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| Tuesday, February 25, 2025 |
| 30 days until Opening Day ... |
| There won't be big news every single day of Spring Training, and I won't make big changes to my ranking everyday as a result. But I did make some changes Monday in reaction to some of the spring news we talked about in yesterday's newsletter as well as one big piece of new injury news that came out after yesterday's newsletter. |
| So we'll start there today, as I moved Rafael Devers down to the bottom of his tier at third base, due to growing concerns about the health of his shoulder. I also moved Orioles prospect Coby Mayo down to the deep-league stash range of the rankings, due to concerns about his chances of making the team's Opening Day roster. But the biggest drop came with Sean Manaea, whose status for Opening Day is suddenly in doubt as a result of an oblique injury. I wrote about all three moves in this piece, but here's what I had to say about Manaea's injury and what it means for how I'm viewing him in drafts: |
| "The Mets announced Tuesday that Manaea has suffered a strained right oblique, an injury that seems likely to land him on the IL to open the season. According to BaseballProspectus.com's Recovery Dashboard tool, pitchers miss an average of 47 days with oblique strains, which would put Manaea on a timetable to return around the second week of April, which wouldn't necessarily tank Manaea's value for the season. |
| But oblique injuries are especially tricky, with a tendency to recur if you don't let them heal completely before returning to baseball activities. That's especially a concern in the spring, when a player may feel pressure to hurry back for the start of the season, potentially aggravating the injury or otherwise messing up their preparations for the season. |
| I liked the changes Manaea made in 2024, lowering his arm slot mid-season to emulate Chris Sale's release point, which fueled 3.09 ERA and 28.4% strikeout rate over his final 12 starts. But I also had some concerns about how sustainable it would be – did he dominate because he unlocked a new baseline level of performance, or because hitters just weren't used to the new look? Could he consistently throw strikes from the new arm slot? Would the league catch up with more looks? I was comfortable with him as a mid-round target despite those concerns, but with the injury, he's now more of a late-round flier for me." |
| I know my colleague Scott White has been very high on Manaea, ranking him as a top-45 starting pitcher before the injury, and he may not be as pessimistic about Manaea's chances of being an impact arm this season. But I think the start of starting pitching is strong enough that I just don't see much reason to buy into a pitcher with an inconsistent (to put it kindly) track record who is already hurt unless he comes at a steep discount. |
| If Manaea drops outside the top-250 in ADP as a result of this injury, I may jump back on board -- and he might even qualify as a sleeper for me if he falls far enough. But as things stand, he certainly didn't crack my list of Sleepers 2.0, which was published on CBSSports.com Monday morning. The new list features six names, headlined by Jackson Jobe , who remains one of the most undervalued pitchers in Fantasy in my eyes. Add in eight holdovers from Sleepers 1.0, and I've got 14 players with an ADP outside the top 200 you should be looking to draft in all leagues -- even with four players cut from Sleepers 1.0. |
| In the rest of today's newsletter, I'm taking a look at some of the biggest boom-or-bust picks in Fantasy for 2025, with an eye on what it could look like if things go right, what could go wrong, and where I land on them for 2025. |
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| The All Boom-or-Bust All-Stars |
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| Every player has a wide range of possible outcomes for the upcoming season, but for some players, the ranges are wider than for others. Here are a dozen players with what I view as the widest ranges, with my thoughts on which side they're going to land on. And, if I sound pessimistic about some of them, just know this: I might still draft them. Because you need to take risks to have a chance to win in Fantasy Baseball. |
| Let's just make sure we understand the risks going in. |
| C – Francisco Alvarez, Mets |
What it looks like if things go right: The best power-hitting catcher in baseball.
What it looks like if things go wrong: Like last season – too many grounders, too many strikeouts, and a fringe starter even at the weakest position in Fantasy. |
| How much of Alvarez's 2024 struggles were the result of the early thumb injury and the later shoulder issue he played through? And how much of it was a conscious decision to change his approach, trying to hit for batting average and totally wrecking his swing? For his part, Alvarez doesn't blame the thumb, so it comes down to finding a way to tap into the plus-plus power that was supposed to be his calling card without totally tanking his batting average. He's young and still capable, but my faith has been shaken, and I don't have a lot of confidence in the best-case scenario coming true. |
| 1B – Michael Toglia, Rockies |
What it looks like if things go right: 30-plus homers, 15 or so steals, and a batting average that won't kill you.
What it looks like if things go wrong: A bench role even on one of the weakest rosters in the majors. |
| Strikeouts are probably always going to be a big issue for Toglia, who has some significant holes in his swing. But does batting average have to be an issue? Toglia hit just .218 in 2024, but with a .244 expected batting average, the biggest negative gap between BA and xBA for any Rockies hitter with at least 400 PA in the Statcast era. Rockies hitters have outperformed their xBA by 17 points on average in the Statcast era, so Toglia wouldn't need to change much about his skill set to project something like a .260 average. Of course, you can't just talk about the upside when talking about a guy who was literally sent back to the minors last season. |
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| 2B – Matt McLain, Reds |
What it looks like if things go right: How does a repeat of Jarren Duran's 2024 season sound?
