2021 Late (But Hopefully Great) Fantasy Baseball Rankings

Where did the preseason go? We’re headed into the last draft weekend and I’m just now publishing my rankings. Tsk tsk.

But, really, the work on the cheatsheets was probably some of my most intense work ever this year so it forced me to stay focused on that before I got to the fun things like sleepers and rankings. Before the last draft weekend starts, I want to get my rankings out into the ether at the very least though.

I’ve entered my rankings into the FantasyPros expert rankings system for a number of years. I started in 2014 and entered rankings up until 2019 but took the year off last year. I’ve finished 8th, 10th, 9th, 31st, and 12th in the country during the years I can pull up on their site. It’s good that I generally finish towards the top but I’d like this to be the year where I finally crack the top five.

In constructing my rankings, I use the data from my Special Blend projections as well as my cheatsheet-sorting capability and my knowledge of my sleeper hitters and pitchers. I mix that all together and generate my skewed view of the draft board and where players should generally fall in a rotisserie 5×5 league in my eyes.

Outliers In My Rankings

There are about 50 other experts on FantasyPros with published rankings at the time of this article. Based on those consensus rankings, there are a number of players that I ranked quite differently than the pack. Let’s discuss some of them:

  • Cody Bellinger and Rafael Devers are two guys in the early rounds that I am higher on than most. If you take a look at my projections, you could probably quickly see why I like them a little bit more than most. The projections are not infallible but I’m going to trust them here and move these guys up a few notches.
  • Joe Musgrove and Kevin Gausman are cases where I’m trusting my calculations for undervalued pitchers. Based on my research there, these are two of the pitchers that seemed primed to deliver big value this year so I’m moving them up in my rankings to the place where I’d start to consider reaching for them in my drafts.

As you dive deeper and see any big differentials, you can likely bet that it’s because of either my projections or my sleeper calculations. If a player is lower than you expected, it’s likely because of a combination of my projections and just having other players I preferred above them. As I’m constructing my rankings, I’m not paying attention to what they general rankings are so it’s always a fun surprise to see where I differ so much.

Will These Rankings Be In The Cheatsheet Soon?

Oh, thanks for asking. Yes, they will. I’ll be doing my final data-based update of the cheatsheets later today. So if you refresh those pages later, you should see version 1.60 of all of the cheatsheets that have the latest and greatest data for you to use. If any versions get released beyond 1.60, it will be because I am fixing a bug that I got notified about.

Anyway, enjoy the rankings and check out the last update of the cheatsheets later today!


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