There is a general belief in fantasy baseball that plate appearances and volume are important, but how much of it actually factors into analysis in the industry? You might share my sentiment that it’s not very often. There is a reason a premium is placed on hitters who are in the lineup every day, but what if you could quantify a player’s lineup context and spot in the batting order to optimize plate appearances on your roster? If you’ve ever wondered about these things, this is the article for you.
The key here is to look for ways to get ahead that are mostly name-agnostic. For this exercise, the information used has nothing to do with the player’s name when looking at team plate appearances. It’s more focused on the specific spot in the batting order on every team and their season-long production, which you can find on Fangraphs under team batting statistics. The best way to use this information is to try to build a team where every player you start is on pace for over 700 plate appearances based on their spot in their team’s lineup. In this article, you will learn how to maximize plate appearances on your fantasy roster with easily attainable players.
Plate Appearances and Teams to Target
The research shows that a good rule of thumb is to target lineup slots that will accumulate over 700 plate appearances, or at least spots that produced that outcome in 2025. When looking at the numbers and looking through the teams, one difference is that the best offenses had the top four lineup spots accumulate 700 plate appearances, while the others only had the top three lineup spots eclipse that mark. The cutoff then tells you that the cleanup hitter on a team needs to be in one of the top offenses to secure 700 plate appearances. Obviously, you may not be able to fill an entire lineup with guys who accumulate that many plate appearances, but in a shallow league, it’s definitely doable. It’s definitely worth paying attention to, and the higher a player is in a lineup and the better the roster, the better that player will be at accumulating points—essentially by default.
The teams whose cleanup spot in the order reached 700 plate appearances in 2025 were the New York Yankees, Milwaukee Brewers, Toronto Blue Jays, Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins, Atlanta Braves, and Detroit Tigers. The Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Athletics came within four plate appearances and deserve to be included here as well. The Diamondbacks and Marlins may come as a surprise here, but they were statistically very good at having their lineups turn over. It makes sense for the Diamondbacks, with Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, and Geraldo Perdomo all at the top of their lineup, but the Marlins were simply an underrated team on offense. The table below gives a good visual representation of these plate appearance numbers for the top teams.
The averages across MLB in 2025 in those lineup spots are shown on the left side of the table as well. Just based on the averages, you can see how each slot someone slides down in a lineup, they are losing roughly 16 or 17 plate appearances. So a leadoff hitter will have at least 100 more plate appearances than the 9-hole hitter over a full season, even in the same lineup.
More Plate Appearance Context and Data
While plate appearances per lineup spot would tell you a lot of players reach 700 plate appearances, only eleven hitters eclipsed that number in 2025, which is why there is a much more useful way of looking at this. What you really want to do is find out how many plate appearances per game someone needs to average in order to reach that number over a 162-game span. While players rarely play every single game, it’s important to know how many plate appearances per game you should be looking for from a hitter. For example, if a hitter averages 4.5 or more plate appearances per game, he’ll reach 700 plate appearances by the 156th game max. What the data says is that the target number for plate appearances per game is 4.32 or higher; if you take 700 and divide by 4.32, you get 162.037—which is the closest you’re able to get to exactly 162 games with a number that’s actually easy to remember.
Useful Across All Formats
What’s great about this exercise and study is that you can now have a target regardless of whether someone has enough games to reach 700 plate appearances or not. So the key then becomes to target players in lineup spots that average 4.32 plate appearances or more per game. If you instead count based on the per-game number (and not 700 overall), the number of qualified players grows from 11 hitters to 40 total, more in line with what the team plate appearance data suggests. Another is that this exercise is useful for fantasy baseball regardless of the format you play in. More volume is always better when it comes to counting stats, and those will help you win no matter what type of league you play in.
Names to Target
To give a few examples of obvious players to target that qualify as well as some that may surprise you, some easy targets are Mookie Betts, Alex Bregman, Brice Turang, Geraldo Perdomo, and Matt Olson. That list is full of guys who either hit very high in the order or play all the time. Most do both, like Matt Olson, who hasn’t missed a single game in at least four years! This exercise shows that Olson should get a boost in any fantasy rankings because his durability makes him a standout. Some surprise names to target are TJ Friedl, Jarren Duran, Ian Happ, Yandy Díaz, and Gleyber Torres. Those may not be exciting names, but they offer great value from a volume perspective.
Names to Avoid
In this specific context, there are some names that lose value that may surprise you. In the quest to maximize plate appearances for your teams, if all else is equal for two players, it’s just another potential deciding factor. Some of those impactful fantasy players lower in lineups are Jazz Chisholm Jr., Teoscar Hernández, Michael Harris II, and Nico Hoerner.
Find your Edge
In summary, you can use data in many easy and simple ways to get ahead—you don’t need to be a genius to calculate these sorts of things. It’s common for people to say nowadays that it’s impossible to find an edge in fantasy baseball, but it’s simply not true. There are many edges out there, but you have to look for them and find them. If you also have a love for that sort of work and strive to get better at it, then it’s a very worthwhile and worthy endeavor.
