Fantasy baseball trade value rankings: Buy low on Bobby Witt, sell high on Eloy Jimenez (2024)

Every week in this space, in addition to updating our rest-of-the-way rankings for the top 200 players in fantasy baseball, I always try to highlight two players to buy low and two players to sell high. And loath as I am to toot my own horn, it was another banner week: Buy-low recommendation Pablo Lopez showed out with a 12-K complete game (partial assist to the Kansas City Royals offense) while sells Nolan Jones (.161/.278/.161 with 11 strikeouts in his last 10 games) and Yusei Kikuchi (roughed up for five runs in 4.1 innings by the Boston Red Sox this past weekend) struggled.

This is a crucial time on the fantasy calendar, when draft capital and sentiment need to be put to the side and it’s time to figure out who can get your team to the promised land, so let’s get to this week’s rankings. As usual, not only will we rank the top 200 players for fantasy baseball (5×5 roto), but we also break down who’s rising, who’s falling and who we recommend targeting on the trade market. Whose hot start is fool’s gold? Who’s about to turn the corner? Read on for this week’s list, and for an explanation of why Eloy Jimenez should be on your trading block.

Buy

• If you’re one of the many fantasy owners who took a leap and spent first-round capital on Witt in drafts this spring, chances are you’ve been pretty disappointed at the return on investment. Yes, the 25 steals are nice, but they’ve come with a .251/.293/.425 slash line, plus mediocre counting stats thanks to the superfund site that is the Royals lineup sans Vinnie Pasquantino. Add it all up, and it’s a player who ranks around 75th in most standard fantasy leagues — not nearly the sort of second-year leap that people expected.

But a look under the hood reveals that Witt actually has taken a substantial step forward; it’s not just showing up in the box score quite yet. His strikeout and walk rates have marginally improved, which is encouraging. But the real reason for optimism is that Witt is attacking pitches to hit far more aggressively — and hitting the ball harder as a result. The former first-round pick’s zone swing and meatball swing rates are up 2.2% and 6.5%, respectively, meaning that he’s identifying and trying to do damage on the right sorts of pitches more often than he was as a rookie. And this shows up in his batted-ball data: Witt’s hard-hit rate, barrel rate, line drive rate, sweet-spot rate, expected average and expected slugging percentage are all way up among the league’s elite.

The problem? Bad luck, mostly. The gap between Witt’s expected wOBA (.360) and his actual wOBA (.312) is the sixth-largest in baseball, suggesting that better things are around the corner once more of those hard-hit balls start finding grass (or clearing the fence). With his obvious athleticism and willingness to run, there’s rare power/speed potential here, and Witt has a chance to put up a big second half and make good on those first-round picks yet.

• Another victim of bad luck: Swanson, who also boasts a very large gap between wOBA (.332) and xwOBA (.363). The Cubs shortstop’s strikeout rate is down, his walk rate is up and he’s barreling the ball more often than he ever has before. He’s not running as often as you’d expect, but that’s likely due to injury prevention more than anything else — Swanson’s sprint speed is as good as ever, but he’s battled through nagging ailments all year, including a heel contusion that’s caused him to miss the last couple of games. He’s an iron man, and if there’s anyone who stands to benefit from the All-Star break, it’s him; given how gung-ho Chicago is about letting its speedsters run, Swanson could be in for big things the rest of the summer.

Sell

• To put my cards on the table: I’ve long been an Eloy Jimenez skeptic. My issue lies not with his prodigious bat, but with his inability to stay healthy over a full season. The injury history is well-worn territory by now, so I won’t rehash it here, save for reemphasizing that the Chicago White Sox slugger has only cracked the 100-game mark once — way back in 2019.

The next IL stint is always around the corner, so if Jimenez happens to get hot for a couple of weeks, you should capitalize by selling high — and he’s been very, very hot of late. Jimenez started July with three straight multi-hit games, and overall has posted a robust .979 OPS with three homers over his last 14 starts. I understand that it can be tantalizing to look at those recent numbers — and his considerable physical gifts — and dream on a league-winning stretch run, but all you have to do is look at the games played column of his Baseball Reference page to see why that’s a mistake. Get out while the getting’s good.

Fantasy baseball trade value rankings: Week 15