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USATSI

First base should be the best position in Fantasy. It should be the easiest position for real MLB teams to fill, and for most of baseball history, it was. Just take your hulk-iest, slugging-iest big dude, give him an extra-large mitt, and send him out there. Your first baseman is just here to mash. 

But first basemen aren't quite mashing like they used to, are they? For every season from 2020 through 2023, first baseman collectively had at least a 110 wRC+, and only three times in 23 seasons in FanGraphs.com's database did first baseman hit to worse than a 110 mark. 2024 was, of course, one of those three seasons, with the 107 wRC+ first basemen put up in 2024 the worst of any season in at least the last 23.

And I'm not sure I have a good explanation for why it's happened. I have a couple of theories, though, one structural and one cyclical.

The structural issue is one you might be thinking of: The universal DH has simply shifted some former 1B over to the DH pool. I think there's something to that theory; designated hitters had a 108 wRC+ in 2024, the best mark since 2018 and a mark bested by only five seasons since 2002 total. Kyle Schwarber and Marcell Ozuna might have been forced to play first base more or less full-time in the pre-universal DH days, but now they can just leave their gloves at home, robbing us of two potential stud first-basemen. 

The cyclical theory is about the specific talents at the first base position. Or the relative lack of talent coming up from the minors to replenish the position. The likes of Joey Votto and Paul Goldschmidt have faded from the scene over the past few years, and young guys we expected to step up to replace them just haven't hit yet. Here are the first basemen who have ranked in the top 50 of BaseballProspectus' top prospects rankings from 2018 through 2022, and you should notice a pattern:

2018: Brendan McKay, LHP/1B, Tampa Bay Rays
2019: Peter Alonso, 1B, New York Mets
2019: Yordan Alvarez, 1B/OF, Houston Astros
2020: Andrew Vaughn, 1B, Chicago White Sox
2021: Spencer Torkelson, 3B/1B, Detroit Tigers
2021: Andrew Vaughn, 1B, Chicago White Sox
2022: Triston Casas, 1B, Boston Red Sox

Those aren't all busts, but only two of them have really hit. And only one of them is actually a first baseman. I'm not ready to totally give up on Torkelson, Vaughn, or especially Casas, but if you're looking for why the position feels like it's missing a few thumpers, that's a good place to start. 

Now, that doesn't explain all of it because few players who end up at first base actually start out there -- Vladimir Guerrero was (and still occasionally is!) a third baseman, after all. And part of it might just be, with how much better teams are at positioning players defensively nowadays, they are willing to live with players at other positions who might have been relegated to first earlier in their careers. In a different era, Aaron Judge might have ended up at first base by this point in his career; in this one, he's playing center field, somehow! 

There's no one answer to why first basemen aren't hitting the way they used to, but that doesn't mean it's just a fluke. We might see some of these trends shift in the coming years, with guys like Jac Caglianone, Xavier Isaac, C.J. Kayfus, and Bryce Eldridge cracking Scott White's top 50 prospects in his mid-season update last summer. And it's not hard to see guys like Rafael Devers, Alex Bregman, and even some of those DH-only types eventually ending up at the cold corner.

But, at least coming out of 2024 and looking ahead to 2025, the position just doesn't seem to be in great shape right now. You can check out Scott White's similar thoughts as well as his breakdown of the position in his 2025 rankings here, while my top-12 can be found here with my way-too-early rankings for every position. In the rest of today's newsletter, we're continuing our State of the Position series with more of my thoughts on where first base stands heading into the offseason: 

2024 First Base Review

2024 top-12 finishers

  1. Vladimir Guerrero, TOR: 0.323 - 98 - 30 - 103 - 2
  2. Bryce Harper, PHI: 0.285 - 85 - 30 - 87 - 7
  3. Josh Naylor, CLE: 0.243 - 84 - 31 - 108 - 6
  4. Freddie Freeman, LAD: 0.282 - 81 - 22 - 89 - 9
  5. Pete Alonso, NYM: 0.240 - 91 - 34 - 88 - 3
  6. Spencer Steer, CIN: 0.225 - 74 - 20 - 92 - 25
  7. Matt Olson, ATL: 0.247 - 78 - 29 - 98 - 0
  8. Salvador Perez, KC: 0.271 - 58 - 27 - 104 - 0
  9. Alec Burleson, STL: 0.269 - 71 - 21 - 78 - 9
  10. Yainer Diaz, HOU: 0.299 - 70 - 16 - 84 - 2
  11. Alec Bohm, PHI: 0.280 - 62 - 15 - 97 - 5
  12. Christian Walker, ARI: 0.251 - 72 - 26 - 84 - 2

It's kind of surprising to see a couple of catchers crack the top 12 at first base, but then you consider that Cody Bellinger and Vinnie Pasquantino missed a decent amount of time, Paul Goldschmidt struggled, Michael Busch couldn't keep his early hot streak up, and on and on and on ... Yeah, it makes sense. It just wasn't a great season for first basemen. 

