The World Series is set, and if you think it was a fait accompli that we'd be sitting here in late October with the Yankees and Dodgers facing off just because they have two of the highest payrolls in the game, I'd like to invite you to take a trip back in time with me.
For the Dodgers, we don't have to go too far back in time – this team's starting pitching woes have been abundantly obvious to everyone paying attention since the late summer. Yeah, this team is absolutely stacked with Hall of Famers and All-Stars, but they also have Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone, Tony Gonsolin, Emmet Sheehan, and Dustin May on the IL, while Bobby Miller was so bad after his own shoulder injury that he didn't even make the roster for the playoffs. That's a whole rotation-and-a-half – and a good one at that – on the IL or in Triple-A, and that's not even to mention that Walker Buehler is a shell of his former self, while Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been obviously limited since coming back from his shoulder injury.
As for the Yankees … well, there was never a point after April where FanGraphs had their odds of making the playoffs anywhere below 80%, so they've always been among the favorites to make the World Series. But let's not act like everyone thought this was some kind of juggernaut all season long. They were below .500 across June and July, and their offense looked like a two-man show until the Jazz Chisholm trade just before the deadline – and they probably wouldn't be where they are right now if not for the postseason heroics of Giancarlo Stanton, who most had written off as a difference-making player at this point in his career.
Which is to say, while I've seen some grumbling about how "unfair" it is that these two juggernauts "steamrolled" their way to the World Series, I'm just going to enjoy the upwards of six future Hall of Famers we're about to see take part in this series, including the two best players since Barry Bonds retired on opposing ends of things. Neither of these teams is without flaws, but they've both overcome their issues to stand here at the end of the season, competing for the title and I, for one, am excited to watch them go head to head.
If you're not as excited, well, there's always next year. We've been keeping our eyes on 2025 here at Fantasy Baseball Today HQ, and it's certainly not too late to catch up. Scott White and I have been going through each position with an eye on 2025, and while each series is ongoing, both make for a good starting point:
Early 2025 Rankings
State of the Position
I'll be continuing that series with third base later this week, but today, we're finishing up another series with my Way-Too-Early Busts. I covered sleeper and breakout candidates for 2025, and now we are taking a turn for the pessimistic. Part of the problem with writing about bust candidates when we're nearly six months away from the start of next season, of course, is that several of these picks below might be out of date long before most of you are actually drafting in 2025. Trades might suddenly open unexpected avenues of value for some of these guys, while free agency could close off plenty of paths to the point where calling some of them "busts" may not even matter.
The good news is I'm going to be updating this list and the others plenty of times before the 2025 season starts. For now, here are nine players I'm probably going to be avoiding when I start drafting for 2025.
Way-too-early 2025 Busts
Brice Turang, 2B, Brewers – Turang had a heck of a 2024, finishing with 50 steals while taking a big step forward across the board from a rookie season that left him looking like a fringe major-leaguer. But he also fell apart as the season went on, hitting .280 or better in April, May, and June and just .214 from that point on. His speed is a legitimate asset, and he makes enough contact that he might just be able to keep slapping his way to Fantasy relevance on the strength of that speed. But he's also on a Brewers team with plenty of redundancy on the roster and a demonstrated willingness to throw even young guys into platoons if they think it will improve their chances to win at any given point. Turang might just be a one-category contributor even in a best-case scenario; he might be borderline unplayable otherwise.
Luis Garcia, 2B, Nationals – I want to believe in Garcia. I've been a believer for a long time. So I'm really hoping his price ends up pretty reasonable after a very solid but hardly dominant season. Garcia finished 2024 with 18 homers and 22 steals while hitting .282, and he might have been even better if the Nationals let him play every day. At least, that's the case for a 2025 breakout – that the Nationals will relent on their insistence that Garcia is merely a platoon bat and he'll prove capable of being an everyday player with 90-run, 90-RBI upside. I want to see that in 2025. But Garcia is a career .250/.269/.356 hitter against lefties and his impressive overall slash line in 2024 might just be the product of the Nationals protecting him against lefties. If he's drafted as if he's just the large side of a platoon, with 20-20 upside, I'll be in on him; if he's drafted as if 2024 is the floor, and we should expect another big step forward, I'm going to be out. "Like, man, I think it depends."
Matt Chapman, 3B, Giants – It was truly awesome to see Chapman have such a big bounceback season – he's long been one of my absolute favorite players to watch, and I genuinely think he might be the best defensive player I've ever seen play baseball. But he had a really weird year, one I don't think he's likely to repeat for Fantasy. We've gotta start here: Chapman stole 15 bases in 2024, four more than he had in his entire career prior to last season. He also scored 98 runs despite having a merely decent .328 on-base percentage while hitting fourth and fifth in the lineup primarily. Neither of those stats seems particularly likely to repeat itself, and given the tough home park he finds himself in, I'm not sure I'd bet on a repeat of his 27 homers or .247 average either. Chapman is a really good player, but I think things came together in a way they aren't likely to again for him last season, and I certainly won't want to be the one who drafts him as my starting 3B.
