First Base Fantasy Baseball Value Picks - John Laghezza's Points League Targets (2025)

It's my second assignment at RotoBaller and still just as excited to be here with my people, covering my first fantasy love — points leagues. I can't even remember how long ago my high-stakes, head-to-head CBS home league started but it's safe to say the players we drafted in the first round have long since retired. During that time, the fantasy game has grown by leaps and bounds to different sites with countless variations — and that's where I'd like to start this little exploration.

Yahoo's gained a ton of steam in the points league streets, but for someone yet to play there, I needed to ensure my recommendations hold up under scrutiny. Never afraid of a little mathematics, I ran some hitter data through the old spreadsheet. Despite the seemingly disparate scoring between CBS and Yahoo, both last year's first base total points (R=0.987) and this year's 2025 projections (R=0.964) correlate nearly perfectly across providers. Whew, that's a relief.

For the less nerdy crowd, it simply means no wild ranking adjustments are needed, so this work should stand tall no matter where you play. To stick with the same academic through-line, I'll use the same projection-based calculations to identify the most significant first base values on the board.

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First Base Points League Rankings

Josh Naylor, Arizona Diamondbacks

Overall Rank: 88th

Not all values live in the final rounds, sometimes it's about identifying a positional cliff. Arizona's latest acquisition Josh Naylor is coming off his best season to date (.243 BA, 84 R, 108 RBI, 31 HR, 6 SB), and moving to last year's highest-scoring team — but no one seems to care.

The 27-year-old lefty slugger's always possessed a fantastic plate approach throughout his entire career (16.6 percent K%, 9.7 percent SwStr%) with top-tier contact skills (88.9 percent zone contact rate) to boot. In points leagues, consistently putting the ball in play is a huge plus.

Coming off a career-best 31-home run campaign, perhaps the market's anticipating some negative regression due to the elevated 18.6 percent HR/FB on a relatively uninspiring 8.4 percent barrel rate.

That said, Naylor's elite pitch identification skills and contact profile allow him to turn his hands on anything inside — where his pull-side power (12.0 percent pulled FBLD rate) takes over.

Granted, Chase Field ranks extremely low on Statcast's park factor for left-handed hitters, but it's not an end-all-be-all. Joc Pederson posted a 31 HR, 600 PA pace just last season. Naylor will bat in the top third of the order every single day, anchoring a solid lineup, and looking to build off an excellent three-year 121 wRC+.

If you don't feel like punting a relatively top-heavy 1B position, Naylor's skillset entering his power prime could land him in the top-5 first basemen and provide profit with peace of mind.

Yandy Diaz, Tampa Bay Rays

Overall Rank: 209th

If projections float your fantasy boat, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better value on either CBS or Yahoo than Rays' veteran first baseman Yandy Díaz. The 33-year-old projects for a healthy stat line (.278 BA, 75 R, 76 RBI, 20 HR, 2 SB), making him the seventh-highest first baseman in points leagues, despite being drafted consistently outside the top-200 overall.

For transparency's sake, even as a volume drafter I never draft Yandy, pegging him as too boring and not enough of a needle-mover. Well, they say boring vets help win championships — and at cost, we could be looking at that manifest once again.

There's no question Díaz's plate approach ranks among the very best in MLB (15.3 percent K rate, 5.4 percent SwStr%, 25.6 percent O-swing rate, 92.6 percent zone contact rate). However, I've always maintained his inability to consistently lift (55.4 percent ground-ball rate) caps any true home run potential, which now that I verbalize it, matters significantly less for a double machine in points formats.

Yandy Diaz Is About To Have A Big Year pic.twitter.com/k0kChMUuHJ

— Running From The OPS (@OPS_BASEBALL) February 24, 2025

In Yandy Díaz's defense, the raw power in his bat is severely underrated. The only player to match both his 49.0 percent hard-hit rate and +117 mph maximum exit velocity in 2024 was some guy named Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — who last I checked was pretty good at baseball.

While certainly not the type of guy to draw any oohs or aahs in the draft room, Yandy Díaz represents a perfect late-round "glue guy" — someone you start every week to keep the lineup competitive while you chase upside on the waiver wire.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Cincinnati Reds

Overall Rank: 231st

Staying completely on brand, I'll be forcing Cincinnati's Christian Encarnacion-Strand into every article humanly possible this draft season. Sure, I could cite Great American Ball Park, the best park to hit home runs in on the planet, or his monstrous career 600 PA pace in the minors (.322 BA, 100 R, 123 RBI, 36 HR, 8 SB) — but this value play lies within the projections themselves.

Using CBS' scoring system, inputting Derek Carty's THE BAT X (my personal favorite) places Encarnacion-Strand as the second-best first baseman on a per-plate appearance basis (0.74 Pts/PA). Yes, second. You read that right, and he's currently being drafted as the No. 18 first baseman.

The market's too tied up in the combination of a throwaway injury season plus Roster Resource's "bench role" — both of which I'm ignoring aggressively. You'll have plenty of vanilla-flavored options late in the draft to choose from (some mentioned in this piece).

I prefer to shoot the moon in the late rounds — most of these will get dropped anyway. Reassessing his past trajectory means superstar status complete with league-winning potential.

Andrew Vaughn, Chicago White Sox

Overall Rank: 289th

Didn't think I'd be recommending many (if any) White Sox, but here we are. There's a lesson here somewhere regarding bad team bias but that's another story for a different day. Regardless of provider, Chicago's former third-overall pick projects as a back-end No. 1 first baseman.

Vaughn's career disciplinary metrics rate far from perfect (20.3 percent K%, 9.8 percent SwStr%, 34.8 percent O-Swing rate), but his elite 89.9 percent zone contact rate and solid underpinning power stats (46.1 percent hard-hit rate, nine percent barrel rate) continue to make him a viable fantasy asset as long as he's playing every day.

Without any legitimate competition for playing time, Vaughn's going to be penciled into the top third of the lineup every day, even if it means as a DH (27 games in 2024 for reference). He projects as one of the last 25 HR bats on the entire board for a points league finish ahead of Spencer Steer, Cody Bellinger, and Paul Goldschmidt — who all get drafted roughly 150 picks earlier.

Keep in mind that the supremely depressing surrounding context in Chicago will most likely limit Vaughn's counting stats and therefore any ceiling run at a top-5 positional finish.

That said, if you punted first base or play in a deeper league format, you will return a profit at cost. While I'm not pushing him up the board by any means, he'll be circled as my fallback option if the situation calls for it.

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