Toughest first basemen to rank for 2027: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s upside comes with plenty of big risk

For the past couple of years, ranking first base was tough because there were so few really good options to choose from. In 2024, there were just five players who played at least 10 games at first base and had at least 80 RBI and 80 runs; in 2025, there were seven; in 2026, there have already been nine, and there are still 12 days left in the season. 

This holds true no matter which metric you use. Homers? There have been nine 30-homer first basemen this season, compared to seven in 2025, four in 2024, and five in 2023. It's even more stark with OPS, where 17 first basemen have at least an .800 OPS while qualifying for the batting title; there were 13 in 2025 and just four in 2024. However you want to define it, this is the strongest the first base position has been in at least a few years. 

This makes the stakes higher for drafting in 2027. Betting on a Bryce Harper bounce-back in 2026 was easier to do when there just weren't a ton of impact bats seemingly available; betting a top-50 pick that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will dominate next season could prove incredibly costly, given the alternatives. 

Of course, with so many one-year wonders helping to fuel the gains at first base, there's also going to be risk all over the place. Many of these breakouts will prove to be legitimate, but at least some will wind up coming back to Earth, and if you're the one investing big into one of those breakouts, you'll have to understand how much risk you're taking on. As we continue our look at the toughest players to rank for every position, first base has no shortage of options. I managed to whittle it down to eight names, but that was from an initial list of almost 15. 

So, just because the position looks better than it has in a long time, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy to figure out for 2027 drafts. 

The toughest players to rank at first base

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays

The weirdest thing about Guerrero's season is, in a lot of ways, he doesn't look like a significantly different hitter. His batting stance and swing look very similar to what they have in years past (unlike when Fernando Tatis was similarly struggling after dramatically changing his stance and setup), and he's still generating plenty of bat speed. He's not hitting the ball as hard as he typically does. Still, it's not like a 90.5 mph average exit velocity and 44.5% hard-hit hate are terrible marks that explain why Guerrero is bottom-10 in all of baseball in Isolated Slugging percentage. He's nestled between Xavier Edwards (86.7 mph average exit velocity) and Xander Bogaerts (89.3). It's just hard to come up with a good explanation for how Guerrero ended up here. 

Part of it is just, well … he's maybe a bit overrated for Fantasy? He was a second-round pick entering 2026 despite having 23 homers, 84 RBI, and 95 runs – a good season, but not worth that kind of price. We've seen elite production from Guerrero before, but in just two of his eight MLB seasons now, so maybe drafting him with the expectation of elite production is just a mistake. 

That being said, I do expect better from him in 2027. In part, just due to natural regression – he's better than this, even if the underlying data is the worst since his rookie season. This kind of season is within the range of possible outcomes for Guerrero, which makes him a bad choice for an early-round pick. But the MVP-caliber production is also within that range as well, and I don't think you can say that for most first basemen outside of the top tier. He definitely won't rank as a top-five 1B for me in 2027, but I have a very hard time seeing him falling outside of the top 12. 

Josh Naylor, Mariners

2025 was such a great season for Naylor, but all of a sudden, he's going to open next season as a soon-to-be-30-year-old with declining metrics pretty much across the board. Maybe it's the hangover from the first year with a big contract, but as a general rule, betting on players at this point in Naylor's aging curve to bounce back from a down year usually isn't a great bet. After holding his own in T-Mobile Park last season (in a small sample size), Naylor is hitting just .255/.317/.344 at home, which feels like a pretty alarming sign. Though with just a .711 OPS on the road, it's not like he's been great there, either. Naylor does have a multi-year track record before 2026 of being a must-start player, so I don't want to discount the possibility of some positive regression – and his 27 steals to date are still a very nice bonus at first base. But this does feel like a more irreversible slide than Guerrero's, and I won't be giving Naylor nearly as much of the benefit of the doubt. If all it costs is a late-round pick, I don't mind betting on a bounce back, but I don't think Naylor should be ranked anywhere close to a top-12 1B for 2027. 

Alec Burleson, Cardinals

Burleson has kind of emerged as the new Naylor, a batting average and run production standout, despite iffy power for the position. He's traded a bit of contact this season for the best quality of contact metrics of his career. If anything, there's been a bit of poor luck here – he has a .376 expected wOBA compared to a .355 actual mark, a pretty big gap for what is already a breakout season. Of course, much of the increase in his value comes from an MLB-best 110 RBI, and you just can't bet on another year with this kind of success with runners on base. He's still a viable starter with, say, 90 RBI, but he probably isn't a difference maker in the same way. This is the profile of a low-end top-12 1B, not the top-five guy he's been this season. 

