In the first few weeks of the fantasy baseball offseason, I love to do an overview of all my teams and their performance during the 2026 season before I turn the page to 2027. Looking back at my drafts and my waiver moves and my categories helps me to identify my strengths and weaknesses and, hopefully, makes me a better fantasy player for future seasons.
But this season I decided to dig deeper.
After doing my own audit of my teams, I updated all my drafts and waiver moves into Claude. I then uploaded the NFBC ADP for March and the FanGraphs’ Player Rater for 12-team leagues. I then asked Claude to evaluate my drafts and my activity on the wire, trying to figure out where I earned the most profit and I were I suffered the greatest losses. I asked it to categorize common hits and misses to try and identify my overall strengths and weaknesses and see if there are any blind spots in my process.
What you have in this article are the key takeaways from my season, both from my own research and Claude’s audit of my team. I hope that my lessons can also provide worthwhile insight for your own fantasy process in 2027 and beyond.
Trust Your Research; Give Moves Time to Breathe
I say this every year, but I guess it bears repeating, especially for me. You do the work in the offseason and feel pretty confident in your takes, but then you start to read other content, see players play in spring training, or get closer to the drafts and begin to second-guess yourself. Don’t do that.
Sometimes it takes the form of your pre-season draft targets and fades. For me, I gave a presentation at First Pitch Arizona on “What Makes a Top 25 Starting Pitcher.” In that presentation, I concluded that George Kirby was just a fringe top 25 starting pitcher due to some concerns about his ability to zone his fastball consistently and lack a clear go-to whiff secondary to righties. Yet, there I was during drafts deciding that I was being too harsh on my assessment and drafting Kirby if he fell outside of the top 10-12 starting pitchers. Obviously that did not work out. I also wrote an article on pitchers being drafted outside the top 250 overall picks that I felt could land inside the top 25. Braxton Ashcraft checked all the boxes in my research. Yet, as I was writing the content, I started to talk myself out of it. I didn’t like his fastball enough. His team wasn’t good enough. Many reasons. Yet, it’s not just that I said, “Maybe Ashcraft doesn’t have top 25 upside,” but that my negative spin on his upside caused me to start to think negatively about him overall, and I drafted him nowhere. Big miss.
This goes for in-season moves too. Most of us have a process for identifying players we want to add. It’s not just sorting by last 14 days’ stats. I have multiple leaderboards that I have created on FanGraphs that highlight stats I believe indicate future value. I’ll usually check those and flag players who appear for multiple metrics. That led me to early-season pick-ups of Casey Schmitt, Curtis Mead, Jake Bauers, Luis Garcia, and Blaze Alexander, among others. But, just as I mentioned above, if a player pops for you, trust it and give it time. Unfortunately for me, I added Garcia and Bauers just in time for them to have 5-10 bad games on my roster. Instead of trusting the previous sample size that led me to add them in the first place. I cut bait and tried to find another trending hitter on the wire. I didn’t want to get caught holding the bag for too long. But it was a bag I wanted. It was a bag I researched. I should have held the bag for a little while longer.
So I’m creating a system for myself when it comes to players I add mid-season based on real data and skills that I believe in. I want to give hitters about three weeks or like 75 plate appearances. I want to give pitchers about 3-5 starts (unless they were only added as a streamer). For hitters, I’m going to start asking myself some key questions that I think can help me avoid these situations in the future:
- Is this guy starting almost every day?
- Is the replacement I’m thinking about adding UNDOUBTEDLY better, or just newer?
- Is the slump luck (low BABIP, steady contact) or skill (strikeouts up, power gone)?
I’m not going to cut a player until the first answer is “No” or the second answer is “undoubtedly better,” or the third answer is “skill.”
Waiting on Starting Pitching Still Makes Sense
I have been a proponent of waiting to draft a starting pitcher, and I continue to believe in that after this year. I’ll have an entire article coming out on research I did that answers “When Should You Draft a Starting Pitcher,” but the simple answer is that my results this season indicate that one ace at most in the first three rounds could be arguably, but you do not want to start loading up on starting pitchers in rounds 4-8, then two or three starters from the ADP 85-160 pocket.
