This offseason, multiple important fantasy baseball 1B changed spots. With several familiar faces in new places, there are lots of new dynamics to consider as you rank your options at first base. Overall, this is a premium position with good power potential from the top options, but it’s also a relatively deep position with good options later or cheaper in drafts as well. Headed into Spring Training, let’s take a look at my favorite 1B to target as fantasy baseball sleepers.
Whether you prefer season-long leagues, DFS contests, or DraftKings Best Ball, DK Network will have you covered throughout the upcoming season. To begin our coverage, we went through potential breakouts at each position: AL SP Breakouts, NL SP Breakouts, AL OF Breakouts, NL OF Breakouts, Catcher Breakouts, 1B Breakouts, 2B Breakouts, 3B Breakouts and SS Breakouts. At 1B, I highlighted Tyler Soderstrom, Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Kyle Manzardo as potential breakouts. In addition to those three players, here are three more fantasy baseball sleepers I’m targeting at first base.
Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles moved the fences back before the 2022 season and unintentionally drained Mountcastle’s fantasy value. He hit 33 homers back in 2021, but he lost 11 homers in just the first year the wall was moved back and his power input has declined in each of the last four seasons to just 13 last year. The righty still hit a solid .271 with 63 RBI, a .316 wOBA and 108 wRC+.
Coming into 2025, Mountcastle is excited about the wall coming back in to closer to where it used to be. The fence will move between 9 and 20 feet, and Mountcastle said. “It’s a good feeling to know that you can pull the ball again and get good results out of it.”
If Mountcastle can get close to his 2021 numbers of 33 homers, a .232 ISO and .335 wOBA, he’ll re-emerge as a top-10 option at 1B and be one of the top fantasy football sleepers at the position. He should have plenty of opportunities with a strong lineup in front of him. Last season, he hit in the middle-third of the order, and if he gets even 20+ homers, he’ll be a strong option well outside the top tier of 1B.
Michael Toglia, Colorado Rockies
I think my personal favorite of my fantasy football sleepers at 1B is Michael Togia. Toglia is a switch-hitting 26-year-old who got his first extended time in the MLB last season. He played 116 games and hit .218 with 25 home runs, 14 doubles, a .238 ISO and a .329 wOBA.
A deeper look at his numbers shows cause for optimism going forward. Even though he played about the same number of games at home and on the road, he had more power production away from Coors Field. He hit 17 of his 25 homers on the road with a .328 wOBA and 110 wRC+. If Toglia can take advantage of the boost of Coors Field, he could have even better numbers in 2025.
His splits also show a progression as the season went on. He hit .106 in March and April and only .197 in the first half. In the second half, he hit a more palatable .235 with a .336 wOBA. A huge part of that progression was a major increase in his walk rate. He only had a 7.8% walk rate before the break compared to a 14.7% walk rate after the break.
Toglia also ranks near the top of the MLB in contact quality. He’s in the top 10% of qualified hitters in average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate.
While his K% is still very high over 30% and his batting average will probably never be an asset, he does have huge potential to be one of the top fantasy baseball sleepers at 1B this season. He’ll definitely be a regular DFS target when playing at Coors, but his home-road splits show he can be much more as he continues to grow into a middle-of-the-order power bat for the Rockies.
Jonathan Aranda, Tampa Bay Rays
Aranda is a regularly recurring character on lists of fantasy baseball sleepers for the last few years. He mashed at Triple-A in 2022 and 2023, and the Rays were counting on him having a breakthrough in 2024. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it went down.
He hit .371 in 2024’s Spring Training with a .432 wOBA but he fractured his ring finger, which kept him out until mid-May. He went 10-for-47 (.213) in 18 games and was struggling with his timing with sporadic playing time. The Rays sent him back to Triple-A to get more at-bats, but while there he strained an oblique and was shelved until August. He finally made it back to the bigs at the end of August and hit .247 (20-for-81) in his 26 games over the last month of the season. He added five homers for a .347 wOBA and 132 wRC+ over that small sample size, which the Rays hope is a sign of things to come in 2025.
Aranda hit over .300 in each of his last two years in the minors before last season and showcased good power with 18 total homers in 2022 and 25 in 2023. He’s expected to get plenty of work at DH and platoon with Yandy Diaz at first. If he can stay healthy, this season could be the year he finally breaks out and pays off his potential as one of the top fantasy baseball sleepers at 1B.
