Fantasy baseball: Why history says spend big on top rookies like Jackson Holliday

Of the many debates that rage around the fantasy baseball community come draft season, among the fiercest involves rookies — more specifically, how aggressive you should be in targeting them.

Some owners take them off their boards entirely, arguing that rookies’ lack of big-league track record and often so-so standing with projection systems as reasons to ignore them at their inevitably inflated ADP. Others, meanwhile, will tell you that you can’t win your league without taking those kinds of big swings — success stories like Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson last year suggest that projection systems are missing the upside present in the game’s top prospects, a rare chance to acquire early-round value at a slight discount.

With big names like No. 1 overall prospect Jackson Holliday, Rangers outfielders Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford and Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio again rocketing up draft boards this spring, figuring out which side of the argument to fall on is as important as ever. So let’s get to the bottom of it using cold, hard data: I went back and looked at every top-100 prospect (per Baseball Prospectus) with an ADP (using historical NFBC data) inside the top 100 and top 150 overall each year from 2014 to 2023 to see how they fared in their first big-league seasons.

Obviously, every player is different, and the history of one top prospect isn’t proof positive one way or the other about how another top prospect is going to pan out. They are their own players, with their own development paths, and their results will be their own. But what does history tell us about which way you should lean regarding big-name youngsters? Read on to find out.

Top 10 prospects in fantasy drafts so far in 2024

First, for context, here are the 10 most expensive prospects in drafts this year based on NFBC ADP data:

Holliday is the buzziest name, arguably the top prospect in baseball ever since the Orioles took him No. 1 overall a couple of years ago. But Langford might be the most enticing fantasy prospect in the Minors, a historically awesome college hitter with the Florida Gators who appears on the fast track to Texas. Jackson Chourio seems like he might well win an Opening Day job with the Brewers with a strong camp, while Noelvi Marte is one of some 15 promising young infielders in Cincinnati.

Prospects drafted inside top 100, 2014-2023

What can the past tell us about where you should be targeting these players in drafts? As you can see below, the track records of prospects taken inside the top 100 overall is actually shockingly strong. (Auction values courtesy of the FanGraphs auction calculator.)

Okay, so it’s not a great sign that the most expensive rookie in fantasy drafts over the past decade was a flop: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was basically a replacement-level option at first base in his first big-league season, hitting .272 with 15 homers, and just 121 combined runs and RBI in 123 games. Of course, those numbers from a 20-year-old with no MLB experience are tremendously encouraging in terms of real-life baseball, but substantially less valuable in fantasy — particularly because he didn’t steal a single base.

Which brings us to key point: If you’re targeting a prospect in your draft, try to make sure they’re bringing four- or five-category skill sets to the table. The learning curve in the Majors is real, but even if a player’s bat isn’t ready, they can always run their way into some decent value — especially given the current state of stolen bases around the league. With the exception of Guerrero Jr. and Seager — who was an almost-immediate sensation, dropping into the top of the Dodgers lineup to hit .308/.365/.512 with 105 runs and 26 homers — every other player on the above list posted double-digit steals as a rookie. And it’s no coincidence that they all turned a profit: Not only did eight of the nine provide at least $12 in value, but they actually collectively outperformed other players drafted between 50 and 100 in that time frame.

• Average of rookies: $18.36
• Average of all players: $7.3

The lesson here? If a rookie pushes his way into the top 100 in ADP, you should be pretty confident that they’ll be a very good player — especially if they promise stat-stuffing contributions. How does that hold as we get a bit deeper into drafts?

Prospects drafted 100-150, 2014-2023

There’s not quite as much of a profit to be found here, but the evidence still supports bullishness — with one major exception.

The two biggest busts here, by far, are pitchers. Anderson looked great in the shortened 2020, striking out 67 batters across 50 innings including the playoffs, but he was middling in his true rookie season — 3.58 ERA, 1.231 WHIP, 8.7 K/9 — and things have only gotten worse for him since. Sanchez arrived with even more hype and was similarly brilliant in his rookie season, but he hasn’t thrown a pitch in the Majors since then. It’s hard to account for injuries, but we do know that pitchers are far more susceptible and are a far riskier demographic overall. (Matz was fine as a rookie, finishing sixth in NL ROY voting, but still: The evidence seems to suggest that it’s a far more treacherous jump for a pitcher to make.)

Which is all to say that, yes, I think chasing rookies at market value is probably a pretty smart strategy — or, at least, it has been. That doesn’t mean that this year’s rookie class is going to be chock full of superstars; again, make each individual evaluation for yourself. The point, really, is that betting on top prospects over the past decade has paid off pretty reliably. If you like the profile of a given rookie this year, don’t let their inexperience or the perceived risk talk you out of it.