With the fresh fantasy baseball season approaching, it’s time to get you some tiered rankings from my Shuffle Up series. Use these for salary cap drafts, straight drafts, keeper decisions or merely a view of how the position ebbs and flows. Today’s assignment is third base.
Additional positions will follow regularly through next week.
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The numbers are unscientific in nature and meant to reflect where talent clusters and drops off. Assume a 5×5 scoring system, as usual.
More Tiered Rankings
The Big Tickets
Ramírez already has nine toes in the Hall of Fame, and he’s routinely one of the 10 best players in baseball. But you get queasy when you look at the rest of the Cleveland lineup, most of the same names from the team that was 28th in runs scored a year ago. Ramírez is also stepping into his age-33 season, which makes me careful with his stolen-base projection. In short, love the player, hate the setup. I’ll want my first offensive pick to be tied to a loaded offense, and Ramírez won’t have that.
Given all the fanfare attached to Machado when he hit the majors as a teenager, it’s a little funny to appreciate him now, in his boring veteran days. Machado has essentially given us a full season in 10 out of 11 campaigns, building a nice floor. He’s likely to hit for a plus average along with 25-30 homers and 10-15 steals. Third base isn’t particularly deep, either. Machado makes sense at his current 32.0 Yahoo ADP.
Injuries wrecked the last two seasons for Riley, but he’s still just 29 and faces no restrictions as camp opens. His batting-average dip the last two years makes sense given the strikeouts, but he’ll hit 30 homers in a full season and provide decent run production. Riley’s ADP now sits in the high 60s, which is probably too big a correction.
Legitimate Building Blocks
It’s a sort of homecoming for Suárez, who already has 439 Great American Ballpark starts under his belt (.260/.347/.504, with 101 homers). His head should be a lot clearer removed from the Seattle marine layer — his slash in that ballpark was a messy .211/.311/.406. Suárez’s career stats show a bump in the second half, so be patient if he has a slow start. Last year’s finish was muted by Seattle’s park, but he was a .307/.341/.602 monster after the break in 2024, with 20 homers, and he had 29 second-half homers back in 2019.
Chapman is probably a better real-life player than a fantasy one — you get nothing for his angelic defense, and his solid OBP skills are mildly baked into his fantasy value. You’ll give up something in average here, but he’ll pop 25 homers or so and mix in a handful of steals, a skill that’s revived since he left Toronto for San Francisco. Not all of your picks have to be screaming of possible upside; Chapman can likely be a solid par with a Yahoo ADP of 144.2.
Talk Them Up, Talk Them Down
It’s been a bumpy couple of years for Marte, who was suspended in 2024 and demoted to the minors last year. The Reds have shuffled him in the field, too — Marte will open this year as the starting right fielder, and he might see time in center. It’s important to remember that he was once a top-25 prospect and he’s merely entering his age-24 season. His 162-game pace over three seasons hashes out to 18 homers and 21 steals, and he’ll probably be the team’s No. 2 batter to open the year.
It’s fair to worry about Montgomery’s average, which was .239 with the White Sox last year and just .246 during 376 games in the minors. But Montgomery at least does exciting things when he does make contact, conking 21 homers in just 255 at-bats with Chicago. His Baseball Savant page is full of validation, with plus marks in expected slugging, hard-hit rate, barrel rate and bat speed. Montgomery feels like a cinch for 30-plus homers and he’ll get extra volume as the No. 3 hitter in Chicago. Picking him might require some batting average care later, but we can manage that.
It was curious to see Polanco hit a career year at age 31, and in Seattle, no less. Most of his Baseball Savant sliders are supportive, decent plate discipline and good contact numbers. He might open the year as the cleanup man for the Mets. I’m interested.
Some Plausible Upside
Murakami will probably see time at first and third base for the White Sox. He was a take-and-rake player in Japan, slashing .273/.394/.550 over eight seasons but striking out as much as 180 times in a season. His stock peaked after a 56-homer season in 2022, and injuries cost him half a season in 2025. If you have the freedom of daily transactions, look to isolate the lefty Murakami against right-handed opponents.
Esteemed colleague Fred Zinkie lists Correa as one of his third base sleepers, and I know from experience that disagreeing with Fred is not a +EV strategy. But I’d like to point out that Correa’s Yahoo ADP is about 60 spots higher than his global ADP, and he’s always going to carry batting-average and injury risk, in addition to the zero you’ll get in the stolen base column. This is also the weakest Houston lineup we’ve seen in a while; the Astros were 21st in runs scored last season.
Bargain Bin
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