Fantasy Baseball Draft Busts: Eury Perez & Kyle Bradish (2024)

Let’s take a look at a few pitchers that are unlikely to return value based on where they are being selected in fantasy baseball drafts. Here are two starters that are likely to become fantasy baseball draft busts in 2024.

Busts to Avoid

Eury Perez (SP – MIA) | 83.0 ADP

Reaching The Show is no small feat for a 20-year-old pitcher. Eury Perez not only did so, he also spun a 3.15 ERA in 19 starts, totaling 91.1 innings. According to FanGraphs, the young righty also had a superb 28.9 K%, validated by his 29.3 CSW%. Perez’s long-term outlook is bright.

Still, his underlying data wasn’t as encouraging as his 3.15 ERA. All of his ERA estimators were notably worse. Specifically, he had a 3.66 xERA, 4.24 xFIP and 3.94 SIERA. Perez’s 8.3 BB% was also merely a pinch above the league average (8.6 BB%) in 2023.

Perez must improve his underlying skills or remain lucky to avoid regression turning him into an upper-3.00s to low-4.00s ERA pitcher. The righty could be a top-100 player with an upper-3.00s ERA, a useful WHIP and many strikeouts if he were a workhorse. Through no fault of Perez, he won’t be in 2024.

In 2023, he pitched a career-high 128.0 innings between Double-A and the majors. Perez tossed 78.0 in 2021 and 77.0 in 2022. The Marlins haven’t released a specific innings cap for Perez in 2024, but he will have one.

Skip Schumaker shared two key updates on Marlins pitching:

Eury Perez, 20, will have a to-be-determined innings guideline after throwing ~90 @MLB innings last season.

Max Meyer, 24, is expected to be an option to start this year after undergoing TJ surgery in ’22.@MLBNetwork

– Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) February 15, 2024

The Marlins could have him repeat approximately 130 innings after that was their approach to his workload in 2021 and 2022. That’s the worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario might be around 150 innings for the soon-to-be 21-year-old pitcher.

Perez is the 32nd-ranked pitcher in ADP. To deliver a break-even finish this year at a likely innings ceiling between 135 and 150, Perez might need to duplicate Bailey Ober‘s 2023 output. Ober had eight wins, a 3.43 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 146 strikeouts in 144.1 innings, finishing as the 33rd-ranked pitcher. Those marks are attainable for Perez, but they’re hardly a lock. Furthermore, with his innings limit, Perez must take a monumental step forward to offer a ceiling beyond finishing as the 25th to 30th-ranked pitcher. A high ceiling isn’t everything, but the scale is unbalanced for Perez’s floor and ceiling, creating more risk than reward at his ADP.

Kyle Bradish (SP – BAL) | 160.0 ADP

Kyle Bradish had a sensational breakout last year. He dominated opponents, tallying a 2.83 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 6.6 BB% and 25.0 K% in 30 starts spanning 168.2 innings. Bradish was the 11th-ranked pitcher by our value-based-ranking (VBR) metric.

He’s picked as the 65th pitcher in fantasy drafts. The fly in the ointment is apparent for Bradish. The righty isn’t healthy. He’ll open the season on the IL with a UCL sprain. For those unfamiliar with the UCL, it is what’s repaired in Tommy John surgery. Bradish and the Orioles are avoiding Tommy John and attempting rehab after he received a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection.

The likelihood of the PRP injection and rehab helping him avoid Tommy John surgery is dependent on the severity of the UCL sprain, and the Orioles haven’t divulged that information. A study from Sage Journals reveals a wretched success rate for high-grade UCL injuries but a more promising one for low-grade strains.

The secrecy from Bradish and the organization can be read as hiding a higher-grade sprain. Yet, the young righty’s advancement to playing catch out to 140 feet might suggest a low-grade sprain. Even in the latter event, Bradish’s not 100% to avoid the knife. The risk of an entirely lost season is too significant for gamers to draft him in any draft-and-hold leagues without waivers.

Bradish might be worth the risk in standard leagues with IL spots if his ERA estimators supported his sub-3.00 ERA last season. Sadly, they didn’t. Instead, Bradish had a 3.82 xERA, 3.53 xFIP and 3.76 SIERA. So, he’d be a candidate for steep regression even if he was entirely healthy, but he’s not, and pitching through the UCL sprain could cause him to tweak his pitch mix or depress the quality of his stuff. Therefore, the risk isn’t worth absorbing at an ADP inside the top 200 picks. Bradish is the 65th-ranked pitcher in ADP. However, the Zeile consensus projections peg him as just the 89th-ranked pitcher. Bradish is only worth a dart in the last round or two of 12-team leagues or larger that also have either a deep bench or IL spots.