While there’s still plenty of time until the season starts, it’s never too early to develop your draft strategy.
Spring training isn’t quite here yet, so obviously, things can change quickly. We have plenty of data from 2019, though, and we’re starting to get a picture of where players are falling. Now is the time to start setting your targets. Now is the time to start looking at your general drafting strategy to make sure that you get the players YOU want. Part of that strategy is fading players that others are high on.

The picks you make in the first five rounds may not win your league, but they can absolutely lose it. At the risk of sounding reductive, fantasy baseball is often about risk management at its core. Minimizing your risk, particularly in early rounds, is one of the keys to being in the money at the end.

Before we get going, I want to emphasize one thing: I’m not saying that these are bad players. They’re generally going in the early rounds because they’re quite good. In many cases, they’re among the best at their positions. What I don’t like is the current asking price required to get their services. If they drop a bit, they might become much more interesting and viable. Every draft is different, and ADP often can change significantly between early February and late March. You need to be flexible, but you also need to remember these names. You don’t want to overpay on any of these guys.

So without further ado, here are my five early-round picks to fade in 2020. (ADP number is an average of CBS, Yahoo, RT Sports, NFBC, and Fantrax.)

Gerrit Cole (ADP 7)

There’s a couple reasons for fading Cole. The first one should be obvious: a starting pitcher, even an amazing one, will help you out once per week on average. Thirty two games or less, per year. That’s not much, particularly when compared to position players that potentially help you out 150 times per year.

Plus, you can safely expect at least a few starts to be outright bad, and at least a couple to be mundane. So any pitcher is probably only TRULY helping you out 20-25 times in a season. Sure, Cole is great, and nobody is going to argue otherwise.

Buuut you also should note another thing: that 16.9% HR/FB rate. That’s scary, given that he’s moving into Yankee stadium, which is much more hitter and homer friendly. Plus, let’s not discount the fact that New York’s fans and media break pro athletes all the time. And there’s the elephant in the room about the Astros and cheating – who knows how he’s going to respond to hostile fans and possibly questions from the media moving forward?

Either way, there’s a LOT of factors that make him a bad pick this early, and one you should fade the hell out of, more than probably any other on the list save for my third pick.

Trea Turner (ADP 11)

With Turner, there’s a couple of things going on as well. First off, it’s health-related. He’s started 125 games or more exactly ONE time in his career. We all know how much his speed is a factor, and it’s primarily the #1 reason people draft him this high. But he’s fragile, like a LOT of speedsters.

In 2019, he only stole 35 SB. No projection has him with more than 40 for a HEALTHY 2020. In 2019, who stole more bases than him though, you might ask? Mallex Smith, Jonathan Villar, Adalberto Mondesi, and Ronald Acuna Jr. You can get three of four more cheaply than you can get Turner. And while Turner’s bat (probably) won’t hurt you, his shaky durability most certainly will, if he’s your guy in the first or second round. He’s a pick to fade in 2020, for sure.

Justin Verlander (ADP 17)

It’s impossible to ignore the fact he’ll be one of the most booed pitchers in the game this year. Justin Verlander’s outspoken nature, combined with his suspicious silence in the wake of the Houston scandal has made him a rather vilified guy. There’s no way to know how he’ll deal with this, but I suspect it will be with righteous indignation and a surly attitude. It also might be enough to break him.

He’s 36, and beyond a very rare bunch of pitchers, this is where we should see a very sharp decline beginning. Just like former rotation mate Gerrit Cole, though, he has a 16.0% HR/FB rate, which is definitely a problem. More worrying? His BABIP was over 60 points below his career average at an absolutely unsustainable .218 for the 2019 season. He also had a hard-hit rate of 41.8%. (Which was also the highest in his career, by a significant margin.) He’s a fly ball pitcher, due regression. In fact, the four highest hard-hit percentages of his career have all happened in the past four seasons. He’s fading, and I’m pretty sure this is the year where we all get to see it collapse for him again. Not only do I NOT want him in the second round, I DON’T WANT ANY PART OF HIM AT ALL. The risk is just far too high.

Fernando Tatis Jr. (ADP 18.4)

I take nothing away from Fernando Tatis Jr. The kid has a very bright future ahead of him, and he’s absolutely an asset to the Padres. That being said, it is freaking LUDICROUS to take him in the second round. For Pete’s sake, Anthony Rendon, Jose Ramirez, and Freddie Freeman are all going after him. REALLY? DO you people REALLY think he’s going to outperform all of them? Even the most optimistic projections don’t have him breaking 30 homers, 25 steals, 100 runs, or 100 RBI. HE IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF INFLATED VALUE.

Tatis struck out nearly 30% of the time, and carried a BABIP of .410 – if you don’t understand precisely why both of these things are alarming red flags, I’m not sure what to tell you. He doesn’t currently have the power to justify that level of striking out. When his BABIP goes down, his batting average is going down, and significantly.

Let someone else overpay for him, and reap the rewards. Yeah, I get FOMO- we all want the hot young stud, but he’s not the man this year. The absolute worst-case scenario for you is that he gets his strikeouts under control but basically returns a 4th-5th round value. The worst-case for Tatis owners is that he rides the bench or he gets sent down to the minors.

This is exactly why he’s one of the early rounds picks to fade – you’re passing up on a ton of opportunities to get drastically better.

Adalberto Mondesi (ADP 40.6)

If my #2 and #4 guys got mashed into one person, it would be my #5 pick. He’s an injury-prone speedster who is ALSO the son of a former major leaguer who succeeds despite poor plate discipline.
Yes, IF he’s healthy, he can singlehandedly lead you to wins in the SB category. He could conceivably steal 50+ in a full season.

Of course, that’s a giant “if”, since it’s never happened. He’s never even hit 500 plate appearances.
Even if he did do that, he’d have to develop plate discipline, which is also growing increasingly unlikely. Like Tatis, he strikes out at a nearly 30% clip.

Add in that the Royals have already shown that they’ll mismanage him (he played with an injured shoulder toward the end of last year), and the fact that they’re just a disaster of a franchise right now, and statistically speaking, he’ll be lucky to get 75 Runs or RBI. We still don’t know if the shoulder injury has completely healed, or if there are any lingering effects, so he’s already limited power maybe even less than it was before. Could he turn it around? Sure. Is it likely? No, not really.

Either way, let someone else pay to take that risk. If you want the speed that badly, Jonathan Villar is going at ADP 52 right now. Speed aside, he’s still going ahead of Manny Machado, Giancarlo Stanton, Keston Hiura, Ketel Marte, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (To name a few).

What I’m saying is that you’re passing up far too much talent by taking Mondesi this early. There are far better options out there who will contribute to multiple categories, as opposed to simply one.

Tell me who you’re fading this year, or tell me how wrong I am in the comments below.

Come back next week when I tell you who I like in the middle rounds.

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