MLB

Fantasy Baseball: 9 Spring Training Position Battles With Big Implications

A player's role has a huge effect on his fantasy-baseball stock. Which players could see major fluctuations here in this year's spring training?

Ambiguity sucks. When we're uncertain about things, we can confuse the roles of hegemonic powers in international relations with the relationship powers of baby hedgehogs. That's a bit embarrassing, and we should likely try to avoid such ambiguities.

But there's also a positive side of ambiguity, especially when it comes to fantasy sports. When we don't know how a situation is going to play out, we're prone to just avoid it completely. Selecting a guy who winds up with a reduced role is a buzzkill, so we wind up looking elsewhere in pursuit of more firm playing time.

While this is all well and good, it can cause us to overlook situations that would normally make us foam at the mouth. Sure, there's some risk involved in drafting a reliever who may not wind up getting save opportunities, but you can bet your bottom there's upside to compensate.

With spring training on the horizon, baseball is brimming with these types of situations. If a player were to win a job or lock down a role right now, it's possible that his draft stock would absolutely skyrocket. While we can't know for sure whether that'll happen, identifying these situations can allow us to buy while the gettin's good.

Let's try to identify these high-leverage scenarios currently in play as we inch closer to the start of real games. Any time we reference an average draft position (ADP), it will be based on FantasyPros' ADP data over the past seven days. As you get set for your season-long drafts, here are some position battles to monitor throughout spring training.