Fantasy Baseball 2020: Players to Avoid at Each Position

Look alive, fellow fantasy baseball players. It’s time to stop obsessively refreshing Adam Schefter’s Twitter feed for Tom Brady nuggets and concentrate on what really matters—beating the stuffing out of your fantasy baseball opponents.

I admittedly spent more time binging the Astros cheating scandal than preparing for my draft this winter, so we’re all playing catchup here. I’ve found that a less-than-stellar draft is easier to overcome in fantasy baseball than in other sports because the season is so long, rewarding owners who survive the battle of attrition by attacking the waiver wire with vigor. Forward-thinking is also a must, as keeping tabs on up-and-coming prospects can often be the difference between achieving fantasy glory or drowning in a pool of mediocrity. But above all else, fantasy owners should eschew risk whenever possible, emphasizing balance and upside in equal measure.

Whether it’s a player with injury red flags, a declining vet on borrowed time or a mirage whose production is unsustainable, fantasy owners need to be on the lookout for these imposters, ticking time bombs who could detonate your team in an instant. To help you cram for the final exam, here are nine players—one at each position—I’ll be fading in drafts this spring.

I like to sprinkle my takes with a dash of cynicism, so Pete Alonso disciples shouldn’t take what I’m about to say personally. I know he went ballistic last year, bettering Aaron Judge’s rookie-record with a major-league leading 53 home runs in his debut season, but I’m still not buying what the Polar Bear is selling.

Alonso may actually have better lineup protection this year—provided Yoenis Cespedes returns as a reasonable facsimile of the player he once was—but his contact rate plummeted in the second half of 2019 (.235 AVG with 91 strikeouts in 272 at-bats) and it’s hard to envision him gaining readmission to the 50-home-run club, a threshold reached just four times in the last decade. I’m not expecting Alonso to get the Barry Bonds treatment, but I imagine pitchers will approach him much more cautiously now that he’s a known commodity. At his early third-round ADP, I’ll respectfully pass on the sophomore slugger, who fits the profile of a prime regression candidate.

Robinson Cano is obviously low-hanging fruit for critics coming off easily the worst season of his career (.256/.307/.428 over 390 at-bats). Playing half his games at Citi Field, traditionally one of the more pitcher-friendly venues in the sport, and the fact he just turned 37 are two more strikes against him. I’ve heard the second baseman floated as a potential bounce-back candidate after he showed signs of life with a respectable .284 average in the second half last season, but anyone expecting the Cano of old is bound to be disappointed.

Cano’s power has dried up (his 30.43 AB/HR rate the last two seasons is a far cry from his career 26.2 clip), he stinks against lefties (.215 AVG last year) and while the 15-year vet still makes excellent contact (82.7 percent in 2019), he’s eclipsed a .300 batting average just once in his last five seasons. While his name may still carry weight in certain fantasy circles, I’m letting Cano be someone else’s problem this year.

Like you, I haven’t the foggiest clue what to make of Matt Carpenter’s last two seasons. An enigma in cleats, the 34-year-old doesn’t run hot and cold—he runs sweltering Sahara hot and dogsled-in-a-blizzard cold. And to be honest, the Jekyll and Hyde act is getting old. After winning us over with a heroic 2018 (career-high 36 round-trippers), Carpenter trolled us all last season by hitting an anemic .226 with an embarrassing 31-percent strikeout rate (129 punch-outs in 416 at-bats). Back and foot injuries did little to help the cause as Carpenter went from fantasy darling to a pariah in the blink of an eye.

So which of Carpenter’s alter egos should we expect this season—the dinger-swatting dynamo who beat the National League to a pulp in 2018 or the lost-at-sea version who barely made it to shore in 2019? The truth probably lies somewhere in between, though Carpenter’s age and sudden lack of positional eligibility (after years at other infield positions and occasionally moonlighting in the outfield, Carpenter has settled in as a full-time third baseman) both work against him in the fantasy realm. The emergence of Tommy Edman, a jack-of-all-trades who can play anywhere on the diamond including the hot corner, further complicates Carpenter’s standing within the organization. Carpenter may be a familiar face, but his fantasy arrow is pointing down.

If something is too good to be true, it usually is. Nothing on Marcus Semien’s MLB track record prepared us for what was to come in 2019, a statistical tsunami that included 33 blasts, 92 RBI and the fourth-highest WAR in baseball (8.1) behind perennial MVP contenders Cody Bellinger (9.0), Alex Bregman (8.4) and Mike Trout (8.3). Mid-career, Semien made the near-impossible leap from serviceable big-league regular to an unflappable powerhouse, adopting an entirely new baseball identity. Talk about flipping the switch. And how perfect is it that Semien—the quintessential overnight star—accomplished all of this while playing for the penny-pinching A’s, who continue to spin baseball miracles from spare parts?

I hate to pour cold water on an underdog plot this compelling, but speaking as the realist in the room, Siemian’s otherworldly 2019 could very well prove to be an outlier in what has otherwise been a fairly pedestrian career for the 29-year-old Cal-Berkeley alum. This wasn’t a case of Semien fulfilling some long foretold athletic prophecy, laying his foundation brick by brick before finally culminating in last year’s career crescendo. If you’re scouring the depths of Semien’s Baseball Reference page, hoping to find a bread crumb that may explain his out-of-nowhere success, don’t bother—you won’t find any.

How could Semien, the embodiment of average—his career-bests prior to last season were 27 homers, 75 RBI and 89 runs scored with a .735 OPS—rise to such towering heights? Maybe Semien has turned the corner in his career, though there’s an equal probability that 2019 was his magnum opus, a career high-water mark that will never be topped.