I had Claude look at every starter drafted in the top 23 rounds from 2022 to 2026. Then I compared their FanGraphs Player Rater value at the end of the season with the hitters drafted within about six picks of him that same season. Rounds 9-10 were the only range where starters beat nearby hitters with any consistency; and, what’s more, rounds 5-8 are the clearest loss.
| Rounds | SP | SP avg $ | Nearby hitters avg $ | SP beat hitters | SP bust rate (<$5) |
| 1-2 | 15 | $17.2 | $18.0 | 53% | 20% |
| 3-4 | 38 | $13.8 | $14.9 | 47% | 21% |
| 5-6 | 36 | $8.0 | $13.4 | 36% | 36% |
| 7-8 | 32 | $5.1 | $9.1 | 38% | 53% |
| 9-10 | 36 | $11.5 | $7.2 | 56% | 39% |
| 11-12 | 43 | $5.4 | $5.7 | 47% | 51% |
| 13-14 | 38 | $3.6 | $3.6 | 55% | 61% |
| 15-16 | 31 | $1.2 | $3.1 | 39% | 71% |
| 17-20 | 63 | -$1.6 | $0.4 | 32% | 73% |
Yes, not many of the starting pitchers drafted in the early rounds actually bust, and if they do, it’s usaully injury related; however, they are consistently being outearned by hitters. The starting pitchers in rounds 6-8 also tend to be busts far more often on their own. Usually because they are veterans with long track records that we’ve let fall for a reason or upside arms with no track record (hello Eury Perez).
The same pattern shows up when starters are grouped by how many starting pitchers were already off the board. SP26 went between picks 94 and 111 every year, which is why rounds 9-10 line up with SP26-35.
| SP draft rank | Median pick | SP avg $ | Nearby hitters avg $ | SP beat hitters |
| SP1-5 | 20 | $17.3 | $17.1 | 52% |
| SP6-10 | 39 | $11.1 | $14.6 | 44% |
| SP11-15 | 53 | $7.7 | $14.4 | 28% |
| SP16-20 | 70 | $8.2 | $10.6 | 44% |
| SP21-25 | 89 | $5.8 | $9.1 | 40% |
| SP26-30 | 104 | $14.0 | $7.0 | 64% |
| SP31-40 | 131 | $5.3 | $6.0 | 46% |
| SP41-50 | 162 | $2.5 | $3.5 | 50% |
The starting pitchers from 25-30 have historically been a sweet spot in beating hitter value, and then starting pitchers from 30-50 are much closer to beating hitters in value than the starting pitchers are early on. All of which continues to say to me, try to land an ace early: one of the top 10 pitchers, and then get comfortable waiting for a very long time to fill out your rotation.
Is there enough talent if you wait? Where each season’s top-24 SP were drafted | |||
| Season | Top-24 SP drafted in rounds 1-4 | Rounds 5-8 | Round 9 or later |
| 2026 | 5 | 2 | 17 |
| 2025 | 6 | 2 | 16 |
| 2024 | 5 | 3 | 16 |
| 2023 | 5 | 5 | 14 |
| 2022 | 7 | 4 | 13 |
Additionally, if you do wait to fill your rotation and you’re trying to break ties between a few names, it might not be a bad idea to favor pitchers on good teams. Kirby (Mariners, 76 wins), Joe Ryan (Twins, 77), Framber Valdez (Tigers, 76), Kyle Bradish (Orioles, 79) and Eury Perez (Marlins, 80) earned 0.24-0.32 wins per start, while Drew Rasmussen (Rays, 98) and Eduardo Rodriguez (D-backs, 86) earned 0.50+. There is some more data to support that, but we’ll cover that in another article later.
Price the Likely Outcome, Not the Best Case
This is a big lesson for me this season. Honestly, perhaps the biggest one I needed to learn. It’s OK to believe a player is worth more than their ADP. It’s OK to believe that a player will take a step forward or gain skills that give them more fantasy value. However, when you’re ranking that player or planning to draft them, it’s important that you do so based on the LIKELY outcome, not the IDEAL outcome. Rank them as if they could get better, not as if they could become great.
