The 2024 Major League Baseball season is about 10 weeks old (a third 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 55 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
David Fry (C/1B/OF), Cleveland Guardians
So many puns to make with David Fry’s name compared to how he has been playing lately. Scorching Hot Fry. The Fry-er is Heating Up. David Fry is the third-best hitter in rotisserie baseball over the last two weeks after hitting a crazy .500 with seven home runs, 19 RBI, 14 steals, and a steal. Only the crazy months for Jose Ramirez and Aaron Judge have been better. After “only” getting one hit and one RBI on Wednesday night in Colorado, Fry is batting a cool .356 with a 1.103 OPS this season. A later bloomer who didn’t make his MLB debut until halfway through his age 27 season in 2023, what could possibly be driving this colossal success for the six-year Minor Leaguer?
For one, the batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is an unsustainable .412 on the year. League average is about .29o this season. That’s the bad news for Fry. The good news is his plate discipline is off-the-charts awesome. He is 99th percentile in walk rate, 92nd percentile in chase rate, and 94th percentile on sweet spot contact when he does swing. He is pounding the ball to all fields and has a max exit velocity of almost 109 miles per hour. Projections give him about a .260/.340/.420 number the rest of the way. I can get on board with that if it means another 10 homers and five steals for a player who was an afterthought at draft tables this spring.
Jake Meyers (OF), Houston Astros
After a hit, an RBI, and a stolen base against a tough pitcher in George Kirby on Wednesday night, Jake Meyers is hitting .294 with an .872 OPS this season. He is a top-40 hitter the last two weeks with a .372 average to go along with three bombs and 10 RBI. He has been an unexpected source of power and on-base ability this season for both the Houston Astros and his fantasy managers. Meyers was another player who was undrafted this season but has been subject to strong waiver bids over the last two weekends as his bat shows no signs of slowing down.
In fact, his barrel rate, hard-hit rate, average exit velocity, and launch angle are all way up over 2023, which supports the jump from a .678 OPS this season to .872 this year. But the improvements are not just focused on how he is hitting the ball, but also how he is approaching each plate appearance. His strikeout rate dropped from 25% to 18% this season and his walk rate is up from just over seven percent to about eight percent in 2024. That’s led to more line drives and fly balls, and a jump in HR/FB rate from 11% to 16%.
Ben Brown (SP/RP), Chicago Cubs
If only some more wins were attached to Ben Brown’s performance over the last month, we would be looking at perhaps the most coveted pitcher in fantasy baseball. Despite striking out 33 batters in his last 23 innings, and posting a 1.16 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP, Brown has just one win to show for it. That win came in his last start when he absolutely demolished the Brewers’ lineup for 10 strikeouts and no runs in seven innings. After bouncing around a little bit between starting and relieving, the move of Kyle Hendricks to the bullpen signals that Ben Brown is in the rotation to stay for good.
Brown was a 33rd round pick straight out of high school in 2017, so there is not a tremendous amount of pedigree here, but he has proved to be a strikeout machine in the minors as well as a pitcher that limits the longball. His curveball now grades as 70 on the traditional 40-80 scouting scale and he throws it at 87 miles an hour. Among pitchers with at least 40 innings in 2024, Fangraphs ranks only Aaron Nola’s curveball better in all of baseball. It has become an almost unhittable pitch that he throws 37 percent of the time and has a 50% whiff rate attached to it.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
George Springer (OF), Toronto Blue Jays
Did a drop in the order to the seventh position for the first time in his career fix what has been wrong with George Springer all season? He did hit a two-run homer on Tuesday after that demotion and had a double, a walk, and two runs on Wednesday as well. Only a little more time will tell if Springer can fix some of his season-long troubles, of which there have been many. He is one of several disappointing pieces of what was supposed to be a potent Blue Jays lineup. But even with the success of the last two days, the signs may point to more trouble on the horizon.
The power has basically been zapped from Springer’s bat this year. His hard-hit rate is down seven points. His barrel rate is 4.7%, which is far and away a career-low. And he is two miles per hour lower on his average exit velocity than in 2023. Springer’s launch angle is just eight degrees this year, meaning he has no lift on the ball to drive many line drives or home runs. Springer will be 35 years old before the end of the season, so there is no surprise a slow-down has begun. But after he hit 21 home runs and stole 20 bases in 2023, it’s been more of a slamming on the brakes than a slow and easy stop for his offense.
Edouard Julien (2B), Minnesota Twins
Twins’ second baseman Edouard Julien holds a very unenviable distinction as we approach the month of June. Over the last 30 days, among all hitters with at least 70 plate appearances, Julien ranks 213th out of 214 hitters in slugging percentage (.197). Only Vaughn Grissom has been worse. In fact, if not for the five steals Julien has during that span, his offensive output (.183/.293/.197) would be completely worthless. He has a 37% strikeout rate (sixth-most in that time) and an ungodly .014 ISO. After a strong first month of the season, it’s all fallen off the rails for Julien and now the question becomes can he get things back on track in a meaningful way?
After hitting first or second for 14 straight starts, Julien has now hit eighth, sixth, and eighth in his last three games. He also now sits every time the Twins face a left-handed pitcher, which was four times in the last 12 games. That’s not the kind of consistency you want in a fantasy starter, especially in weekly leagues. His BABIP is still a respectable .297 and he is up to almost 40% fly balls this year, so not all is lost just yet. He has to learn where he left his power and contact ability and find a way to plug it back into his bat quickly or he will start finding himself on the bench more and more.
Bailey Ober (SP), Minnesota Twins
The decline of Bailey Ober this season may primarily due to some bad luck, but MAN has the luck been bad. After allowing six runs and nine hits to the Royals on Wednesday evening, Ober has a 5.46 ERA over the last 30 days (so that doesn’t include his first start of the season when he allowed eight runs in one inning). He has gone more than five inning just once since May 1st and hasn’t topped five strikeouts in each of his last three starts. Of all the players on this list, I could see a bounce-back coming for Ober when I look at the stats under the hood, but his luck will have to turn around in a hurry.
Almost all of his underlying numbers are the same as his 2023 campaign when he had a 3.43 ERA and was solid for 26 starts. His K/9, BB/9, HR/9, BABIP, and HR/FB are all essentially identical to last year. But two things stand out when comparing 2024 to 2023. First, his ground ball rate has tumbled from 34% to 28%, so way more balls are going in the air against Ober. Second, his strand rate (a solid 79% in 2023) has plummeted to 67%. That means a full third of his batters reaching base are scoring this year. The league average is 72%, so hopefully some course correction there leads to a better ERA going forward.
