2024 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Chris Towers' Busts 1.0 pinpoints players to avoid drafting in all rounds

I'm certainly not opposed to making a recent prospect catcher my No. 1 catcher – Bo Naylor was one of my Breakout picks! – but the price tag for Diaz just seems a bit steep. He's going off the board as the No. 5 catcher in NFC drafts, and while you can certainly see the case for it, I'm not sure the value makes much sense. To be fair, Diaz had a pretty awesome rookie season after a slow start, posting an OPS of at least .855 in every month from June on. And he's got the underlying metrics to back it up – his .288 expected batting average was actually a bit better than his actual mark, likewise with his .360 expected wOBA. Take it at face value, and Diaz's rookie season looks like the second coming of Salvador Perez. But it's an awfully tough profile to make work, as Diaz's 44% chase rate was one of the worst marks in the game. The nice thing is, Diaz tends to do damage when he swings, which makes up for his poor swing decisions (that's how he actually had a better-than-average 19.6% strikeout rate despite the sky-high chase rate), but players with that kind of swing profile are always on a razor's edge – just think about how guys liek Javier Baez, Andres Gimenez, Nick Castellanos, and Luis Robert have struggled with consistency. Being a catcher increases the margin for error, but Diaz's price introduces too much risk for an inherently volatile profile.

Bellinger is one of the toughest players to figure out how to value for 2024, and the fact that he's still unsigned in mid-January suggests the smart people running MLB teams are also having a tough time figuring out who he is. On the surface, 2023 was a resurgent campaign, as his .881 OPS was his best since his MVP 2019 season. But a quick look under the hood reveals dramatically diminished quality of contact metrics that call his bounce-back into question. The gap between his expected wOBA (.327) and his actual mark (.370) was .043, the fifth-highest mark among all qualifiers last season, and calls into question whether what he did was at all sustainable. On the plus side of the ledger, Bellinger did showcase career-best plate discipline, and a 43.2% pull rate helped him maximize his otherwise middling quality of contact. But the problem with just assuming that means what he did last season was sustainable is that his strikeout rate in his MVP season was less than a percentage point higher than it was in 2023, while he pulled the ball even more often that season and he actually managed to underperform his underlying metrics; the same was true in his disappointing 2020. None of that means he can't repeat his 2023, but when the cost is a top-60 pick, it's just not a bet I'm willing to make.

The potential of a power-speed combo like the one McLain showed as a rookie is awfully hard to pass on at second base, but there are enough red flags here that I just can't quite bring myself to buy in at this price. The biggest is, obviously, the 28.5% strikeout rate, though unlike some players with elevated strikeout rates, McLain's issue isn't that he's a free-swinger; far from it, as his 41.8% swing rate ranked 180th out of 212 players with at least 400 plate appearances last season. That's not necessarily a problem for a guy like Kyle Scwharber, who waits for pitches he can do damage on, but McLain has neither Schwarber's power nor his patience; instead, McLain seems to verge on passivity a bit too often. Obviously, it didn't hurt him last season, but his combination of poor in-zone contact rates (83% in 2023, a 28th percentile mark) and middling pop (50th percentile average exit velocity; 27th percentile max exit velo) and an all-field's swing might make it tough to maximize his power consistently, even in one of the best home parks for power. McLain has enough else going on for him that he should still be a useful Fantasy option, but is a .250-.260 hitter with 15-ish homers and 20 steals really worth a top-65 pick?

I swear, I'm not intentionally trying to draw the ire of the Queen City here. I'm sure Skyline Chili is fine! And, at some point this preseason, I'm going to put together my "All-FOMO" team, a list of players I need to make sure I have on at least one of the dozen or so teams I draft this season, and De La Cruz is absolutely going to be on it. The fully-realized version of De La Cruz is one of the few players who could conceivably give the fully-realized version of Ronald Acuña we saw last season a run for his money. If you're playing in multiple leagues, the wide range of possible outcomes makes De La Cruz worth the risk … but if you're only playing in one league, spending your precious second-rounder on a guy with flaws as glaring as De La Cruz's is awfully tough to justify. De La Cruz makes a ton of damage when he makes contact, but he's a free swinger and has significant holes in his swing, leading to a massive 33.7% strikeout rate. But the bigger concern here might be that, while De La Cruz is, ostensibly, a switch-hitter, he was brutal from the right side of the plate, hitting .184/.231/.263 with a 40% strikeout rate against lefties last season. He's going to steal enough bases to have value even if his struggles continue, and his defense should insulate him from playing time risks … but the floor here is "he got sent back to the minors in May." There may not be a player with a wider range of realistic outcomes in the game right now.

That Kim is likely to regress as a hitter seems pretty obvious – his .330 wOBA eclipsed his .313 expected wOBA, and the latter was right in line with what he managed in 2022, so a return to that level seems pretty reasonable to expect. So, the question here is mostly whether he'll continue to be one of the game's most prolific base-stealers. After attempting just 21 steals in 267 games over the course of his first two seasons, Kim suddenly attempted 47 steals in 2023, the sixth-most in the majors. Kim is fast, but he's not exactly a blazer – he ranked in the 79th percentile in sprint speed, seventh-lowest among 21 players who attempted at least 30 steals last season. Will the Padres let Kim run wild like that again? If so, then he's probably a pretty decent pick here. If he regresses back to where he was pre-2023 … well, there's a reason he was being drafted outside the top 250 this time last year.

