The 2025 MLB season officially got underway with the Cubs and Dodgers in Japan, but we’re still in the thick of fantasy baseball draft season. With that in mind, we decided to pull together the Rotoworld Baseball staff to get their intel on the players they have drafted the most this spring.
Our fantasy analysts spend a lot of time in the offseason thinking about which players could be poised for a breakout season, whether because of opportunity, underlying skills, or just value relative to their average draft position. It’s one thing to write about it, but it’s another to go out and execute in an actual draft. That’s why this exercise carries some weight.
We hope it helps you leading into your drafts this week.
2025 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Rankings, strategy, sleepers, mock draft results
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ROTOWORLD’S MOST DRAFTED PLAYERS FOR 2025
Bowden Francis SP/RP, Blue Jays
For me, it’s Bowden Francis. He’s actually one of seven guys that I have 100% of through my first 3 or four drafts and I’ve already written about Verlander. Francis was a dominant force in 2024 once he was finally given a full-time shot in the Jays’ rotation – going 4-2 with a 1.53 ERA and unfathomable 0.53 WHIP and a 56/7 K/BB ratio over 59 innings in nine starts after joining the rotation on August 7. He’s obviously not going to continue at that unsustainable level and flirt with a no-hitter every time out like he did in 2024, but there’s nothing in the skills profile that leads me to believe he can’t be an elite starting pitcher for fantasy purposes. The biggest concern here is going to be the jump in workload after throwing just 123 innings between the Jays and Triple-A Buffalo in 2024. Through the first eight NFBC Main Event drafts he’s held an ADP of 262 and I fully believe he’s going to deliver a substantial profit from that spot in the draft. – David Shovein
Victor Robles OF, Mariners
There’s an extreme reluctance from fantasy managers to believe Robles’ unexpected Seattle metamorphosis wasn’t a mirage simply because they’ve been burned multiple times in the past. The 27-year-old former top prospect failed to live up to those astronomical expectations for nearly a decade with the Nationals, but things immediately clicked with the Mariners where he experienced an uptick in hard contact, started striking out less, and ran with reckless aggression on the basepaths….