2025 MLB Risers And Fallers: Eat Crow, PCA Haters!

Major League Baseball has now played four of 26 weeks this season, which means we have minimal stats to evaluate players for our fantasy baseball squads. With Opening Day past us and the dog days of summer ahead, who have been some of the more interesting risers and fallers?

In the aggregate, four weeks of production are not a lot of information to use when evaluating players for the rest of the season. That’s why it’s also important to look at usage, lineup placement, platoon splits, and other factors when trying to determine what to do with tough player choices.

This piece will look at some MLB fantasy assets that have seen their fantasy value rise and fall through the first four weeks of games. This will hopefully give us an idea of what to do with these players moving forward.

Roster percentages (from Yahoo) and stats include all games finished by April 22.

MLB Risers

Pete Crow-Armstrong (OF), Chicago Cubs

In another slugfest with the Dodgers on Wednesday night, Pete Crow-Armstrong homered AGAIN to bring his line on the season to .294/.339/.549 with five homers, 10 steals, 17 RBI, and 21 runs. Yes, he has played two more games than most players due to the Tokyo Series in March, but this version of PCA in his sophomore year is better than anyone could have expected.

Does he still struggle with taking walks? Yes, his walk rate is below 5%, and he still strikes out about 25% of the time. But this is now two straight seasons of a manageable strikeout rate after he was near 30% several times in the minor leagues. This season, his barrel rate is up, his exit velocity is up, and his launch angle is up. All those combine for a recipe of a power and average season that is putting him among the elite fantasy assets in all of baseball.

Anyone who avoided PCA this draft season because of concerns about power or the potential for strikeouts is looking mighty foolish right about now.

Brice Turang (2B), Milwaukee Brewers

Brice Turang went 4-for-5 (with a walk) in his game on Tuesday night against the Giants to raise his batting average to a robust .337. Add in eight steals and three home runs, and we have a star emerging. Those numbers have put him near the top of all second basemen in rotisserie formats, and he now has 32 hits across 24 games in 2025.

Turang had a mini surge up draft boards late in the draft season, but he still was picked around 135-140 as fantasy managers were cautious of the low power numbers last year and concerns that he could come anywhere close to repeating 50 steals from 2024. A locked-in, everyday role was also in question, as well as his spot in the batting order. All of that now appears to have been a distraction from one of the most dynamic players of 2025. Turang is solidified in the leadoff spot. He is playing every day. He is showing some speed and pop, and appears to be one of the draft season’s steals at the middle infield positions.

Turang still hits the ball on the ground too much (57% in 2025), but his sprint speed is in the 95th percentile, so he can turn a lot of those ground balls into hits. Regardless of how he gets there, Turang will be one of the fastest risers in 2025.

Nick Pivetta (SP), San Diego Padres

Only one pitcher has at least 1.0 wins above replacement (WAR) over the last two weeks. And it’s not Hunter Brown, Tyler Mahle, Garrett Crochet, or any of the other hottest pitchers in baseball. It belongs to Nick Pivetta and his 3-0 record over the last 14 days. In his 20 innings pitched, Pivetta owns a sparkling 0.45 ERA and is striking out 10 batters per nine innings.

On the season, Pivetta is a stellar 4-1 with a 1.20 ERA and just 0.30 home runs allowed per nine innings. He has been a stabilizing ace on the Padres staff and has lowered his walk rate from 2024 while maintaining a strong strikeout rate.

His fastball (which he throws 49% of the time) continues to be devastating and still sits around 94 mph with a 90 mph cutter to balance it out and throw hitters off. If he can keep batters guessing on those two excellent pitches and keep his walk rate at the elite level, this could be a career year for Nick Pivetta.

MLB Fallers

Anthony Volpe (3B), New York Yankees

No one is ever going to expect another Yankees shortstop to come in and be Derek Jeter, but after Anthony Volpe hit 21 home runs and stole 24 bases as a 22-year-old in 2023, we all thought the sky was the limit. But last year was very uneven (28 stolen bases, but a .293 OBP). And now this year, Volpe looks like his ability to hit for contact and drive the ball is gone.

Despite improving his walk rate to 12%, Volpe has struggled to just a .209/.310/.407 line this season. The past two weeks, it has been much worse. During his last 51 plate appearances, Volpe is hitting .167/.294/.214 with no home runs.

The weird thing is that his Statcast metrics are improving. His exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are all up. But he is hitting 49% ground balls and just 7% line drives. That won’t get it done when you’re hunting for hits.

Logan O’Hoppe (C), Los Angeles Angels

Only one player in all of baseball has a higher strikeout rate over the last two weeks than Logan O’Hoppe’s 44.7%. In that span, he is hitting .216/.237/.243 with no home runs, RBI, or stolen bases. To make matters worse, he only has a 2.7% walk rate during that time.

O’Hoppe was a popular sleeper pick for 25+ home runs this season. While he does have five already, those were all hit early, and now he has gone into a massive slump, just like the rest of the Los Angeles Angels lineup.

The strikeouts are a problem, as they have already risen more than 10 percentage points over last year due to a big drop in his zone contact rate from 2024 to 2025. If that level of swing-and-miss continues, O’Hoppe’s average is going to continue to fall, and the power is going to continue in a freefall along with it.

Robbie Ray (SP), San Francisco Giants

Pitchers who walk a lot of batters are killers in fantasy baseball terms. Some pitchers walk a lot of opposing hitters. And then there is Robbie Ray. With 6.66 walks issued per nine innings this year, Ray is more than a full walk per nine higher than any other qualified pitcher in Major League Baseball. If that wasn’t bad enough, Ray is also one of the ten worst pitchers at giving up home runs this season (1.85 per nine innings), as his performances with the Giants this season are starting to resemble some of his worst seasons of his career.

His strikeout rate is under 10 Ks per nine this year, his groundball rate is under 40%, and his 14% barrel rate allowed is the highest of his career. We have seen Ray go through these wild ups and downs in seasons before. Some seasons, like in 2021 and 2022, he is able to course-correct and deliver serviceable, even Cy Young-caliber seasons. In other years, things go off the rails, and he cannot get things back on track. We can’t guarantee 2025 will look like that,

He missed a ton of time in 2023 and 2024 with injuries, so this could be Ray working himself back into shape and building up velocity and endurance. So far, however, there have been no signs of progress, and Ray has been mostly unusable. He has at least three walks in each of his last four starts and has only surpassed four strikeouts twice this year.