Hitter List 9/19: Ranking the Top 150 Hitters To Own ROS

[hitter_list list_id=”25147″ include_stats=”1″ season=”2018″]

Welcome back to Hitter List. This will be the final iteration for 2018. As with every previous Wednesday, I’ll rank the current value of the top 150 hitters for the remainder of the year. Use these rankings to help get a sense of both a player’s expected performance and his trade value in your fantasy leagues moving forward.  They’re constructed with 12-team, H2H, 5×5 leagues in mind; adjust as needed for your specific setup. Position eligibility does factor in to a degree.

With so little time left in the season, adjustments to the List can and will be aggressive. In particular, injuries will take on added importance as even a minor health issue could completely torpedo a player’s value. Rest assured that any rankings you vehemently disagree with were explicitly an attempt to insult you and/or your favorite player(s) personally. Seriously, before you work yourself into a rage in the comment section, understand that this is only one person’s opinion. I’m wrong a lot! Comes with the territory of doing this sort of thing.

On to the highlights!

• Injury roundup: Aaron Judge finally returned to full-time duty from a chip fracture in his wrist yesterday. It’s anyone guess as to how effective he’ll be. Kyle Schwarber is dealing with a back injury and hasn’t played in over a week, though he did fielding drills over the weekend. Maikel Franco (shoulder, neck) has also been sidelined for the past week. Eddie Rosario is done for the year after his quad strain flared up again, while Jose Abreu was hospitalized for an infection in his thigh and might also have played his last game in 2018. The biggest news is Trevor Story suffering UCL damage. Reports are suggesting that he’ll avoid Tommy John surgery, but the issue does cast a bit of doubt over his ROS value.
• New to or back on the List this week: Jeff McNeil, Ji-Man Choi, Scott Schebler, and Ryan O’Hearn. All four have been among the most valuable hitters in fantasy over the past 14 and/or 30 days. Are they truly that talented? Probably not, but of course at this point in the year all that matters are the numbers.
• Thanks for reading all season! I hope that this exercise proved helpful to you in your quest for fantasy baseball glory. I appreciated your feedback each week, even the occasionally harsh criticism. In the instances where the ranking in question wasn’t a simple oversight (easier than you might think with so many moving parts to keep track of, especially since players seemed to always wait until after I’d filed the column to get hurt!) it forced me to either defend or reconsider my positions on a regular basis. Despite what the current national and political climate would have you believe, this is a good thing. And on that vaguely soapbox-y note, thus concludes the 2018 edition of Hitter List. Best of luck to you in the final days.