The MLB offseason has kicked into full gear with the Winter Meetings just around the corner, it’s time to take stock of what happened in 2024 and see what lessons we can learn for 2025. In order to do that, we’re going to go position by position to break down the overall landscape and help find the best pockets of value.
Similar to last year, when I wrote my State of the Union for each position, I’m going to look at the value produced in 2024 by regular starters at each position to see where the most value is coming from each position and identify areas of strength that we can target in our drafts and areas of weakness that we can try and avoid. Last year, much of my analysis was based on the impact of the new rule changes, so this year we’ll just look at the overall landscape and see how much carried over.
Table of Contents
We started with first base and then covered second base last week, so now we’ll move on to third base today. To get a quick sense of the position, I looked at how many third basemen earned $10 in value according to the Fangraphs Player Rater.
Surprisingly, this is only two more hitters who earned double-digit value on the player rater than we saw at second base. I had believed that second base was clearly the weakest position, and it may end up being true as we dive in, but at first blush, seeing that few third basemen earn double-digit fantasy value is surprising.
A lot of it can be attributed to down seasons from Austin Riley, who then got hurt, Nolan Arenado, Max Muncy, and Isaac Paredes, all of whom earned double-digit value in 2023. That left only Jose Ramirez, Rafael Devers, Manny Machado, Alec Bohm, and Jake Burger as the five third basemen to earn double-digit value in each of the last two seasons. However, I should note that both Gunnar Henderson and Spencer Steer also earned double-digit value in both seasons but didn’t play any third base in 2024 and won’t have third base eligibility for 2025.
Rebound seasons from Eugenio Suarez and Matt Chapman put them both in the group that posted double-digit fantasy value but this is shaping up to be another top-heavy position with a handful of question marks outside of the elite hitetrs. However, Jazz Chisholm picking up third base eligibility last year gives this position a little more depth at the top.
Category Breakdown
Now we’ll see what value the third base position provided in each standard category in a Roto 5×5 league. I sorted by…