Biggest Breakout from 2024

Vladimir Guerrero, TOR

Er, "re-breakout." 

Guerrero underperformed his expected stats in a pretty huge way in 2023, leading to plenty of theorizing about why that might be the case forever. In 2024, he pulled off the double-whammy of improving his underlying skill set and coming closer to actually living up to it. But that didn't look like at all a sure thing early on, as he was hitting just .231/.329/.346 on May 4; from that point on, he hit .348/.414/.597 and looked like one of the best hitters in baseball again.

We've now seen two elite seasons from Guerrero, and we've also seen him hit .269 with an .804 OPS in the two seasons in between them. Which one is the real one? I tend to take the optimistic viewpoint for the guy who will still be just 26 next season, but you have to acknowledge an unusual amount of uncertainty for an elite hitter here. Maybe his combination of aggression and plate coverage leads to situations where he's making contact on pitches he'd be better off laying off of; maybe it's his all-fields approach that leads to hard-hit balls to the worst parts of the park to maximize the damage created by his contact. But either way, there probably isn't a player with a wider realistic gap for what you could expect from them in 2025. At least until he does it two years in a row. 

Biggest Bust from 2024

Paul Goldschmidt, FA

Goldschmidt took a big step backward in 2023, but was still good enough that it didn't really kill his appeal for Fantasy. But two years in a row of obvious decline is going to lead to his price absolutely free-falling. Goldschmidt turned 37 a few years back, and while we've written him off prematurely before, it does feel like we're near the end here. If you're looking for one thing, it's that he cut his strikeout rate from 28.2% to 23.6% in the second half of the season and saw his OPS rise from .664 to .799. An .800-ish OPS with 10 steals from a first baseman would still play, and the underlying data suggests it wasn't entirely a fluke -- he had a .344 xwOBA in the second half of the season, a solid mark. 

It might just be a dead cat bounce before the bottom truly falls out, but if he lands in the right spot this offseason, I could actually see myself buying into Goldschmidt as a late-round 1B option. 

Biggest rankings movers from 2024 to 2025

Up: Vladimir Guerrero, TOR; Josh Naylor, CLE; Michael Toglia, COL

Naylor is a weird one because it looked like he was truly having a breakout in the first half of the season, and then was so bad in the second half that he ended up being significantly worse than he was in 2023. But at least he stayed healthy and continued to be a standout in RBI, driving in 108 runs. I'm a lot less likely to draft him in 2025 when he's likely to go at least several rounds ahead of his 125.9 ADP. I might have to pass on a player I generally really liked drafting the past couple of seasons.

Toglia is another interesting one. He had a solid season in his first try as a regular, hitting 25 homers, albeit with just 62 runs and 55 RBI. He's a limited hitter, with a massive 32.1% strikeout rate and a .218 batting average, but there's reason to believe he could have plenty of room to grow. He had a .250 xBA in 2024, and that's something you'd expect him to live up to playing half his games at Coors Field, the greatest batting average inflating venue in baseball history. Toglia has legitimate plus-pop and was actually better on the road than at home. I think there might be legitimate breakout potential here if the Rockies just get out of the way and let him play every day. 

Down: Spencer Torkelson, DET; Paul Goldschmidt, FA; Christian Encarnacion-Strand, CIN

I'll admit, I was pretty much all-in on Torkelson as a top-10 first baseman last season. His underlying numbers were terrific in 2023, and he started to live up to them in a big way in his breakout second half. But he took a big step back in basically every way possible in 2024, and he has significant enough contact issues that, at this point, I think it's reasonable to assume he won't ever figure it out. I'm not giving up on him entirely, but the range of likely outcomes for him has certainly shifted in the wrong direction, especially with a home park that is never going to do him any favors. 

