There is a clear need in the fantasy baseball community for points league content and advice, and I believe with my skills that I’m the best person to fulfill that need. I can honestly say from experience that even the content that is out there for points leagues is typically not good or anything I even agree with normally. What I want to do is completely share my strategies and ways I think and operate, and then you can decide if you feel the information is worthwhile and worth listening to. I believe that it will be, as speaking from my own experience I follow this philosophy and have been successful in doing so. This year I set out to only rely on my rankings and thinking, as the times I haven’t stuck to my guns and have been swayed by a so-called “expert” I have regretted that decision much more often than I’ve been happy or pleased with the result. Even if you turn out to be wrong, it’s much easier to accept and learn from when you at least stay true to who you are and your way of thinking from a fantasy perspective. I’d like to share a bit of background about myself, and I want to do that because it will give more of an understanding and context to my views when it comes to baseball. I do believe there is a ton of value in simply watching games and paying attention to what’s really going on for players. Eye test matters, and can’t be the only thing you use, but I do believe that if you only use statistics and analytics and never actually watch games that your own analysis is going to fall short and not be as complete as it has the potential to be. It does help that I played baseball and was a pitcher, even if that was a long time ago. I definitely think like a pitcher and see a lot of things through that lens, but even hitters often use what they know about pitchers in order to be successful in an at bat. I was only able to pitch up until little league because of a disability called muscular dystrophy. While it cut short my baseball playing days, it never took away from my passion for the sport or desire to study the game. While I was never given the opportunity to truly master the sport physically, I have the mentality that I’m still perfectly capable of mastering this sport mentally with my mind. I want to incorporate this blog into the work I already do in a fantasy baseball context because sharing my strategies with others will allow me to help others succeed in this area and truly make a difference and impact. I’m not satisfied anymore with simply being good at fantasy baseball when I know I have the ability to do so much more with it. In time I’d like to incorporate my rankings and information I used for my own drafts this year. 

Today I’m just going to give my top 10 players from my rankings, and also do a deep dive on a player that I think is breaking out and primed for a huge season. There is one league I’m in that’s much more competitive than the others, and that league has a fab budget for free agent players and operates differently than a typical free points league. So I will also give some fab insights and advice. My top 10 players in a points league are, in order, Bobby Witt Jr, Jose Ramirez, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, Francisco Lindor, Tarik Skubal, and Paul Skenes. Not having Judge or Ohtani in the top spot may shock you, but there are good reasons for that. You may notice that my top two ranked players are far and away the two best infielders in the sport from a fantasy perspective. This year and the research I did made me place extremely high value on elite infielders. For example, the gap between Ramirez and the next best 3rd baseman is a larger gap than any other position in baseball has. Witt and Ramirez are also major contributors in stolen bases, and Soto and Judge are not. While stolen bases aren’t as important as they would be in a categories league, it still matters and is a nice bonus in points leagues. Since there are a lot of good outfielders overall and there are just more of them, early in drafts I really target the elite infielders because they are the most scarce position group overall. There are also a lot of pitchers and a lot of good ones, and many more that break out throughout the season as well. They are also so much more injury prone, something I’ve been burned by many times in the past. In my leagues this year, 4 of my top 5 draft picks were always infielders, unless a player dropped to me that shouldn’t have been available. That is also key, that while it’s great to have a strategy and plan, don’t be afraid to move off that stance if the draft and the way it’s playing out dictates it. I had my rankings but didn’t always follow them completely. While Mookie Betts is technically eligible at shortstop and outfield in my CBS points leagues, he fell to me at the end of the 2nd round in two leagues, so I picked him and am using him as an outfielder in both leagues. The only reason I don’t have him at SS is because I have Witt and Lindor in those respective leagues. While I’m on the topic, CBS is easily the best website for fantasy baseball and is great in comparison to the others. I was lower on Ohtani as well simply because he won’t get as many at bats this year or be as aggressive on the basepaths since he’s also going to pitch again. At least in a points league on CBS I believe it almost hurts his value when he does both, since you can’t use him as a pitcher and hitter at the same time and have to choose. To make it more accurate to the reality of how good Ohtani is, if you have Ohtani you really should be able to get his pitching and hitting points and statistics combined, since he is clearly the best player in the sport when he’s able to be an elite hitter and pitcher at the same time. He literally just proved if he was only focusing on hitting that he’s the best hitter in the sport, having scored the most fantasy points in 2024. His hitting stats are bound to suffer once he starts pitching regularly again, and he’ll have more off days as well and not get the same volume of at bats anymore. So while I actually think he’s possibly the best baseball player ever, I don’t love him for fantasy because of the way you have to use him. If all else is relatively equal for a player, I choose the one who can potentially steal 30 bases and hit 30 home runs with great plate discipline, and is why I’m so high on players like Witt, Ramirez, Tucker, and even Corbin Carroll. 

