We’re moving along with the Shuffle Up series — my version of tiered rankings — for the new fantasy baseball draft season. The dollar values you’ll see below are unscientific in nature but reflect how I see the clusters of talent for players that qualify in the corner infield (first base, third base or both).
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Have some disagreements? Good, that’s why we have a game. I welcome your reasoned disagreement over at X (@scott_pianowski) or on Blue Sky (@pianow.bsky.social).
Corner Infield Overview
You’ll find a lot of back-nine players in the corner infield spots, which is why I think you need to address these positions more proactively than perhaps you did a few years back. It was a messy year for first base last season, and third base also has some players who make me nervous.
Tier 1: The Big Tickets
Kid Guerrero’s takeoff hasn’t been linear through six seasons, but let’s respect that he just posted the second-best year of his career, with a juicy 165 OPS+ and positive impact in four categories. He’s stepping into his age-26 season, which often coincides with peak performance. So long as you accept the 48 home runs from 2021 as an unrepeatable outlier, Guerrero feels like an easy player to project, a high-floor candidate with plenty of plausible upside. He’s also been notably durable for five years, missing just 12 games over that period.
I’ll probably be underweight on Freeman during draft season and that hurts, because I’ve been an enormous Freeman fan his entire career. And his disappointing 2024 regular season (no one forgets the World Series heroics) came as an excused absence — he had ankle and thumb injuries, along with a cruel off-field distraction (his young son is dealing with Guillian-Barre syndrome). The Los Angeles lineup offers plenty of buoyancy, but Freeman steps into his age-35 season, so last year’s power and average drops could be seen as expected skill erosion. Player development isn’t always linear in the front half of a career, but skill leakage has a more reliable trend line.
Ramírez is a five-category monster at a notoriously thin position; sounds like first-round fun to me. Ramírez will shut down the running sooner or later, but that wasn’t a problem in his age-31 season. Cleveland was 14th in runs scored last year, which is probably close to the floor.
I don’t know if it’s particularly predictive, but Olson has been much better in his odd-numbered seasons, and surely the Braves can’t have the lousy injury luck that they had in 2024 (it didn’t affect Olson, but the overall lineup stability was wrecked). Olson’s average has bounced around, but a projection of something about .250 with 30-40 homers is a safe (and fun) place to start.
Tier 2: Legitimate Building Blocks
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$27 Jazz Chisholm Jr.
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$27 Pete Alonso
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$25 Manny Machado
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$25 Christian Walker
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$23 Josh Naylor
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$20 Mark Vientos
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$19 Cody Bellinger
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$18 Alex Bregman
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$17 Spencer Steer
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$16 Jordan Westburg
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$16 Junior Caminero
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$15 Royce Lewis
The Bregman signing completed a strong offseason for the Red Sox, as they decided to stop acting like a small-market team. The contract was creative (opt-outs, deferred money) and although there’s been mild attrition to Bregman’s bat, he’s still a plus offensive player who does a lot of things well. He’s also a .375 career hitter in Fenway, for whatever that small sample matters to you. The expected second-base shift shouldn’t be a problem, and Bregman obviously has a rapport with manager Alex Cora.
Alonso’s best landing spot was always the return to New York, given the depth of that lineup. Still, he could be at the crossroads of his career. He’s merely batted .229 (with a .324 OBP) over the last two years, he obviously won’t run much and it’s likely the last few months of uncertainty have offered some unwelcome stress.
Much like Byron Buxton, Lewis is an uber-talent who can’t be counted on to play a full schedule — it’s been just 58 and 82 games the last two years. It’s a crying shame, because what he’s done in the majors over essentially a full season adds up to .268-81-33-104-6. This could be a top-10 MVP guy in a full season, but there have been enough maladies that we have to price it into his expected draft slot.
Right now Vientos slots as the No. 5 bat in the New York lineup, with three OBP overlords in front of him. Statcast didn’t completely validate his 2024 breakout, though his hard-hit metrics were good. I don’t think he’s in danger of losing his gig, even if there’s a slow start. You won’t find a more affordable 100 RBI.
Tier 3: Talk Them Up, Talk Them Down
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$15 Vinnie Pasquantino
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$15 Jake Burger
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$14 Triston Casas
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$14 Yainer Díaz
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$13 Eugenio Suárez
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$13 Alec Bohm
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$12 Paul Goldschmidt
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$11 Yandy Díaz
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$10 Nolan Arenado
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$10 Isaac Paredes
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$9 Luis Arráez
Burger is probably a better fantasy player than a real-life guy, as last year’s 103 OPS+ is slightly above the league mean. But the lineup swap from Miami to Texas is a significant one, he also qualifies at third base and he’s a solid power source with an expected average that shouldn’t hurt you. With an ADP outside the top 120, Burger has settled into a boring but efficient fantasy pick.
Pasquantino’s 2024 rates look similar to the previous year, though he did nudge his average and slugging percentage forward. He’s always had plus contact rates and, had he not gotten injured in September, he would have sailed past 100 RBI. He’ll probably be positive in three of the five categories, and the Royals offense is on the upswing. Pasquantino looks like a boring value pick at his current draft price.
Bohm’s contact rate gets better every year and, parked in the middle of the Philadelphia lineup, he should drive in around 100 runs. His slugging percentage was a career-best last year and his career average is .277 — batting average isn’t a sexy category, but it’s something you need to be mindful of while roster building. Bohm makes sense as an age-28 target.
I’m nostalgic for a time when batting titles were a big thing — and hey, Arráez has bagged three in a row. But he’s a low power and speed source, and even his runs-scored column has been ordinary despite all the hits (part of the problem is he doesn’t walk much). While it’s refreshing to see Arráez put the ball in play regularly — amidst a world where strikeouts are common, almost shrugged off — he’s more fun to root for as a throwback than he is to draft as a fantasy target.
Tier 4: Some Plausible Upside
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$8 Max Muncy
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$8 Ryan Mountcastle
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$7 Josh Jung
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$7 Maikel Garcia
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$6 Michael Toglia
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$6 Nathaniel Lowe
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$6 Alec Burleson
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$6 Luis Rengifo
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$5 Brendan Donovan
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$5 Willi Castro
Toglia’s .218 average scares you initially — especially for someone who plays in Colorado — but some bad luck was at play; his expected batting average was a more acceptable .244. Toglia socked 25 home runs and swiped 10 bases in about 70% of the season, and he also qualifies in the outfield. We can work with this.
Castro is a nifty target outside the top 240, as he qualifies at four Yahoo positions and can adequately contribute in all five roto categories (even if his stolen-base efficiency did drop last year). Maybe the Twins need to have injuries for Castro to push past 500 at-bats again, but look at the roster — there are plenty of injury-prone candidates jumping out at you.
Rengifo is another one of those players who often doesn’t feel like a true full-timer but he’s ultimately needed to roam around the field and play most of the time. He’s a switch hitter and will likely bat first or second when the season starts. I don’t know how to play last year’s 24 steals (in just 78 games), because he wasn’t much of a runner in previous seasons. His bat probably is an eyelash underrated, with a solid 109 OPS+ over the last three years.
Tier 5: Bargain Bin
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