Second Half Fantasy Baseball Breakout Candidates - Underperforming Hitters To Buy Low

Every MLB team has now played at least 95 games, meaning the season is nearly 60% complete. One trend we’ve noticed this year is a large number of underperforming hitters, especially from the first 10 rounds of fantasy drafts. There’s still time to move up the standings, but we’ll need some of those players to […]

Fantasy Baseball League Winners: Unlikely Aces Worth A Roster Spot? (Week 14)

Welcome back to Unlikely Aces, the regular feature where we take a magnifying glass to a group of surging starting pitchers. We have passed the halfway point in terms of games played for every MLB team, so it’s important to make sure we are maximizing our fantasy rosters. Streaming pitchers can be a powerful tool […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 13? (2025)

Welcome back to the week 13 edition of our Buyer Beware waiver wire series. This is where we analyze some of the hot names of the week and look for flaws. After a run of Top 25-type prospects for a couple of weeks in a row, we have a slightly less-hyped group this time. We […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 12? (2025)

Welcome back to the Week 12 edition of our Buyer Beware series for the 2025 season, in which we put a few popular waiver wire names under the microscope. This week we examine three exciting names that we mostly like as talents -- Roman Anthony, Evan Carter, and Ben Casparius. However, each one of these […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 11? (2025)

Welcome back to another edition of our Buyer Beware series, in which we apply a skeptical eye to a few popular waiver wire names each week. This iteration is highlighted by Royals slugging first baseman Jac Caglianone, who many believe could receive the biggest FAAB bids of the year. I have complained about the dearth […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 10? (2025)

Welcome back to another installment in our weekly Buyer Beware waiver wire series. Incredibly, it’s Week 10 already. There’s an old saying about aging and time: the days are long but the years are short. That’s how this baseball season feels for yours truly. This week, we examine two prospects who were recently promoted to […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 9? (2025)

Welcome back to Week 9 of the Buyer Beware waiver wire series, in which we analyze some of the popular names being recommended and provide a questioning, critical perspective. It’s the week of underwhelming prospect call-ups! We have a pitcher that Pirates fans wish was named Bubba and a former top outfielder prospect fallen on […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 8? (2025)

Welcome back to Week 8 of the Buyer Beware waiver wire series. We have passed the quarter point of the baseball season already. This week saw a couple of high-profile position player prospect promotions (five P’s!), but unfortunately, their teams are telling us by words and actions that the young call-ups are meant to be […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 7? (2025)

I know I’ve commented on the mysterious acceleration of time before, but it’s pretty amazing that in a week, we will already be over a quarter through the baseball regular season. Who knows, by then, Rafael Devers might be closing games for the Red Sox. After a couple of exciting weeks in the waiver wire […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 6? (2025)

Is it just us or is time flying? Reaching week six already means we have a mere 20 or 21 weeks of FAAB (and season) remaining. Just think about it: we are almost 20% done with the MLB season and the NBA playoffs still haven’t finished the first round. Maybe the Finals will be over […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 5? (2025)

It's hard to believe, but it’s already time for Week 5 FAAB recommendations and questions. Just when you thought it was safe to focus on the crusty veterans and turn the page on the flood of prospect promotions, we had a few new faces reach the majors recently, most notably in West Sacramento. That’s right, […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 4? (2025)

This week saw a blitz of prospect promotions across baseball as major league teams look to cover for injuries or provide a spark. That’s right, the injuries kept on keeping on, too, as we got bad news on players like Willi Castro and players not responding well to rehabilitation, such as Grayson Rodriguez. Both injuries […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 3? (2025)

We are just over two weeks into the major league season, and injuries have started to hit. Here’s just a smattering of major contributors lost in the last week or so: Matt McLain, Masyn Winn, Jackson Merrill, Wyatt Langford, Justin Steele, and Zach Eflin. We could go on. Fantasy managers will be searching for answers, […]

Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis: Buyer Beware for Week 2? (2025)

We are now a full week into the 2025 baseball season, so we can surely make definitive decisions about who will boom, who will bust, and who will perform as we expected. Of course, that isn’t true. We are still dealing with very small samples for both hitters and pitchers. That’s why we have you […]

Buyer Beware? Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Analysis for Week 1 (2025)

