With six weeks left in the regular season, it’s time to face the truth: a lot of people are kind of over this. We’re entering the dog days of the summer, and most fantasy managers at this point know where they stand, in or out, title contention or playing for next draft season. At this point the pipe dreams of drafting that Luis Robert 40-40 season or the Tyler Glasnow Cy Young campaign have been replaced with the nightmare of scanning the bottom of the Marlins depth chart to see where you can scrounge up some stolen bases (and if you are one of these bottom scrapers, you can check out the Rolling in the Deep series or other articles on Razzball).
As we wind down the 2025 season, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the preseason projections to find the biggest scams, and this is specific to those misses that were not because of an injury. Ronald Acuña’s underperformance was part scam, but for the most part due to various injuries. Most systems projected Blake Snell to be Top 10 in strikeouts, but, obviously, he has missed a lot of time. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at these five true scams that pulled the rug out from under many of us this summer:
#1 Corbin Carroll: 40 SB (Steamer)
Do you know how many steals Corbin Carroll has this season? 14! On pace for 19 all season. Juan Soto already has 18 SB, and walk year steals king Josh Naylor is at 22 SB. The truly scammy part of this is that Carroll is still sporting a 98th percentile sprint speed, so it’s not that some injury has caused him to lose speed, and also he is reaching base at an above average .320 OBP, so it’s not that he is lacking opportunities. The chart plotting sprint speed vs number of steals shows the absurdity of this situation how he compares to Naylor.
#2 Jacob deGrom – 12.2 K/9 (Steamer)
This was already a head scratcher before the season began. We saw Jacob deGrom return from an extended layoff and posted a down 11.8 K/9 in 2024 (from 13.4 in 2023). The logic was clearly “he would be better with another 6 more months of rest” but the 12.2 K/9 was the highest projected of any pitcher with more than 100 innings. Spencer Strider and Blake Snell were the next highest with 11.9 K/9 and 11.7 K/9, respectively. After being projected to strikeout 146 batters in 108 innings, the “easy on the gas pedal” version of deGrom is pacing to finish with 190 strikeouts in 179 innings. While he has managed to keep his ERA low, the strikeouts being the result of quantity and not quality was an unexpected scam.
#3 Kyle Schwarber – 107 wRC+ vs LHP (Steamer)
A common scam that gets us every year, “This guy can’t hit lefties, what if he sits every time there’s a lefty starting? The platoon splits will bring him down”. Kyle Schwarber was projected to have a 107 wRC+ vs LHP this season with 9 HRs. Instead, he has a 167 wRC+ with 16 HRs against lefties this year. The funny thing about this is last season he had a 152 wRC+ against lefties in 248 PA.
#4 Gavin Williams – 15.4 K-BB% (ZiPS)
Looking at his 2023 and 2024 K-BB% (where he missed significant time in both seasons due to injury), you will see it was 12.8% in 2023, then 14.2% in 2024. So based on the positive growth (I assume?) most projections system baked in a forward progression for Gavin Williams in 2025. The reality instead, he took a huge step back and currently has a 11.1 K-BB%, worse than the likes of Cal Quantrill, Michael Wacha, and Tervor Williams.
#5 Bubba Chandler – 13~20 Games Started (various projections)
Did you miss out on Paul Skenes last year? Not to worry, get in on the ground floor of the next Paul Skenes; The man named Bubba Chandler who happens to play for the same team! “Too late, too late” will be the cry when the fantasy manager with the Bubba has passed you by.
As it turns out, the “ground floor” was an ADP position higher than pitchers like, say, Matt Boyd, David Peterson, and Jose Soriano, and the only thing “next” about him was that we won’t see him until next year.
Neat article! Any idea/thought as to why Carroll is not running more? Reminds me of my Jackson Merrill :(
Tommy John effect on Ks for DeGrom??
There’s gotta be a team component for Arizona. You look at their SB the last 4 season:
They’re just stealing less as a team it seems. I wonder if there’s some coaching thing that a reporter can ask about.
For deGrom, he intentionally dialed down his fastball to avoid injury this season, and it shows up in his pitch modeling numbers. What’s really interesting is he’s been dialing up his fastball recently and you can see it in the numbers (look at the last 2 pink bars on deGrom’s graph). I don’t know if this is him saying “well the season is over soon anyways” but I guess we’ll see if he has the ability to turn back into God-deGrom in short spurts.
Ah, interesting way of looking at things. Hear ya on the team component, I think it’s going on in Cinci to some degree, as I’ve unfortunately learned this year with Elly stealing at a lessened clip, at least compared to last year. Good stuff on deGrom…did not know that, and I am a Fantasy Noob and Razzball joiner, so the insight is great!
(loving the site)
Thank you, take care.