Encarnacion-Strand was one of those prospects who always put up way better numbers than the scouting reports would make you think. We haven't seen enough of him at the MLB level to say for sure whether the scouting skepticism will work out, but I do worry his pitch recognition might be too bad to allow him to be much more than a one-dimensional power hitter. It's a relatively small sample size across parts of two seasons after he suffered a season-ending hand injury in late April, but his 37.8% chase rate in the majors is nearly 10 percentage points worse than the league average so far. There are a few hitters who still manage to thrive despite similar chase rates -- Nick Castellanos and Salvador Perez are probably the most optimistic examples -- and Encarnacion-Strand will have a very favorable home park to back him up as long as he stays in Cincinnati. I'm not giving up on CES and will probably draft him if his price falls enough to where he's clearly a corner infield option, but it feels like an extremely risky profile at this point.  

Offseason preview

Who needs an upgrade most? 

Would you believe me if I said the Yankees won the AL East despite getting the worst production from their 1B spot of any team in the majors? The Astros, Orioles, and Tigers also stand out among contenders who could use a first base upgrade, though the Tigers seem likely to give Spencer Torkelson one last chance to prove himself. The Rangers, Pirates, Giants, and Reds all need better production from their first basemen in 2025 if they want to take the step forward all four clearly want to, though the Reds at least have some in-house options to consider. 

Top impending free agents

Alonso's free agency will be one of the most interesting storylines of the offseason, and with Scott Boras representing him, it seems pretty unlikely he's going to sign before the spring. And it seems pretty unlikely he's going to get the $200-million contract he's looking for. However, he's also the only one of those listed who is below the age of 32, so it's not like any of the "discount" options is likely to be a better bet.

(Note: You could also include Cody Bellinger here if he opts out of his contract, though any team signing him would likely be looking to him as an outfielder with positional flexibility rather than purely as a first baseman). 

Trade candidates

I don't really think there's much chance the Blue Jays actually trade Guerrero, but he will be a free agent after next season, and there were plenty of rumors about a trade at the deadline, even if there doesn't appear to actually have been much smoke there. The Blue Jays would have to opt for a full-on rebuild if they moved Guerrero, and I imagine they'd rather give it one more go with their franchise centerpiece before deciding to move him, especially with how little impending free agents seem to fetch via trade these days.

Mountcastle is a bit of wish-casting on my part, though the Orioles probably need to start consolidating their roster. And Mountcastle is older than the rest of their core and isn't quite as impactful as some of the younger guys. But I'd also like to see what he could be capable of without Baltimore's massive left field holding his power potential back; he has underperformed his xwOBA by at least 19 points in three straight seasons. I still think Mountcastle could be a 25-homer, 100-RBI guy in the right circumstances. 

Top 2025 rookies to know

  • Coby Mayo, BAL*
  • Xavier Isaac, TB
  • Jac Caglianone, KC
  • Bryce Eldridge, SF

Mayo won't be 1B-eligible to start 2025, so this is a bit of a projection. The hope is that the Orioles will clear up their glut in the corners and give him a starting job somewhere. Maybe that will be at third base, but he should see at least some time at 1B and is coming off a .926 OPS as a 22-year-old in Triple-A, so the hope is he can get more consistent playing time next season than the Orioles were ever able to provide in 2024. He might not even be a first baseman, and he might also be the best hope the position has. 

First base-only prospects are pretty rare, so it's no surprise there aren't many littering the top of prospect rankings -- and the experience of guys like Vaughn and Torkelson, who have flopped as top-10 guys lately, might be making prospect evaluators less likely to give bat-only types the benefit of the doubt these days. 

Isaac seems like the consensus top first base prospect these days, and in another organization, the fact that he reached Double-A this season would be reason to think he might have a chance to make the majors in 2025. But the Rays, more than maybe any other organization, want their top prospects to prove themselves at Triple-A before they get called up, and with Isaac putting up a sub-.700 OPS in his first taste of the high minors in 2024, it seems like he's probably more of a 2026 rookie to know, unfortunately. 

Caglianone's first taste of professional baseball saw him put up a .690 OPS in 29 games in High-A, so he probably needs to get hot at Double-A in 2025 before we really talk about him as a potential option, too. That leaves Eldridge, then, who did reach Triple-A this season, but has also played just 17 games above High-A himself and isn't yet 20. Which is to say: The cavalry's not coming from the minors. At least, not in 2025, most likely.