What it looks like if things go wrong: How does a repeat of Zack Gelof's 2024 season sound? |
| McLain overperformed his expected stats by a significant amount in 2023 and has suffered season-ending injuries in two seasons since, so I tend to be lower than the consensus on him. But what if his home park just keeps allowing him to outrun his underlying metrics? And what if that whole Reds lineup takes the step forward we expected, McLain stays healthy, and sustains that 29-27 pace from his rookie season? The plate discipline might be bad enough to sink the profile – he struck out 29% of the time as a rookie and showed pretty alarming underlying contact skills – and the injury history is alarming, too. But if his rookie season was at all real, we're talking about a potential top-30 pick next season. |
| 3B – Mark Vientos, Mets |
What it looks like if things go right: The good version of Eugenio Suarez.
What it looks like if things go wrong: The bad version of Eugenio Suarez. |
| Vientos has the kind of raw power that can swamp plate discipline concerns … to a point. He was in the fourth percentile in whiff rate and 24th percentile in chase rate last season, which certainly isn't a deal breaker – Tyler O'Neill, Brent Rooker, Teoscar Hernandez, and Giancarlo Stanton have similar whiff issues, and Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, and Anthony Santander (among others!) all ran worse chase rates than Vientos. As for the specific comp here: Vientos probably has a bit better raw power, but his swing isn't quite as grooved for power as Suarez's is, and his underlying plate discipline is probably a bit worse, too. Suarez usually hits for plenty of power, but the batting average has been all over the place. Is a .200 batting average a risk for Vientos? It might be, and with the Mets having a much slimmer margin for error than their massive payroll might make you think, I think there is a world where Vientos whiffs his way out of a job. |
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| SS – Xavier Edwards, Marlins |
What it looks like if things go right: "What if Brice Turang wasn't a drain on your batting average?"
What it looks like if things go wrong: "What if Brice Turang lost his job?" |
| There just aren't a lot of comps for this profile in the majors these days. Edwards is trying to be a throwback to the Juan Pierre days, slashing and sprinting his way to an inflated batting average and tons of steals. It worked for about half a season in 2024, but he also outperformed his expected batting average by nearly 80 points, and the whole profile looks a lot worse if it comes with a .252 average. And, because Edwards is playing out of position at shortstop for the Marlins, he won't have the playing time cushion Turang's elite 2B defense gives him. Even on a team as seemingly hopeless as the Marlins, it's not impossible to see how Edwards could find himself on the outside looking in. |
| OF – James Wood, Nationals |
What it looks like if things go right: Jazz Chisholm with even louder tools.
What it looks like if things go wrong: Oneil Cruz with even bigger flaws. |
| At 6-foot-7, 234 pounds, Wood is already one of the biggest dudes in baseball, and he uses every inch of that frame to generate power. He's also a well above-average athlete, ranking in the 85th percentile in sprint speed – only four players listed at a higher playing weight were faster than Wood in 2025. It's an incredibly impressive collection of tools, and it allowed Wood to put up a 20-28 pace as a rookie despite being very far away from a finished product as a hitter. He rarely elevated the ball, and when he did, he rarely hit it to the pull side, which means he wasn't often tapping into his plus-plus raw power; likewise, he stole 14 bases despite just a 64% success rate. It's easy to see how Wood can be a superstar if he just sands down some of the rougher edges in his game, but you just need to look at Chisholm and Cruz to see how much harder it is to do that in practice than it is in theory. The floor here seems fairly high based on how his rookie season went, but any backsliding with his plate discipline could make things pretty ugly. |
| OF – Christian Yelich, Brewers |
What it looks like if things go right: A legitimate five-category superstar.
What it looks like if things go wrong: He goes on the IL in April and never comes back. |
| This one is actually fairly straightforward: If Yelich is the same guy after back surgery ended his 2024 season, he's an impact five-category bat. Yelich never stopped having an excellent approach at the plate, and he never really stopped hitting the ball hard, running an average exit velocity over 91 mph every season from 2021 through 2024. However, he struggled to consistently drive the ball in the air and wasn't quite as much of a batting average standout until last season. We attributed much of his struggles to lingering back injuries, but how confident should we be that those issues are behind him now that he's 33? I was initially pretty confident, but I recently moved Yelich down into the mid-round range of my rankings after giving it a bit of thought. It just feels like there are only a few ways things go right, but there are a lot where things go wrong – including the ones where Yelich manages to stay healthy but just isn't the same guy he used to be. |
| OF – Jasson Dominguez, Yankees |
What it looks like if things go right: What if we built the whole plane out of Corbin Carroll's second half in 2024?
