Safest Foundation Players in 2022

BABS’ Asset Groups provide us with skills profiles. Sorting the players by ADPs/AAVs within each group reveals the profit opportunities. But integrating risk into the process has always been more art than science. BABS’ new risk values give us a clearer way to manage the liabilities side of the ledger.

Now, in addition to prospecting for profit, we can fine tune our roster construction efforts by managing our player selection within a risk budget. The actual budget amount is yours to set. Playing for this year? Shoot for something in the $30-$40 range. In rebuilding mode? Open things up a bit more.

However, my global piece of advice is — it’s best to play it conservative in the early-going because foundation players are tougher to replace. Let’s take a look at what the risk values are giving us this year.

In a 15-team league, everyone is going to be jockeying for a draft seed where they expect their targeted players to drop. But I want to keep that initial pick — that $35+ buy — to be as low risk as possible, and that means only considering players with a risk cost under $1.00. Eight of the 15 in the current first round ADP rankings meet that criteria:  Trea Turner, Juan Soto, Jose Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes and Bryce Harper.

That’s seven. The eighth is potentially Shohei Ohtani, but only on the batting side. Ohtani the pitcher has a risk cost of $5.00, which is high, particularly for a first-rounder. Whether or not you want him to anchor your roster will depend upon how you plan to use him, and what your league’s rules allow.

Should you miss out on that octet, you will be hard-pressed to find many low-risk options. Remember that risky players in the Top 60/$20-plus incur an additional penalty, so you have to take that into account. Kyle Tucker is your next best choice at $2.00. The rest of the first round players have risk costs of $3.00 or more.

If you’re stuck with a higher risk first-rounder, you can temper the pain in the remaining four rounds. Here are the players who have risk value of $1.00 or less in rounds 2, 3 and 4:

ROUND 2
Freddie Freeman
Rafael Devers
Manny Machado
Cedric Mullins
Marcus Semien
Whit Merrifield
Brandon Woodruff
Zach Wheeler

ROUND 3
Trevor Story
Matt Olson
Xander Bogaerts
Liam Hendriks
Josh Hader
Sandy Alcantara
Aaron Nola
Robbie Ray

ROUND 4
Paul Goldschmidt
Tyler O’Neill
Austin Riley
JT Realmuto
Pete Alonso
Nick Castellanos
Freddy Peralta
Kevin Gausman
Raisel Iglesias

Three important points:

1. These are not recommendations of who you should draft in these rounds, only their market costs. If you are going to pay market value, these are the least risky options.
2. These are not NO-risk players, only those with the fewest back marks that we know about now.
3. Low risk does not mean high skill. You might look at Kevin Gausman and decide that he’s not going to put up the numbers in Toronto that the market expects, and pass, despite the low risk.

Conceivably, you could come out of Round 4 with $1.00 or less applied to your risk budget, which is a huge start. From there, you can start taking more educated risks and build upside with more easily replaceable players.