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If you've been playing Fantasy Baseball long enough, you've surely noticed a trend by now: Everyone is really good at playing Fantasy Baseball.

A decade ago, coming up with a list of busts to avoid in upcoming drafts was easy enough. Seth Lugo had a career-best season in 2024, finishing as a top-10 starter for the first time as a 34-year-old. If that happened in 2014, he might have been drafted as a top-15 starter the following season – this year, he's not even a top-50 starter in ADP. Hard to call him a bust at that price, you know? 

Every draft room is just so sharp these days, that it's hard to find an edge. You've got to search hard to find them, and maybe be willing to zig when everyone else is zagging, too. And there's one much-hyped player I'll be avoiding in my drafts in 2025: Lawrence Butler.

And it bums me out. 

I want to like Butler. Heck, I've got him ranked as a top-24 outfielder and top-80 player in my Roto rankings, so I'd say I do like Butler. Quite a bit. It's just that everyone else seems to like him a whole lot more than I do in every single draft. In the month of January in NFBC drafts, Butler is the No. 19 outfielder off the board, with an ADP of 65.3. I like him – there's 30-30 upside here and he could very well be a first-round caliber player if all goes right! – but it's an awfully high price to pay coming off a season where Butler was sent back to the minors and put up these kinds of month-by-month stats:

  • April/March: .195/.303/.325 (89 PA)
  • May: .138/.219/.138 (32 PA)
  • June: .179/.172/.250 (29 PA)
  • July: .363/.408/.802 (98 PA)
  • August: .266/.301/.585 (103 PA)
  • Sept/Oct: .280/.330/.409 (100 PA)

The highs are incredibly high, obviously, but that's really only two months of production at the level he's being drafted at. And it's not like his minor-league production suggests superstardom, either – he hit .257/.344/.439 overall, and his OPS in the high-minors was only a hair over .800, too.

Butler has plenty to like about him, obviously. But speed is no longer at the premium it once was, and the outfield position is suddenly much deeper than it was a year ago, so paying up for Butler's cost just doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I wish it did. I'd love to have him on my team and root for the upside outcomes. But there's too much risk here to justify it. 

Here are 11 more players I won't be paying the sticker price for in 2025:

Busts 1.0

Logan O'Hoppe, C, Angels – ADP: 118.34

Maybe the signing of Travis d'Arnaud doesn't really mean anything. He's a starter-caliber catcher masquerading as a backup, sure, and the Angels jumped the market to sign him, sure, but maybe it won't affect O'Hoppe's playing time – O'Hoppe was eighth among catchers in playing time last season. Or hey, maybe O'Hoppe is so good that even a 10% reduction in playing time wouldn't really impact O'Hoppe's price, which remains top-eight at the position in the month of January. After all, he has legitimate difference-making power for a catcher, as evidenced by all the red on his StatCast page under various batted-ball metrics. But O'Hoppe also has pretty scary plate discipline issues that could limit his upside, even with all that power. I don't think he's a terrible choice as your No. 1 catcher, but I can see too many ways this could go wrong to justify the cost. 

Pete Alonso, 1B, FA – ADP: 54.1

The vibes aren't great for Alonso. A protracted, disappointing (for him) free agency process was easy to see coming from a mile away, and MLB team's lack of interest in his services is a reflection of how the one-dimensional slugger is valued, sure, but also how Alonso is expected to age. He's an all-fields slugger whose quality-of-contact metrics have been moving in the wrong direction since his peak. Alonso is still typically among the best power hitters in the league by the end of the season, but it's a profile without much margin for error – despite decent contact rates, he has hit .240 or worse in consecutive seasons, with a sub-.250 xBA in each season. If he returns to the Mets, he's going to drive in a ton of runs and probably be worth this price, but is that .240 average and 35-ish homers worth this price if it comes with 90-ish RBI in a lesser lineup? Is there that much of a difference between Alonso and Jake Burger in that outcome? I'm not convinced. 

Luis Garcia, 2B, Nationals – ADP: 114.6

If the Nationals were ever going to give Garcia a chance to truly play every day, wouldn't last year have been the time? They entered the second half of last season nine games under .500 and Garcia still only started 77% of the team's games after the All-Star break – this despite Garcia playing at a higher level than ever before. He started just 15 games against lefties last season and I just don't see much reason to think that's going to change in 2025. If the breakout he enjoyed in 2024 was for real, he could still be worth a top-120 pick, but I think there's plenty of reason to be skeptical – especially about his 22 steals, which were 13 more than his 2023 total despite what remains below average foot speed. With Garcia likely to put you at a deficit in runs and RBI due to his lack of an everyday role, you really need him to be a 20-20-type hitter, and that's no sure bet. 

Willy Adames, SS, Giants – ADP: 84.8

Contract-year effects are weird and hard to parse, but there's a lot about Adames' 2024 season that looks pretty flukey. Less so the career-high 32 homers – just one more than his previous best – than the 112 RBI, which came in part thanks to an MLB-record-tying 13 three-run homers, something he isn't likely to repeat. And then there's the career-high 21 steals – 13 more than his previous best! – despite declining sprint speed. And then there's the move from Milwaukee to San Francisco as a free agent to consider. Only one team had more steals than the Brewers last season, while only one team had fewer than the Giants, so a repeat of those 21 steals seems especially hard to buy into. And, while American Family Field isn't a significantly better hitter's park for right-handed hitters than Oracle, it is a much better park for right-handed power, ranking seventh in HR park factor over the past three seasons, compared to Oracle, which ranks 28th. There were already a lot of reasons to think Adames wasn't going to replicate his 2024 campaign, and he landed in just about the worst spot to do so. 

