I’m not sure how it was for everybody else but the 2024 MLB season was a return to normalcy for me. We didn’t have to deal with a pandemic or a work stoppage. There were no big rule changes from the previous season and pitching seemed to catch back up to hitting a bit which certainly suited my fantasy baseball style. You’ll hear more about that a few paragraphs down the page. Right now I present to you my annual harbinger of spring; my 9 fantasy baseball draft tips for 2025.
The 2025 FantraxHQ Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit has been churning for over a month now, but this year I decided to wait a bit before breaking out a few nuggets of wisdom before draft season really heats up. This isn’t so much my draft strategy as it is my stream of consciousness regarding what it takes to have a successful draft and ensuing fantasy baseball season
I’m gonna be honest with you. I have reposted this article several years with just a few minor tweaks… until the last few years. Things have changed so much, that I think it’s more than time to re-examine some of the basic tenets I once held firm to… Or return to what has worked for me in the past.
Follow the basic principles below, and with a little luck on the injury front, you’ll find yourself in contention come August. Don’t worry, all of us here at FantraxHQ will be here to offer support along the way and help you seal the deal when September and October roll around. First, you’ve got to get to that point, so let’s lay out the road map to Fantasy success.
Fantasy Baseball Draft Tips for 2025
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Play it extremely safe in the first five or six rounds
Whoever said you have to take risks to win, didn’t mean drafting injury-prone or one-hit wonders in the early rounds. I get it. It’s boring to play it safe, and nobody makes comments about how great a pick is when it’s the obvious safe play. That’s okay. I’d rather look like a genius in September than in March. That probably means you’ll skip over the trendy hitter everyone thinks is gonna break out. It means you’ll probably have to bypass that pitcher with the 100-mph heater to go along with a sketchy injury history. Instead, go with known quantities. The early rounds of a draft are not where you earn profit. Use these picks for safe investments with solid odds of getting your money back. Save your upside plays for later. Speaking of which…
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Let your sleepers be sleepers.
This hasn’t changed much for me. Everybody has sleepers. Even those fantasy baseball snobs who say there are no such things as sleepers; they have sleepers. They just like to call them value plays, late-round fliers, or some other less cliche term. Whatever you call them, sleepers are players that may have big question marks, but you like them to greatly out-produce their draft cost. It’s a chance to make a nice profit in your draft. Profit is what wins leagues.
If you start reaching too far for your sleepers, though, you take away a lot of your profit even if that player breaks through and you feel like a genius for drafting them earlier than everybody else. I still remember a perfect example of this from years ago.
It was an NL-Only industry mock draft during the draft season of 2012. Jose Altuve was coming off a nice, but unspectacular 57-game debut (Yes, the Astros were in the NL then). The draft was going mostly as expected until someone drafted Altuve in the third round.
Now Altuve went on to have a very nice year and probably returned his value, so some would say this guy nailed it. Smart fantasy baseball managers however, know he cost himself a ton of value. He could have safely waited until the eighth or ninth round to draft Altuve and taken a more proven player in the third. So maybe he got third-round value out of Altuve, but his ninth-round pick was just a run-of-the-mill ninth-round pick. It was a great call on the player. It was a terrible mistake as a draft pick.
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Use a paper cheat sheet
But Fantrax and other draft sites show who’s been drafted and who hasn’t. Why the extra piece of paper? Two reasons. First, while it’s easy to see who is available overall, the speed at which most drafts move means it’s not always easy to see how many draftable players are available at any one position.
More importantly, though, you want a cheat sheet with your own rankings, because the default rankings for any site are going to conflict with your values. Your favorite end-game sleepers might be so buried on the site you forget all about them in the heat of the draft. Your cheat sheet will help you stay on top of the available player pool better and ensure you maximize value later in the draft. Don’t worry, we’ll have some printable cheat sheets for you once the player pools are a little more solidified.
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Build a balanced roster
The uncertainty of the last few years has been impossible to predict. The people who built balanced rosters were best equipped to deal with all the unknowns and end up in contention late in the season. Balance means making sure you have solid options at all positions and also not neglecting any statistical categories to the point that you’re not within shouting distance come mid-season.
To help you achieve this balance, I’ve created a little recipe for success in snake drafts. Acquire these assets in the first 10 rounds and you’ll be well on your way to a winning draft this season.
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Draft two top starting pitchers in the first four to five rounds… and then wait.
This is where 2024 was a breath of fresh air for me. For years, I had succeeded in fantasy baseball by drafting a couple of ace pitchers and then relying on late-round pitching sleepers to fill out my staff. It always worked… Until it didn’t. A few years back offense started dominating baseball and it got a lot harder to identify late-round pitchers who could provide value. My ratios were getting blown up and it ‘un-did’ a lot of the good things the pitchers I selected early did. Last season, pitching caught back up and once again, I won leagues because of identifying pitchers like Garrett Crochet and Sean Manaea who turned in ace-like performances of their own. Maybe I just hit a dry spell for a few years but I felt like fantasy baseball turned back the clock a bit in 2024. The things that always worked for me were working again. Now we have no idea if 2025 will play the same. For all I know they may be working on another big change to the baseball as we speak. Regardless, I still think the winning formula on the pitching side is to grab two aces early and then target upside late-round pitchers to round out your staff.