What it looks like if things go wrong: What if we built the whole plane out of Corbin Carroll's first half in 2024? |
| Dominguez has been so hyped for so long that it's been easy to forget what kind of player he actually is. The calling card has always been the raw power, but his actual in-game power has generally been more decent than good – in 177 games between Double-A and Triple-A, he has 27 homers, for example. He's a patient hitter with big raw power but isn't totally optimized to get to the power in game, often hitting too many ground balls or weak pop-ups. And, while he's been a very aggressive baserunner, he rates out more as an above-average runner by pure foot speed, making hopes of 40-plus steals look overly optimistic. But 20 homers, 30 steals, and a bunch of runs, if he manages to get to the top of the Yankees lineup, isn't a realistic upside scenario, but there's also plenty of risk of an unmanageable batting average – and he might be a fringe-y defender even in a corner spot. Which is to say, there could be some playing time risk if Dominguez doesn't hit the ground running, which we couldn't say for Carroll when things were going poorly early last season. |
| SP – Jacob deGrom, Rangers |
What it looks like if things go right: He's the best pitcher in baseball for 150 innings.
What it looks like if things go wrong: He's the fifth-best pitcher in baseball for 50 innings. |
| There are two theories out there. One is that deGrom just isn't built to survive the amount of torque he creates when he pitches. The other is that, while that may have been true when he was pitching with a UCL carrying several thousand pitches worth of damage in it, it's less of a concern following UCL reconstruction. I tend to lean toward the former with the 36-year-old who hasn't stayed healthy for a full season since 2019. I suppose there's a world where deGrom stays healthy and makes it through even more than 150 innings of dominance, but that feels too optimistic even for an exercise designed to give the optimistic case a hearing. Ultimately, if you take deGrom as your SP1 – that's where the price has settled – the biggest thing you have to know is, that you need to minimize risk with the rest of your pitching staff. Which is awfully hard to do, given the risk inherent in just about every pitcher. |
| SP – Hunter Greene, Reds |
What it looks like if things go right: 2024.
What it looks like if things go wrong: Pre-2024. |
| You're always going to get big strikeout rates. You're always going to have to deal with slightly problematic, though not disqualifying, walk rates. The biggest difference between the disappointing version of Greene and the dominant version in 2024 came down to the quality of contact he allowed. Greene allowed lots of loud contact in 2022 and 2023, and then he became arguably the best pitcher in baseball at limiting hard contact in 2024. That's a skill that takes a long time to normalize, so how much of his apparent growth in 2024 was a real skill improvement very much remains to be seen. I've tried to come up with a good explanation for why Greene's quality of contact allowed was so much better in 2024, and the best I can come up with is that his fastball added about an inch of rise, which coupled with the introduction of a splitter helped keep batters' barrels off the ball despite largely similar pitch locations. I'm not at all convinced that this was real, and the time Greene has missed with elbow and shoulder issues in the past few seasons makes him largely a stay-away for me. |
| SP – Shane McClanahan, Rays |
What it looks like if things go right: Pre-injury Shane McClanahan.
What it looks like if things go wrong: Post-injury Walker Buehler. |
| When McClanahan was at his best prior to his second Tommy John surgery, he had an elite fastball and changeup combo, plus a slider that dominated lefties. It was about as good a package as you could ask for from someone with somewhat iffy command, and if you could guarantee he was the same guy as he was prior to the injury … well, I would still have my concerns. Because McClanahan had a tendency to get hit pretty hard when he wasn't missing bats, and now he's moving from a pitcher's paradise in Tropicana Field to what could be one of the better hitting environments at George M. Steinbrenner Field. If McClanahan's stuff is as dominant as it was in 2022, he'll thrive anywhere, but we saw with Buehler last season that you can't always bet on that coming back. |
| RP – Felix Bautista, Orioles |
What it looks like if things go right: 60 innings of making hitters absolutely miserable.
What it looks like if things go wrong: 20 innings of making Fantasy baseball players absolutely miserable. |
| We're gonna learn a lot about Bautista's value for 2025 once we actually see him on a mound pitching competitively, and hopefully, that'll happen relatively soon. He's coming back from Tommy John surgery and a second procedure to address nerve issues a few months later, and he only faced batters for the first time this week. Does he still have the pre-injury stuff? Can't say! How does his command look coming back from injury? No idea! His price has dropped in the past couple of months , but Bautista still costs a top-100 pick about as often as not, and while the upside could be huge – he was arguably the best per-inning pitcher on the planet in 2023 – we just don't know if he's still that guy. If he is, a top-100 pick is a steal. But there are some ugly tail-end outcomes here, too. |
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