Willy Adames, SS, Brewers – "Most three-run homers in a season" isn't an especially notable record, but it's one that Adames tied this season with a whopping 13 of them. If you knew nothing else about Adames except for that, it would be pretty easy to bet against a repeat of his 2024 performance. However, like Chapman, he also started running wild in a contract year, swiping 21 bases, 13 more than his previous career-high. Adams is a solid hitter, one of the better power bets at the position since he got to Milwaukee, but 2024 was pretty much a perfect storm that isn't likely to repeat, no matter where he ends up playing in 2025.
Teoscar Hernandez, OF, Dodgers – Another contract-year standout, Hernandez's status as a bust may depend on whether he returns to Los Angeles or not. He certainly benefited from getting away from Seattle, where he admitted he just didn't see the ball well, resulting in a down year in 2023. But he also benefited from hitting behind some of the best hitters of their generation with the Dodgers and is looking to cash in with a big contract this offseason. He might find another tepid market waiting for him as he enters his age-32 season, and I doubt he'll end up in a better situation than he was in last year. Given his age and looming free agency, the chances of Hernandez matching 2024 seem pretty slim, and there is real bottom-out potential given his age and contact issues.
Anthony Santander, OF, Orioles – Santander has probably been one of the most consistently profitable picks in Fantasy over the past half-decade or so, but I'm worried that's going to change in 2025. Like Hernandez, he's heading into free agency this offseason, but in Santander's case, he's doing so coming off by far the best season of his career. In a year where power was hard to come by, Santander hit 11 more homers than ever before while also recording career-high numbers in runs and RBI. Santander is a good power hitter, but he also overperformed his underlying skills significantly, posting a .345 wOBA compared to a .328 xwOBA, and it came almost entirely from power production – he slugged .506 for the season, 50 points higher than his .456 xSLG. Betting against a guy coming off a career year as he enters his 30s is a pretty easy call to me.
Luis Gil, SP, Yankees – Gil feels like one of the easier bust calls out there. The stuff here is undeniable, and it allowed him to overcome some of the worst command of any pitcher in baseball en route to a 3.40 ERA in 2024. But the underlying metrics didn't really buy it, as he had a 4.14 FIP and 4.36 xFIP; if you want to argue that Gil's stuff makes him especially hard to hit squarely, I'm on board with that idea, but he still had a 3.83 xERA, which accounts for the quality of contact allowed. And, it's worth noting that, after a really strong start to the season where he uncharacteristically avoided walks, he regressed pretty badly, posting a 4.92 ERA over his final 17 starts, with just three quality starts in that span. Add in that Gil threw more than 120 more innings in 2024 than he did in 2022 and 2023 combined, and you're also talking about some pretty significant injury risk on top of the performance concerns here. Gil could be an ace if he has even average control, but there are just too many things working against him for me to buy in coming off this breakout.
Ronel Blanco, SP, Astros – Just when it seemed like we could relegate Blanco to the waiver wire for good, he bounced back with a tremendous stretch run, allowing two runs in 24 innings in September and even tossing a couple of scoreless innings against the Tigers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. And yet he still feels like one of the easiest fades among all pitchers likely to be drafted as Fantasy starters in 2025. No matter what your ERA estimator of choice is, Blanco overperformed more than just about any pitcher in baseball: Only three qualifiers outperformed their xERA by more than Blanco's 1.17 gap; no qualifier outperformed their FIP by more than Blanco's 1.35-run gap. He showcased decent strikeout skills, with three secondary offerings sporting a whiff rate over 33%, but he had below-average control and basically average skills on contact, which all add up to an ERA that probably should've started with a four. Without RP eligibility in 2025, Blanco looks like someone who should be relegated to the late-round, streaming pile of starting pitchers.
Carlos Estevez, RP, Phillies – Admittedly, this one is going to largely depend on where Estevez signs this offseason because if he doesn't have a chance to close in 2025, nobody is going to draft him anyway. But he still looks like a pitcher I want no part of for my Fantasy staff unless he comes at a steep discount. He managed to lower his walk rate after sporting an inflated mark in 2023, but it came along with a steep decline in his strikeout rate, which fell all the way to 20.5% after a trade to the Phillies. Estevez is a flyball pitcher with shaky control and iffy strikeout skills, and that isn't a profile you want to bet on remaining closer all season long.
