Predicting the First Round of 2025 Best Ball Drafts

Jackson Chourio joins the elites

Here are a few guidelines before we start deep-diving optimal 2025 draft strategy:

1. Today’s exercise is a fun way to start familiarizing ourselves with next year’s player pool. As we learn more, our opinions can and will change!

2. Underdog’s position allocations — pitcher, infield, outfield — create scarcity issues. There might not seem to be a difference between Vlad Jr. and Kyle Tucker in Round 1, but once you get to the middle rounds, it becomes clear how scarce the outfield is. This makes elite outfielders the most valuable commodity in Best Ball, and it shapes this entire exercise.

3. UD’s scoring dynamic makes it hard to take a pitcher too early. I anticipate the value of high-end pitchers in Best Ball will be a widespread macro-level discussion this offseason.

4. It was hard to narrow things down to a concrete top-12! Once I added honorable mentions, the first two rounds felt flush with quality hitters. It’s a deep group, and things feel “flat” after the big 4.

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1.01 - Aaron Judge, OF, Yankees
1.02 - Shohei Ohtani, DH, Dodgers

There’s no wrong answer between Judge and Ohtani for the 1.01 in Best Ball. This is the most straightforward case of deferring to ADP once drafts are live.

That might be obvious to some, but the concept of balancing “player exposures” will be new to others. We’ll discuss it more throughout the offseason.

Anyways, here are the highest Underdog point totals from the past three seasons:

Here are the highest “Points per plate appearance” totals from the past three years:

Finally, here’s Judge vs. Ohtani in Underdog points per PA since 2022:

• Judge: 2.82

• Ohtani: 2.64

There are many ways to slice it as to who should be the 1.01, but the more actionable conclusion is to recognize that they’re in their own tier entering 2025.

It’s foolish of me to doubt Ohtani because he’ll probably go 60/60 next year while winning the Cy Young, but I do have questions about how regularly he’ll run once he’s a full-time pitcher again.

Stolen base totals are fueled by intent, a statement evidenced by Ohtani attempting 37 thefts in the second half of 2024. He did that in 65 games, compared to 26 attempts in 94 first-half contests.

Judge, meanwhile, is the closest we’ve seen to Barry Bonds since he retired.

The above table features the single-season wRC+ leaderboard since 2000. Judge hasn’t quite reached peak Bonds production levels, but he’s the only other player to have two seasons in the top 18 during this time. And nobody has come as close to Bonds as Judge has. I will keep betting on him as much as possible while he’s on this historically significant run.

1.03 - Juan Soto, OF, Free Agent

In 2022, Soto ranked 29th in points per PA (PPA) and 20th in total points.

In 2023, he finished 15th in PPA and 5th in total points.

In 2024, he finished 4th and 4th.

Playing his home games at Yankee Stadium and hitting in front of Judge helps keep his floor immensely high, as does his durability.

There isn’t much to say otherwise, assuming he re-signs with the Yankees. Soto’s 41 homers were a career-best. His 180 wRC+ was his highest since the shortened 2020 campaign, and otherwise a career-best.

Next year will only be his age-26 season. Like Judge and Ohtani, Soto should be a top-3 pick in every Best Ball draft to begin the offseason.

1.04 - Bobby Witt Jr., IF, Royals

We’re now three seasons into Witt’s career, and he’s improved his plate discipline in each one of them:

He also improved his barrel rate again, finishing at 14.3%, which ranked in the 92nd percentile.

Simply put, Witt keeps getting better.

He has stolen 30+ bases yearly and has popped at least 30 homers in back-to-back seasons. He’s doing this while becoming an elite defensive shortstop. Witt finished with 10.4 fWAR in 2024 — the 10th-highest total by a position player since 1966.

His position is the only thing holding him back in Underdog’s Best Ball format. That being said, it’s a testament to his ability to be a top-4 pick as an infielder. Witt is great enough to be okay with falling behind at Best Ball’s scarcest position.

1.05 - Elly De La Cruz, IF, Reds

1.06 - Gunnar Henderson, IF, Orioles

Given the uncertainty about whether he will take another step forward in 2025 … or possibly take one back, this is my most challenging rank.

Only Jarren Duran and Shohei Ohtani had more plate appearances than Gunnar this past season, which played a big role in him finishing with the sixth-most points among all positions. He was still elite efficiency-wise, though, ranking ninth overall in points per plate appearance.

The 23-year-old looked like a top-4 pick through June, and after a couple of quiet months (by his new standards), he closed September on a better note:

Henderson spent this season chasing less and making more contact inside the zone than in 2023. While he still barreled the ball at the same rate as a rookie, he decreased his strikeout rate while increasing his batting average and OBP.

The “concern” is that his power output fell as the year went on, but there isn’t anything alarming in his underlying metrics to suggest the torrid start was a fluke. His K% dropped in the second half, while his batted ball results remained intact.

Henderson’s 31 HR/FB% was the highest among all hitters in the first half, and that fell to 14% following the All-Star break. This explains the drop in power.

Given that homer-to-fly ball rate is such a noisy statistic, this is a classic case of believing in full-season statistics over partial-season numbers. Henderson went on power binges at times in 2024, and he did it while showing a reduced strikeout rate with better on-base skills.

Henderson just finished his age-23 season with the Orioles’ 10th-highest fWAR total by a position player all-time. Since 1967, only Cal Ripken Jr. has had a more valuable year as an Oriole. There’s a chance we still haven’t seen the best of him.