For at least some of these players, there's a point where I would be willing to draft them, but I have a hard time seeing myself getting there with Thomas. His ADP is about 80 spots higher than I have him ranked right now. Thomas' stolen base abilities give him a reasonably high floor, but he put up a .223/.274/.431 line during the second half of last season, which looks a lot like a guy with a career .726 OPS prior to last season turning back into what he was – that he only had a .755 OPS during his minor-league career doesn't hurt the case. The underlying metrics suggest that Thomas overachieved for most of the season, as his expected average of .255 and xSLG of .436 were both well short of what he managed for the season. A low-to-mid-.700s OPS bat with 20-steal potential can be a useful Fantasy option, but it's not worth a pick in the first 10 rounds.

The Rays faced two must-win games in the Wild Card round last season and Lowe only started one of them. Obviously, a sample-size of two is microscopic, but it highlights the issue with Lowe very clearly: He just isn't an everyday player for the Rays, and might never be. The Rays are going to try to min-max their way to a playoff spot every year, and that has historically meant they aren't afraid to put even their best players into platoon roles if they think it gives them a marginally better chance of winning. Now, in Lowe's case, he still managed to be a top-30 player in Fantasy last season despite not being an everyday player, so if he just repeats that, he'll be worth this price. But the margin for error here is basically nonexistent; a month-long slump could turn into a trip back to Triple-A or a lost job pretty quickly here, especially since Lowe hasn't been a great defender to this point. Given the very limited track record of success at the major-league level, this is a big bet on a guy with a limited ceiling and basement-level floor.

Kirby followed up a strong rookie season with another very strong season, but I'm not sure what he did in 2023 justifies a top-10 SP price, which is where he's going off the board. Kirby was the No. 13 starting pitcher last season, and there's reason to believe he might have gotten a bit lucky with that result: His 3.90 xERA is more than a half-run higher than his actual mark. Kirby is a very good pitcher, but I think he's pretty clearly somewhere south of an ace unless he figures out how to generate more strikeouts. He showed signs of that in the second half last season … kind of. His strikeout rate jumped from 20.8% in the first half to 25.2% after the All-Star break, but it was mostly concentrated in a three-start stretch where he struck out 26 in 16 innings at the end of July; from Aug. 1 through the end of the season, his 21.9% strikeout rate was actually lower than his overall mark for the season. Kirby is fine, but he's going a few rounds ahead of Logan Webb, who had a better version of Kirby's 2023 season and showed the kind of strikeout upside in 2021 that Kirby has never shown. I can't justify this price.

Now, when it comes to Glasnow, I really don't have any real performance concerns. Since the start of 2019, he has a 3.03 ERA and 1.013 WHIP, with a massive 35% strikeout rate. He's an ace when he's on the mound. The problem is that Glasnow's 120 innings in 2023 were a career-high at the MLB level, and he's only ever reached 150 innings in a season at any level once, back in 2017. And he's SP11 in ADP right now. Maybe the Dodgers will be able to keep him healthy, but I'm not sure we have much evidence to suggest they're miracle workers in that sense; I'm also not sure the Dodgers are particularly likely to ask Glasnow to work through any minor issues when we know their goal is 100% about winning in the playoffs. Glasnow has been on the 60-day IL three separate times in the past five seasons with an elbow or forearm injury, and while it's possible he's past that – his IL stint last season was due to a left oblique injury – I just don't see how you can justify this kind of price for that kind of injury history, even with a player as talent as Glasnow. If the Dodgers got 70 innings out of Glasnow in the regular season but he's ready for October, that's probably a success in their eyes. And it would be a disaster for a third- or fourth-round pick.

I've had a pretty simple process when figuring out how to approach Snell that has worked out pretty well: When his price is high, I avoid him, and when his price is low, I buy. We're eight years into Snell's career at this point, we should know who he is: An occasionally brilliant pitcher who is maddeningly inconsistent. There were serious discussions about whether Snell was droppable in Fantasy early last season, when he had a 5.40 ERA through his first nine starts; then he ripped off a 1.20 ERA through his final 23 starts that led to his second Cy Young award. "But maybe he's finally figured it out," you might be saying. And I will just remind you that he finished the previous season with a 2.19 ERA in his final 14 starts before going directly into that abysmal nine-start stretch to open 2023. So, I'm just going to avoid him now that his price is high. It's worked out really, really well for me so far.

Ultimately, I can't complain too much about King's price, but I also can't bring myself to actually draft him at this price. He was awesome for exactly one month as a starter at the end of last season, posting a 2.27 ERA over six September starts with a 31.7% strikeout rate, but it's not like that's the first time we've seen King pitch well in the majors; he's been a very good reliever for a few years now, so this isn't exactly a Zach Plesac situation. But the thing to keep in mind about that September run is, he only had more than 80 pitches in a start three times, and he followed up his lone 100-pitch outing with five walks in six innings in his next start, and then four runs in four innings with one strikeout in his next (and final start). Which is to say, we have no evidence that King can hold up to a starter's workload while remaining an effective pitcher. It's not the worst bet you can make with a pick in the double-digit rounds, but with the likes of Chris Sale and Carlos Rodon having shown they can do it for full seasons and upside picks with workload questions like Ryan Pepiot, Shane Baz, Hunter Brown, and more going off the board after him, it's just not a bet I'm going to be making. (The one exception is in H2H points leagues, where King's RP eligibility could make him a significant difference maker as a SPARP.)

Clase was still a very good Fantasy option last season, leading the majors in saves for the second season in a row. However, there were real red flags in his profile along the way, most notably with his strikeout rate droppin from 28.4% to 21.2%, a career-low. He still limited hard contact extremely well, though even that regressed a bit, leading to a 3.06 xERA that was more than a run higher than his 2022 mark. He was still quite good, but Clase was well short of dominant for the first time at the major-league level, and the concern here is that's a harbinger of bad things to come. There weren't any injury concerns that we know of, so it could be much ado about nothing. But if I'm going to invest in a closer with a top-50 pick, I don't think it can be one with those kind of performance concerns.