Early ADP Analysis - First Base

Dave Shovein takes a deep dive into early NFBC average draft position data to give fantasy managers an overview of the landscape heading into next season.

Even for the most casual fantasy drafters, entering a draft without any type of plan at all is a sure recipe for disaster. One of the most important tools at the disposal of any fantasy manager is average draft position. It’s the critical data that provides insight into the going rate for each player in fantasy drafts.

ADP isn’t a static tool though, it evolves over time. It will show us trends, whether a player is moving up or down in the rankings. It also gives us insight into the maximum and minimum picks made for every player. Using this data should be absolutely critical in developing your plan of attack for your next fantasy draft.

Every Tuesday in this series I’ll take an early look at how ADP is shaping up at each position. I’ll attempt to highlight where the tiers fall at each position, areas of the draft that you may want to target the position and players that I may be avoiding at their current draft cost.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure to read through the first entry in this series, which ran last week as part of our catcher preview series.

Full disclosure, nearly all of my fantasy endeavors are done at the NFBC where both their 12-team and 15-team formats utilize rosters that start 23 players (14 hitters, nine pitchers). That includes two catchers. The analysis will be viewed primarily through that lens but there should be plenty of insights that can be taken away to other formats as well.

On to the first base position!

Here’s a look at how ADP is shaping up at the position as of now. For this exercise, I’m looking at the data from NFBC Draft Champions leagues (15-team, 50 rounds) from the last two weeks. As we get closer to the season and drafts become more prevalent, I’ll start to shrink that window a bit to make sure we’re looking at the most accurate and up-to-date information.

For this exercise I cut off the list at the top 40 options at the position. As we progress throughout the off-season, I’ll likely dive even deeper than that in an attempt to uncover some late-round gems.

The first thing that jumps out to me when looking at the current market values, is how thin the position looks to be as a whole. In years past, first base has been a haven for power production and where most fantasy managers wind up shopping for their corner infield options as well. I’m not sure that’s going to be the case this year.

One thing is for certain, there appears to be a clear top-five options at the position as there’s a sizable gap between Pete Alonso (45.65) and Salvador Perez (79.80), and really Perez is being drafted as a catcher so the gulf is actually from Alonso all the way down to Josh Naylor (94.45). That’s a huge cliff early in the draft.

It becomes a bit more bunched up after that, as options seven through 13 by ADP all land in the 94.45 to 124.03 range, meaning that on average, the top 12 options at the position (assuming Perez is a catcher) are off the board by the early ninth round in 15-team formats and by the 11th round in 12-team drafts. That group also includes three other players (Spencer Steer, Cody Bellinger and Jake Burger) who have additional eligibility and could be used elsewhere.

For me personally, I want to be shopping from that group if at all possible. There are only a few players aside from that top 12 that I would feel comfortable with as my starting first baseman. That means that I need to find a way to devote one of my first eight picks to the position.

So which players will I be targeting at the position and where? I’ll go through the same exercise that I did at the catcher position to see which players I’m much higher on than the market as a whole. The first name that pops off for me is Freddie Freeman. He’s the top overall first baseman on my board, but I’m not sure there’s enough of a value for me to be actively targeting him in the first round. Depending on how the rest of by draft board plays out though, he’ll definitely be an option for me if he’s there in the second round.

The first screaming value on the board, at least as of now, looks to be Christian Walker. He’s the eighth player on the board based on ADP with an ADP of 105.33 and a min pick of 89. He’s the fifth ranked player at the position on my board, and bunched really closely to my fourth option, Pete Alonso.

Now it’s very possible that the move to the Astros will cause a shift in his ADP and Walker will begin to rise up draft boards. He would need to rise pretty significantly though for him not to be the top value on my board at the position. He looks like a player that I would actively target around his min pick. For this exercise, if I’m picking in the middle of the draft at pick eight, I would be looking his way in the sixth round at pick 83, not being afraid to set a new min pick to grab him.

It looks like I’m slightly higher than the market on Cody Bellinger, but it’s not enough to make him an active target for me. Astonishingly, the next player that looks like he should be a target for me is old faithful and 2024 mega disappointment Paul Goldschmidt. Again, he’s a player that could move up in the market with the move to the Yankees and the much more favorable home ballpark. It still looks like I’m going to be the high man on him though.

In a case like this where there are two players that I’m so much higher on than the market, what I would normally attempt to do is land both of them – Walker at first base and Goldschmidt as my corner infielder. If for whatever reason I miss on Walker, I would still be comfortable with Goldschmidt as by starter at first base, or could also target Bellinger to pair with him.

But where should I be targeting Goldschmidt? A fine question indeed. As of now, his ADP sits at 202.9 with a min pick of 132. Even that min pick of 132 puts him outside of that top-12 cliff (124.03) that we looked at earlier, though it’s much earlier than his ADP. I think this one would depend on whether or not I was able to land Walker in the sixth round. If I had Walker in tow already, I would probably be more willing to try to game the ADP a bit and get Goldschmidt at an even greater discount as opposed to jumping him around the min pick.

Once again, if we’re looking at this from the eighth pick in the draft, if I had Walker already I’d probably be looking at Goldschmidt in the 10th (pick 143) or the 11th round (pick 158). If I didn’t already have Walker and say I missed on Bellinger, I would happily take Goldschmidt in the ninth (pick 128) and set a new min pick.

There are other guys mixed in here that will still be on my draft board, meaning that I would be fine taking them at cost, but those are my top targets. The next guy on the list that looks like a tremendous value to me would be Michael Busch. How I attacked him though would depend entirely on how the position has played out for me to that point. As of now, his ADP sits at 244 with a min pick of 188. Let’s examine the possible scenarios.

If I was successful in getting Walker in the sixth round and also landed Goldschmidt in the 11th round as my corner infielder, I wouldn’t be pressing the issue on Busch to fill my utility spot. He’s still a great value, but I’d be looking his way more in the 14th-16th rounds (picks 203, 218, 233) depending on what other positions I need at the time and how the rest of the draft has played out for me.

If I miss on Walker but hit on Goldschmidt in the ninth round, I’d be fine targeting Busch around his min pick in the 13th round (pick 188) or in the 14th (pick 203). If something crazy happened and I missed on Walker, Bellinger and Goldschmidt and still didn’t have a first baseman, I’d consider jumping Busch even higher than his min pick in the 12th round at pick 173 if I didn’t like anything else on the board at the time. More likely though, I’d still try to get him in the 13th (pick 188).

Remember, this is just the draft plan as of now, at current draft prices. Things are going to shift up and down as we progress closer to our big drafts in March and we’ll continue to monitor and update the draft plan as we go. Things also could change as we progress through other positions and find different pockets of value at different positions.

Hopefully at some point in my ramblings here you were able to at least glean some valuable information that you can take with you when attempting to craft your draft plan for the upcoming season. If you perform the same types of exercises at every position, know the player pool forward and backwards and know in which pockets of the draft you’re more likely to target each position, then you’re already a few steps ahead of the competition and well on your way to competing for a league title.