The old saying goes, you can’t win your fantasy baseball league in the early rounds, but you can lose it. There are exceptions to everything, and working around early-round busts is possible. Still, it’s a steep hill to climb, and avoiding landmines is optimal. Two hitters with average draft positions (ADPs) in the top 40 are ill-advised investments, with one having full-blown bust potential and the other unlikely to provide value anywhere close to commensurate with his ADP.
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Bust Hitters
Elly De La Cruz (3B/SS – CIN) | 37.6 ADP
Elly De La Cruz’s combination of raw power and speed is drool-inducing. He’s also still young, turning just 22 in January. De La Cruz’s long-term upside and value in keeper and dynasty formats is sky-high. Unfortunately, he might have growing pains in 2024.
De La Cruz has fewer than 400 plate appearances in the upper minors, amassing 207 in Double-A in 2022 and 186 in Triple-A in 2023. He dominated in Triple-A and forced Cincinnati’s hand to promote him to the parent club. De La Cruz got off to a fast start before cratering. The following table has his first-half and second-half splits.
Predictably, De La Cruz's underlying data was ugly. Specifically, he had a gnarly combination of passiveness in the strike zone and chasing too frequently out of the strike zone. The plate discipline numbers in the following table are courtesy of FanGraphs.
De La Cruz's second-half improvement in O-Swing%, which was still markedly below average, was undercut by his slide in Z-Swing% and Z-Contact%. Furthermore, pitchers recognized the youngster's struggles with identifying balls and strikes, leading them to throw him fewer pitches in the strike zone than the league average.
The toolsy infielder must drastically improve his plate discipline and strikeout rate to live up to his top 40 ADP and his ranking as tied for 27th in ADP among hitters. Since De La Cruz had a 31.0 K% in Single-A in 2021, a 30.7 K% in High-A in 2022 and a 30.9 K% in Double-A in 2022, betting on him cutting his strikeout rate under 30.0% this season seems unlikely.
Luis Robert's 28.9 K% in 2023 was the highest among hitters in the top 27 in our value-based-ranking (VBR) metric. Adolis Garcia (27.7 K%) and Nick Castellanos (27.6 K%) were the only other hitters in that group with a strikeout rate above 27.0%.
De La Cruz's tantalizing combination of power and speed won't help fantasy teams if he can't reduce his strikeout rate. Finally, a prolonged slump could earn him a spot on the pine or back in Triple-A for more seasoning. The Reds are legitimate contenders in the National League Central and have ample quality infielders to award De La Cruz's vacated at-bats to if he falters. The downside outweighs the upside for picking De La Cruz inside the top 50 picks.
Adley Rutschman (C - BAL) | 39.2 ADP
Among catchers with at least 500 plate appearances since 2022, Adley Rutschman has tied for the highest wRC+ (130). The switch-hitting backstop has lived up to his lofty prospect billing. Like top-shelf-hitting young catchers before him, Rutschman's ADP is inflated by positional scarcity. Chasing position scarcity isn't optimal, and Rutschman is unlikely to provide value at his ADP.
He's the 30th-ranked hitter in ADP after finishing as the 71st-ranked hitter in VBR in 2023. Rutschman's 687 plate appearances were the most by a catcher in 2023. In fact, they were the most for a player whose primary position was catcher in more than a decade. Since 2014, players whose primary position was catcher reached at least 600 plate appearances just 10 times. Loosening the threshold to 500 plate appearances boosts the sample to 58 instances. Nevertheless, catchers are impacted by the physical demands of donning the tools of ignorance, and attrition impacts their number of plate appearances. So, it's unlikely Rutschman will exceed 650 plate appearances this season.
The Zeile consensus projections are optimistic about his outlook. Still, they project him as the 40th most valuable hitter, and Rutschman's ADP is among the top 40 overall players. Again, he's the 30th hitter in ADP, setting the bar high for him to break even. The following table shows Rutschman's stats in 2023, the worst mark for each listed category for a top-29 hitter in 2023 and the median marks.
Despite exceeding the median in plate appearances, Rutschman was below the median in every 5x5 category for the top 29 hitters in VBR in 2023. He's unquestionably an excellent real-life player and one of the best hitters among catchers, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze to spend a top-50 selection on him.
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Josh Shepardson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Josh, check out his archive and follow him @BChad50.