Mark Vientos, 3B, Mets – ADP: 86.9

If the Mets really do stand firm on not bringing Alonso back, the bust case for Vientos does become harder to make, simply because hitting behind Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto could put Vientos in line for tons of RBI opportunities. The ceiling here could be very high if Vientos repeats his 2024 breakout … I just don't know that he will. Vientos' breakout was fueled in large part by improvement in plate discipline, allowing him to put his excellent raw power into play more often. However, though Vientos' plate discipline was improved in 2024 … it was still pretty bad! His zone contact rate of 75% was 197 among 207 players with at least 400 PA, while his chase rate of 32% was in just the 22nd percentile among the same group. Vientos has the power to make the most of the contact he makes, but his underlying stats suggest there was still some good fortune to end up with the numbers he did in 2024 – his .356 wOBA outpaced his .331 expected wOBA, the seventh-biggest gap of any hitter. Vientos' circumstances could make him a star, but there are a lot of ways this could go really wrong. 

Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF, Cubs – ADP: 137.7

Here's something scary about Crow-Armstrong: He's one of the very few players who actually ranked lower than Vientos in those plate discipline metrics I cited just now. And Crow-Armstrong doesn't have the high-level quality of contact metrics to make up for it. What he does have going for him is arguably best-in-baseball speed and centerfield defense, which should mostly insulate him from playing time risk, which is nice. But Crow-Armstrong seems likely to be buried in the bottom of the Cubs lineup, and might just be a one-category contributor in 2025. In an era where steals are as plentiful as they are right now, you're better off waiting for Victor Robles (ADP: 196) or Cedric Mullins (219.2) for your steals. 

Josh Lowe, OF, Rays – ADP: 164.0

Lowe is another one where we are potentially paying something of a premium for steals that we just don't need to. Even though the Rays shielded him from plenty of the toughest lefties on the schedule, Lowe still struck out a whopping 31.8% of the time last season, which is just an untenable mark for a platoon bat. And, at this point, 2023's 24.8% mark is looking like the outlier for Lowe's career. I do like the positive park shift with the Rays moving to George M. Steinbrenner Field, but I like that for Brandon Lowe (a sleeper pick of mine) a lot more, given his standout power and cheaper price. Lowe looks like a solid source of speed, but the other counting stats will probably be pretty poor, and his batting average isn't likely to help much either. I'd rather take a flier on similar profiles with Robles (196), Nolan Jones (255), or Jordan Walker (287.2). 

Jacob deGrom, SP, Rangers – ADP: 47.5

Since making it through the 2020 season healthy, deGrom has thrown just 197.1 innings. That's 287th among all pitchers in baseball, just behind James Paxton, who pretty famously can't stay healthy! deGrom is healthy right now, and to some drafters, that's all that matters – we aren't any good at predicting injuries, so why penalize players who aren't actually hurt? I'm sympathetic to that argument, especially when I can get difference-making talents like Mike Trout (129.7) or Kodai Senga (150.2) at a significant discount. That's not happening with deGrom. If he's the deGrom of old, even 130 innings would be worth this price, of course, but we're also talking about a 36-year-old whose velocity was down nearly 2 mph from his peak when he returned for three starts from Tommy John surgery. If deGrom is the same guy he was before and he stays healthier than he has been in a half-decade he can justify this cost. Is that the best you want to make with your fourth-round pick? 

Blake Snell, SP, Giants – ADP: 54.5

Here's some useful advice for Fantasy players: Know thyself. If you can ride the Snell-coaster without getting so frustrated by the low points that you sell him at a steep discount, then he could be worth this price – as frustrating as the process is, the end results usually bring tons of strikeouts and excellent ERA numbers, and there should be plenty of wins to be found in Los Angeles. But there's always a stretch for Snell where everything seems to go wrong, both with performance. He had an ERA north of 5.00 as late as June in each of the past four seasons except 2023 (he had a 5.04 ERA on May 25 that season, naturally). And Snell is also at a pretty severe workload deficit relative to most of the other aces, having reached 130 innings just once in nine MLB seasons – and with the Dodgers almost certain to use a six-man rotation in 2025, even the 180-inning mark he hit in his two Cy Young seasons is almost certainly a long shot. There's plenty of upside here, but it might be more capped than you think in 2025. Given the obvious downside risk, I won't be taking this ride. 

Roki Sasaki, SP, Dodgers – ADP: 83.4

I've been banging the "Sasaki's risk is being overlooked" drum for months, and I think everyone is about to catch up to me. During his intro press conference with the Dodgers, Sasaki confirmed that he dealt with elbow and shoulder issues in his time in Japan, and was even given a recommendation for Tommy John surgery at one point four years ago. He has avoided that outcome since, but it's not like it's been smooth sailing since – hence why I've been talking about the risk here for some time now. Sasaki has made just 33 starts over the past two seasons – about 60% of what he would have made without injuries – and has never thrown more than 130 innings in a season. That would be worrisome enough, but it also comes with a near two-mph drop in fastball velocity last season. Sasaki could be an impact starter right away, but given the obvious injury concerns, the workload limitations he's going to face, and how unproven he is, I can't justify drafting him 30 picks ahead of Tyler Glasnow, given his similar upside and downside risks. 

Felix Bautista, RP, Orioles – ADP: 80.3

Baustista is being drafted more or less as if there's no concern about how he's going to pitch coming back from Tommy John surgery. If that works out, great, you've got an absolutely elite closer on a very good team, and you picked him as the No. 7 RP off the board. That's pretty good! I just won't be doing that with a pitcher who I haven't seen throw even one pitch coming back from the injury. Maybe we'll get to Spring Training and Bautista will be sitting at 99-100 with his fastball and ripping off killer splitters and sliders and I'll back off my skepticism. But until I see him, I just can't sign off on this price.