostering a player who is going to hit .220 hurt you more than it had in years past since the baseline you needed to compete rose around them. That was bad news for guys like José Abreu, Rowdy Tellez, Joey Gallo, Joey Votto, and Ryan Noda.

Four 1B hit over .300 this year, which gave them quite a bit more value compared to their positionmates: Freddie Freeman, Yandy Díaz, Josh Naylor, and Cody Bellinger. We also got sneaky strong averages from Ryan O'Hearn, Donovan Solano, Alex Kirilloff, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Triston Casas, Spencer Steer, and Alec Bohm, among others.

When it comes to batting average, 1B has become a much deeper position than it was before, and one that doesn't need to be a drain in the category.

This is admittedly where we expect the most value out of our 1B. It makes sense to some extent since having 20 players hit over 20 home runs makes 1B the deepest position for power aside from OF. However, interestingly, only four 1B hit 30 home runs or more in 2023 (Matt Olson, Pete Alonso, Christian Walker, and Spencer Torkelson), compared to eight who did it in 2022.

While it's only a one year sample size, it does raise some eye brows about the top-end power value at the position. For the most part, we got big power out of the players we expected to get big power out of. Olson, Alonso, Walker, Paul Goldschmidt, Freddie Freeman, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Josh Bell all hit over 20 home runs. But who in that group seems like a logical bet to push over 30 home runs next year? Goldschmidt and Freeman are both aging (in baseball terms) and could hit over 30 but are likely past their days of being among the league leaders in big flys. Bryce Harper and Rhys Hoskins each could push 40 home runs next year, if fully healthy, but Vlad Jr. is tough to count on to get near that 40 home run mark given that we're still talking about his swing plane not consistently providing lift.

An interesting name to keep an eye on is Triston Casas, who hit 24 home runs with 15 coming in 54 games after the All-Star break. Casas, Torkelson, and Andrew Vaughn represent potential youth upside at the position, while veterans like Carlos Santana, Brandon Drury, and Justin Turner all hit over 20 home runs and continue to provide power value despite being overlooked. However, our list of truly elite power hitters at 1B appears to be getting a little bit smaller as some of those big boppers get older.

Another category with a slight uptick but nothing overly meaningful. In truth, there are no real surprises here. The middle of the order hitters who provide the most power or hit in the best lineups were all able to drive in 80 runs or more with Olson, Alonso, Freeman, and Walker being the only ones to drive in 100 or more.

Some other names on here to keep in mind who might not immediately pop into your head as huge RBI assets are Alec Bohm, Josh Naylor, Justin Turner, Spencer Torkelson, Brandon Drury, and Spencer Steer.

But at the end of the day, we're not changing our idea of how the 1B contributes to RBIs based on this data.

While there wasn't any major gains here from last year, I think it's intriguing to look at runs because it's often the most overlooked offensive category in 5x5 leagues. When we do consider runs, we just think about rostering players who hit leadoff for good lineups. While that was helpful for somebody like Yandy Díaz, who scored 95 runs this year, we also got solid run production from middle of the order hitters in good lineups like Olson, Alonso, Freeman, Bellinger, Goldschmidt, Walker, Harper, and Vlad Jr.

Some less expected names who helped us in runs this year were Carlos Santana, Ty France, Spencer Torkelson, and Spencer Steer (his name comes up here a lot). While this hasn't changed from 2022, it's just good to see the numbers and know that you can get runs from some unexpected sources at this position.

It says 15 stolen bases above, but I dropped the number down to 10 for 1B because so few of them actually run. However, even when dropping the total, we saw a huge jump in 1B who actually contribute in the steals category. Last year, only two players (Freddie Freeman and Seth Brown) stole over 10 bases, this year, the nine players did: Freeman and Cody Bellinger (who both stole over 20), Spencer Steer, Luke Raley, Owen Miller, Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, Christian Walker, and Josh Naylor.

If we can now get 10+ steals from our 1B, that adds a little buffer for us in the category; however, what should stand out most is that a lot of the names on this list showed up in other categories as well. It used to be that we bumped up Freeman or Goldschmidt because they would "chip-in" some steals, but in 2024, we could look for that same boost from Bellinger, Harper, Walker, Steer, and Naylor. (We've talked about Spencer Steer a lot here).

So what do we do with all this information? As of now, below is my top-15 1B for 2024. Obviously a lot can change before the season kicks off, but this is where we're at as of now.

Make sure to check back over the next couple of weeks as I go through all of the positions.