2019 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: First Base Tiers 1.0

First base has historically been a position of big bats, but it's surprisingly thin these days, as Scott White's tiers show.

By Scott White

Jan 30, 2019 at 12:49 pm ET • 1 min read

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Tiers, for the uninitiated, are an alternate form of rankings that groups players by expected level of production. While it's true every player is expected to produce less than the player ranked ahead of him, there are points in the rankings where the drop-off in expected production is more significant. And at those points, a new tier begins.

The goal is to give you a clear depiction of the distribution of talent at each position so that, in the heat of a draft, you can determine at a glance which position is the ideal one to target. Naturally, the one closest to dropping into the next tier is the one you'll regret having passed up a round later.

Below are the first base tiers for 2019. They depict a historically deep position that has become surprisingly thin at the top.

The Elite: Paul Goldschmidt, Freddie Freeman, Anthony Rizzo^
The Near-Elite: Joey Votto, Matt Carpenter, Jose Abreu, Cody Bellinger
The Next-Best Things: Jesus Aguilar, Edwin Encarnacion, Max Muncy, Carlos Santana†, Joey Gallo^, Jurickson Profar†
The Fallback Options: Matt Olson^, Miguel Cabrera, Luke Voit
The Last Resorts: Tyler White, Eric Hosmer, Jose Martinez, Justin Bour, Justin Smoak, Ian Desmond^
The Deep-Leaguers: Josh Bell, Brandon Belt, Peter Alonso, Marwin Gonzalez, Jake Bauers, Yuli Gurriel, C.J. Cron, Wilmer Flores
The Leftovers: Jay Bruce, Ryan O'Hearn, Ryan McMahon, Yonder Alonso, Ryon Healy, Trey Mancini, Albert Pujols, Chris Davis, (Kendrys Morales), (Ji-Man Choi)