Top 1,300+ Dynasty Rankings & Tools Update

Intro

Hello, I'm Smada, and I've manually ranked over 1,300 (now 1,400+) baseball players for dynasty leagues. I've taken the 600+ prospect rankings curated by our dynasty team and woven them in with MLB players. The prospects are in order of the Top 600+ list with a few edits where I've bumped up 2025 ETA guys (hello, Alan Roden).

However, this is not just one list of 1,300+ players. It's a customizable dynasty tool with multiple inputs for league size, type and valuation preferences that then feed a trade analyzer, trade matchmaker and league analyzer tools.

This release marks the first update since the kickoff to our new dynasty rankings in January. The core of the list has remained the same, especially at the top. Here is where I've made adjustments:

Injuries... there have been quite a few
Significant Spring Training developments
- Don't care a ton about spring performance. What I do care about: healthy or not healthy, new usable pitch, pitch tweak, increased velo over extended IP, playing a new position, new max EV.
Jobs won or lost
RP rankings as I overvalued them a bit in the first release (SV only ranking)
Some players I overvalued in hindsight

Default Settings

The default order and $ values were created with the following league settings in mind:

15 team league with 5x5 roto scoring, OBP and SV
- A change from previous editions that were based on saves + holds. In my experience, holds league strategy comes down to waiting on RP because the league overvalues the closers. Additionally, holds players players pop up frequently on the wire. Essentially... I'm not sure if holds rankings are all that useful. But saves rankings might be.
Starting roster with 14 H spots (1x C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, CI, MI, 5x OF, 2x UT) and 9 P spots
7 bench spots and 10 MiLB roster spots

Here's what the list looks like in the app suite. You'll see the values, position, team, age, prospect rank and peak projections. New in this edition you can toggle to show short form player notes.

Creating Your Custom Top 1300+ List

There is not a "standard" dynasty league. That fact makes league settings & value preferences extremely important when it comes to trade & startup draft values. Which makes every static dynasty list inherently lacking.

With that fact in mind, we built the ability to create your own list and values based on your settings and preferences. The default settings that I mention above act as a starting point and our tool allows you to customize the list from there. Below are all the current options and filters:

There are two settings that change the order of the players are ranked:
- Changing the League Type from OBP to AVG moves the hitters around quite a bit. The process used was to take peak projections for OBP & AVG and change them into Z-scores (happy to go into more detail if you want) then calculate a value change to a players OBP $ value. For example, Jackson Holliday was ranked 57th in January with a peak projected OBP of .380, but a projected AVG of just .265. This results in an adjustment of $5 in average leagues, bringing his value down from $18 to $13 and his rank down from 57th to 107. New this update, I've added an AVG & OBP option for those of you who play
- Ding older players dynamically creates a more youth friendly list. It crudely reduces 30-31 yo player's $ value by 20%, 32-34 yo by 25% and 35+ yo by 35%.
Then there are the settings that keep the player order but change the $ values, impacting replacement level:
- The number of teams, starting roster spots, bench & MiLB squad total all impact $ calculations.
- The Dollar Value Calculation setting changes the $ values by either "Valuing Stars" more or "Valuing Depth" more. You know how your league operates and sometimes it's impossible to trade for a star player without "overpaying." Conversely, maybe your trying to evaluate your team as a whole and give value to the depth of your squad. Whatever the case is, you have options to increase & decrease $ values quickly and can be helpful to find a range to that player's value.
- Under the Filter Options you'll also see a toggle to choose AL/NL only leagues. Dollar values will re-calculate with only those players included.

List Filters

Quickly view subsets of the list by position, age and team. New in this update is Movement which filters the list to see the players who were added or had big movements from the last update.

If you upload your Fantrax all players file and then toggle "Filter by Upload" you can activate the filters for Manager and Contract.

If you upload your Fantrax or CBS available players file and then toggle "Filter by Upload" you'll see the top available players in your league. If you need help with this, please reach out!

Updated Tools

This list and customizable values also feed into three tools in the app suite:

The Trade Analyzer tool sits on another page in the app suite, but it utilizes the Top 1300+ dynasty list as its backbone. All the same league setting options are here and if you were already changing settings on the dynasty list page, you can copy over those settings here.

The Trade Matchmaker tool is a tab within the Trade Analyzer where you can build out potential deals. You can see an example in this thread where I built a deal and completed a trade.

First, upload your Fantrax owned players file. Next, choose your team, trade partners & value wiggle room. Then develop the deal with numbers of players to send and receive, as well as minimum player value and honing in on the type of players you're looking for.

Select your players to trade and the tool spits out potential deals to consider that are within the value range you selected.

The League Analyzer tool sits within the dynasty list in a tab that says "Evaluate League". You'll upload All Owned Players files from either Fantrax or CBS and be presented with cumulative team value, average age, average own%, Hitting/Pitching split and MLB/Prospect split. You can also toggle teams to see players with their values and ranks.

Where To Find the List & Tools

The list and tools can be found in the PLIVE+ APP SUITE which is available to The 60 Tier subscribers ($10/mo). The app suite post also has a google sheet of the Top 1300+ that includes the tiers.

Additional Notes on List Creation & Future Editions

In the initial January ranking, Jordan Rosenblum's Peak Projections that fuel PLIVE+ values (redraft version OOPSY now on Fangraphs) acted as my starting point. I then went and manually ordered players into positional ranks and grouped into tiers. Then tier by tier I folded in and manually ranked the positions together.
There will likely be some readers who think I've undervalued prospects & younger players to a certain degree. I'm upfront about the fact that I prefer to build winning dynasty squads for 2025. In my opinion, among biases, the bias towards winning is one of best ones to have. If you hold this opinion, or are in a complete rebuild, the "Ding older players" toggle is there for you.
I plan on continually editing this list as news breaks and adding players that catch my attention that didn't make the initial cut. I also reserve the right to change a ranking that just doesn't sit right in-between larger updates.

Thanks for reading! Please comment with any questions!