Finally, the breakout player I’d like to do a deep dive on is Tyler Soderstrom, a first baseman who came up last season as a top prospect for the Athletics. He’s off to a hot start, hitting 0.378 with 6 home runs and 10 RBI. It’s early in the season, but he’s tied for the MLB lead with 6 home runs. It’s too little a sample size to guarantee he’s breaking out and that this will stick, but I’m betting on this being a legit breakout. While it often takes a long time for the underlying metrics and analytics to really stabilize and actually tell us something, if you wait until you know for sure then you’re not going to get him. So with a quick hitting start like this for a player you have to jump in even if it’s not a certainty to work out. I was already considering adding him and did add and start him in a league where I lost Freddie Freeman to the injured list. Then I watched his at bats and saw his approach and thought that looked good, then I wanted to look at some things like swinging strike rate, walk and strikeout rate, and barrel rate and compare it with 2024 stats. There has been an improvement across the board, and I’m fully buying in. His swinging strike percentage has been cut from 14.7% to 11.9%, and while that may seem small he actually went from below the MLB average to being better than the average, which is 12.5%. His walk rate has improved from 9.4% to 10%, which is a slight improvement burt is noteworthy when you compare his strikeout rate improvement as well, lowering it from 24.9% in 2024 to 20% so far this year. For a player with huge power potential like Soderstrom is showing, a strikeout rate at 20% or less is really what I look for. A points league really rewards plate discipline and is a lot of the reason I like it so much and prefer it over other formats. His barrel rate has improved from 13.9% to 17.1%, and is also impressive because his 2024 barrel rate was already above average. The MLB average is only 7.7%. One thing I will point out is that his home run to fly ball rate is clearly an outlier and bound to regress, but even his rate in that category in 2024 was already above average, so I don’t really worry about that at all as long as the rest of these improvements hold up. His home run to fly ball percentage is an absurd 60%, but in 2024 it was 21.4% while the MLB average is 12%. So he was already well above average in this category last year when he wasn’t very good. I’m buying this as a legit breakout, and his new home ballpark in Sacramento only helps his stock. It’s only been 4 games so far, but the ball has been flying out of the park and runs have been scored in bunches. As a left-handed hitter he’ll be able to take full advantage of the short fence in right field, and when the weather gets hotter the ball is going to carry even more. I see a player who has legit potential to hit 40 home runs and be a true difference maker in fantasy baseball. You almost never find a player on the waiver wire who has that power potential who can also hit for average. In the past week, he’s even walked more than he has struck out, which is one of the best indicators a hitter can have in a points league.  I am preparing to spend 10-12% of my fab budget on Soderstrom, and he’s already owned in 93% of leagues on CBS. I was on the fence and almost added him in my fab league and wish I would have, as I could have added him for free. I still view the cost as worth it. The fab budget in that league is out of $100 for the season, and I have $84 left and plan to spend $10-$12 on Soderstrom. Last year there were some players I really overspent on and I ran out of money, but it was my first year doing fab so I learned a lot from that. I typically have the mindset that you have fab money in order to spend it, so don’t be afraid to use it if you truly believe in a player. I am not afraid to run out of money, because I have the mentality that by then my team will have everything it needs, and there is still the potential that I can bid $0 and get a player for free. So go pick up Soderstrom wherever he’s available, since he’ll likely be universally owned soon even in Yahoo and ESPN leagues.