5 Second Half Fantasy Baseball Bust Candidates: Starting Pitchers to Avoid (2025)

July 28, 2025

Dan's second-half fantasy baseball bust candidates for starting pitchers in 2025. Trade away or sell high on pitchers like Seth Lugo, Zack Littell, more.

In fantasy sports, we constantly find ourselves assessing and reassessing players' fantasy values throughout the season. Baseball has such a long season that we have many opportunities to do this; some may even argue we do it too often.

But a player's value can fluctuate as wildly as the stock market from week to week. It's most important to identify the bigger trends. Is a player demonstrating skills that should keep their value on the rise over the long term, or is the opposite?

Identifying second-half bust candidates, particularly those who are currently ranked high enough to demand a decent trade return, can be a useful exercise. I'm not going to tell you that you need to trade every pitcher on my list today, but this article will examine some starting pitchers who are outperforming their peripheral statistics. You can choose to ride it out with them or attempt to trade them before their value potentially decreases.

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Gavin Williams, Cleveland Guardians

2025 Fantasy Stats: 104.1 IP, 6 W, 3.54 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 106 K

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.53 SIERA, 23.7% K%, 13% BB%

Current Yahoo! Roto Rank: 360

There's never been a better time to sell Gavin Williams! He's coming off arguably his best start of the season and has looked good in two of his last three starts, as he blanked the Tigers earlier this month.

Gavin Williams strikes out double-digit hitters for the first time in almost two full years pic.twitter.com/RqPkraUjZI

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 20, 2025

Yes, I am selling. I have been a "maybe this is the year" guy for Williams the last two years, but I am starting to doubt if he'll ever become the ace that so many of us were convinced that he could become.

We could discuss the number of innings that he's logged, eclipsing every other season in his career except 2022; however, Williams has always been a conventional starter, so I worry about that a bit less than I do with Holmes.

The glaring stat here is the walks. A 13% BB% is bad news, and if you prefer to see it over nine innings, it's 5.0 BB/9. He's made six starts this season where he has walked four or more batters; that's going to kill your WHIP, even if he does rack up strikeouts and have good batted ball results.

Williams is a tease because he throws hard (96 mph) and has a very good curveball. But the curve is the only pitch with elite movement, but he's not getting hitters to chase his breaking balls outside the zone (26.7% Chase%).

I compared his potential to peak Shane Bieber before the season, but I am starting to doubt if he will ever have the same pinpoint control that Bieber did and the ability to throw all of his pitches for strikes consistently in any count.

His game log this year has had more ups and downs than your favorite summer roller coaster. I think we will continue to see uneven results from Williams and that he's more likely than not to see ERA regression into the 4+ range.

Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals

2025 Fantasy Stats: 113.0 IP, 7 W, 2.95 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 99 K

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.05 SIERA, 22% K%, 8.5% SwStr%, 39% GB%

Current Yahoo! Roto Rank: 118

I wrote a lot about Lugo over a week ago as one of my biggest regression candidates. I'll try to keep this blurb a bit shorter and not reiterate too many of the same points.

In two starts since the All-Star Break, Lugo's line is 12 IP, 12 H, 7 ER, 2 BB, 11 K. He allowed two home runs to the Marlins, including this one to Kyle Stowers.

Home run No. 2⃣0⃣ for the red-hot Kyle Stowers 🔥 pic.twitter.com/TnZOP8Uyeu

— MLB (@MLB) July 18, 2025

That's now 17 home runs allowed this season, despite pitching in one of the least HR-friendly parks in all of baseball.

Before the Lugo mob sets after me with their torches and pitchforks, I want to say this. Yes, Lugo may be just one of those pitchers who defy all logic and can yield above-average results despite poor underlying numbers. Heck, we saw him do this all last season, too. In my estimation, he's a perfectly average pitcher and should have fantasy value going forward.

However, do I think he will finish anywhere near his 118 ranking or with an ERA under 3? Absolutely, not! This is why I view him as one of the best sell-high options out there.

Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays

2025 Fantasy Stats: 128.1 IP, 8 W, 3.72 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, 85 K

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.26 SIERA, 16.5% K%, 11.2% Barrel%, 87 Stuff+

Current Yahoo! Roto Rank: 199 (57% rostered)

I had to include Littell in this piece because I have seen his rostership ticking up since he's been on a pretty nice run lately. Before he took a beating at the hands of the Reds yesterday (6 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 2 HR), Littell had strung together five quality starts in a row.

But make no mistake here, Littell is not a good pitcher. He is an innings-eater with excellent control, and while that has value for the Rays in real-life baseball, there's simply not much fantasy value to be had here.

Littell's fastball is so bad that he's leading with his slider (30% usage) and splitter (27%), and let's not forget what we said about pitchers who have to resort to such antics. Without providing any strikeouts, Littell has to rely on wins (outside of his control) and ratios to provide fantasy value. His elite walk rate helps keep his WHIP in a manageable range, but he's giving up loud contact, so he's bound to suffer some negative regression in ERA.

