2023 Best BABS Targets

by Pat Cloghessy

What does investing have to do with fantasy baseball? Quite a bit, in fact. During any type of draft, we are investing in players. Players attain a certain market value. This value is based on past performance, projected future performance, age, skills, etc. You get the idea. By its very nature, a market can contain inefficiencies. Take this, from Investopedia:

• An inefficient market is one that does not succeed in incorporating all available information into a true reflection of an asset’s fair price.
• Market inefficiencies exist due to information asymmetries, transaction costs, market psychology, and human emotion, among other reasons.
• As a result, some assets may be over- or under-valued in the market, creating opportunities for excess profits.

Identifying market inefficiencies is not always easy, but if you can spot them, “excess profits” are there for the taking. 

Enter BABS. A cursory view of her database brings potential profit centers into relief. BABS actually does make this exercise easy. It’s one of her best assets.  

Batters who hit for both power and average are winning players. This tends to make them very expensive at the draft table. Rafael Devers and Manny Machado. Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Riley. These are a few of your 30 HR/100 RBI/.280 BA types. None of them escape the 2nd round very often. 

Nick Castellanos (PW,AV) had a (by his standards) dreadful first season with the Phillies. Nonetheless, BABS likens his skillset to those cornerstone bats mentioned above. He is 100(!) picks cheaper than the lot of them. Nick’s poor performance in 2022 has probably caused many drafters to avoid him altogether, resulting in an inefficient market price. Don’t underrate human emotion. And don’t fade BABS. Castellanos’ name may as well be flashing in neon lights. Is he going to be Devers or Goldy? Doesn’t really matter. If he is, we’re swimming in profit. If he falls short of that, it’s not that difficult to break even. Easy pickins for astute readers of this site. 

George Springer (PW,AV) is in the same boat, just a bit more expensive (ADP 81). Still a deep discount for those assets. 

Quick, find a bat with no risk score, and a power/average asset pairing. Who did you turn up? Vlad, Jr.? Nolan Arenado? Excellent choices. They bring a nice (p,AV) mix to the table, but pay up. The market values these bats in the first three rounds. Jose Abreu, not so much. BABS tabs him with the same assets. Where is the love? Jose has probably dropped in part due to his paltry power output in 2022. Some metrics were down, and he is getting older. But other metrics were up (hard hit %, xBA). He hit fewer balls in the air, the lowest percentage of his career. Is this an indicator of aging? Maybe. BABS doesn’t see a huge dropoff.  In fact his projected assets (p,AV) are right in line with career output. First base is rather thin this season. 

Abreu isn’t the only power/batting effectiveness bat who seems to have fallen out of favor. Ketel Marte (p,AV) is one of only seven keystoners who can claim that asset pairing. Marte’s slot (ADP 210) is significantly lower than any of the other six. Since finishing 4th in NL MVP voting in 2019, Marte hasn’t even sniffed that level of production, but he still owns the skills. Entering his age 29 season, Ketel is still in his prime years. Nabbing those assets at that slot at this position feels almost criminal. NCIS:BABS; streaming soon on Paramount+. 

“I’d like to get Marcus Semien’s stats in the 19th round”.

“Are you drunk, or insane”?

“I’m a BABSian, we think it might be possible”.

Semien is a triple-asset threat. Those traits don’t come cheap when they come together. Except maybe in the case of Nick Gordon (p,SB,a). Same assets as Semien, except 250 picks later. Gordon isn’t without questions, but at that price who cares? This one fits squarely in the “information asymmetry” basket. BABS has the info, others clearly don’t. 

Thus far, we’ve encountered minimal risk in our quest to unearth market inefficiencies. It gets a bit hairy for pitchers, but that’s in their nature. Arms that throw in the upper 90s are not anti-fragile. Nick Lodolo (ER,KK) fits this mold. Big skills and injury downside. The upside: Lodolo sports approximate attributes to aces like Verlander, Nola, Woodruff and many others. The teeth of many fantasy rotations will be built upon these assets. Most will be drafted between the 2nd and 6th rounds. Lodolo is still available in the late 9th in many drafts. 

Digging deeper, Jordan Montgomery (ER,k) proved to be a fantastic acquisition for the Cardinals last season. Julio Urias and Zack Wheeler are similarly skilled. You can wait on Montgomery. A full 115 picks after Urias/Wheeler. The market doesn’t appear to be buying Jordan’s stellar 2nd half (he did slow a bit at the end of September). Good, let everyone else sour on him. The skills are still there, and at that point in the draft, he’s a back end rotation guy with room for more. 

Blake Snell (ER,K+), pictured, can be maddening. But he can also be Gerrit Cole. Blasphemy? Nah, just market inefficiency. Snell has frustrated fantasy managers long enough for you to get an ace-caliber lefty at pick 125, which is a bit crazy. Few possess his skills, and he might not be as risky as the consensus valuation indicates. 

The BABS database is beautiful in its simplicity. Names like these pop up all over the place. It might seem counterintuitive at times. But we don’t want groupthink. We’re here, in this space, for leverage. We’re here to mine for market inefficiencies. The wisdom of the crowd can sometimes lead down the wrong path. Ignore the peer pressure. And remember:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then you fight you, then you win.”

NOTES: The ratings in the above analysis may vary slightly from the latest database update which was run after this analysis was written. To engage with other readers on this topic, head over to the Reader Forums. If you have a question that would be best answered by one of our experts and benefit everyone, submit it on our Contact Page and put MAILBAG in the Subject Line.