I noticed this a lot with some of my early round picks. In far too many leagues this season, I took Gunnar Henderson or Julio Rodriguez in the first round. On one hand, it makes some sense because we’ve seen them produce first-round value and they remain young players. However, their numbers from 2025 did not suggest first-round production. Not even close. I was buying their bounceback, but I was buying them at a price where they NEEDED to bounce all the way back to their peak. The same could be said for taking Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the top 20 picks or drafting Trea Turner in the first two rounds.
Turner’s batting average fell from .304 to .241 this season, and Henderson’s fell from .274 to .227, each with a matching BABIP drop. Gunnar’s steals fell from 30 to 10 and Vlad Jr.'s homers from 23 to 9. But there were warning signs. In 2025, Turner had a career-low 42.1% hard-hit rate, and his 5.8% barrel rate tied his career low. His expected BA was about .270, which means the underlying metrics didn’t support the .300 average. Oh, and he was 33 years old with a history of hamstring strains.
In 2025, Henderson’s home runs fell from 37 to 17, his barrel rate fell from 11.2% to 8.6%, and his xwOBA fell from .374 to .341. His chase rate rose, and his plate discipline got work, but we learned that he had a shoulder impingement most of the year, so we were betting on a rebound. That bet was reasonable, but the price you had to pay for him assumed a full return to his 2024 level. Expecting Gunnar to bounce back was fine, but paying as if the bounce-back was certain was the issue. If we had split his 2024 ($33) and his 2025 ($17) and thought of him as a $25 player, then he likely goes in round three, and even though he still disappoints, he doesn’t cost you as dearly.
After inputting years of data into Claude, I looked at 96 players drafted inside the top 300 from 2024 to 2026 who had earned $15+ two years earlier and then dropped $8+ the year before their next draft. On average, the market priced them about right; those players earned roughly what their ADP implied. Yet, only 24% got back to 75% of their peak value, so assuming the full bounce-back is rarely a good bet.
| Bounce-back candidate | # | Avg profit vs. ADP | Profitable |
| Hitter with 2+ good seasons before the dip | 26 | +$1.4 | 42% |
| Hitter with one peak season | 17 | -$3.0 | 29% |
| Pitcher coming off a full, worse season | 20 | -$0.3 | 40% |
| Pitcher coming off an injury year | 13 | -$4.4 | 38% |
| One peak season + injury year (any position) | 12 | -$6.5 | 8% |
Generally speaking, if a hitter has multiple years of good value and then sees their production dip, they have a decent shot to at least become a profitable player based on their next season ADP. Same goes for pitchers who were healthy all season but just not pitching at the level we’re used to. Players without a track record of production or players who are coming off injury don’t just fail to recoup previous value, but they often fail to be profitable at their drafted value.
The area where I needed to hear this the most was in my starting pitcher strategy. I know, I’m a “starting pitcher guy,” but my draft strategy this year was terrible. Which leads to our next point.
Be More Cautious on Starting Pitchers Returning from Injury
This seems logical, but this also includes pitchers who returned in 2025 and looked good. Think Eury Perez and Kyle Bradish. I had come to believe that, partially because of Jacob deGrom in 2024, if we saw really good innings from high-end starters that we could expect solid results in 2026. For the most part, that was true when it came to health, but the thing I miscalculated was that these pitchers weren’t Jacob deGrom. I was not only paying for full health, which I mostly got, but I was paying for skills improvement as well. That was the mistake.
Coming out of my drafts, I have five teams with Kodai Senga (he was going late), four teams with Edward Cabrera, two teams with Zach Eflin, two teams with Bradish, and two teams with Perez. Most of them were drafted near healthy-pitcher prices after missing much of 2025; yet, as a group, they lost about $145 against their draft slot. Any one of these bets is fine at a discount. A cleaner test from Claude-backed research found 42 starters who had thrown 120+ IP before an injury year. At market price, they roughly broke even, with 48% being profitable and earning $0.2 collectively; yet, they rarely got back to their peak. The ones who threw 30-79 IP in the injury year did best, becoming profitable 64% of the time, and 64% reached 120 IP the next year. Pitchers with more innings during their injured season, who were often pitching through repeated injuries, were the worst, returning a profit just 38% of the time, and only 38% reached 120 IP in the following season.
