Fantasy Baseball Draft Outlook: Jazz Chisholm Jr., Shane Bieber, Oneil Cruz, Vladimir Guerrero Jr (2024)

While this isn’t your typical “breakouts” article, it’s meant to serve the same purpose. Fantasy X-Factors are players who will be difference makers for both their team and your fantasy baseball team. Sometimes that player may be a second-rounder looking to take their game to the next level. Other times it could be an 18th-rounder with the potential to end up as a top-five talent at the position.

With that in mind, let’s cut the intro short and get straight into the list. Here are all of our fantasy baseball draft X-Factors. Below we dive into a few notable names from the list.

Fantasy Baseball X-Factors

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1B, DH)

Are you guys ready to play a fun game of “Which Vladdy will we get this season?”. It seems to be a running theme these last few seasons. While we all want Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to return to his former 48-home run self, he’s been on a bit of a free fall in some key stats.

	AVG	OPS	HR	Hard-Hit%
2021	.311	1.002	48	55.2%
2022	.274	.818	32	50.4%
2023	.264	.788	26	49.2%

He’s seen a pretty drastic decrease in a majority of his power numbers since that amazing 48-home run season. Despite that, Guerrero will still be hitting in the heart of a playoff-contending lineup. He’s still hitting the ball hard and will find some level of success. Teammates Bo Bichette and George Springer are great but the true X-factor on that team is Guerrero. If he can improve even slightly in 2024, he starts to flirt with first-round-worthy production.

Oneil Cruz (SS)

By the end of last season, it felt like people had forgotten about Oneil Cruz. The 2022 rookie, who threw the hardest, hit the hardest and ran the fastest was leaped by Elly De La Cruz. The glimmer of awesome that was Oneil Cruz was a thing of the past.

Cue the “Hold up wait a minute, y’all thought I was finished” music…

This spring training, Cruz has returned with a vengeance. He’s not only made sure people remember the name, he’s done it with an exclamation point at the end. His seven home runs are the best in spring training. He’s scored 13 and driven in 14 in just 11 games. Plus, he’s hitting .355 with a strikeout rate of just over 20%. Oh ya, he’s also mashing. He’s already recorded five batted ball events of 110+ MPH. He’s flying up draft boards for good reason. He may be the biggest X-factor not currently going in the first round. If he stays healthy, a historic season may be in store.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. (OF)

This spot was originally slated to go to Eury Perez, but with the injury news, it now goes to the next man up. Jazz Chisholm is an X-factor in his own right. Arguably one of the few players in baseball with legitimate 40/40 upside… if he could only stay healthy.

Last season was probably his best yet, going 19/22 with 33 total XBH in under 100 games. If he stays healthy, he’s Fernando Tatis Jr. If he doesn’t, he’s going late enough in drafts you can still enjoy his healthy stretches without worrying about it crippling your team.

Shane Bieber (SP)

Oh, how the mighty Shane Bieber has fallen. It’s fair to say we were all very “whelmed” in 2023 when it came to his season-long performance. Velocity was down, movement was down, strikeouts were down and hard contact was way up. His 47.6% hard contact was a career-high while his 13.7% K-BB rate was a career-low. A literal disaster of a performance for a guy we all hoped could return to glory.

This offseason he did the “I went to Driveline” thing. He made a concerted effort to increase his fastball velocity and regain command of his breaking stuff. If the offseason work can translate to in-season success, Bieber has a top-25 SP upside.