It’s that time of year again – Baseball, and more importantly Fantasy Baseball, is almost back. Spring training is well underway, and we don’t have to worry about a lockout like last year. With only three weeks until the season starts on March 30th, your draft might be very soon, so there’s no time to waste preparing. One of the most important parts of draft prep is finding a good set of rankings to guide you. The first step to finding good rankings is figuring out who makes good rankings, and that’s where we come in. Here at FantasyPros we track draft rankings from as many experts as we can find, so that we can tell you who is the most accurate.

Accuracy Methodology

Before we get to the results, it’s worth going over how we come to these conclusions. You can read the detailed accuracy logic here, but I’ll give you the short version. There are a few steps:

1. Determine the player pool: We aim to include all fantasy relevant players. To that end, players can qualify for the accuracy competition by having a strong finish that season, or by being ranked highly by the consensus in the preseason. The definition of “ranked highly” varies by position – for example, we include starting pitchers who were ranked in the top 50, or who finished in the top 50. You can see the cutoffs for each position in the full breakdown.
2. Calculate VORP: Since most fantasy baseball leagues don’t use fantasy points, measuring player performance is a bit more complicated. We calculate VORP – Value Over Replacement Player – according to the standard 5×5 categories. That is, we determine z-scores for each stat within the MLB, and then add together a player’s score for each stat. We then compare that to the score for a what we would consider a replacement-level player in a typical fantasy league.
3. Score the experts’ predictions: Since we measure actual production in terms of VORP, we use a template to interoperate expert rankings as VORP predictions. For example, if you ranked Kyle Tucker as the #5 Outfielder, we read that as predicting that his VORP would be that of the actual OF5. Since he finished 4th, that results in a very good score for tucker. The result of this is an “error” number for each player, where lower is better.
4. Aggregate: We calculate accuracy scores for each position by adding together the error scores for every player at that position. For overall accuracy, we add positions together. Each player contributes equally, so the relative value of different positions is primarily a consequence of the number of players. As a result, OF and SP are naturally more impactful than C or RP, for example.

Overall 2022 Accuracy Standings

Now that you’re sufficiently bored by the details, it’s time for results!

See the full field of experts (48 total) | Combine top experts into consensus rankings

A huge congratulations is in order for Keith Lott of Fantasy Six Pack, who took home first place in his first year in the competition! If you’re a regular reader of these articles, you’re used to seeing sustained success from the best rankers, so it’s exciting to see a newcomer start so strong and shake things up. Keith’s rankings are extremely well rounded – he was one of only two experts to finish top-5 at five different positions (the other being Brad Camara from RotoBaller, who finished 7th overall). Keith also earned the distinction of being the only expert to rank in the top 20 at every position. Fantasy Six Pack, had a very strong showing this year, with Travis Argo and site founder Joe Bond joining Lott to put three experts in the top 10.

Speaking of familiar names, our second place finisher Mick Ciallela from Fantrax has built quite the resume. This is his third consecutive top-10 finish, including a first-place performance in 2020. This level of consistency is extremely valuable – the ultimate goal is to win our fantasy leagues, and with a track record like this, you can feel confident that drafting with Ciallela’s rankings is a sound first step toward that goal.

All these experts have done something very impressive. I’d like to also highlight FantasyPros’ own Andrew Gould, who notched his third top-10 finish, and Max Freeze of Freeze Stats, who was the only expert to finish in 1st place at two different positions (SP and 1B).

Top Experts By Position

While a well-rounded set of rankings is important, we also like to recognize when experts really nail a single position. Here are the #1 experts for each:

This concludes the 2022 MLB Fantasy Draft Rankings accuracy study. See you in the draft room!

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Jacob Herlin is a Data Scientist for FantasyPros. You can find him on twitter @jacoblawherlin.