All of which is to say, betting on solid performance from pitchers who are returning from injury, especially if we’ve seen them return to throw healthy innings, is not a terrible idea. Yet, the damage can come from paying the cost of their previous level and also drafting multiple of them in the same draft, which, you know, I did far too much this season.
With that in mind, some pitchers who we should likely not be paying previous peak value for in 2027 are: Garrett Crochet, Carlos Rodon, Nick Pivetta, Hunter Brown, Cole Ragans, Tyler Glasnow (again), Spencer Strider, Brandon Woodruff, Cade Horton, Blake Snell, Trey Yesavage, Connelly Early, and Pablo Lopez.
Don’t Get Enamored With Hypotheticals and Upside
I just have to tell myself this over and over again. Hello, Edward Cabrera. It’s OK to be interested in upside. We all know that upside can win us leagues when we tap into it. However, upside rarely comes from nowhere. The data shows that it’s highly unlikely for a player to have no track record of success and then emerge as a pure upside player. Even Jordan Walker had a $1.5 return in 2023, so he had shown the talent to produce positive fantasy value, and then we also had prospect pedigree to fall back on.
For my own teams, hitters who I added on the waiver wire who had no 2025 MLB baseline of production had just a 17% positive run of value. Meanwhile, hitters I added on waivers who had at least 450 plate appearances in 2025 had a 49% positive return on value. That could obviously just be me picking up the wrong players, but I did grab Henry Bolte in a few places. I also had far too many shares of Ryan Waldschmidt, Angel Genao, or Abimelec Ortiz.
If we look league-wide, 287 players in 2026 finished with a positive value in fantasy baseball. Just 34 of them had under 130 career plate appearances or under 50 innings. That’s 12%. Of that 12%, many were top prospects who we had already seen in brief stints (Sal Stewart, Parker Messick, Chase Burns, Carter Jensen, Logan Henderson, Payton Tolle, Grant Taylor, Nolan McLean, Chase DeLauter). In 2026, only 12 pitchers who came into the year with under 50 MLB innings and had an ADP higher than 300 returned a positive value. That’s 3%. For hitters with an ADP higher than 300 and fewer than 130 MLB plate appearances, only 8% earned a positive value.
In 2025, there were only 37 players who met the same plate appearance and innings pitched criteria who finished with a positive value, and only six of them reached a $10 value, including Nick Kurtz, Cade Horton, and Drake Baldwin, all top prospects.
At the end of the day, it’s OK to take chances on upside, but it’s highly unlikely that upside will return value unless we’ve seen it at the MLB level before. The longer a player’s track record is with mediocre to negative value, the tougher it’s going to be for him to break that trend, and the smaller the track record is, the smaller your bet on positive value should be. For every Walbert Urena, there are plenty of Gage Jumps and Connor Prielipps.
Even though there will always be exceptions, it’s best to focus on pitchers with roles and solid ratios (Emerson Hancock, Matthew Boyd, Troy Melton) or hitters with a secure role and a baseline of MLB experience (Miguel Vargas, Jake Burger, Garrett Mitchell, Jake Bauers, etc. History has shown us that, in your drafts, a secure role in March/April regularly beats projected upside, especially when you’re taking late-round players.
One Elite Closer Offers Nice Safety and Is All You Need
There isn’t a lot to say about this one. Closer chaos is the name of the game, and recent history has shown that snagging one elite closer, often between rounds 4-7 in a 12-team format, is a profitable move. I’ve taken this approach for two years now and been very happy with the outcome. Injuries are always a concern, and last season I lost Emmanuel Clase to gambling, which was new for me, but I got really good production this season from drafting Cade Smith, David Bednar and Raisel Iglesias early. Maybe I just got lucky two years in a row.
