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Ryan discusses five fantasy baseball holds, players you should not cut yet despite poor starts to 2025 and heading into Week 5. Don't drop these players yet.
Even four weeks of a fantasy baseball season is a small sample from which to make conclusions. Our fantasy baseball rosters might be feeling the impact of players who have started slowly, but the season is long, and we are only less than one-sixth of the way through it.
When injuries or slow starts hit, it's tempting to drop players who are not contributing. It's human nature to want instant gratification from a player we just drafted four weeks ago. The good news is that there is plenty of season left to fix a team that isn't where you want it in the standings.
In this column, we will discuss why you should hold this group of players off to poor starts, even through four weeks. This will include five players in total, some of whom are universally rostered, and others who are found on a lower percentage of teams. It will be tempting to grab a hot player off waivers to replace these players on a cold streak, but stay the course!
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Triston Casas, 1B, Boston Red Sox
69% Rostered
When Triston Casas returned from injuries in 2024, his offense set the stage for what many thought would be a breakout year at first base for the 25-year-old slugging first baseman. He hit 13 home runs in just 63 games and had a .462 slugging percentage to go along with an elite 12.3 percent walk rate. If he could just cut down on his 31 percent strikeout rate, we were told, he would be able to enter the elite tier of first basemen.
Well, he has cut down on his strikeouts in 2025 (just 23 percent through Thursday), but the rest of his offensive production has looked awful. Casas is hitting .167/.263/.310 with three home runs and five runs through 95 plate appearances. The catapult that was supposed to shoot him into fantasy stardom has malfunctioned, leaving fantasy managers to wonder why.
BACK TO BACK DAYS OF TRISTON CASAS GOING DEEP!
Might not mean much tonight, but if he starts clicking again, this offense reaches a whole new level.
pic.twitter.com/1QSo7l1Sts— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) April 24, 2025
Casas has been on many most-dropped lists for a week now, and has sunk his roster percentage to under 70 percent in Yahoo leagues. I think that is a mistake. I might bench Casas until his production improves, but I am not dropping him. As said before, the strikeouts are down, and he is still walking at a 10 percent clip. His barrel rate remains above 11 percent, and his average exit velocity is almost identical to 2024.
He has a .186 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) this year, which is the 11th-worst rate in the league among qualified hitters. When his luck improves and the power returns, Casas is going to be a key part of his potent Red Sox offense.
Ryan Mountcastle, 1B, Baltimore Orioles
68% Rostered
Another member of the Baltimore Orioles who is struggling at the plate is first baseman Ryan Mountcastle. Mountcastle is already down to about two-thirds rostered in fantasy leagues thanks to his .230 batting average and one home run this season. Just about every other fantasy-relevant statistic has taken a nosedive, such as average, RBIs (only five so far), and he also has zero stolen bases.
What's odd about Mountcastle is that his numbers appear to be some of the worst of his career, but the supporting stats around them are just as consistent, if not better, than in past seasons. His strikeout rate and walk rate in 2025 are identical to what they were in 2024. His hard-hit rate is higher. Mountcastle's barrel rate is almost double what it was in 2024.
Even his BABIP is a solid .291. So, where can we point to find the lack of production? The best I can tell, it's in one number that is very fluky and can change in an instant: home run per flyball rate (HR/FB). For his career, Mountcastle is at 15 percent HR/FB. This season, it is down around four percent, meaning almost no flyballs he hits are ending up over the fence. This is despite the fact that his 2025 flyball rate of 29 percent is higher than 2024 (34 percent).
Jake Burger, 3B, Texas Rangers
73% Rostered
Until a week or so ago, Jake Burger was universally rostered in fantasy formats. After hitting 29 homers in 137 games in 2024, including 19 in the second half, it appeared the sky was the limit with Burger moving to a better hitters' park with the Texas Rangers. The start of the 2025 season hasn't proved that to be correct so far.
Burger is slashing just .169/.210/.312 with three home runs and a 29 percent strikeout rate. His groundball rate is up to 50 percent (there aren't many homers hit on grounders!), and he is walking just two percent of the time through 23 games. It's been an abysmal start, but there are still signs that Burger's power will emerge, and he is just getting unlucky right now.
Jake Burger feeling good after a long ball. Prior to tonight’s game, he was hitting .179 (12-67 AB), 2 HR in 20 games.