Freddie Freeman, Dodgers

The Dodgers have maintained that there isn't one specific incident that has led to Freeman's ongoing battle with knee tendinitis, but it feels notable that he is hitting just .227/.327/.318 since he fell into the Royals dugout on Aug. 12 and left the game. He was having another pretty typical Freddie Freeman season before then, but his production has been dragged down by a very slow finish; he might finish with less than 75 RBI and 80 runs this season, along with his fewest homers since 2015. The skills still look pretty strong, and he figures to remain a standout in batting average, but at this point, you're taking a big hit in power for sure, and potentially in run production with Freeman as your first baseman. It'll feel weird to do it, but I'm not sure Freeman deserves to be ranked in the top 12 for 2027. 

Jonathan Aranda, Rays

Aranda is a good hitter. But I do worry 2026 will go down as the high-water mark for his career. The Rays gave him a much longer leash vs. lefties this season and it mostly wasn't worth it – he has hit .245/.328/.331 against them with a 28% strikeout rate, and while that certainly isn't unplayable, they can probably do better pretty easily. Aranda still more than holds his own against righties, but it's hard to be a must-start Fantasy option as a true platoon bat. It also doesn't help that, after looking like a true, across-the-board breakout early on, he has just a .687 OPS in the second half of the season. He's still going to finish north of 20 homers and 90 RBI with a helpful batting average, so I don't want to downplay how valuable Aranda has been this season. But given the late-season swoon and the platoon issues, this feels like more of a corner infielder than a starting first baseman to me, and not one I'm particularly excited about. 

Munetaka Murakami, White Sox 

Everyone ended up being right about Murakami, and that might just be because he's an unusually volatile hitter. Early on, it looked like the doubters were dead wrong, as he hit .240 with a 50-homer pace before going on the IL in late May with a hamstring injury; since coming back, he is hitting just .171 with a 38% strikeout rate and more like a 30-homer pace. Maybe the hamstring injury is totally to blame and he would have kept walking that Kyle Schwarber-esque tightrope to Fantasy dominance without it, but I'm pretty skeptical. He has bigger swing-and-miss issues than basically any player in baseball. While his swing decisions and power are elite, there are probably just always going to be these kinds of downside outcomes in his profile. He's a good power hitter who will probably be a drain on your batting average, and I think more than almost any other player, Murakami's value is going to be dependent on your specific team context throughout the draft. If you took Schwarber with your second-round pick, you're going to have to just cross Murakami off your draft list entirely, no matter where he falls. If you go with Bobby Witt and a pitcher in your first two picks, you might need the sure-fire, elite power Murakami provides, justifying a multi-round jump up your board. How do you rank that player, exactly? Probably as the No. 18 1B, if I had to guess. 

Luis Garcia Jr., Yankees

Garcia has had a shockingly incredible season. He already has 12 more homers and 21 more RBI than his previous career high, and he needs just one more run to match his previous best. Sure, he's stopped running, but when you're hitting .287 with 30 homers, who cares? But here's my concern: Since getting to the Yankees, he has just 15 RBI and 18 runs in 36 games despite an .839 OPS since joining the team. That's an 81-run, 68-RBI pace even if he played a full season, but of course, those 36 games include just 32 stats in 38 team games, as he continues to be treated as more or less a full-time platoon bat. And that's always going to be the issue for Garcia, who has been at a counting stat deficit to other players with similar offensive profiles outside of those incredible few months at the end of his Nationals tenure. If he continues to hit as well as he has this season, he'll still have value for Fantasy, but not as much more than a corner infield option now that he's lost 2B eligibility. 

Jake Bauers, Brewers

Bauers has had a remarkable turnaround, going from a failed prospect to a journeyman bench bat to one of the most valuable players on the best team in baseball this season. And the thing is, it doesn't look like a fluke at all. He has raised his average exit velocity to 92.4 mph and his hard-hit rate to 52.9%, borderline elite marks. He's doing it while posting phenomenal plate discipline, but on a swing-decisions level and on a per-plate-appearance level. Take it at face value, dig into the deeper numbers, and whatever you'll find looks like a legitimate difference maker, and one who hasn't slowed down at all as the season has gone on. He plays against lefties and has crushed them, too! The only argument he has against him is that he doesn't have the track record to back it up, and age-30 breakouts that turn into sustainable production in a player's 30s are pretty rare. History is working against him, but that's really the only case I can muster against him. Bauers won't be a top-12 1B for me in the rankings, but I can definitely see a situation where I end up drafting a bunch of him because everyone else will be more skeptical. (And, for what it's worth, you're probably going to be better off drafting him as an outfielder, where he might actually be a top-24 option).