We all love fantasy baseball, but how can we level up? For many, keeper and dynasty leagues are the answer. The strategy of building a team from the ground up can be alluring, whether for a young, up-and-coming team or one ready to win now.
The biggest hurdle many fantasy baseball managers face is understanding the value changes in dynasty and keeper leagues. How do I value a prospect who is two years away from the majors? How high should a 36-year-old pitcher with an unknown number of years left be drafted?
I hope my rankings provide you with some insight and clarity.
About the ranks
As always, I like to explain the number I rank: 400. I could easily go up to 1,000, but I try to put a focus on the core players. Despite my best efforts, there are points in a dynasty draft where you will have to start veering in a particular direction. I am trying to show overall value, but if you are building a win-now team, you will pretty early on start elevating the older players and have little interest in non-debut prospects. The same goes for a young build. Maybe you decide that you won’t be hyper-competitive the first year or two, so you target young major-leaguers and top minor-leaguers who are close to making the MLB jump. In this case, you are likely to ignore the ranks of Jacob deGrom or Freddie Freeman. So, when that time comes, I would turn my attention from a dynasty list to either a redraft list or a prospects list, depending on which fork in the road you take.
These are also category-based rankings, so they will work for H2H and Roto. They are not designed around points leagues. I also tend to skew lower on ranking catchers. Regardless of your team’s build, closers will always rank lower in this format because of the volatility.
Team builds
There is no one special way to build a dynasty squad, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. However, there are a few strategies to identify.
Win-now: This build is more like a redraft team. Older players will fall in a dynasty draft, and this allows you to start collecting highly-ranked players for the upcoming year to a greater degree than in a normal redraft. You are likely not looking at the high costs of Jesús Made or Max Clark.
Future build: This build is reaching higher for very young and unproven talent. Konnor Griffin would be a likely first-round target here, following up with Jesús Made and more of that ilk. You may not compete for a year or two, but the idea is to build a powerhouse for the future. Despite the temptation, you are avoiding players over 30 years old (unless you use them as trade bait for win-now teams).
Balance: This build combines everything, and managers of balanced builds are likely to pay much closer attention to my list. They may take Konnor Griffin in the second round, but an elite closer a few rounds later, while also taking the value of a Freddie Freeman-type. Here, you’re looking for pure value across the board. Managers of these builds may fall into the trap of thinking they are a title contender when they’re not, but the right drafting can put fantasy GMs near the top of the league for a very long time.
Under 25: This build is what it says (and you can adjust it to say players “under 28,” etc.). You want to win, but also want a team build that has some staying power. You wouldn’t draft the old guys; instead, you’d bump up all players who are entering their prime years.
As I said, there are lots of other ways to draft a dynasty team without a name attached. I imagine the comment section will have other great “theme” suggestions.
Rankings
No dynasty rank or ranker is perfect, but I hope the following list is a useful tool to help you attack your dynasty league.
Tools
► Download: Top 400 dynasty rankings (Excel version)
► Practice your drafting skills with FantasyPros’ Draft Wizard. Perform mocks in minutes that you can customize to your league settings.
► There are many amazing fantasy baseball rankers, so check out what the aggregated ranks of the best look like at fantasypros.com/mlb/rankings.
► Find my top-500 fantasy baseball prospect ranks at www.inthisleague.com.
Follow me on Twitter @isitthewelsh.