— Abby Jones (@_abigaiiiil) April 23, 2025
First, his .196 BABIP is among the 15 worst in the league. That should normalize back to his career .290 at some point, which will bring a better average and more run production opportunities. In terms of power, the underlying skill remains intact. His 46 percent hard-hit rate in 2025 is identical to 2024, and he still has an 11 percent barrel rate. He has gotten unlucky with a 13 percent HR/FB rate after over 18 percent in 2024.
Due to injuries and inconsistency, Burger was a slow starter in 2024 as well. There does not appear to be anything wrong with Burger's health at this point, so this is simply a matter of the power not yet catching up with the skills. His .312 slugging percentage comes with an expected slugging percentage of .429, so the power should start to reappear at any time.
Eduardo Rodriguez, SP, Arizona Diamondbacks
26% Rostered
If I withheld the name and the win-loss record and showed you a pitcher striking out 10.7 batters per nine innings, walking only two batters per nine, allowing less than one home run per nine, and had a career best number in groundball rate and HR/FB rate, you would guess it was an ace that would be a must-have for all fantasy rosters. The problem is that pitcher is Eduardo Rodriguez, and has has a 1-2 record with a head-scratching 4.40 ERA.
Rodriguez's expected ERA is 2.86 this season, so something is amiss as to why those numbers don't align. He had decent run support in his five starts. His BABIP is slightly high at .342, but it should normalize around his career number of .305. What appears to be happening is some terrible luck when Rodriguez allows men to get on base against him.
SP Eduardo Rodriguez is UNDERVALUED, worth a flier
🫦 24% K-BB%*
🚨 .373 BABIP | 62.5% left on base%
👀 37.8% chase rate*
🧮 4th-most Ks (29)
✅ 4.09 ERA | 2.36 xFIP | 2.75 SIERA | 2.85 xERA
👏 3 pitches➡️13%+ SwStr%*career-best
rostered in <25% of Yahoo leagues, <12% in ESPN pic.twitter.com/FEj1zYXJuE
— the Fantasy Gospel™ (@fantasy_gospel) April 18, 2025
Left-on-base percentage (LOB%) is the percentage of runners a pitcher strands on base once he lets them reach. For his career, Rodriguez is at a 73.5 LOB percentage. The major league average this season is 72.6 percent. In 2025, Rodriguez is all the way down to 61 percent. Only five qualified pitchers have a lower number (and two of them are Paul Skenes and Dylan Cease!).
Unless Rodriguez has developed some mental block that prevents him from getting guys out when there are men on base, this should improve dramatically. When it does, Rodriguez is putting up some of the best numbers of his career to support what should be a much better season.
Jordan Westburg, 2B/3B, Baltimore Orioles
91% Rostered
NOTE: Jordan Westburg was added to the IL this week. He is an IL stash if your league uses those settings. Otherwise, he could be dropped if that spot is needed for another player.
Considering the state of second base this season (Ketel Marte and Zack Gelof injured, Jazz Chisholm and Marcus Semien slumping), I would be very hesitant to drop any second baseman, particularly ones with multi-position eligibility and 20-home run potential. Jordan Westburg is slumping right now, but could be someone in store for a breakout.
Westburg has just one home run since March 29 and only has three extra-base hits in that span as well. On the season as a whole, he is hitting .193/.247/.386 with four home runs and just five runs batted in for what was supposed to be a high-powered Orioles offense. Under the hood, however, there are signs Westburg has improved on his .264/.312/.481 season in 2024, and is a clear hold or target for trade.
Notable Chase% changes from 2024 to 2025:
- Wilyer Abreu: -14.6% 📈
- Luis Arraez: -11.7% 📈
- Colt Keith: -11.3% 📈
- Jeremy Peña: -8.6% 📈
- Jordan Westburg: -7.8% 📈
- Shea Langeliers: -7.6% 📈
- Luis Robert Jr.: -7.3% 📈
- Julio Rodriguez: -7.2% 📈Worse Chase% below 👇 pic.twitter.com/4dqqvojcce
— LouisAnalysis (@LouisAnalysis) April 7, 2025
Westburg's barrel rate is up to 14.3 percent in 2025, a jump from 11 percent last season. In fact, only Chisholm has a better barrel rate among second basemen than Westburg this season. He is fifth in the position at hard-hit rate and fourth in max exit velocity. According to Statcast, his .386 slugging percentage is performing well under expectations. He should be at .481, meaning some positive regression is right around the corner.
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