The new lesson may have come in learning to just give up on those second-tier closers. Maybe this is an overreaction to one year, but every other closer I tried to grab from the second tier fell on their face: Daniel Palencia, Jeff Hoffman, Ryan Walker, or Paul Sewald from that final tier. Some people may see that as a reason to draft two closers early, but the data just shows it isn’t worth the cost. Instead, the key appears to be to locate the high-performing relievers early on waivers and just add them, even if they don’t have a clear job. For me, that was grabbing guys like Bryan Baker, Louis Varland, Grant Taylor, Tanner Scott, and Jacob Latz early on and then just holding on. I also grabbed Mason Montgomery at the beginning of the summer and did not hold on. In some leagues, I was lucky enough to win him back with FAAB bids, but I did lose him in others.
When I think of playing the closer carousel on waivers, it’s often bidding on guys like Lucas Erceg, Brad Keller, Phil Maton, Joel Kuhnel and Gregory Soto, whose skills we don’t love but we think they “have the job.” I think it’s time to move away from that. But saves was my best-performing category across all my teams this year, so I’m likely to keep this approach next year.
Avoid the Sunk Cost by Making Quick Cuts or Changing Bids
This is another one that’s not a ground-breaking rule for anybody, but something we (I) need to hear again from time to time. One of my biggest issues from a value standpoint, according to Claude, was that I held onto “sunk cost” players for too long. Unlike one of the rules above, when research/data tells you to add a player, and you give them a chance to perform, there are some players that we add on gut feeling, or minor league numbers, or fringe data, and they don’t pan out. They don’t need to be held as long. There are also some players the data does like at one point, but who take such a big step back for long enough that the previous data should feel more like an illusion.
Based on my spending habits, it appears as though I became attached to players I bid more than $40 to acquire. Perhaps that’s a good note for me in the future to use $40 as a psychological cutoff point if my subconscious equates some value to that number. However, in 12-team leagues, I held Bubba Chandler ($41) for 126 days, and all of Noelvi Marte ($53), Angel Genao ($101), and Gregory Soto ($41) for far longer than they needed to be held. (Granted, some of these bids, like Genao, were impacted by the time of year and how much money I had left to spend.)
All of my bids that were $40 or more earned a positive value 25% of the time. That’s not a great return. I also held onto players who I spent over $40 to acquire for too long 17% of the time, and only did that 4% of the time for players I spent $10 or under to acquire. So, for me, I need to remember two things. For one, a $41 add gets the same checkpoint rules as a $4 add. Also, my $ 40-or-more adds were not impactful enough because I was spending too much on fringe players. I need to be more deliberate about deciding who is an “expensive add” and who is a “flier,” and I need to bid far less on “fliers.”
Veteran Bats With Regular Roles are Gold in the Middle Rounds
We always say things like “the boring players get overlooked,” and it continues to be true, so I’m going to repeat it here. When I analyzed the results of all of my drafts, I found that the veteran bats I took in the middle rounds were the most profitable picks I made. The everyday veteran bats I drafted in rounds 7-20 beat their slot value 21 of 28 times. That’s a tremendous hit rate. For me, those guys were Michael Harris III (on 3 teams), Jake Burger (on 3 teams), Willson Contreras (on three teams), Bryan Reynolds, Yandy Diaz, Luis Arraez, Miguel Vargas and others.
When Claude analyzed my transactions, it found that hitters with an MLB track record drafted in this range earned positive value nearly 40% of the time. That mark was just 22% for unproven ones (hitters without a full MLB season). Also, three of every four hitters I cut too soon were this type of player, a veteran with a steady job. So not only do I need to focus on drafting these players in the middle round, but they deserve a longer leash if I add them on the wire or at the beginning of the season, post-draft.
If my draft strategy is then to load up on bats early, get one ace, and one closer in the first seven rounds, then I should be focusing on alternating between starting pitchers and veteran bats in clear roles in the middle rounds. These are guys who are not studs or “upside” bets because all those guys would have gone earlier. That means, in 2027, we might be looking at guys like Wilyer Abreu, Teoscar Hernandez, Brandon Nimmo, Lawrence Butler, Jo Adell, or Casey Schmitt. We’ll have a clearer idea when ADP starts to roll out.