Ah, spring has truly sprung. You couldn’t tell from the fans in Cincinnati bundled in Carhartts or the Seattle faithful decked in trident slickers, but baseball began in all its mellow glory on Thursday. Winter is going, in other words. And with it perhaps a good bit of our free agency acquisition budgets (FAAB) as […]

Platoon Hitters to Target for Fantasy Baseball Drafts: Late-Round Value Picks

It is so widely accepted as ironclad fantasy law that we rarely stop to consider its validity: avoid platoon bats at all costs, they say. We will not argue that fantasy managers should aim to roster many such players, but as “they” also say, there’s a time and place for everything. It’s true that innings […]

Yahoo Fantasy Baseball Rankings Analysis - Draft Values and ADP Advantages (2025)

NFBC is the platform folks use when feeling the itch to draft in December or January for the upcoming fantasy baseball season. We are now in prime drafting territory for every format and every provider, especially those that host home leagues. That includes Yahoo, which specializes in the head-to-head categories format (though also offers points […]

Too Expensive? Second Base Fantasy Baseball ADPs That May Be Overvalued

As MLB teams ramp up through spring training, fantasy baseball players are likewise getting their research reps in and gearing up for the best part of this game we play: fantasy baseball draft season. Some of us have been drafting for weeks if not months, and one of the clearest trends we’ve discovered is the weakness […]

Fantasy Baseball Hitter Sleepers: Mid-To-Late Round Draft Targets (2025)

It’s a new year, football titles have been won, and pitchers and catchers will report to Spring Training shortly. It’s time to get into fantasy baseball mode. Some of us fanatics — or obsessive fantasy gamers if you aren’t feeling charitable — have been drafting for 2025 since November (ok, maybe even October, but keep […]

Juan Soto’s 2025 Fantasy Baseball Outlook - Top Landing Spots and Fantasy Analysis

As even casual baseball fans know, superstar outfielder Juan Soto is a free agent and about to command one of the most lucrative contracts in sports history. Just 26 years old and coming off his best overall season, with career production that compares favorably to the incomparable Ted Williams, the buzz around baseball has Soto […]

Steamer Surprises: Projection Values For 2025 Fantasy Baseball

Welcome back to The Lookahead; this week, we take an early look at the first projections of 2025. It’s the most wonderful time of the year… No, this isn’t yet another column decrying the perpetually accelerating Christmas creep phenomenon. Instead, we fantasy baseball fanatics have two events to celebrate. First, drafts for 2025 are open […]

Lessons Learned For Fantasy Baseball 2025

Welcome back to the Lookahead; this week we apply lessons from 2024 to our 2025 draft prep. One of the primary, overarching goals with this column is simple: how can we improve as fantasy players? Just as a shop owner doesn’t know what to order next without taking inventory, so too should we reflect on […]

The Biggest Fantasy Baseball Busts Of 2024

There are technical, precise ways to measure a fantasy “bust,” but we know one when we see one. We lived through it, after all. These players slowly but surely sabotaged our fantasy teams despite high expectations. For those who want firm parameters, we have, with one exception, spotlighted players drafted in the top 150 who […]

The Best Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Pickups Of 2024

We saw several big breakouts in 2024, from Brent Rooker to Jack Flaherty to Seth Lugo—but those players at least got drafted in most leagues, if very late. No, here we want to celebrate the true difference makers, the guys who came out of left field (not literally; we aren’t confined to just outfielders). Here […]

The Lookahead: Seven Bold Predictions For 2025 Fantasy Baseball

Welcome back to The Lookahead. This week, we make seven (eight, really) bold predictions for the next fantasy baseball season. One of the best parts about playing fantasy games is dreaming about what could be, the process of taking what we think we know to predict the future. At the same time, as Niels Bohr […]

The Lookahead: Three Breakouts Who Could Bust (2025 Fantasy Baseball)

It happens every season: player X breaks out while flashing enticing upside, rides the small sample goodness to a relatively high draft cost the next year, and then busts. We want to avoid repeating those mistakes. There are often warning signs with these players. For example, one perilous archetype is the power/speed guy with dubious […]

2025 Fantasy Baseball Rankings - The Lookahead: Who Are The Top 12 Players?

Welcome to The Lookahead, a weekly Fantasy Baseball column. This week we rank the 2025 first-rounders. As American icon and fount of homespun wisdom Dolly Parton once said, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” As we move into mid-September, the writing is on the wall that most fantasy managers […]