2026 Fantasy Baseball: Redrafting the first two rounds now that the season is a quarter over

2 weeks ago 9

Ben Rice and Drake Baldwin have put themselves in the discussion even as catcher-eligible players

May 12, 2026 at 9:25 am ET • 10 min read

In-season Fantasy Baseball content mostly amounts to who to add, who to drop, and what the latest line score means. As such, the top-end talent that occupies most of our attention during Draft Prep season tends to fall by the wayside.

But things are changing at the top, too -- not as much as you might think, but enough that it's worth revisiting a few times a year. Now that this year is a quarter of the way done (yes, really), I'd say we're due for such a visit.

My preferred way to go about it is to redraft for the first two rounds. Drafting is the backbone of Fantasy Baseball, after all, and that early portion of the draft became so well-worn that everyone can spot the differences in an instant.

I'll admit the process involved more hair-pulling than I expected. There were about 16 players who had to be in, and about 18 others who could be in. That adds up to 34 when I was only looking for 24. I address some of the near misses at the end.

Note that the only consideration here was how a player will perform going forward. The numbers that he's already banked don't count for anything except for the psychological toll that they take on us. I try to resist that, but I am probably more susceptible to it than I'd like to admit.

Note also that this self-redraft was conducted with Rotisserie leagues in mind, though at the end of the article, I do depict how things would change in Head-to-Head points.