Toughest players to rank at third base for 2027: Jose Ramirez's decline creates a major Fantasy dilemma

Miguel Vargas, Manny Machado and Kazuma Okamoto add more uncertainty to a third base position filled with 2027 questions Sep 22, 2026 at 9:42 am ET • 9 min read Third base wasn't viewed as a strong position entering 2026, and it doesn't look much stronger. Sure, we had players like Sal Stewart, Miguel Vargas, and Kevin McGonigle breaking out and establishing themselves as the next generation of the position, perhaps, and that ain't nothing. But we also had deeply disappointing seasons from Jose Ramirez, Jazz Chisholm, Manny Machado, Austin Riley, Maikel Garcia, Bo Bichette, Eugenio Suarez, and Noelvi Marte, all of whom were drafted in the top 10 at the position. It would not be an overstatement to say that eight of the top 10 at the position busted, and you can throw Matt Chapman (3B12 in ADP) and Addison Barger (3B14) in there, too, to round it out. So, yeah, we needed the breakouts. Because a lot of the old standbys let us down and it's not like the breakouts are without their flaws or concerns – any player who has only done it once is going to enter the next season with at least some question marks. Looking ahead to 2027, Junior Caminero might be the only sure thing at the position. He's going to be a first-rounder no matter what, but if you're the type to play position scarcity games, you might need to make sure you reach for him no matter where you're picking. Because if not, you're going to be left with a big question mark at an important position. The toughest players to rank at third baseJose Ramirez, GuardiansThere are those who will argue Ramirez is very easy to rank. Some will say you should take his decline at face value; when a 34-year-old starts to fall off, they don't generally get it back. Ramirez enters the final week of the season hitting .237, his worst mark since 2015, while his 12 homers are his fewest since 2016. Sure, there was a mid-season hand surgery to blame it on, but to reiterate an earlier point: You probably shouldn't expect a 34-year-old to be healthier than he was in the past. Just take the numbers and the decline at face value. That's one approach you can take. But I don't think it'll be mine. Because, despite the mediocre production, it doesn't actually look like Ramirez's skill set has declined much at all. His strikeout rate is up, but at 12.9%, it's still within a percentage point of his career mark, while his walk rate is actually his highest since 2021. His .306 wOBA is his worst mark since 2015, but his .329 expected wOBA is basically right in line with what he did in 2024, when he hit 39 homers and had arguably his best season ever. It's down from 2025, but not so much that it looks like a total collapse of the skill set. Ramirez still makes a ton of contact and he still hits the ball in the air to the pull side as often as anyone, the primary way he has overcome middling quality of contact metrics throughout his career.Now, I'll grant that it's possible that the small, almost imperceptible changes in Ramirez's underlying skills have more impact than you might expect. Ramirez has been an outlier in how he outruns his underlying metrics, but that can be a delicate dance to keep up; Marcus Semien was an elite Fantasy player with a very similar skill set right up until the point he lost it. The margin for error with this kind of skill set might just be narrower than for guys who can crush the ball consistently, so maybe Ramirez's decline won't be stopped by a healthy offseason.I'm open to that. He won't be a top-five player in my overall rankings for 2027. But he'll definitely still be a top-five third baseman, and might still be the second option off the board for me. Miguel Vargas, White SoxI don't think it's tough to figure out where Vargas ranks among third basemen. He belongs no lower than fourth, and I think you can make an extremely compelling case that only Junior Caminero should be ahead of him. So this might be more about just making sure everyone is prepared for the possibility that Vargas will be a second-round pick in 2027. The level he has reached in 2026 is completely unprecedented for Vargas, who has been playing pretty regularly since the second half of 2024 and had never really shown this kind of difference-making upside. But his .366 wOBA is actually a mild underperformance relative to his .381 expected wOBA, which is actually tied for the fifth-best mark of any hitter in the league.I don't think Vargas is actually a top-five hitter in baseball. But if you wanted to argue he was a top-10 Fantasy option after this season, I wouldn't have a strong argument against it; the best argument I could muster is just, "Well, he's only done it once." But in addition to the underlying numbers, here's the other thing I love about what we're seeing from Vargas: He just refuses to slow down. July was the worst month of his season, but he responded with a .948 OPS in August, and then he went out and won AL Player of the Week last week. He's hitting .260/.373/.467 in the second half with strong plate discipline and plenty of speed and power. Those gaudy underlying numbers are a little worse than they were early in the season, which might portend some regression in 2027. But, again, it probably wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to be a top-10 hitter again. But that doesn't mean the breakout isn't real, and where you rank him among Ramirez and Sal Stewart will mostly come down to personal preference. I imagine all three will be at least top-30 picks for me. Manny Machado, PadresThere was a period in 2026 where Machado looked like himself again, and I was ready to write his slow start off as just that. He started hitting for real power again in June, and then in July he hit .292/.369/.552, putting the miserable start to the season behind him. But despite hitting three homers in his first five games back from the All-Star break, Machado enters the final week with just nine homers in 59 games since the break, while hitting .242/.331/.388 in the second half overall. If he deserved some benefit of the doubt for the slow start, it's hard to keep extending that when he came crashing back to earth over the final two months. Machado's .330 xwOBA is definitely better than his actual .311 mark. However, it's still his worst since Statcast tracking began, and unlike Ramirez, he doesn't have a consistent track record of overcoming his underlying stats. There's still room for some improvement in 2027, most notably with his batting average, as a .234 BABIP isn't likely to sustain. But if he hits to his .244 xBA instead, that's still a drag on your average. Think about it this way: How excited have you been to have Nolan Arenado in your lineup this season? He hasn't been awful, but he hasn't been worth near the kind of price we've gotten used to paying for Machado. Neither is Machado at this point. Kazuma Okamoto, Blue JaysIt's been an extremely successful first major-league season for Okamoto, though not necessarily in the way anyone expected. Okamoto was supposed to bring a contact-forward skill set, with just enough power to be a potential all-around impact hitter. Instead, he's been a pretty all-or-nothing power bat, hitting .235/.310/.459 with 33 homers and 89 RBI heading into the second half of the season. A longtime elite contact hitter in Japan, Okamoto has struck out 29% of the time and posted a 14% swinging-strike rate, both bottom-15 marks among qualifiers. The strikeout issues got a little better in the second half, though he was a sub-.700 OPS bat in July and August before getting really hot in September, so it's hard to argue there's too much momentum building here. It's not unreasonable to expect a bit better from Okamoto with a full season under his belt, but the swing and miss issues on display were worrisome enough that he might just never get past it. Draft him for what he did in 2026, and if you get a .260 average from him instead, that'll be a huge win. But there are enough red flags in this profile that there's a real risk he'll end up being exposed before long. Curtis Mead, Red Sox Mead comes with all the typical questions of a one-season breakout, except he didn't even get the chance to do it for a full season. He platooned for part of the early part of the season and then suffered a fractured wrist in his very first game after being traded to the Red Sox in July. When he played, he was terrific, putting up a .253/.353/.498 line and more than holding his own against righties, so the case is pretty similar to that of Vargas as a former top prospect who finally made good. Only he did it for about half as many plate appearances, which makes it inherently more difficult to trust. I mean, just look at Michael Busch, who fully broke out in 2025 and had the underlying data to back it up, but then regressed badly in 2026. That doesn't mean the same thing will happen to Mead (or to Vargas, for that matter), but there's real regression risk that should keep his price down. I still think Mead deserves to be ranked as a top-10 third baseman, but I don't think he'll be worth drafting until at least the double-digit rounds. Zack Gelof, AthleticsThis feels like we're all Charlie Brown and we're gonna run up and try to kick that football again. Gelof has had a pretty awesome season, hitting 19 homers and stealing 14 bases in 105 games, while putting up a very solid .252/.314/.456 line. He has cut his strikeout rate to 25%, the best mark of his career, and while his underlying numbers don't quite back it up, his home park in Sacramento could help explain why it might not be unsustainable. But we did this with Gelof after his rookie season. We overlooked scary plate discipline and swing-and-miss issues because he was a young, exciting hitter with a power-speed combo, and that was worth betting on. And I'm just not sure I want to make that mistake again. He's a pretty good athlete, but that doesn't really translate into much more than above-average raw power, and I just don't have much faith that's enough to overcome what are still some pretty scary issues under the hood. Gelof has, to his credit, become a more patient hitter, though not necessarily a more discerning one; his chase rate has dropped about as much as his in-zone swing rate has. He still has big swing-and-miss issues, and it just always feels like Gelof is going to be dancing on a knife's edge. If he's still there after the first 150 picks or so, I might be willing to take a chance on him. I just don't think I can bring myself to rank Gelof as a starting-caliber player in most leagues.