As with shortstop, third base offers plenty of quality options throughout your draft. In nearly every round, the available third basemen represent some of the better values.
Waiting until Round 13 will net you the always-reliable Justin Turner. Wait a little longer and you’ll get everyone’s favorite sleeper J.D. Davis. And that’s not mentioning the high-upside bounceback candidates like Hunter Dozier and Miguel Andujar.
But there’s no need to avoid the more solid options just to take advantage of the depth. Quality bats like Matt Chapman and Josh Donaldson may not win you your championship themselves, but they’re integral parts of winning teams.
As I have preached often, position flexibility is a critical and underrated part of draft strategy in my opinion. Therefore, I generally rank higher those players who have multi-position eligibility, particularly at three or more positions. The same holds true in my third base rankings, where Danny Santana, Scott Kingery, and Ryan McMahon find themselves higher than consensus. And with the DH likely to be universally employed this season, Wil Myers should see plenty of at-bats and be worth owning.
Although I would certainly be happy to end up with either Yoan Moncada and DJ LeMahieu on my fantasy team, as you can see, neither is a target of mine. Although Moncada made major strides last year, his league-leading .406 BABIP should regress (though he has been, and will continue to be, a high-BABIP hitter) which will lead to a decline in average, and the White Sox do not encourage stolen base attempts. As for LeMahieu, a well-below average launch angle has me doubting he can repeat his power outburst, and I prefer to view him as closer to the respectable, but far from star, player that he was prior to 2019.
In a similar vein, I’m not willing to buy that Yuli Gurriel, now in his age-36 season, can maintain his power gains he showed last year. Viewing him as more of the batting average specialist that he has been throughout his career, I’m much lower on him than consensus.
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Dan Harris is the Editor-in-Chief of FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter @danharris80.