Champ or Chump: Fantasy Baseball Outlooks

Are Jonathan Aranda and Kyren Paris fantasy baseball sleepers, busts, or neither? Rick takes a deep dive into their 2025 fantasy baseball values.

Second base felt like a weak position during draft season, but the waiver wire seems full of intriguing options. In Week 1, we looked at Kristian Campbell. In Week 2, we profiled Jonathan India. This week, two more interesting names are Jonathan Aranda and Kyren Paris.

Neither is a household name, but both are off to strong starts. Each has a bugaboo as well. Aranda is a platoon guy on a team that actively looks for reasons to shuffle the lineup, while Paris has swing-and-miss issues that aren't reflected in his statistics yet.

What will these two offer fantasy managers for the season? Let's find out!

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Jonathan Aranda (1B/2B, Tampa Bay Rays)

16% Rostered

Aranda is hitting .395/.467/.711 with two homers across 44 plate appearances this year. His .464 BABIP is obviously unsustainable, but there's reason to believe he'll produce for the entire season.

First, Aranda offers elite contact quality. Check out all the red in his Statcast profile:

It's a tiny sample size, but Aranda's profile was similar in 2024:

The red isn't as dark because Aranda's 143 PAs didn't qualify him for the batting title, but he was elite in everything above save xBA. Aranda only hit .234/.308/.430 with six homers, but he probably deserved better. The two samples together represent nearly 200 PAs, far too many to "fake" elite contact quality.

Second, Aranda crushed the upper levels of the minor leagues. He reached Double-A (Montgomery) in 2021, slashing .325/.410/.540 with ten homers in 322 PAs. While his .383 BABIP was high, his plate discipline was strong with a 10.2 percent walk rate against a 19.6 percent strikeout rate. His 9.6 percent swinging-strike rate was also quite low for a guy slugging .540.

The Rays promoted Aranda to Triple-A (Durham) in 2022 and he essentially repeated the performance, hitting .318/.394/.521 with 18 HR across 465 PAs. His plate discipline remained strong with a 9.7 percent walk rate against a 21.5 percent strikeout rate, his BABIP remained high at .377, and he didn't swing and miss much with a 7.9 percent swinging-strike rate.

Aranda earned himself a brief cup of coffee with the Rays in 2022 but returned to Durham to begin 2023, hitting .339/.449/.613 with 25 HR in 434 PAs. His plate discipline improved to a 14.7 percent walk rate and a 20 percent strikeout rate, his .387 BABIP makes you question whether he might just run huge BABIPs, and his 7.9 percent swinging-strike rate was outstanding for his power.

Aranda's 2024 wasn't as good. He appeared to have an MLB job after a strong spring training, but he broke his right ring finger fielding a grounder on March 20 and didn't return until mid-May. Then, he suffered a left oblique strain on June 20 that sidelined him until late August.

Between the injuries, he slashed .237/.368/.424 with seven homers in 144 PAs for Durham and the MLB numbers above. His 32.6 percent strikeout rate and 12.1 percent swinging-strike rate at Triple-A were above his established baseline, so he likely struggled with timing after the long layoff.

The 2025 season is still young, but many factors support a potential Aranda breakout. His fly-ball rate has spiked to 46.7 percent from 35.1 percent in 2024. Lifting the ball is a great idea for guys with above-average or better contact quality, and Aranda fits the bill.

The Rays also hit Aranda fourth when he starts, giving him the best possible chance to accumulate counting stats. Aranda hits left-handed, making him one of the biggest potential beneficiaries of George M. Steinbrenner Field when the weather heats up, too.

The downside is that Aranda is in a strict platoon, making him tough to use in weekly formats. The Rays aren't shy about using Aranda as a pinch hitter once a left-handed starter leaves the game, so he logs a couple of PAs even when he doesn't start. Platoon bats are best deployed in daily formats, though, and Aranda benefits from multi-positional eligibility in many of them.

The 26-year-old Aranda won't steal many bags, but he should be a positive contributor in every other fantasy category. This Champ deserves to be universally rostered in daily leagues and has plenty of potential in weekly formats as well.

Kyren Paris (2B, Los Angeles Angels)

78% Rostered

Paris has delivered a .368/.467/.842 line with five homers and five steals across 46 PAs to begin 2025, delighting fantasy managers who took a chance on the 23-year-old. His .391 BABIP won't be maintained, and his shiny surface stats mask underlying issues likely to torpedo his value.

Paris has a 10.9 percent walk rate and a 21.7 percent strikeout rate this season, and the walk rate is supported by a 24.6 percent chase rate. However, his 75 percent zone-contact rate and 18.8 percent swinging-strike rate suggest that Paris should strike out way more often than he does.

A quick look at Paris's MiLB resume reveals that swing-and-miss has plagued him throughout his career. He debuted for Double-A (Rocket City) in 2022, slashing .359/.510/.641 with three homers and five steals in 51 PAs. The sample was tiny, but his 27.5 percent strikeout rate and 17 percent swinging-strike rate were significant red flags. His .500 BABIP masked the issue, however.

Paris returned to Rocket City in 2023, hitting .258/.393/.417 with four homers and 44 steals in 514 PAs. His 17.1 percent walk rate and .365 BABIP gave him plenty of opportunities to use his plus wheels, and his success rate of about 90 percent was encouraging. Sadly, his 29.4 percent strikeout rate and 15.7 percent swinging-strike rate suggested he was far from mastering the level. A brief MLB stint didn't go well.

Paris missed about two months of 2024 with an unspecified lower-body injury and struggled mightily when on the field. He slashed a miserable .091/.198/.130 at Double-A with zero homers and eight steals in 92 PAs. His 39.1 percent strikeout rate and 19.1 percent swinging-strike rate were horrible.

He also logged 159 PAs with Triple-A (Salt Lake), hitting .209/.287/.360 with four homers and eight steals in 159 PAs. His 10.1 percent walk rate wasn't bad, but his 32.7 percent strikeout rate was concerning, even if his 13.2 percent swinging-strike rate represented a slight improvement. Paris again reached the Angels briefly with no success.

Paris's swing-and-miss issues as an Angel are supported by his numbers on the farm, so we cannot dismiss them as a small sample fluke. His .290 xBA tells us where his average would be with a normal BABIP, but it assumes his 21.7 percent strikeout rate will hold.

Unfortunately, Paris's strikeout rate will skyrocket unless he controls his swinging-strike rate. That could transform a batting average asset into a liability, limiting his appeal in fantasy.

Paris has also hit seventh despite his hot start, suggesting the Angels are in no rush to give him a better lineup slot for R+RBI. His production is likely to be empty even if he continues performing well.

Paris is legitimately fast with a Statcast Sprint Speed of 29 ft./sec and was successful on his SB attempts as a minor leaguer, so he's probably a 20-25 SB guy over a full season. His biggest competition for playing time is likely Yoan Moncada, making Paris an asset in deep formats where playing time is king.

Of course, 78 percent of Yahoo! leagues don't fit that description. In standard leagues, the troublesome swing-and-miss makes Paris a sell-high candidate. This Chump will probably be on waivers by August.

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