One of the great perks of modern life is the presence of true experts. Gone are the days where you’re on your own if your car breaks down – you can call a mechanic. Break your leg? Doctors train for years to be be able to make sure it heals properly. Need to prepare for your fantasy baseball draft? The internet is full of experts who will provide rankings so you don’t need to spend days researching. But who should you listen to? That’s where we come in. At FantasyPros we track the rankings of every fantasy baseball expert we can find, so that you can know whose advice to follow on draft day.
If you want to know the full details of how we evaluate experts, you can find the complete methodology here. The Cliff’s Notes version is this:
- We look at each player’s VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) in a standard 5×5 roto categories league.
- Each expert is graded on how closely they predicted the final player rankings.
- Each position is evaluated separately, and overall accuracy standings are determined by adding together the positional scores.
- The total number of experts participating this year is 69, with 64 qualifying for the overall leader board. (That is, 64 experts ranked players at every position.)
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to reveal 2019’s most accurate fantasy baseball experts. The full leaderboard is available in our Accuracy section.
Overall Expert Accuracy Standings
| Top Fantasy Baseball Draft Experts | |
| Rank | Expert |
| 1 | Ariel Cohen – Fangraphs |
| 2 | Jeff Boggis – Fantasy Football Empire |
| 3 | Scott Pianowski – Yahoo |
| 4 | Tim McCullough – Baseball Prospectus |
| 5 | Todd D Clark – The Fantasy Fix |
| 6 | Jake Ciely – The Athletic |
| 7 | Andy Singleton – Expand the Boxscore |
| 8 | Tyler Thompson – Fantasy Six Pack |
| 9 | Heath Capps – Fake Teams |
| 10 | Frank Stampfl – RotoExperts |
See the full field of experts (69 total) | Combine top experts into consensus rankings
This year’s winner is Ariel Cohen from Fangraphs, who you may know as the creator of the excellent ATC projection system. With baseball statistics being the mature science that it is, it may come as no surprise that a projection expert is also an excellent ranker. Cohen took first place with a comfortable margin, about three VORP points above second place. For context, the top 10 experts were all within about 15 points of each other. Cohen achieved this by ranking among the top 10 experts at a whopping five of eight positions – he was one of only two analysts to do so (the other was Jake Ciely of The Athletic). Ariel was in the top 10 for both SP and RP, as well as C, 2B, and most impressively, he was the #1 expert at 1B. At FantasyPros we believe strongly in the wisdom of the crowd, but Ariel was even wiser. His rankings were more accurate than our Expert Consensus rankings at every position except 3B and SS, and even there he was pretty close.
Congratulations are also in order for Jeff Boggis from Fantasy Football Empire in 2nd place and Scott Pianowski from Yahoo in 3rd, who were almost tied. Boggis was our top Outfielder expert, scored in the top 10 for SS and had three other top 20 finishes. Pianowski was our most consistent ranker, as the only expert to rate in the top 30 for every single position, including three in the top 10 and three more in the top 20. You can see each expert’s rank at every position here.
Top Experts by Position
We also like to recognize our top experts at each individual position. If you combined these experts at these positions, you’d have the best possible set of 2019 fantasy baseball rankings.
| #1 Experts by Position | |
| Position | Expert |
| C | Tim McCullough – Baseball Prospectus |
| 1B | Ariel Cohen – Fangraphs |
| 2B | Dan Harris – FantasyPros |
| 3B | Tyler Thompson – Fantasy Six Pack |
| SS | Adam Rosin – FullTime Fantasy |
| OF | Jeff Boggis – Fantasy Football Empire |
| SP | Bobby Sylvester – FantasyPros |
| RP | Site Projections – RotoChamp |
Breakout Players
A fun thing we can do with our accuracy data is find the biggest breakout players – the fantasy-relevant players who exceeded their preseason rank the most – and find which experts had them ranked the highest. Note that the rankings below are at the position level and ECR stands for “Expert Consensus Rank”.
| Player | Pos. | Expert | Rank | Actual | ECR |
| Roberto Perez | C | Al Melchior – The Athletic | 36 | 12 | 60 |
| Christian Walker | 1B | Nando Di Fino – The Athletic | 31 | 11 | 41 |
| Eric Sogard | 2B | Ariel Cohen – Fangraphs | 57 | 19 | 59 |
| Gio Urshela | 3B | Ariel Cohen – Fangraphs | 51 | 11 | 57 |
| Kevin Newman | SS | Al Melchior – The Athletic | 22 | 13 | 34 |
| Yordan Alvarez | OF | Donkey Teeth – Razzball | 107 | 36 | 165 |
| Hunter Dozier | OF | Max Freeze – Freeze Stats | 85 | 35 | 133 |
| Jorge Soler | OF | Andrew Seifter – FantasyPros | 43 | 10 | 76 |
| Brett Gardner | OF | Tim Young – Brewer Rat | 51 | 34 | 90 |
| Trey Mancini | OF | Nando Di Fino – The Athletic | 33 | 14 | 65 |
| Chris Bassitt | SP | Brad Richter – DailyOverlay | 134 | 48 | 214 |
| Max Fried | SP | Andy Behrens – Yahoo | 94 | 45 | 173 |
| Lance Lynn | SP | Mario Mergola – Sporfolio | 77 | 18 | 144 |
| Lucas Giolito | SP | Nando Di Fino – The Athletic | 51 | 13 | 136 |
| Frankie Montas | SP | Nando Di Fino – The Athletic | 89 | 46 | 167 |
| Ryan Yarbrough | SP | Mario Mergola – Sporfolio | 84 | 34 | 147 |
| Brandon Workman | RP | Ariel Cohen – Fangraphs | 168 | 5 | 233 |
| Emilio Pagan | RP | Mario Mergola – Sporfolio | 68 | 8 | 155 |
| Liam Hendriks | RP | Mario Mergola – Sporfolio | 46 | 2 | 115 |
Multi-Year Accuracy
Finally, we like to combine accuracy results from the past three years to recognize experts who’ve proven they can give consistently good advice year-over-year. You can find the full standings, including multi-year accuracy at each position, here.
| 3-Year Fantasy Baseball Draft Accuracy | |
| Rank | Expert |
| 1 | Tim McCullough – Baseball Prospectus |
| 2 | Andrew Gould – FantasyPros |
| 3 | Jake Ciely – The Athletic |
| 4 | Heath Capps – Fake Teams |
| 5 | Scott Pianowski – Yahoo |
| 6 | Jeff Boggis – Fantasy Football Empire |
| 7 | Steve Gardner – USA Today |
| 8 | Tyler Thompson – Fantasy Six Pack |
| 9 | Josh Shepardson – FantasyPros |
| 10 | KJ – Fantasy Team Advice |
—
This concludes our 2019 fantasy baseball accuracy competition results. Congratulations again to Ariel Cohen from Fangraphs and all our top fantasy baseball experts!
Lastly, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay on top of our latest updates and advice. We have plenty in store leading up to and during the baseball season. Stay tuned!