When they decided to cater to the more ‘casual’ fantasy baseballer a few years ago, ESPN made points leagues its default setting. Thus, their rankings and ADPs can vary widely from other platforms. But are the quirks of a points league fully reflected in ESPN’s ADP?
Generally speaking, where a categories league treats each of its 5×5 entities equally, points leagues compile all stats into a single point value for each game. This is where your ‘volume’ factor is key, because simply put, more volume equals more points.
But beyond that, the weighting of that ‘compilation’ process of a bunch of stats into one does NOT balance equally across all categories, and there are also additional stats to consider that aren’t in the limited 5×5 scope. So keep these points in mind:
- Extra-base hits like doubles and triples have value
- Steals (and their single point) are not valuable
- Starting pitchers (and the volume they achieve) are far more important than relievers
- Points can go both up with a good result, and down with a bad one
To that last point, it is VITALLY important to avoid negative outcomes as much as you can. In a categories league, if your all-or-nothing slugger goes 0-4 with three K’s, you net out with zeroes across the board—not fun, but not a ‘negative’ result except for batting average. In a points league, your slugger will have ended up with negative three points, and your other players have to dig you out of a hole.
Same for pitchers, only more so—a blow-up outing from your starter (say 1.2 IP, ten hits, six runs, two K’s) nets you an even bigger negative (-9 in this case), which really hurts when your whole team might score 250-300 points per week.
These are the quirks of the points league game. Now, the question: are ESPN’s rankings fully adjusted to reflect those quirks? Not always.
Traders on Wall Street have a term for when opportunities arise that allow you to exploit the system and earn what essentially amounts to free money: arbitrage. If you convert Euros into Dollars at an overly favorable exchange rate and end up with more than you should have, that’s arbitrage. And as players are converted from roto rankings into ESPN points leagues, there is arbitrage aplenty. Here are some of my favorites.
Francisco Lindor (28.1)
Lindor would be sitting near the end of the first round if not for a fracture in his hamate bone in early February. That’s put his chances of being ready for Opening Day in doubt, and in roto leagues, he’s fallen to the end of the second round. His ESPN points league ADP has dipped even further to 28.1.
Lindor is the rare player who excels both in categories leagues (given his consistency in going 30/30 with tons of run production) and in points leagues (given he’s a doubles machine and has good contact skills—and gets as many plate appearances as anyone else in the league). So there really shouldn’t be any fall-off from one format to another.
As for the injury? I would be more worried if Lindor didn’t have a history of starting slow. In 2024, he was batting .098 after the first dozen games, and still managed an .844 OPS by the end of the year (the third-highest mark of his career). He’ll probably start slow this season, too. By the end of it, he’ll be right back where he started.
Which was pretty good last year: his 468 points were the eighth-highest among all hitters.
Geraldo Perdomo (70.2)
If I don’t get Lindor for my Shortstop, I’m falling back to an option that might have even more arbitrage in Perdomo. Last year, he went from an undrafted afterthought to a league-winner for many players, especially in points leagues. He had more walks (94) than strikeouts (83) last season, a feat only Luis Arraez could also lay claim to, with a 12.0% whiff rate (98th percentile) to back it up. Frankly, he was a points league cheat code.
Will Perdomo regress from his 20-homer, 27-steal season last year? Almost certainly, which is why his categories ADP is around 75th overall. And that feels like fair market value. But will his contact skills somehow regress just as much? Probably not, which is why ESPN’s points league ADP of 70.2 is curious. As long as he’s hitting atop the Diamondbacks lineup surrounded by the likes of Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte, Perdomo’s a top-30 points player—and that’s being conservative.
Vinnie Pasquantino (97.4)
What surprises me here is that Vinnie P. used to get points league respect. As a .295 hitter in his rookie season with an 11.4% K-rate and an 11.7% walk rate, drafters the following year were reaching for him in the fifth or sixth rounds. His contact skills were heralded all over the land, and while his next season was marred by injury, his contract metrics were still elite.
Last season, Vinnie adjusted his approach to gain a little extra power. And it worked pretty well—32 HRs, 113 RBIs. But that K:BB ratio went from an even split to a more to 2:1 ratio (15.7% K’s, 7.2% BB’s).
Know what? That is still pretty darned good. And home runs and RBIs count in points leagues as well. So why in the world is his ADP in an ESPN points league 97.4? That’s three spots lower than James Wood, who has a 32.1% K-rate.
In 2025, Pasquantino had 79 more points than Wood (423 to 344). Wood’s still a great player, but in a points league, they shouldn’t even be in the same conversation.
Some other players he outscored in 2025? Manny Machado. Matt Olson. Elly De La Cruz. Yep, Vinnie’s in the top-50 conversation in this format. He also just crushed a three-homer game in the World Baseball Classic and the Royals brought the fences in this season—you could take him in the third or fourth round and I’d be fine with it.
Shota Imanaga (182.9)
Imanaga logged just 144.2 innings last year as a hamstring injury kept him sidelined for most of May and June. Had he thrown enough innings to qualify, his 0.988 WHIP would have been the fifth-lowest among MLB starters. He didn’t quite replicate the magic (and a bit of luck) that led him to a 15-3 record his first season, but other than the K’s dropping a bit, he was largely the same pitcher (he had a 1.02 WHIP that first year).
In a points league, a low WHIP is absolutely vital, as both hits and walks count a point against your pitcher. You’d rather have a guy like Imanaga and his 4.6% walk rate than a pitcher with a 1.4 WHIP and an 11 K/9.
However, Shota did close out the season giving up twelve homers in his last six starts, so keep an eye on whether he’s keeping it in the yard this Spring.
Andrew Abbott (196.3)
Abbott got a late start last year, coming off the injured list in Mid-April. He still finished the season with 29 starts and 166.2 innings pitched, and if healthy in those first couple of weeks, he could have topped 180 IP. If volume is king—especially for pitchers—Abbott can get there. He also doesn’t have many ‘blow-up’ starts, allowing more than five earned runs just once all last season.
So I am struggling to figure out why ESPN’s ADP has him just barely inside the top 200 at 196.3? Perhaps it’s because he gives up a lot of fly balls in one of baseball’s more homer-happy parks, but his 33.7% hard-hit rate is in the 93rd percentile among pitchers. Maybe it’s because his actual ERA (2.87) was well below his expected ERA (3.56), but his ‘Pitching Run Value’ on Savant is in the 90th percentile.
Most likely, the disrespect is because he’s a quirky lefty who doesn’t throw particularly hard and doesn’t rack up the K’s. But you don’t need a bunch of K’s in a points league—you just need to know how to get batters out. Abbott had a 1.15 WHIP last year, ranking 18th among SP’s in the majors. I think that qualifies.
