Poring over fantasy baseball player rankings can be jarring for diehard fans of a specific team who don’t pay much attention to the other 29 clubs.
That might be especially true for the legions of devoted, deliriously satiated Dodgers followers this year.
Isn’t this the most talented roster in history? Don’t the Dodgers have a star at nearly every position? Isn’t their pitching staff stocked with more premium stuff than the renowned Thunderbolt bar a few blocks from Dodger Stadium?
Everyone knows the Dodgers’ World Series championship was followed by lavish spending for talent during the offseason. With the Dodgers opening the season Tuesday in Tokyo against the Chicago Cubs, it’s time for fantasy players to prepare.
Dodgers fans might be tempted to simply pick as many Boys in Blue as they can. But a team of all or even mostly Dodgers would be hard-pressed to win a fantasy league, which usually consists of 10 to 12 teams. Players from all 30 MLB teams are available in “mixed” leagues, the most common format, meaning that even a slap-dash fantasy team should have more talent than the best team of living, breathing humans.
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Scott Pianowski, a Yahoo fantasy analyst since 2008 and member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Hall of Fame, brought up another reason not to load up on Dodgers: Their best players might be rested frequently, the baseball equivalent of load management. Players need to be in the lineup to accumulate fantasy points.
“I’ve never seen a team so assured of a playoff spot than the 2025 Dodgers,” he said. “They want their healthiest team ready for October. They might decide they used their regulars too much last year. They might back off on workloads, and not just with pitchers.
“My advice: Draft a Dodger, don’t draft five Dodgers.”
Fantasy gurus assign a number to where a player is projected to be taken, calling it his Average Draft Position. Regardless of whether league scoring uses old-fashioned rotisserie categories or head-to-head points, the ADP of the two most desirable Dodgers establish that it would be nearly impossible to draft both.
Shohei Ohtani is a near-consensus first overall fantasy pick because he’s expected to add starting pitching to