The 2024 Major League Baseball season is about 13 weeks old (almost halfway done already!), which means we finally have meaningful numbers that count to start evaluating our fantasy squads. With only 27 weeks in the fantasy baseball season, even a few weeks of information should help guide us to decisions about who deserves a valuable roster spot on our teams and who deserves the bench or deserves to be cut.
With the small sample size caveat pushed to the side for this exercise, most players are about 80 games into the 2024 regular season, so this piece will look at some MLB fantasy assets that have seen their fantasy value rise and fall through the past couple of weeks of Major League Baseball games.
Fantasy Baseball Risers
Brendan Donovan (1B/2B/3B/OF), St. Louis Cardinals
Brendan Donovan has been absolutely smoking hot over the last two weeks, coinciding with the Cardinals picking up a bunch of wins. Donovan is hitting .404 with four bombs, 12 RBI, and a steal in his last 50 plate appearances. His hot streak earned him a promotion from hitting seventh or eighth on most nights to batting fifth in five of St. Louis’ last six games. He is on pace to pass last season’s runs, homers, and RBI sometime next month.
The Statcast numbers look almost identical from 2023 to 2024, so there must be some other reason that Donovan has started crushing the ball lately. I believe the answer can be found in his patience. While his strikeout rate is essentially the same from last year to this year, his first-pitch strike rate is down from 62% in 2023 to just 54% this season. That means in almost half of his plate appearances Donovan is starting ahead in the count now. He is setting himself up for success with his new patience at the plate.
Byron Buxton (OF), Minnesota Twins
Byron Buston probably is going to injure himself reading this on his phone, but for the moment he is healthy and thriving for Minnesota, pushing them firmly into a Wild Card spot. His last few weeks have been incredible. For June, Buxton is hitting .359/.390/.667 with two home runs, eight RBI, and two steals, all while showing the MVP batting production that has been so tantalizing.
Besides health, what has changed for Buxton this year? In June it has been a simple matter of see the ball and pull the ball. Pulling the ball to the left side is where Buxton always has his most power. In May he pulled batted balls just 39% of the time. He has been able to readjust and increase that to 51% in June so far. Combine that with his aggressiveness at the plate this year (46% first pitch swing in 2024; 30% for his career) and we have a recipe for the power surge he always knew existed. He just needs to stay healthy (good luck!).
James Paxton (SP), Los Angeles Dodgers
Before the 2024 season started, I thought James Paxton would fit right in with this Los Angeles Dodgers pitching staff, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean that in a “uber-talented pitcher who can’t stay healthy” kind of way. Clayton Kershaw. Walker Buehler. Dustin May. Etc, etc. But, defying all expectations, Paxton has been phenomenal AND healthy.
Paxton has a 3.18 ERA with a 1.01 WHIP over his last 23 innings. That includes 21 strikeouts, two wins, and he is a top-40 starting pitcher in that time. What’s caused the surge in production this year? Pitch mix. Paxton upped his usage on his elite fastball (now over 61%), cut out the cutter almost completely (4%), and is now throwing his knuckle curve over 27% of the time (under 20% last season). He will always have plenty of run support on the Dodgers, so as long as he has his health, we have a stable, reliable fantasy pitcher.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
Corey Seager (SS), Texas Rangers
Look at Corey Seager’s overall season line and it won’t look that bad. It looks like a down season for the All Star shortstop, but .255/.339/.441 with 14 home runs and 36 RBI halfway through the season is not abysmal. But his season is being propped up by a stellar month of May (.287/.387/.660) that is about as far away from Seager’s June production as you can be. In the last two weeks, Seager is hitting .178/.229/.289 with one home run and six RBI. His lack of offensive production is one of several reasons (see below) the Rangers find themselves six games below .500 and now well in third in the AL West.
The strange thing about his season is that Seager’s barrel rate this year (15.2%) is exactly the same as his number in 2023. But, what’s happening, is Seager can’t get lift on the ball. His line drive rate has dropped from 20% to 14.% and his ground ball rate is up to 44%. Barrels don’t matter if you don’t get them into the air consistently. With a .270 BABIP he isn’t getting completely unlucky, Seager just left all of his power back in May for some reason.
Adolis Garcia (OF), Texas Rangers
Even though Adolis Garcia has roughly the same run production as Corey Seager (14 home runs and 42 RBI), his rates for the 2024 season are significantly worse and don’t at all represent the player we saw in last year’s playoff run. He is hitting just .219/.281/.409 for the season including .184/.259/276 in April. This is all from a player who was hitting .292/.347/.585 with eight homers when April ended. Now it seems like he can’t buy a hit.
Garcia’s hard contact has dropped steeply each of the past three months (48% to 31% to 27%). His groundball rate is almost 44% for the month and his wRC+ of 53 indicates he is about 47% below the league average over the last 27 days. A low .226 BABIP gives some hope for recovery, but Garcia’s hard-hit rate is just in the 73rd percentile after checking in at the 92nd percentile last season.
Logan Webb (SP), San Francisco Giants
Did you draft Logan Webb hoping to get a 4.26 ERA and a 1.32 WHIP this season? Of course not, but that’s what he has done over the last three weeks or so. It’s a deviation from the strong start to the season, but with three of his last five games finishing with an ERA of 4.50 or higher, the arrow is pointing down here. Matchups are somewhat to blame. In those three games Webb faced the Cardinals, Astros, and Yankees. But there are also some troubling signals hanging around.
His strikeouts are down, his walks are up. HIs groundballs are down and his barrel rate allowed is up. Webb’s 49.8% hard-hit rate allowed is far and away the highest of his career (42% overall). I look at his pitches and don’t see any change in velocity so command and control is where I go next. His pitches in the zone rate has fallen three percentage points this year, causing the walks to spike.