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Draft a couple of good middle relievers in the reserve rounds
This tip goes right along with the previous one. We’re not going to hit on every late-round pitcher. We need a safety valve for when things go wrong. And for many of the same reasons elite starting pitchers have gained value, so have the really good middle relievers. The average starting pitcher is getting fewer wins than ever. Those wins and many of the strikeouts are going toward middle relievers who also offer much safer ratios. The best part? These middle relievers are almost free! Use them early in the season while you’re still waiting to see who your pitching sleepers really are. If you draft skill over role, you’re also very likely to “luck” into a closer or two during the season. Closer rankings were a mess in 2024 and we can likely expect a return to the yearly chaos we see in MLB bullpens almost every year. That likely means there will be plenty of opportunities if you draft the right middle relievers.
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You can wait on the middle infield
I remember the days when the middle infield was Derek, Alex, and Nomar, and then a bunch of garbage. It’s still nice if you can get Trea Turner or Bo Bichette, but both shortstop and second base go 20 deep in useful players. If you don’t grab one of the top few at each position, you’re gonna be okay waiting.
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Do not draft a closer early!
In the last few seasons, many fantasy pundits started pushing managers to draft closers as early as the third or fourth round. I don’t care how volatile closers are. There’s no reason to pay for a top closer. In fact, I’d say that volatility makes it even smarter to wait. Not only could that “top closer” lose his job like any other pitcher, but that volatility also means there will be plenty of opportunities to grab saves in-season. I don’t have to win saves. Fourth place in that category is just fine. Additionally, there is way too much hitting and pitching value at that point in drafts to be wasted on saves. Yes, those managers may indeed win the saves category. Just remember, you don’t need to win saves to win your league. It’s very doable to finish in the top half of your league in saves while piecing together a fantasy bullpen in the later rounds and being active on the waiver wire. Sometimes old advice is good advice. Don’t pay for saves!
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Track the rosters of the two owners who draft right before you and after you
Most online drafts move too fast to meaningfully track rosters of the entire league and even in 12-team leagues, it’s very hard to predict which players will go off the board in between your picks. What you can do is try to keep an eye on the positional needs of the owners who draft in close proximity. It might help you decide between the two players you’re targeting. For example, if you know the owners drafting before and after you already have two closers, you might wait on the closer you want and grab your second starting catcher. If you’re within a few slots of the turn (3rd-4th, 9th-10th) this really comes in handy.
For more of the great fantasy baseball rankings and analysis you’ve come to expect from FantraxHQ, check out our full 2025 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit! We’re here for you all the way up until Opening Day and then on into your championship run.
Great site! I just joined a baseball league mid-year as a replacement after several years out of baseball. It is head-to-head and points. These days, is BA or are HR the thing to have? For pitching, it looks like K’s and wins, and to a lesser extent, saves, are the most influential. Is that accurate? Thank you.
I’m joining 14 Team H2H fantasy Baseball league for the first time ever. I’m great at fantasy football but have no clue what I’m doing in FF. I last watched baseball during Seattle Mariners 1995 Refuse To Lose era with Griffey, Edgar etc. I was looking for statistical advantages as I have no strong team loyalties. What I’m hearing is: Take safe studs early, draft balance. Fair? Elite level players in first 4-5 rounds as a best available, safe bet scenario. Include a 1B and two SP. Don’t get shut out. Sleepers can wake. Draft balance. Middle Relief late? What’s considered late round? Perception of Position/Stat advantages no longer different. I recall Piazza/Pudge being only C with good bats. This is helpful. SS/2B not known for power. But both are deep… in 14 team league with guys that probably care about baseball. Should I be mindful of roster depth at any particular position? What will be hardest to replace? In 2QB football leagues you need 3 QB starters. TYIA~! Cheers
Get some good starters (SP) to rotate, go OF and MI early for hitters, look for 20/20 type hitters in the middle rounds.
love your article. i’ve been winning in sultan of stats jeff borigs’ invitational league over the years but it’s the only roto i do and i’m still weak with roto (i cut my teeth in h-h category leagues and i’m by no means close to advanced). why do you say there are more strategies involved and where do i find your roto strategies.
My comment on strategy is more geared toward roto vs. Points. H2H categories does involve quite a bit of strategy. Points leagues are simply about fielding a team that produces the most points. Of course there’s some strategy in building that team, but in general you’re just chasing points. In roto you might not have the best team, but can manipulate categories to gain an advantage. Things like using middle relievers that are basically free to take advantage of WHIP and ERA. Targetting categories where you can gain the most and lose the least later in the season, etc…
nice article doug!
WHICH IS THE BEST FANTASY LEAGUE TO GET INTO ???
It’s really a matter of preference. I like rotisserie because I think it allows for a lot more strategy from us. Points Leagues probably do a better job of reflecting the value of players in real baseball and allow for more smack talk with weekly matchups.If you’re just starting and have maybe done some fantasy football a points league would be a good jumping in point.
I have to say, I have been in a single league, head to head, 12 teamer, points league, lineup sets once a week for the matchup. At first people think it is odd, but every member of the league has stayed the entire 11 years because it is so much fun.