Whether he caught lighting in a bottle or if the progress Semien made last year was genuine, I’ll let someone else take that plunge, particularly at his aggressive seventh-round ADP. I’d much prefer a promising up-and-comer like Fernando Tatis Jr. or a steady veteran with a proven track record to a game of Russian roulette.

Aaron Judge, a 6’7,” 280-pound monstrosity, set the league ablaze with his ludicrous 2017, coasting to AL Rookie of the Year honors on the strength of a league-leading 52 dingers. In doing so, he became the first Yankee to hang a fifty burger in the home run column since A-Rod in 2007. It’s been slim pickings since, however, as injuries have forced New York’s power-forward-sized right-fielder to miss a combined 110 games over his last two seasons.

Judge still rakes whenever healthy—a rare occurrence these days—though he’s yet to recapture his rookie-year form, seeing his slugging percentage dip from a blistering .627 in 2017 to a tamer .528 the following year and a marginally better .540 in 2019. Already on the shelf with broken ribs, the two-time All-Star is a long shot for Opening Day. Judge is still just 27 and hopefully has plenty of great baseball ahead of him, but his third-round ADP seems ambitious for a player with such pronounced durability concerns. They say 80 percent of success is just showing up but unfortunately for Judge, staying on the field has never been his strong suit.

Catchers don’t typically have the longest shelf lives but Buster Posey’s prime lasted longer than most, spanning a near-decade as arguably the top backstop in baseball. Unfortunately, that reign ended with a thud in 2019 as the former MVP endured a career-worst season, slumping to a lackluster .257 average, ending his run of nine straight seasons batting .280 or better. While juiced balls led to record home run totals across baseball in 2019, Posey apparently missed the memo, leaving the yard on just seven occasions (once every 57.9 at-bats).

With top catching prospect Joey Bart (.438 average in Cactus League play) peering over his shoulder, the once-dominant Posey suddenly finds himself on shaky ground in San Francisco, adding another layer of uncertainty to this year’s proceedings. An injury-prone (hip surgery cost him the final month of 2018) singles hitter playing on a bad team, the soon-to-be 33-year-old (he celebrates his birthday later this month) doesn’t carry much fantasy intrigue anymore, even at a relatively thin position.

The general public seems to acknowledge that Clayton Kershaw—a perennial Cy Young contender in his prime—is no longer the dominant force he once was. In fact, it’s become increasingly clear that the long-tenured left-hander isn’t even the best starter on his own team anymore—fantasy owners almost universally prefer Walker Buehler, who is being drafted a round earlier than Kershaw on average. Kershaw’s signature curveball still slaps, though his fading fastball velocity (Fangraphs clocked his average heater at a modest 90.4 mph last season) is consistent with pitchers in the twilight of their career.

The crafty southpaw can get by with smoke and mirrors—last year’s 9.54 K/9 was actually a marked improvement on the 8.65 K/9 figure he posted in 2018. But the bigger worry is Kershaw’s body, which has betrayed him more times than fantasy owners can count. The 200-inning threshold—a benchmark he used to reach regularly—is now a pipe dream for Kershaw, who hasn’t logged 30 starts in a season since 2015. At this point it’s not a matter of if Kershaw’s body breaks down, but when. If you’re at peace with Kershaw’s physical limitations and feel you can weather the inevitable DL stint, have at it. Just don’t place me in that category.

There may be some recency bias at play here, but Craig Kimbrel didn’t pass my eye test in 2019. Rust was expected after Kimbrel didn’t find a team until June (with teams weary of forfeiting a pick, Kimbrel’s market didn’t heat up until after the draft), eventually settling in as the Cubs’ ninth-inning gatekeeper. The former Red Sox and Braves closer can obviously still sling it—he averaged a healthy 96.4 mph on his fastball last season. But even with his heater sizzling, Kimbrel was far from lights out in the ninth, submitting a career-worst 6.53 ERA while issuing free passes (5.2 BB/9) at his highest clip since his rookie campaign in 2010.

Kimbrel’s bloated ERA was obviously skewed by a handful of bad outings, but the 31-year-old flamethrower still allowed home runs at an alarming rate, yielding nine gopher balls (a career worst) in just 20 2/3 innings out of the Cubs’ pen.
No stranger to busy base paths, Kimbrel was a frequent tight-rope walker in Boston, though having triple-digit cheese is a pretty good Get Out of Jail Free Card. Kimbrel will assuredly fare better in year two of his Cubs tenure than he did in his Wrigley debut, though the erratic right-hander no longer belongs in the upper-echelon of fantasy closers.

As a rare breed of hybrid player, I’ve always been fascinated by Shohei Ohtani’s skill set and firmly believe the dual-threat 25-year-old’s best is still to come. The question is how Ohtani fits into the fantasy sphere. Each hosting site seems to treat him differently—Ohtani carries both DH and pitcher eligibility on ESPN but exists as two separate entities in Yahoo leagues. Most of the season-long leagues I play in now employ weekly lineups, forcing you to choose between using Ohtani as a hitter (he’s only eligible as a DH/utility player, which is also a hassle) or pitcher. That’s not exactly convenient.

Meanwhile Ohtani’s upside is further limited by his lack of at-bats. Even without pitching to worry about (Ohtani’s recovery from Tommy John surgery kept him from toeing the rubber last year), the Angels never treated the former Rookie of the Year as an every-day player in 2019, affording him just 384 at-bats all of last season.

With the right-hander on track to rejoin the Halos’ rotation in May, Ohtani will surely have his hitting workload scaled back, probably maxing out around 10-12 at-bats per week. Ohtani has proven to be a superb hitter (.286/.351/.532 career slash line) and a more than capable base runner (12 thefts last year) when given the opportunity, but juggling two positions will undoubtedly put a dent in his counting stats. I appreciate the novelty of Ohtani, but could do without him in fantasy.

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