Fantasy Baseball Rankings 2019 and Busts: Model that beat experts warns about Willson Contreras, Dee Gordon

On Sunday, MLB news broke that Blue Jays third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be out for almost a month with an oblique injury, sending one of the top Fantasy baseball prospects to the shelf. He wasn’t the only top prospect to go down, either. In L.A., outfielder Jo Adell, drafted in the first round two years ago, is feeling the effects of ankle and hamstring injuries and will need time to heal up, sending him careening down 2019 Fantasy baseball rankings. In order to win your league this year, you’ll need to dodge 2019 Fantasy baseball busts, players who will fall well short of their expected production. Whether it’s a budding player who fails to live up to expectations or a superstar who tanks, busts can destroy your season. The only way to avoid them, and at the same time find must-have Fantasy baseball breakouts and sleepers, is to use proven 2019 Fantasy baseball rankings like the ones at SportsLine.

Last year, their model warned that Orioles starting pitcher Dylan Bundy was being overvalued. Bundy was the No. 40 starting pitcher drafted on average in CBS Sports leagues, but finished at No. 68 thanks to a sky-high 5.45 ERA. The team at SportsLine was all over Bundy as one of its biggest Fantasy baseball busts from the start. Their model had him listed much lower than expert consensus Fantasy baseball rankings, and anyone who listened to their advice was well positioned for a league title. 

Their model is powered by the same people who powered projections for all three major Fantasy sites. And that same group is sharing its 2019 Fantasy Baseball rankings and cheat sheets over at SportsLine, helping you find Fantasy Baseball sleepers, breakouts and busts long before your competition. Their cheat sheets, available for leagues on many major sites, are updated multiple times every day. Any time an injury occurs or there’s a change on a depth chart, the team at SportsLine updates its rankings. 

In fact, when it came to ranking players in Fantasy football, SportsLine’s Projection Model beat human experts last season when there were big differences in ranking. And the model was the closest to the hole overall, meaning it best pinpointed where every player would finish each week. That could literally be the difference between winning your league or going home empty-handed. 

One of the potential 2019 Fantasy baseball busts the model is predicting: Cubs catcher Willson Contreras. 

Contreras exploded onto the scene for the North Siders in 2016, earning a summer call-up and proceeding to slash .282/.357/.488 while helping lead the Cubs to their first World Series in 108 years. He followed that up with an even better second season, with an .855 OPS, 21 home runs, with 74 RBIs. However, his numbers bottomed out in a big way in 2018. He hit just 10 home runs and drove in 54 with a .730 OPS. This year, drafters are assuming the 26-year-old will bounce back and, in fact, he’s the third catcher off the board on average.

But that ignores the reality behind Contreras’ dropoff. His swing doesn’t generate a lot of lift since he’s had a groundball rate of 52 percent or higher in every professional stop he’s made since 2012. In 2016 and 2017, his power was buoyed by home run-to-flyball rates of 23.5 and 25.9 percent, but he’d never gone above 13.4 percent in any stop in the minors. Last year, that number plummeted to 9.3 percent.

That’s why the model says Contreras finishes outside the top five at the position, behind catchers like Yadier Molina, Buster Posey and Wilson Ramos, who are all being drafted after him.

Another player that SportsLine’s Fantasy baseball rankings 2019 are fading: Mariners second baseman Dee Gordon.

Gordon used his speed to take the league by storm, first with the Dodgers and then with the Marlins. He earned back-to-back All-Star appearances in 2015 and 2016 by making hard contact on the ground and taxing opposing defenses by hitting over .300 in two of three seasons from 2015-2017 and leading the league in steals three times from 2014-2017.

However, Gordon appears to be slowing down in his 30s. He went from stealing 60 bases in 2017 and leading the majors to swiping just 30 bases in 2018. His speed also cost him at the plate, with his average dipping from .308 to .268 and his OPS dropping from .716 to .637 in the process. Managers hoping for Gordon to provide steals with regularity are still drafting him 12th overall among second basemen, but SportsLine’s Fantasy baseball rankings 2019 say he’ll finish outside the top 20 at the position in 2019, drastically under-performing his ADP.

SportsLine is also predicting one of the consensus No. 1 players at his position to struggle mightily in 2019 and finish outside the top five. You’ll want to avoid drafting him with an early pick, as that could be the difference in winning your league or going home with nothing. 

So which potential Fantasy Baseball busts should you avoid in your draft? Visit SportsLine now to get 2019 Fantasy Baseball rankings for every single position, all from the model that called Dylan Bundy’s huge bust last season, and find out.