Best Bets Today – Feb. 19, 2025
FTN Staff
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The closing line of Fitzgerald’s classic novel carries a different meaning within the context of the story, but it’s fitting for fantasy baseball in its own way.
If we look only at past production and chase last year’s stats without considering how a player may perform in the upcoming MLB season, we’ll end up rowing against the current. Thus, making our pursuit of a league title a difficult and more grueling endeavor. We’ll miss out on the new breakout stars and projection-beating seasons if we focus on drafting last year’s numbers. This is now generally understood by the fantasy community at large.
It’s why Seth Lugo has an NFBC ADP around 180 this draft season even though he was one of the single most valuable fantasy players last season. We don’t expect Lugo to repeat his surprise 2024 in the same way that Robbie Ray hasn’t since matched his Cy Young season of 2021, or Triston McKenzie his breakout 2022, among countless others.
This is also why projection systems have become widely used tools. Projections account for more than only last year’s surface stats, and they attempt to provide a median baseline for what a player’s production will look like in the ensuing season. It helps provide us with tempered, realistic expectations upon which we can add our own research and form our own opinions of who will break out or otherwise overperform the market’s expectations.
And yet, there’s still one place where we continue to beat on, against the current, ceaselessly staring into the past, and that’s how we leverage 80th and 90th percentile category targets.
What Are Category Percentile Targets?
Experienced NFBC players are likely familiar with the idea of 80th– and 90th-percentile targets in roto leagues. The concept is rooted in larger overall competitions like those found on the NFBC (Online Championship, Main Event, Draft Champions, etc.). Targets for overall competitions are the focus of this article, but you’ll see that 80th-percentile targets can apply to standalone and home leagues as well.
If an overall contest has 1,000 total teams, then the 80th percentile of stolen bases, for example, would be the total accumulated by the team finishing in 200th place overall in the category. That team would earn 800 of 1,000 points in the stolen base category. Let’s say that team had 190 SB. Our 80th percentile target for stolen bases is then established as 190 SB. We can do this for every category to determine percentile targets for each.
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