After a long, cold, frustratingly slow offseason, MLB’s regular season begins on Wednesday, March 20, with the Dodgers and Padres squaring off in Seoul (the 28 other teams will get things started on Thursday, March 28). With precious little time to go until Opening Day, now is the time to start cranking up your fantasy baseball drafts — and we’re here to be your one-stop shop for all things draft prep. We just recently unveiled our top 300 overall for redraft leagues in 2024, as well as top prospects to know, full positional previews and sleepers at every position.
Now, however, it’s time for something a little less fun: players to avoid at every position. Next up: third base, a position that isn’t quite as perilous as it seemed at this time last season but still should come with a giant, flashing “buyer beware” sign on it. There are several no-doubt, slam-dunk, early-round guys here, and more middle- and late-round targets than we’re used to from the hot corner, but in between and all around there are still plenty of pitfalls.
Fantasy baseball busts: Third base
Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds
ADP: 35
I really hate being this guy, because De La Cruz is as fun as it gets when he’s rolling. Alas, I’m forced to fade at his current outrageous ADP: The guy just hit .191 in the second half while getting benched against left-handed pitching, and while he could make major strides as he gets used to the Majors, there are just too many red flags here to stomach spending an early-round pick. With so many five-category contributors still on the board, why not take one with far lower risk, saving the upside swings for later in the draft when the opportunity cost is lower?
Ha-Seong Kim, San Diego Padres
ADP: 85
Kim’s quality of contact didn’t come close to backing up his apparent growth as a hitter, with his hard-hit rate and average exit velocity both dropping from 2022 to 2023. Of course, much of his fantasy value was tied up in his 38 steals last season, but that’s another place where it’s fair to be skeptical – he had just 12 steals in 2022, after all, which is a massive jump even given the new rules. It’s not hard to imagine a world in which Kim backslides to something more like a .250, 12-homer hitter at the plate, meaning he’ll have to really, really run to recoup top-100 value.
Max Muncy, Los Angeles Dodgers
ADP: 121
Muncy’s profile, from a fantasy perspective, is simple. He doesn’t run, and his three-true-outcomes approach will always limit his batting average. His path to mid-round viability is hitting homers and driving in runs — about 30 and 90, to be precise — and that feels like a pretty risky proposition to me this season. Muncy isn’t getting any younger, and his exit velocity data shows a slight decline as he pushes into his mid-30s. There’s a chance the power backslides a bit, and that’s significant, because it’s the foundation upon which his fantasy value rests. If Muncy becomes more, say, a 25-28 homer hitter than a 30-35 homer hitter, he looks a lot different. There are scenarios in which Muncy falls enough that I consider him — it’s always good to have exposure to that Dodgers lineup — but the batting average sink is tough to build around, and the floor here is lower than I’d like.
Josh Jung, Texas Rangers
ADP: 134
You can point to the fractured thumb Jung suffered in August as the cause of his late-season swoon, but the reality is that the league had started adjusting to him well before then — he posted a .718 OPS in June and a .740 mark in July after his hot start to the season. Jung is a line-drive machine when he makes contact with a swing optimized for power, but the problem is how often he makes contact. Jung struck out nearly 30% of the time last season, and it’s hard to see him hitting north of .260 again if that persists; only seven qualifying batters struck out more in 2023, and their combined batting average was .235. Maybe he pulls a bit of the Muncy trick, hitting for enough power to keep the profile afloat in a strong offense. But he’s already battling a balky calf this spring, and it’s just too easy to see how this could all go pear-shaped — he pretty much has to produce at a 30-35 homer pace to recoup this value given his lack of steals.
