The 2024 Major League Baseball season is almost 13 weeks away (almost over!), which means we finally have the sound numbers we need to start evaluating our favorite teams. With only 27 weeks left in the fantasy baseball season, even a few weeks of information should help guide us in decisions about who deserves an important roster spot on our teams and who deserves to be benched or cut.
With the small sample size caveat pushed aside for this exercise, most players are around 80 games into the 2024 regular season, so this piece will take a look at MLB legend assets that have seen their legend value rise and fall over the past few years. weeks of Major League Baseball games.
Fantasy Baseball Risers
Brendan Donovan (1B/2B/3B/OF), St. Louis Cardinals
Brendan Donovan has been smoking hot over the past two weeks, which has gone along with the Cardinals getting a lot of wins. Donovan is hitting .404 with four hits, 12 RBI, and a steal in his last 50 plate appearances. His hot hitting earned him a promotion from hitting seventh or eighth most nights to hitting fifth in the last six games for St. Louis. He is on pace to surpass last season’s runs, home runs, and RBI sometime next month.
The Statcast numbers look almost identical from 2023 to 2024, so there must be another reason why Donovan started crushing the ball recently. I believe the answer can be found in his patience. Although his strikeout rate is the same from last year to this year, his first strike rate has dropped from 62% in 2023 to just 54% this season. That means about half of his plate appearances Donovan starts ahead of the count now. He is setting himself up for success with his newfound patience at the plate.
Byron Buxton (OF), Minnesota Twins
Byron Buston is probably going to hurt himself reading this on his phone, but for now he’s healthy and thriving in Minnesota, pushing them firmly into the Wild Card spot. His last few weeks have been amazing. In June, Buxton is hitting .359/.390/.667 with two home runs, eight RBI, and two steals, all of which reflect MVP hitting production that has been very appealing.
Besides health, what has changed for Buxton this year? In June it was easy to see the ball and catch the ball. Pulling the ball down the left is where Buxton is at his greatest strength. In May he pulled batted balls just 39% of the time. He was able to correct and increase that to 51% in June so far. Combine that with his aggressiveness at the plate this year (46% swing for the first time in 2024; 30% for his career) and we’ve got the kind of power surge he always knew was there. You just need to stay healthy (good luck!).
James Paxton (SP), Los Angeles Dodgers
Before the 2024 season started, I thought James Paxton would be a perfect fit for this Los Angeles Dodgers staff, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean in an “uber talented pitcher who can’t stay healthy” kind of way. Clayton Kershaw. Walker Buehler. Dustin May. Etc., etc. But, defying all expectations, Paxton has been beautiful AND healthy.
Paxton has a 3.18 ERA with a 1.01 WHIP over his last 23 innings. That includes 21 strikeouts, two wins, and is a 40-game starting pitcher in that span. What caused the increase in production this year? A mixture of pitch. Paxton has increased his usage on his elite fastball (now over 61%), cut the cutter almost entirely (4%), and is now throwing his knuckle curve more than 27% of the time (down from 20% on the season past). He’ll always have plenty of run support for the Dodgers, so as long as he’s healthy, we have a stable, reliable fantasy bullpen.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
Corey Seager (SS), Texas Rangers
Take a look at Corey Seager’s season line and you won’t be surprised that it’s bad. It looks like a down season for the All Star shortstop, but .255/.339/.441 with 14 home runs and 36 RBI over the course of the season isn’t bad. But his season is supported by a fantastic month of May (.287/.387/.660) which is about as far from Seager’s June production as you can get. Over the past two weeks, Seager is hitting .178/.229/.289 with one home run and six RBI. His lack of offensive production is one of several reasons (see below) the Rangers are six games under .500 and are now in third place in the AL West.
The irony of his season is that Seager’s barrel rate this year (15.2%) is exactly the same as his 2023 number. But what happens is that Seager can’t lift the ball. His line drive rate dropped from 20% to 14.% and his ground ball rate reached 44%. Barrels don’t matter if you don’t constantly bring them into the air. With a .270 BABIP he hasn’t been completely unlucky, Seager just gave up all his power in May for some reason.
Adolis Garcia (OF), Texas Rangers
Even though Adolis Garcia has almost the same game as Corey Seager (14 runs and 42 RBIs), his numbers for the 2024 season are terrible and not at all representative of the player we saw in last year’s playoffs. He is hitting just .219/.281/.409 this season including .184/.259/276 in April. All this from a player who was hitting .292/.347/.585 with eight homers at the end of April. Now it seems he can’t buy a hit.
Garcia’s hard contact has dropped significantly in each of the past three months (48% to 31% to 27%). His groundball rate is around 44% for the month and his wRC+ of 53 shows he is about 47% below league average over the last 27 days. A low .226 BABIP offers hope for recovery, but Garcia’s slugging rate is at 73 percent after entering the 92nd percentile last season.
Logan Webb (SP), San Francisco Giants
Did you draft Logan Webb in hopes of a 4.26 ERA and 1.32 WHIP this season? Not really, but that’s what he’s been doing for the last three weeks or so. It’s a departure from a strong start to the season, but with three of his last five games finishing with an ERA of 4.50 or higher, the arrow points down here. The similarity is to be blamed in some way. In those three games Webb faced the Cardinals, Astros, and Yankees. But there are also worrying signs hanging around.
His strikeouts are low, his walks are high. His ground balls are low and his barrel rate is high. Webb’s 49.8% hard-hit rate allowed is far and away the highest of his career (42% overall). I look at his pitches and see no change in velocity so command and control is where I go next. His pitches are down 3 percent this year, which has led to an increase in walks.
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