The 2024 Major League Baseball season is about 20 weeks old (only two months left in the season!), 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 115 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
Jake Burger (1B/3B), Miami Marlins
Maybe it was a little bit crazy on my part to predict Jake Burger would be the fantasy baseball hitting MVP (at least based on ADP), but the power I was infatuated with in the offseason is finally emerging. Jake Burger is cooking up some crazy numbers right now and is a low-rostered power bat that could help literally any fantasy team right now. Just in the past two weeks, Burger is hitting .346/.455/.731 with a trio of home runs. He has six bombs in the last month and is in the top 25 among hitters in slugging percentage and on-base percentage.
There has been a huge shift for Burger in his batted ball profile in the second half of the season. In the first half, Burger hit the ball on the ground 51% of the time, essentially sapping any potential power that lived in his bat. In the second half, Burger has seen that number plummet to 22.9% while his fly ball rate is up to almost 46%. That allows him to tap into his gargantuan strength and is the primary reason why Burger already has nine bombs in the second half when he had only 10 in the first.
James Wood (OF), Washington Nationals
Finally shaking the rust off his first-ever promotion to the Major League, top prospect James Wood is hitting the cover off the ball lately, proving that he does belong in the big leagues after all. Now well past a shaky start, Wood is hitting .357/.481/.619 in his last 12 games with a home run and three steals. I might expect those two numbers to flip over the weeks to come as his power develops and his plate discipline continues to evolve. There is one part of his game that he must course-correct as he rounds out his first season.
Wood is still striking out at a 35% clip in the last two weeks. Even with an elite 19% walk rate, that is way too many whiffs and will keep Wood from unlocking whatever next levels exist in his bat. But with someone as hot as Wood, this is nit-picking to say the least. Wood is getting on base, he is driving in runs (11 in two weeks), he is scoring runs, and his batting average has risen from .200 on July 26th to .261 as August 8th arrives.
Sean Manaea (SP), New York Mets
Sean Manaea didn’t look great in two starts against the New York Yankees and the Miami Marlins in late July, but he has bounced back in a HUGE way in his next two turns against the Twins and the Cardinals. In those two contests, he allowed zero total runs, walked one batter, and struck out 21 over 14 innings. These were immaculate performances that show what a career year Manaea is having in the Big Apple. He now has eight wins, a 3.30 ERA, and almost 10 strikeouts per nine innings pitched.
Manaea is picking up steam and improving on just about every important metric from earlier in the season: strikeout rate, home run rate (he is now under one homerun per nine), walk rate, and groundball percentage. The elimination of his four-seam fastball (12% of his pitches) in favor of his dynamic sinker (39%) and slider (26.7%) is driving a massive turnaround and helping the new Mets’ pitcher become a bona fide ace in the second half of the season.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
Colt Keith (2B/3B), Detroit Tigers
For a couple of weeks in July, rookie Colt Keith was the King of Detroit. From July 3rd thru July 27th, Keith hit .361/.446/.750 with seven home runs and 17 RBI in 21 games. He walked 11 times and even hit three triples in that span. He was unstoppable. But since that time, it has been a sharp decline into almost unplayable territory. Since July 28th, Keith is hitting .189/.231/.216 with no home runs and just one RBI. What happened to cause Keith to go from one of the most added players in fantasy baseball to obscurity?
The first thing that stands out is his BABIP. In the most recent stretch, it was 200 points lower than his dominant run in July. Luck played a tremendous part in Keith’s rise and fall, and his true self is likely somewhere in the middle. Keith also has seen his walk rate cut in half from July to August, and the aggressiveness at the plate has hurt his average and slugging percentage. If luck can get back on his side, and he gets back to being more patient at the plate, perhaps the world-beating version of Colt Keith can return for the last six weeks of the season.
Christopher Morel (2B/3B/OF), Tampa Bay Rays
Christopher Morel debuted with the Tampa Bay Rays after his trade with quite a bang. He hit two home runs in his first two games, immediately replacing the power that the Rays traded away in Isaac Paredes. But in the five games since those home runs, it has been as bad as it can possibly get for Morel. He is slashing an unfathomable .000/.278/.000 in August and is striking out almost 33% of the time.
These kind of prolonged slumps are just part of the roller coaster ride of rostering Morel. In a 20-game stretch in April and May he slugged .543 and hit six home runs in 20 games. He followed that up with a stretch where he hit .095/.259/.119 for 12 games. If stability is what you want, Morel is likely not the right man for your starting roster. But if you’re trying to catch lightning in a bottle for the playoff stretch, Morel’s hot streaks are always just right around the corner.
Max Meyer (SP), Miami Marlins
After Max Meyer returned from being put on ice by the Marlins for two months, it was assumed that Meyer, one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, would assume the form he took in April when he made an electric debut. In those first few games, Meyer had a 2.12 ERA, a .180 batting average allowed and 14 strikeouts in 17 innings. The Marlins, choosing to “save his arm” instead of being upfront about wanting another year of team control, sent him back to AAA and recalled him to start on July 27th. It hasn’t been pretty since then.
Meyer has allowed 13 earned runs in 13 innings and only struck out 12 batters across three starts. He has six walks in his last three starts when he only had three in those first three early-season starts. It hasn’t been just the walks, although they are a major contributing factor. Meyer also has seen his fly ball rate jump 10 percentage points and his ground ball rate fall by 11 points. Hard contact is up, barrel rate is up, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Meyer might have benefited from facing more MLB lineups rather than being sent down to dominate a level he had already mastered.
