2024 Dynasty 3B Targets

We’re especially top-heavy at Third Base this year with a few high-upside names and up-and-coming prospects who are also eligible at the position. In no particular order, there are Rafael Devers, Austin Riley, Jose Ramirez, Manny Machado, Gunnar Henderson, and more who can carry your lineups for a full season.

If I’d written this yesterday, Noelvi Marte would be part of the crop that’s up-and-coming, but for now, we’re going to have to leave him off. Is there an immediate PED discount? Probably, but it’s still a risk if we don’t know if his performance last year was PED-related or not. I’m going to lean and say no and that he took PEDs in the offseason to recover from injury, but either way he’s out for 80 games, so he’s a non-factor in the immediate term. This pushes the likes of Jeimer Candelario and Spencer Steer into target territory, and we’ll go over them both below.

There are still a few options being drafted at relatively low ADPs that can yield great value at the position. Let’s go over them:

These are the 3B of note and their second-half numbers (July 1st onward) last year. The first and second rows are Royce Lewis and Austin Riley, respectively. The third row is Gunnar Henderson. The fourth row is a target of mine as well as a few others so let’s go over them and at what cost we can probably pay for them. First, let’s take a look at the names on the list:

If you’re a visual person, here’s a plot that’ll put this in more perspective:

Everyone on this list had a wRC+ greater than 110, except for Nolan Arenado who struggled in the 2nd half. More on him later. Six had a wRC+ greater than 130 while also having more than a .4000 TB/PA. Good numbers on a per-appearance basis. Three of them are being drafted around the same range (55-65) and one is being drafted with an ADP of about 173.

Royce Lewis is the outlier and has the potential to be one of the top 3B in the game to go along with a top 25 overall fantasy asset as long as he’s given a clean bill of health. Do we bet on that and pay the price? We’ll go over my thoughts in a bit, but if you read my Dynasty 3B sleepers and breakouts you already know where I stand.

Some of the old reliable names like Manny Machado and Alex Bregman stick out and those two are names I’m specifically targeting for this year as they’re both in great circumstances to repeat what they did last year and can be counted on to bring you the counting stats that you need. Sorry for the redundancy, it’s early in the morning.

Rafael Devers, Gunnar Henderson, and José Ramirez need no introduction and are all great pieces to build your team around. I left Elly De La Cruz off this list because he was mentioned in my SS targets and the same goes for 3B — chase his upside, to keep it short. I’ll do a brief write-up on Noelvi Marte at the end and share what I think you should do with him if you have him or are willing to acquire him. With that said, let’s get started on our first target: