Run of the mill fantasy baseball drafts may still be months away, but for those of us who play fantasy baseball the right way, we’ve got our dynasty drafts approaching quickly. Today I’ll be giving you my top 400 fantasy baseball dynasty rankings with prospects included. Each league is obviously different with league size, keeper totals and scoring settings so as you are looking at these rankings, know that I built it with this standard format in mind:
- 5×5 scoring (BA, HR, RBI, R, SB, ERA, WHIP, W, K, SV)
- 12 teams
- 25 keepers
If you’ve got different settings and are itching to see how I’d adjust a few rankings, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter with your questions. Likewise, if you are in a much deeper league (I’m in one with 24 teams and 50 keepers!), I’ll be rolling out my annual Top 400 Worldwide Prospects article right around Christmas. With all that said, let’s dive into the rankings, but first, I’ll tell you about five players I am especially recommend targeting.
Vlad Guerrero Jr. (3B – TOR)
“C’mon, Bobby, this isn’t supposed to be obvious players. We all know Guerrero is a beast. Next.” Wait, don’t move on yet! I know you are all aware of Guerrero the same way everyone was aware of Mike Trout when he came up. The price was exorbitant for both, but just like when Trout was at this stage of his career, I’d still consider his market value to be a buy-low opportunity. I’m not sure most people realize just how great of a prospect he is. This isn’t like Juan Soto and Ronald Acuna or Alex Bregman and Andrew Benintendi. Sure, those guys have been phenomenal, but to be frank, they don’t belong in the same conversation as Vlad Jr. Instead, let’s turn to a few of his peers: Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez. These are three of the best prospects in the last 25 years and it is by no means hyperbole to toss Guerrero in with them. Like Trout, all three received legitimate MVP consideration before their 22nd birthday. All are inner-circle Hall-of-Famers, and while you don’t want to put that on any kid, if anyone deserves that kind of hype, it would be Guerrero. He belongs well within the conversation and you ought to go after him with that in mind.
Vlad: 276 MILB games, .331/.414/.529, 12.1% BB, 11.1% K
Trout: 290 MILB games, .341/.426/.516, 11.7% BB, 16.1% K
A-Rod: 193 MILB games, .319/.484/.591, 9.0% BB, 18.5% K
Griffey: 130 MILB games, .318/.425/.572, 15.0 BB, 17.0% K
Pujols: 133 MILB games, .314/.378/.543, 8.4% BB, 8.6% K
David Dahl (OF – COL)
The road to being a regular has been tumultuous for the Rockies’ young outfielder. He ruptured his spleen, nearly ending his career in the minor leagues, suffered a season-ending rib injury in 2017, broke his foot, has knee problems, and yet, is still a great young talent. If he is able to stay healthy, we’ve got another Carlos Gonzalez on our hands. Throughout the minor leagues, Dahl has terrorized pitchers with both his power and speed. As if that combination isn’t exciting enough, he was consistently touted as a potential batting title winner as a prospect. We saw glimpses of that in the second half last year when he posted an .897 OPS in 39 games started. If you pro-rate that out to a full season, his 48 homers and 140 RBIs should excite you. Granted, he isn’t going to do that in 2019, but the stolen bases should come up to around 15 with his batting average climbing close to .300. That looks quite a bit like Car-Go’s 25-year-old season (.295, 26 HR, 92 RBI, 20 SB, 92 R). You should be able to steal that kind of production in the 7th or 8th round of re-draft leagues this year and for dynasty leagues, well you know just what to do.
Scott Kingery (2B/3B/SS – PHI)
“Seriously, this guy again?” I know, I know. He was a disaster last season, but that certainly doesn’t mean his career is ruined, nor that you should already give up on him. Now is the time to buy just like it was when Javier Baez, Xander Bogaerts and Nolan Arenado got off to slow starts as a rookie. I shouldn’t have to remind you that Mike Trout batted .220/.281/.390 in his debut. These things happen to extremely talented players and Kingery is one of them. We are talking about a kid, after all, who in 2017 had 63 extra base hits and 29 stolen bases with a .304 BA in 132 minor league games. Oh, by the way, he qualifies at 2B, 3B and SS. Bryce Harper or Manny Machado may be coming into his young and improving lineup this year too. You can buy Kingery him for pennies right now so what are you waiting for?
Julio Urias (SP – LAD)
Much like Dahl above, Urias has had a rough go with injuries since he lit the world on fire as a 19-year-old rookie. Let’s take a look back at just how historic those 77 innings were. Here are all the starting pitchers in baseball history with at least 9.7 K/9 and a sub 3.40 ERA as rookies with 60+ innings as a starter: Bob Feller, Mark Prior, Stephen Strasburg, Jose Fernandez, Dwight Gooden, Hideo Nomo, Luis Castillo, Jose DeLeon, Noah Syndergaard, Kerry Wood and Urias. The only ones to do it as teenagers were Gooden and Urias. That is elite company. We didn’t get to see a ton from him last year in his return from injury, but what we did see looked every bit as electric: 15 innings, 26 Ks, 11 hits. By the way, he is over two years younger than Walker Buehler and Alex Reyes. If Urias were still prospect eligible, everyone would be raving about him, but since there is no obvious route to innings at the start of the year, you can bet his owner will sell him for far less than a normal top 10 prospect.
Freddy Peralta (SP – MIL)
Last year, I wrote about Luis Castillo, who you’ll notice, appeared in that elite group above. He had an unbelievable dominator index as a rookie (K/9 minus H/9). Both he and Dinelson Lamet appeared among the all-time rookie leaders in that metric:
Kerry Wood +6.3
Hideo Nomo +5.3
Dwight Gooden +4.8
Stephen Strasburg +4.8
Dinelson Lamet +4.0
Jose Fernandez +3.9
Mark Prior 3.7
Pedro Martinez +3.6
Luis Castillo +3.5
HM: Nolan Ryan, Bob Turley, Noah Syndergaard, Herb Score, Yu Darvish, Max Scherzer
Peralta’s +5.4 puts him second all-time. He will need to improve his command, of course, but the same was true of many names on this list just like many other Cy Youngs who didn’t make the list. You can teach control, but you can’t teach stuff. Peralta’s got it. He may struggle at times this year like we’ve seen out of Jose Berrios to begin his career, but it should surprise no one if he becomes a perennial Cy Young contender within a few years.
Now let’s check out the top 400: