Recently, we discussed players that you should absolutely draft that are going outside the top 30 hitters and pitchers. Switching gears and looking at the flip side, the last thing you want to do is take a player that is ultimately going to leave you disappointed, especially if he costs you a top draft spot.
As we’ve done in the past, we reached out to pundits to get their take on who they’ll be avoiding on draft day. After all, why spend a ton of time on research when they can do it for you? And of course, this is all based on their current average draft position (ADP). If they fall to you at a cheaper price, nobody is saying you 100% MUST NOT DRAFT. We also realize David Price is an obvious answer (major injury concern) so the experts were asked to name other pitchers besides him.
Get custom draft advice with our fantasy baseball tools 
Q1. Who is the one hitter inside the top 30 in hitter ADP you are avoiding the most and why?
Daniel Murphy (1B/2B – WSH)
“Last season, the National League OPS leader was Daniel Murphy and he is going with the 33rd pick on average this draft season. I wouldn’t be caught dead selecting him within the top 60 picks, let alone top 35. Before his absurd .348 BABIP driven batting average and .985 OPS, his career high OPS was just .809. This isn’t your standard breakout, where a player was realizing his potential. Rather, his age (32) indicates it was almost certainly a fluke and that he is likely to see significant negative regression.”
– Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros)
“If you’re drafting Daniel Murphy at his current price tag, you’re expecting a repeat of last season, but regression is coming. His 2016 BABIP of .348 is almost 30 points higher than his career mark (.319), which coincided with a 2016 batting average 51 points higher than his career number (.347 vs. .296). Before last season with the Nationals, he never hit more than 14 homers in a season. When his numbers backslide to typical levels this season, Murphy won’t look much better than Ben Zobrist or Dustin Pedroia, both of whom can be drafted much later.”
– Greg Smith (The Fake Baseball)
Jonathan Villar (2B/3B/SS – MIL)
“Giancarlo Stanton, like I bet a lot of people, is at the top of my list. This is for injury reasons. I’ll be different, though, and say Jonathan Villar. It is highly unlikely Villar repeats his stellar 2016 for a few reasons. First, he is an an extreme ground-ball hitter (only 24% fly-ball hitter), so you are relying on a high HR/FB rate for the 19 home runs to repeat. This will affect his RBI and run totals as well. Second is the steals is clearly where he carries most of his value, stealing 62 last season. I’m not alone here in thinking his spike in batting average, up to .285 from his career average of .235 before last season, will not repeat. Steamer projects him dropping back to .255. and his OBP dropping down to .333. This will limit his steal totals, most likely down to the mid-40s. Keep in mind even if he regresses like I think, he will still be plenty valuable, just not top-30 hitter valuable.”
– Joe Bond (Fantasy Six Pack)
“I don’t hate any of them, but I’ll pick Jonathan Villar. His 2016 was fantastic, and I’ve always liked him a bit. However, I can’t get past the fact that a year ago, he was a castoff. I don’t trust him enough to pick him so early.”
– John Halpin (Fox Sports)
George Springer (RF – HOU)
“I fail to understand the hype for Springer. He finished with a higher caught stealing total than his stolen base mark. On top of that, reports are that Springer will only run when the “situation calls for it.” How often is that going to happen when you can’t even convert 50 percent of your attempts? Springer is a nice young talent with 25-30 home run power, but he will post a mediocre average and a low number of steals. He’s not the 25/25 threat people want him to be and therefore not a Top 30 hitter.”
– Jake Ciely (RotoExperts)
Brian Dozier (2B – MIN)
“Dozier set new single-season highs in homers (42), RBIs (99) and AVG (.268) last season, and even with his flyball rate and hard-hit ball rate trending up annually, per FanGraphs, a repeat of 40-plus taters seems unlikely. He set another high last year, too, in BABIP (.280, .269 prior to last season). A slight reduction in homers and regression to his career norm in BABIP would take a bite out of his average and bring him back closer to his career .240 mark. Dozier is a fine player, but paying for his career year as well as a position scarcity markup for a position that doesn’t look terribly scarce on talent to me, isn’t something I intend on doing in drafts this year.”
