FANTASY

7 'OUTSIDE VIEWS' THAT BUILD SMARTER DYNASTY TEAMS

- by MATT EDDY

Think of the Baseball America dynasty rankings as your guide to building a successful roster in a startup dynasty league draft.

Success can be measured in present terms or future aspirations. Some managers will draft a team to win now. Others will take aim at year two. Still others will hoard prospects in an effort to build a roster full of players who will grow together toward their peak seasons.

We rank players in order of their projected future value, with an emphasis on their value in a three-year window, in this case from 2026 to 2028. In some cases, value can be interpreted as trade value. Many prospects are young enough and promising enough to be exchanged for win-now MLB veterans.

Underpinning the BA dynasty rankings are MLB player projections built by Dylan White and his proprietary RoboScout model, which factors, among other things, weighted statistics, age curves and Statcast data, such as batted-ball metrics and pitch attributes.

Dylan is an accomplished redraft player who, along with co-manager Brian Slack, won the high-stakes NFBC Main Event competition in 2024.

Geoff Pontes lends his prospect expertise to help line up minor league players and integrate them into a ranking full of established major leaguers. Geoff has been playing in dynasty leagues for nearly 20 years and has built dynasty prospects rankings for a decade. He is a veteran of several industry leagues, including LABR and Tout Wars.

Today, dynasty league fantasy baseball managers have no shortage of resources available to help them assess prospects' tools, peak projections and rankings. Numerous sites and social media accounts display Statcast-inspired batted-ball data and pitchers' Stuff+ scores.

That's why I take a much broader view with my dynasty strategy ideas. Well, that's not the only reason. Taking more of an “outside view” is one of the only things that differentiates me in dynasty leagues.