The 2024 Major League Baseball season is now seven weeks old (a quarter of the way done!), 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 40 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
Ryan Jeffers (C), Minnesota Twins
You can probably rattle off most of MLB’s top-ten in wOBA for the 2024 season without much problem. You have Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, and Kyle Tucker. You would eventually remember Marcell Ozuna and William Contreras are having big years as well. But what you might not realize is Ryan Jeffers is fifth overall with a .423 wOBA, including 10 home runs and 31 RBI (ninth in baseball as of Wednesday). In fact, only Shohei Ohtani has a better slugging percentage than the .629 mark Jeffers carried into the May 15th games.
So what has he done this year to change from a career .240 hitter to a .290/.368/.629 hitter this year? He isn’t necessarily hitting the ball harder. His barrel rate, hard-hit rate, launch angle, and exit velocity are all slightly down from last year. It isn’t luck because his .299 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is only slightly above the league average. it basically just comes down to contact. Jeffers’ contact rates, swinging strike rates, and zone rates have all improved markedly, and it’s allowing him to square up the ball better than ever before.
Brenton Doyle (OF), Colorado Rockies
Am I the first person to make the Doyle Rules reference? No? The 200th? That sounds about right. But in another horrific Colorado Rockies season, Brenton Doyle is shining bright as someone who can help fantasy managers in at least three categories, with perhaps more to come. After a shaky start to the season, Doyle is hitting .298/.351/.471 since April 6th with eight doubles, three home runs, and eight stolen bases.
(Literally, as I wrote the previous paragraph he hit another home run, this time against the Padres on Wednesday.)
The batting average, runs, and stolen bases are where Doyle should make us our money. His speed has proven to be phenomenal and game-changing, as proven when he stole a base in four consecutive games less than a week ago. His 29 feet-per-second sprint speed is two feet per second faster than the league average and puts him in the top third of all center fielders. It’s a big reason why he only has one caught stolen this year and has been able to generate 26 runs on a Rockies offense that ranks 25th in the league in runs scored. With an everyday role secured and his play improving, Doyle is a steal (get it?) if he is still on your league’s waiver wire.
Luis Gil (SP), New York Yankees
Luis Gil was basically undrafted this spring (pick 458 in NFBC drafts), so he has a case for being the most valuable pitcher in fantasy baseball through the first quarter of the season. Gil has a 2.51 ERA, a 1.09 WHIP, and 48 strikeouts through his first 43 innings pitched. Add it all up and it comes out to a 4-1 record and more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings. His new cutter is helping his game evolve as he looks to keep up his hot start all season, but he’s now locked into a place in the rotation even when Gerrit Cole returns this summer.
Gil has been getting very lucky with hits (.186 BABIP) and home runs (just 0.63 per nine innings). There’s no question about that. He also is allowing fewer than 40% ground balls in 2024. Add those up and I’m not discounting the possibility of a negative regression at some point. But as it stands right now, Gil deserves to be on fantasy rosters as he continues to improve and stay ahead of hitters with new pitches.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
Jackson Chourio (OF), Milwaukee Brewers
Jackson Chourio had a really big game on Wednesday afternoon with a pair of hits, a home run, and two RBI. The problem is, that performance has been an outlier over the last month or more for the talented Milwaukee rookie. Before that game, Chourio was hitting just .179/.207/.196 since April 21, a span of 21 games. He had no home runs and no RBI in that period of time, an almost impossible task for someone who had 59 plate appearances for the number one team in the National League Central. Needless to say, it has not been a smooth start for MLB’s number two overall prospect.
Chourio’s problem is only partially driven by luck. His .265 BABIP is not egregious and his expected batting average is just .222 (he is at .210 overall for the season). His problems come down to a 28% strikeout rate and a very low 86.6 miles per hour average exit velocity. It doesn’t help that he is also hitting 50% of his batted balls into the ground. Chourio has 70-grade speed, but he needs more lift and power behind his hits or they are going to keep turning into outs all season.
Manny Machado (3B/DH), San Diego Padres
Manny Machado has a streak of eight full seasons with at least 28 home runs, which includes 30 bombs in just 138 games in 2023. With just five through the first 25% of the regular season this year, he is going to really have to pick up the pace to keep that streak alive in his age 31 season. In fact, he is going to have to really pick it up to have any sort of fantasy value this season. His power has been completely sapped this year as he has just 10 total extra base hits in 170 plate appearances.
It’s now known that Machado played through much of 2023 with elbow pain and it may have lingered into this season. He has only missed a handful of games this season, but it’s clear that something (elbow or otherwise) is hampering his power. Machado’s .354 slugging percentage is more than 130 points below his career average and his strikeout and walk rates are all severely worse than last year. Is this the beginning of the end for Machado? Only time will tell, but fantasy managers don’t have too much of that time before it may be too late to rescue his season.
Sonny Gray (SP), St. Louis Cardinals
The first five starts of Sonny Gray’s season? Immaculate. He had a 0.89 ERA and a .194 batting average against while striking out 38 batters in 30 innings. Since then? Reality has come crashing in on him over his last two outings and he has allowed 11 earned runs and 19 baserunners in his last 11 innings. He still has a strong 15 strikeouts in that span, but a 9.00 ERA and a .696 slugging percentage allowed is not going to cut it for fantasy teams.
In Gray’s first five games, his rolling hard-hit rate allowed was consistently under the league average of 32%. Since then, it’s been hovering between 45% and 50%, and Gray has given up four bombs in the last two games. After being added en masse after his first month of the season, we now should proceed with caution to see if the hard-hit trend continues or if the shut-down version of Gray returns.