1.07 - Yordan Alvarez, OF, Astros

We’re still waiting for that one season when Yordan puts it all together and hits 50 homers with a .300 AVG, an elite OBP, and monstrous runs and RBI totals.

In other words, we’re looking for Aaron Judge.

Interestingly, Yordan’s career-high in homers is only 37, and he’s topped 100 RBI just once while never doing so in runs. This is despite playing in 135+ games in three of the past four seasons. In 2023, he still logged 114 contests, so it isn’t as if he’s missing huge chunks of time.

Alvarez’s Statcast page remained blood-red in 2024, though his barrel rate fell from the 99th-100th percentile the past two seasons to “just” the 92nd percentile this year.

What matters most is that this is a game of upside, and Yordan’s metrics show there’s still an enormous ceiling here despite continuing to underperform his expected stats.

1.08 - Kyle Tucker, OF, Astros

At the time of Tucker’s shin injury on June 3rd, only Judge had more homers than him. Only Judge and Soto had a higher wRC+.

Before we chalk that up to a hot couple of months, notice Tucker’s chase rate decline dating back to midway through 2023:

Among players with at least 650 PAs since June 28th of last season, only Judge, Ohtani, and Soto have a higher wRC+ than Tucker. I reference this to drive home that he didn’t suddenly have a breakout (partial) season in 2024. It’s been longer than that. We’ll see if we get an injury discount heading into 2025.

1.09 - Kyle Schwarber, OF, Phillies

By raw points, here are Schwarber’s Underdog point total finishes over the past three seasons:

• 2022: 11

• 2023: 12

• 2024: 12

It isn’t the ceiling we want from Yordan, but that’s still the ceiling of a first-round hitter. Add in the safety he provides and that he plays the scarcer non-pitcher position, and he’s as rock-solid of a top-12 pick as we’ll see.

1.10 - Corbin Carroll, OF, Diamondbacks

I wrote about Carroll in my recent Baseball America feature: 15 Young Stars Who Could Shape The Postseason. Here’s part of what I wrote:

Carroll’s performance has been welcomed after a disastrous first half that led many to believe his nagging shoulder was beyond repair. Teams tell us how they feel about players with their actions, and it only took until April 24th for Carroll to be dropped to seventh in the order. At no point in 2023 did he hit that low against a right-handed starting pitcher.

There’s an entire offseason to dive into the shoulder mystery, but for now, the 24-year-old is back performing like a franchise hitter should.

In early August, SwingGraph’s proprietary vertical bat angle data showed that Carroll was taking steps to regain his 2023 swing:

I then provided the table below, released on September 17th, so the second-half stats aren’t current.

You get the idea. Terrible first half. Incredible since the All-Star break. The “shape” of one’s season matters, and that’s a topic we’ll dive deeper into in the coming months, but when all was said and done, he finished 14th in total points one season after finishing 10th. His year ended up being far from the disaster it appeared to be back in May.

1.11 - Fernando Tatis Jr., OF, Padres

Here are Tatis’ wRC+ by season:

• 2019: 151

• 2020: 151

• 2021: 158

• 2022: N/A

• 2023: 112

• 2024: 135

I show this to highlight his performance before and after the injuries and suspension. Last season was a down year compared to his previous highs, but it’s worth noting that he played a career-best 141 games.

He hasn’t made it all the way back in 2024, but at least in September, he’s hit seven homers. This includes a 17% barrel rate, far closer to his 2020-21 level than he posted in 2023.

In ‘23, Tatis ranked 37th among position players in total points. He missed time in ‘24 and finished tied for 30th in points per plate appearance.

Set to enter his age-26 campaign next season, it makes sense to keep betting on Tatis’ upside for at least one more year.

1.12 - Jackson Chourio, OF, Brewers

Speaking of upside, is it too aggressive to close out Round 1 with a player who doesn’t turn 21 until next March?

Does taking him ahead of safety stalwarts like Betts and Jo-Ram make sense, even if they play the less scarce position?

Honestly, it’s probably best for everyone if Chourio’s 2025 ADP hangs out later in Round 2. I include him here to say that, eventually, in an efficient market, upside bets are going to be priced uncomfortably high.

Remember, Best Ball drafters are shooting for a 99th percentile outcome — not just in terms of season-long points, but specifically in the playoffs and finals.

Serious Best Ball drafters are also building “portfolios.” It’s okay to think Chourio is an inefficient pick at 12th overall and still draft him 5% of the time or so.

The deeper level of Best Ball is building exposures to players and doing so in a way that captures upside so that when things hit, they hit big. Downside sucks, but nobody should be playing Best Ball to make their money back. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prizes available. Drafters should want as big of a piece of that pie as possible.

This is becoming more about Best Ball strategy than about Chourio specifically, and I’ll have plenty more macro-level thoughts this offseason. For now, I’ll leave you with Chourio’s monthly wRC+ since June:

• June: 144

• July: 143

• August: 156

• September: 123

Consistent excellence. At age 20. If he’s priced at the 1.12, and you’re building a Best Ball portfolio, is this a player you’d want zero of?

Honorable Mentions

Ronald Acuña Jr., OF, Braves

Jarren Duran, OF, Red Sox

Mookie Betts, IF, Dodgers

Jose Ramírez, IF, Guardians

Jackson Merrill, OF, Padres

Julio Rodríguez, OF, Mariners

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., IF, Blue Jays

Francisco Lindor, IF, Mets

Brent Rooker, OF, A’s