Avoid the Aging Power Bats
Targeting veteran bats doesn’t apply to all veterans, though. Aging power bats were some of the worst bets I made in drafts. Most power hitters who are still in the prime of their careers go earlier in drafts, so these are almost all later round picks. In fact, many of these picks were either last round flyers or players I took in draft-and-hold formats. But, regardless, most of them were not good.
For me, my most common targets were Adolis Garcia, Tyler O’Neill, Nick Castellanos, Taylor Ward, and Matt Chapman; although, injury played a big role in his struggles. As a general rule, hitters who are over 30 and have an xwOBA under .330 appear to be most susceptible to a decline in their power production. If that’s the only tool they have, they become major risks. So while you may still want to draft Jose Ramirez or Trea Turner for speed, some names that could worry you in 2027 are Ketel Marte, Manny Machado, Ian Happ, Eugenio Suarez, Josh Bell, Christian Walker, Willy Adames, and Jose Altuve.
Outfield Is Not As Deep as You Think
For the past couple of seasons, we’ve been discussing the idea of an outfield cliff. This year, just 21 outfielders earned $15 of value, according to FanGraphs’ Player Rater. That was 19 in 2025 and 17 in 2024. What’s more, only 73 outfielders this season earned $1 or more. If you’re in an NFBC format that’s 12 teams and five outfielders in your starting lineup, there are 60 outfielders being started every single week. When you factor in bench players, there are very likely, at bare minimum, 72 outfielders on rosters, and that’s not even factoring in injuries.
All of which is to say, you’re very likely going to have an outfielder on your roster, and possibly in your starting lineup, who has negative value. That’s why it should come as no surprise that my evaluation of all my teams showed that outfield was my worst waiver position in every league. Outfielders I added on the waiver wire returned positive value for me just 28% of the time and earned about -$38 in total value. That’s players like Lourdes Gurriel, Trevor Larnach, Braden Montgomery, Owen Caissie, Victor Mesa Jr., and a late-season Roman Anthony. Yes, maybe I just made some bad reads in here. I did grab Zack Gelof and Dominic Canzone in a few places, but the data seems to overwhelmingly suggest that the best strategy is to build the outfield in the draft; the wire won’t fix it.
Pay more Attention to WHIP and Pitcher Command
Last but not least, another pitching lesson that I need to learn every single season. In addition to betting too hard on players with an injury track record, I tend to focus so much on stuff and the ability to miss bats that I forget about command. Well, not forget about it, but don’t prioritize it. That’s how I can draft a team in my home league where I get Dylan Cease in the seventh round and Gavin Williams in the 14th round and still have bad pitching categories (Thanks Eury, Bradish, and Cabrera, among others).
This is part of the reason I decided to do lots of research on which command metrics actually matter, and I’ll be giving a presentation on that at First Pitch Arizona, but I also went back over my teams and found that some of my best adds were just steady innings-eaters who threw strikes and gave me good ratios. Parker Messick was a favorite late-round draft target, and I scooped Eduardo Rodriguez, Keider Montero, Justin Wrobleski, Matthew Boyd, Jake Bennett, and Troy Melton off the waiver wire in plenty of leagues. Brandon Pfaadt also fit into that category once he came back with his renewed pitch mix.
Now, this is a tough tightrope to walk. These command-first pitchers tend to give him a lot of contact and have lower strikeout totals, so you do want to make sure they’re in good pitching environments, and you also can’t hold onto them for too long when the contact starts to be detrimental. I held Andrew Abbott, Landen Roupp, and Eric Lauer too long in a few places, and maybe gave Andre Pallante a couple more starts than he deserved. So focusing on WHIP/command and innings can be important, but I’ve also found that those pitchers having high groundball rates can make them a little less volatile or prone to blow-up starts (Sonny Gray, Foster Griffin, Nathan Eovaldi, Griffinx Jax, etc.)
