This article is part of our Dynasty Rankings series.
Note from James Anderson: I am excited to announce that Ian Kahn, a successful actor and fantasy baseball player, will be taking over RotoWire's dynasty rankings going forward. I simply can't get you dynasty rankings as often as you would like them. It is a full-time job just to handle all of the prospect content on the site, and that only covers about half of my responsibilities. I didn't want the prospect content to suffer in order to pump out overall dynasty rankings more than twice a year. Even then, the rankings were often limited to 150 or 200 players. You all deserve better than that. Not only is Ian my co-owner in the RotoWire Dynasty Invitational, he is the best dynasty player I know. So he is extremely qualified to rank 400 players for dynasty leagues and to give you updated versions of those rankings every few months. This means you will be getting rankings that are twice as deep and at least twice as frequent as what you were getting from me over the past few years. Quality dynasty rankings take forever to put together, and Ian definitely put the time in on these. I gave him some feedback, but these are his rankings, and I really want to stress that. He had the freedom to rank prospects wherever he saw fit, so you will see inconsistencies between the top-400 prospect rankings and the top-400 dynasty rankings -- Brendan Rodgers fans, rejoice. This is not a flaw, but
Note from James Anderson: I am excited to announce that Ian Kahn, a successful actor and fantasy baseball player, will be taking over RotoWire's dynasty rankings going forward. I simply can't get you dynasty rankings as often as you would like them. It is a full-time job just to handle all of the prospect content on the site, and that only covers about half of my responsibilities. I didn't want the prospect content to suffer in order to pump out overall dynasty rankings more than twice a year. Even then, the rankings were often limited to 150 or 200 players. You all deserve better than that. Not only is Ian my co-owner in the RotoWire Dynasty Invitational, he is the best dynasty player I know. So he is extremely qualified to rank 400 players for dynasty leagues and to give you updated versions of those rankings every few months. This means you will be getting rankings that are twice as deep and at least twice as frequent as what you were getting from me over the past few years. Quality dynasty rankings take forever to put together, and Ian definitely put the time in on these. I gave him some feedback, but these are his rankings, and I really want to stress that. He had the freedom to rank prospects wherever he saw fit, so you will see inconsistencies between the top-400 prospect rankings and the top-400 dynasty rankings -- Brendan Rodgers fans, rejoice. This is not a flaw, but a perk. You already know where I'm at on all these prospects, and I'm always here to answer any and all dynasty questions, but Ian has a voice on our site now too, and that's a win for everyone.
My old man, rest in peace, was a successful businessman. At a young age he taught me a lesson that I employ constantly in life, and in fantasy baseball: listen to your client. They will tell you what they want. In dynasty baseball there may be no better lesson. Yes, the waiver wire is crucial, the draft every offseason is key, but there is no more important aspect of becoming a champion than a successful trading philosophy.
We all have our guys. We all have our rankings. We all have our tells. When I engage my trading partner, it will hopefully be on the telephone. That's where your trading partner/client tells you all that you need to know. My background is in the acting field, where the difference between a slight pause and a full pause means everything. I bring up a player that I am interested in trading for, and the response will tell me the tale. "Yeah, I'd be open to moving him," with a little bounce in their voice tells me a player I have ranked as a top-100 dynasty asset might only be seen as a top-200 asset by my "client". That's where I want to strike. I'm never interested in buying my client's favorite player. That acquisition cost is too high. I want the guy they're looking to move. That is where the value always lies. There's your market inefficiency.
Making trades is fun. Almost always. One of the tricks that I try to use is what I call the "Pringles Move". Once your client makes that first trade with another owner, the next one is always easier to pull off. Once you pop you can't stop. I look at what the client is doing with that deal and try to build off where they are going. If they have just signaled that they are looking to go for it in 2019, I am going to find the piece on my team that will help them in their goal. The key is to make an offer that will keep that conversation moving. If the client is going for it and you send them an offer that is 70-30 in your favor, you won't be able to take advantage of the situation at hand. You have to get close enough for them to bite.
Later in this piece I'm going to talk about the late-April trades that can set the course of your team for years to come, but right now I want to discuss these rankings, which RotoWire unveiled today.
The rankings are for a 15-team, keep-forever dynasty leagues; two starting catchers, 23-man active rosters with seven bench spots and 20 minor-league players per team. The two-catcher aspect pushes up catchers a little more than you might be used to seeing. If you play in a league where only 15-to-20 catchers start, you can bump catchers down these rankings. Everything is relative. If you are in a rebuilding phase, you can bump guys like Edwin Encarnacion and Robinson Cano down while pushing the young minor-league bats up.
I ranked these players based on how I would draft them in a startup situation. I look at dynasty startups a bit differently than most players. I am not looking to build a team in the first year, though my teams will often end up competing in that first year. Rather, I am looking to the second season to start stacking my dynasty championships, a run that will hopefully last three-to-six years. I am always drafting for value, and in dynasty baseball, the value will always lie in young bats.
Draft as many young bats as you can starting from the first round, and don't stop. These will be the trade chips that you use to build your dynasty. In a 15-team league, often as many as 13 teams will be looking to win a crown in Year 1. That's your market inefficiency. Everyone wants to win that first year. Well, by April 28, at least half of those teams will clearly see that this will not be their year. That's when you strike.
I individually email all of the owners who are in the lower half of the standings and ask if they want to hop on a call about a possible deal. Many will. In that call I will let them know that I will be selling my young bats to the first team that is interested in rebuilding for the future. It's all about psychology. In dynasty, like in MLB these days, you are either going for the crown, or building towards that time.
My client will have players that may have been drafted in the second or third round, but if they are going to rebuild, those players won't be part of their hypothetical future championship squad. Those are the guys that I want. Out of my 50 players, I have 30 hitting prospects that will have value. I'll tell the person on the other end of the call I can spare two top-100 prospect bats, that I might have gotten in rounds 11 and 14, for two players drafted in, say, the third and sixth rounds. It always works. Always.
I will make a handful of these trades, because once another owner sees that they can get young bats for their players, they want in on that ride. Now having James Anderson as a partner in RDI is a huge advantage, because he is constantly stocking our minor-league system with emerging young bats as we go through the season. Using this philosophy in our 20-team league, we started the season with minor leaguers populating half of our lineup through April 28, and then we employed this strategy. We had 58 points out of 200 on May 1, and ended the season with 165 points, coming in second place behind Ryan Bloomfield. We lost by three points. If we had started the process a week earlier, or if Chris Sale had stayed healthy, we might have won the title in Year 1.
Either way, we go into Year 2 of our league with three first rounders, one second rounder, four third rounders, one fourth rounder, two fifth rounders and two sixth rounders from the original draft. We also were able to hold onto the first two prospects we drafted (Bo Bichette and Royce Lewis).
This is why players like Wander Franco can be ranked as high as 45 in these rankings. Sounds crazy, almost blasphemous. However, if a team drafts for now and finds itself looking at an early rebuild, they won't hesitate to move 31-year-old Carlos Carrasco for a 17-year-old future star who some suggest might have the helium of a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. going into 2020.
I will be available to answer all questions about the list in the comments below. I'm particularly excited to discuss how I have Shohei Ohtani at 24th overall. I'm really grateful to be joining the RotoWire team.
Keep track of Ian's Top 400 Dynasty Rankings!