It's hard to trust a guy who misses bats so infrequently and who is as HR-prone (1.83 HR/9) as Littell. It certainly doesn't help that he's pitching in a minor league stadium for his home games, either.

I'd leave Littell on the wire or dump him if you already snagged him after his hot stretch. There's more pain coming; he's simply not a very good pitcher for fantasy purposes.

Kodai Senga, New York Mets

2025 Fantasy Stats: 80.2 IP, 7 W, 1.79 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 79 K

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.17 SIERA, 24.2% K%, 11% BB%, 94 Stuff+

Current Yahoo! Roto Rank: 105

I am sure this will ruffle some feathers, and it brings me no joy to deliver the bad news to any managers with Senga on their roster. However, I think he's one of the most overrated pitchers in baseball this season. Senga's surface stats simply don't reflect how mediocre he has been in many ways.

Senga missed some time this season, so he's not on pace to match the 166 innings he pitched in his 2023 season, and he made just one start last season, so we can toss out 2024 for comparison's sake.

His rookie campaign was impressive as he finished with a 12-7 record, 2.98 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 202 strikeouts, but I don't think he'll be able to match that this year, even in his ratios.

Senga is far too reliant on one pitch, granted, it's a nasty one. His splitter (or "ghost fork"-ball) is still one of the toughest pitches to hit in baseball. However, his fastball and cutter are both getting hit hard this season.

Both his four-seamer and cutter velocities have dipped a full tick on the radar gun, which could help to describe why they have been less effective. The slider has provided some decent batted ball results, but he only throws it about 8% of the time. He's upped his cutter usage while dropping his fastball usage, which could be a sign that he's less confident in his fastball.

I have a hard time getting on board with pitchers who are so dependent on the splitter without a good fastball to back it up. It's a great pitch, by all means, but we've seen splitter-heavy pitchers such as Kevin Gausman and Shota Imanaga turn in dominant outings one start and then get blown up in the next one. Let's play a little game to illustrate what I am talking about a bit further.

Insert the Office meme with Pam saying, "Corporate wants you to find the difference in these two pictures."

One of the profiles is Senga. The other one is Orioles rookie Tomoyuki Sugano. But can you tell which is which?

If you guessed that Sugano was the first picture, you are correct. I cut off the velocities to help confuse you a bit more, but the big giveaway is that Sugano's splitter is inferior with less vertical movement, and he's more reliant on sinkers and sweepers than Senga, who is still throwing more fastballs and cutters.

Sugano is leading with the splitter at 25% usage and pitching to a 4.54 ERA and 1.35 WHIP. His fastball is only around 92 mph and gets drilled, so he's forced to lean into his splitter and offspeed pitches even more than Senga. I'm not saying that Senga and Sugano are identical pitchers, but I think the margin between them is much smaller than their surface stats would suggest.

Senga's arsenal has not been nearly as sharp as in 2023. His Stuff+ rating of 94 is well below average, while he had a 101 rating back in 2023. And then there's the walks...

Senga's 11% walk rate is tough to stomach. While it's the same number he posted in 2023, it was a little easier to digest when he was striking out 29% of batters. His K% has dropped 5% and he now sports a very ho-hum 13% K-BB% as a result.

Simply stated, Senga's sophomore campaign is likely to fall short of the lofty expectations that managers (and Mets fans) have. He's the one pitcher on this list with enough name recognition to get a top-50 player in return, and I'd float some offers out there to see what he might fetch in a trade.

Grant Holmes, Atlanta Braves

2025 Fantasy Stats: 111 IP, 4 W, 3.81 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 121 K

2025 Advanced Stats: 4.01 SIERA, 25.7% K%, 11% BB%, 91 Stuff+

Current Yahoo! Roto Rank: 387 (62% rostered)

I'd like to go on the record that I love Holmes, aka the Kenny Powers doppelganger, as far as pure entertainment value and as a real-life, feel-good story. After toiling in the minor leagues for 10 years, Holmes debuted with Atlanta last season at age 28, making 26 appearances, seven of which were starts.

Holmes has been a strikeout stud, piling up Ks all season, and he's managed to stay healthy (unlike most of the other Atlanta starters) all season. He's made 20 starts this year and logged 111 innings already.

That's awesome; however, I would like to point out that it's also the most innings he's pitched since 2017, when he was at Double-A for the Athletics. Holmes has functioned as a reliever for the majority of his last four seasons and was just converted back to a starter last season.

So could Holmes run out of gas in the second half? I have the same concern with another Holmes (Clay) in New York, who is in unprecedented territory in terms of workload.

I also don't like the walks (11% BB%) or the home runs (1.30 HR/9). Holmes has a very good slider, but he's leading with it at 33% usage because his fastball is getting smoked (.654 SLG). His Stuff+ rating of 91 is a good reminder that he has a relatively low ceiling overall. He probably would be best served in the bullpen in the future, but he is making the most of his opportunity now.

I am not sure what his trade value might be, but those strikeouts are appealing if you can convince another manager to take on his ratios.

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