2025 Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Head-to-Head (H2H) points league: No discounts for format specialists

Leading up to the eight-hour Fantasy Baseball Today Mock Draft Mega Stream, I'll admit I was uneasy about using the Head-to-Head points portion as "official" mock draft results for our humble website. The room was comprised of Fantasy civilians -- fans of the podcast, basically -- and you just never know tuned into the format those guys are.

But I have to say, they knocked it out of the park, giving us the most fitting Head-to-Head points mock draft results that we've had so far.

By that, I mean that all the format specialists, even the ones who we can normally trust to slip because of commonly held biases against the injury-prone or the unproven, were singled out and elevated to the point that, even in what's ostensibly a shallow format with only 252 players being drafted, the late rounds actually felt like late rounds. There were no layups, only dice throws.

I specifically mean within the hitter ranks. I got the ball rolling with Ian Happ at Pick 101, a selection that was well suited for the format but still felt like a reach because of all the points league-coded outfielders that I knew would be available later. Turns out they weren't. Brandon Nimmo went at Pick 104, Steven Kwan at Pick 105 and Jurickson Profar at Pick 111.

Still reeling from that sequence of events, I had a chance to fill my shortstop opening with Matt McLain in Round 10, but I chose not to because I knew Xavier Edwards (3.46 points per game last year, nearly as many as Elly De La Cruz) and Carlos Correa (3.33 points per game last year, nearly as many as Trea Turner) would be available later. Turns out they weren't. I didn't even have a shot at Edwards, who went eight picks later (124), and I had just one chance to grab Correa, who went at Pick 136.

Third base was another position where points league specialists were elevated, with Alex Bregman going at Pick 38, Isaac Paredes at Pick 106, Alec Bohm at Pick 142 and Max Muncy at Pick 175. All were taken well ahead of where we normally see them go, but it's hard to argue given the way their skill sets play in this format.

With so many "hidden gems" removed from the draft pool so early, there came a point midway through the draft when hitters just weren't worth taking anymore, not beyond what was necessary to fill out a starting lineup. In a format where you're only looking at overall production rather than having to balance particular categories, the hitters eventually all look the same, and again, with only 252 players being drafted, some of those virtually identical hitters are sure to be available on the waiver wire after the fact. When the hitter pool enters that stage of homogeneity, many of us like pile up starting pitchers, knowing that we'll need more of them to move in and out of the lineup based on matchups and two-start status.

I say "many of us," but in this draft, it was more like all of us. The push for pitching was so widespread that hurlers who you'd never see drafted in a comparably sized Roto league more or less dominated the late rounds. Examples include Ryan Weathers (Pick 195), Jose Soriano (201), Luis Severino (203), Mitch Keller (204), Max Meyer (207), Brandon Woodruff (209), Nestor Cortes (201), Tomoyuki Sugano (214), David Festa (215), Charlie Morton (220), Zebby Matthews (221), Jack Leiter (222), Kumar Rocker (226), Casey Mize (227), Mitch Spence (229), Hayden Wesneski (235), David Peterson (237), Shane Smith (238), Will Warren (240) and Jameson Taillon (248).

That's what I mean when I say the late rounds actually felt like late rounds. We went deep into the pitching pool, in a way that doesn't always happen in our Head-to-Head points mocks but may be most advisable for the format.

Get the Fantasy Baseball Today 2025 Draft Guide Here!

So who were the whiz kids who made this magical mock draft happen? Here are their names (and/or pseudonyms) followed by the full draft results.

1) CJ, CJBaseball16
2) Vincent Giammanco, For the Love of the Pod
3) Chris Towers, CBS Sports (@CTowersCBS)
4) Randy Russell, Trans-Siberian
5) Scott White, CBS Sports (@CBSScottWhite)
6) Frank Stampfl, CBS Sports (@Roto_Frank)
7) Trent Clifton, Trent Clifton
8) Phillip Wombacher, Cool as a Cucumber
9) Greg Harris, Harris87
10) Sean Millerick, Sean Millerick
11) Brandon Melchiorre, @ATrendyNiteClub
12) Jonathan Fraser, House Fray