– Josh Shepardson (Fantasy Cruncher)
Q2. Who is the one pitcher inside the top 20 in pitcher ADP you are avoiding the most and why?
Stephen Strasburg (SP – WSH)
“I feel like this one is going to be popular, but I’m going with Stephen Strasburg. Don’t get me wrong, he is a fantastic pitcher. If he could ever pitch a full season like we saw in 2014, his current ADP of SP13 would be a huge bargain. The issue is I can’t trust him being healthy and this is 100% of the reason I avoid him. There are enough pitchers who will get injured to draft one that has a history of repeated injuries.”
– Joe Bond (Fantasy Six Pack)
Carlos Carrasco (SP – CLE)
“David Price is an obvious name given his uncertainty, and Max Scherzer should rank lower with his concerns, but he’s far from being avoided. Carlos Carrasco, however, continues to skate by without criticism despite having worrisome home/road splits the past two seasons. Carrasco had a 5.03 ERA at home in 2015 and 4.29 last year compared to ERAs in the 2.40 range away. Those are Coors-like splits, and it’s certainly reason enough to push Carrasco outside of the Top 20, especially if you play in weekly lineup leagues.”
– Jake Ciely (RotoExperts)
Kyle Hendricks (SP – CHC)
“David Price is too obvious, so let’s go with Kyle Hendricks. Like Villar, he’s another guy I like but don’t trust enough to pick as early as I’d need to. He has an average K rate and projections have his ERA in the 3.20-3.50 range. The latter is too likely for Hendricks to be my SP2 in a mixed league.”
– John Halpin (Fox Sports)
Jake Arrieta (SP – CHC)
“Arrieta has been awesome with the Cubs, and he’s routinely beaten his advance metrics. FanGraphs graded the Cubs as far and away the best team defense in baseball last year and as the second best defense in baseball in 2015, so his propensity for beating fielding independent stats isn’t alarming. Having said that, Kyle Schwarber represents a big defensive downgrade in left field, and even if the Cubs returned the same defense, projecting defensive regression would make sense. That’s a ding against the value of Arrieta, and it comes on the heels of a mediocre second-half in which he tallied a 3.69 ERA (4.19 FIP, 4.11 xFIP and 4.37 SIERA) with a 10.0% BB%, 20.9% K% and 1.07 WHIP. Overall, Arrieta’s walk rate (9.6%) and strikeout rate (23.9%) in 2016 checked in as his worst marks in Chicago, and even his lowest BABIP (.241) posted with the Cubs couldn’t prevent him from sporting his highest WHIP (1.08) with them. He doesn’t look like a slam dunk fantasy ace to me, yet as a top-30 pick and the seventh SP off the board, he’ll need to be in order to hit value on the draft capital required to secure his services.”
– Josh Shepardson (Fantasy Cruncher)
Max Scherzer (SP – WSH)
“I’m not one to spend early picks on pitchers in first place, but Max Scherzer is a complete stay-away based on the stress fracture in his throwing hand. He’s modified his fastball grip to mitigate the pain of his injury, and we have no idea how his fantasy performance will be affected by that change. There are plenty of other elite arms available at lower draft day prices. Let one of your league mates take the risk on Scherzer.”
– Greg Smith (The Fake Baseball)
Zach Britton (RP – BAL)
“Britton is currently being drafted 66th overall on average. For someone who has never surpassed even 80 strikeouts out of the bullpen, that is entirely too high. Sure, his ERA and WHIP are sexy, but at just 65 innings, they won’t help you enough to offset the strikeout problem. Perhaps most importantly, saves are such a volatile statistic because they are team driven. If you don’t get the opportunities, you can’t save an AL-leading 47 games again.”
– Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros)
—
Thank you to the experts for naming their players to avoid. Be sure to give them a follow on Twitter and subscribe to our podcast below for all the latest shows.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS
