Are You For Real? Analyzing 4 Surprising Fantasy Baseball Breakouts From Ramon Laureano, Austin Hays, Max Muncy, Brooks Baldwin

July 8, 2025

Tommy analyzes 4 hot fantasy baseball hitters to consider adding in Week 15, 2025. These deeper sleeper hitters could emerge as fantasy baseball waiver wire breakouts, or just be mirages.

Welcome to the third rendition of the hitters' version of "Are You For Real?"! I hope you all enjoy the nerdy deep-diving as much as we do! With less than a week until the All-Star Break, it's a great time to find a surging slugger on the waiver wire.

As a reminder, we're looking for lesser-owned hitters who seem to be on a bit of a hot streak of late. Then, we're digging deeper into some underlying numbers to see if the strong performance may be something tangible that could stick moving forward, or perhaps there are red flags that suggest a classic "flash in the pan" situation is afoot.

Today, I will be looking at four hitters who have shown flashes over the past 14 days to decide if they're worth your time in fantasy baseball. They're likely available on the waiver wire in shallow leagues, and you can probably still get them for a fair price in deeper leagues. All roster percentages are taken from Yahoo! and are accurate as of July 7th. Let's get to it!

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Ramon Laureano, OF - Baltimore Orioles

13% Rostered

The Streak (Last 14 Days): .349 AVG, 1.010 OPS, 1 HR, 6 RBI, 13 R, 1 SB

Injury has continued to be a theme in Laureano's MLB journey, as the eight-year pro has only surpassed 106 games played once in his career. However, since his return from a minor ankle sprain in early June, the 30-year-old has had a month to remember, hitting .281 with four homers, 17 RBI, 20 runs, and a stolen base.

He's heated up even more these past two weeks, as shown by the streak above.

Ramón Laureano’s last 45 games:

.305 avg
9 HRs
26 RBIs
31 Runs
.942 OPS

Dude just shows up and plays ball. pic.twitter.com/oRHsVOu7bb

— Zach Bollinger (@zachbollinger18) July 1, 2025

Laureano is one homer shy of matching his 2024 total with 36 fewer games played, and he's on pace to hit as many homers as he did in his standout sophomore 2019 season in Oakland. He's also hitting for average much better than he has in his last five seasons. Fortunately, several underlying trends support this late-career resurgence.

The right fielder has found success in Baltimore, hitting for hard contact nearly 5% more than in his last two seasons. Laureano is also pulling the ball 3.5% more often, and hitting flyballs and line drives a touch more as well. These factors all align nicely for an increased HR/FB rate, which is expected to be up to 20% for the year.

Laureano is known to have a high BABIP as well, based on his profile as a hitter, so sitting at .344 on the year so far is not setting off any alarms.

Verdict: It's not always fun backing a career year from a 30-year-old off a handful of "down" seasons, but here we are. Laureano has always had a nice power profile, and it was shocking to see him struggle so much in that department over the past few years. If the righty slugger can stay healthy (which is a BIG if), it's fair to expect a .270 batting average with 12 more home runs, plenty more run production, and a couple of stolen bases the rest of the way.

Austin Hays, OF - Cincinnati Reds

17% Rostered

The Streak (Last 14 Days): .206 AVG, .735 OPS, 2 HR, 6 RBI, 5 R, 0 SB

Hays has been dealing with a plethora of left leg injuries so far this season, and his most recent one shelved him for almost a month. While his numbers may not be eye-popping in a vacuum, they sound much better when you realize the 30-year-old has three doubles and a triple to go along with his two homers in nine games since returning from the IL.

Hays was due for some batting average regression anyway.

The former Oriole debuted in mid-April this year and came out of the gates red hot. The biggest positive change in his batting profile has been his barrel rate, which has more than doubled since 2024. As a result, Hays' HR/FB rate is as high as it's ever been, sitting currently at 18.2%, despite no real strides in the fly ball or hard contact tendencies.

On one hand, it's hard to find any underlying stats that suggest Hays has "figured it out" and that he's all of a sudden back to his peak 2021 form. However, when you consider that he's finally hitting in a hitter-friendly park surrounded by some very dangerous hitters, it makes some sense. Hays is likely seeing many more hitters' pitches these days, and his good swings are producing much more as a result.

Verdict: Even if we convince ourselves that a full season in Cincy is all Hays needed to be back to a huge potential hitter, the playing time and injury concerns are real. The roster percentage does seem a bit low when considering the production and upside here, but we must factor in IL spots and bench room into that number.

So, if you have the luxury of being able to take risks on high-upside, high-risk hitters, Hays is a tremendous option. But investing a lot in the 2016 third-round pick could come back to fantasy managers in a few different ways.

Max Muncy, 2B/3B/SS, Athletics

5% Rostered

The Streak (Last 14 Days): .282 AVG, .862 OPS, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 6 R, 0 SB

Early in his Athletics career, Muncy seems to be embodying what it means to be a streaky hitter. That's understandable for a 22-year-old getting his first major league action with a franchise that has A LOT going on, to say the least. But the positives with Muncy are that he's showing real pop, and while the strikeout rate may be high, the kid may not be a complete liability in the batting average department after all.

Since being recalled from triple-A, Muncy is hitting .242 with six homers and three doubles in a month of pretty consistent playing time. All three of those doubles and two of those homers came within the past week. Could the youngster be figuring it out right before our eyes?

Max Muncy goes oppo 🌮 pic.twitter.com/c7UbpW7rDI

— MLB (@MLB) July 2, 2025

It's too early to make any significant claims here, especially since the positives and negatives appear to be competing in the underlying trends. Sure, Muncy only hits for hard contact 26.1% of the time, and his 34.9% fly-ball rate doesn't match up with his recent home run surge, but the batting average improvement, along with some gap power of late, suggests a young hitter is making strides.

The strikeout rate is still too high, but a .279 BABIP suggests some positive hitting regression may keep the batting average trending upwards. There's a lot to unpack here!

Verdict: There's a ton of promise here, and we as fantasy managers love to see recent hitting improvements correlate with a send-down followed by a call-up. It makes sense when you consider player development! So long as you can stomach too many strikeouts the rest of the year, Muncy is worth a shot to see if this power is legit and if the batting average can hover more in the .255 range moving forward.

The roster percentage here should tick up as we head into the All-Star Break.

Brooks Baldwin, 2B/SS/OF, Chicago White Sox

1% Rostered

The Streak (Last 14 Days): .353 AVG, 1.068 OPS, 1 HR, 3 RBI, 3 R, 1 SB

A nice week for the young center fielder has him making his list at just a single percentage of ownership. Baldwin went 6-for-16 in his last four games of Week 14. He only struck out four times in that span, which is a slight improvement compared to his 29.1% rate this year.

Baldwin has now played 20 more games than he did in his first MLB stint at the end of 2024, and he's showing some underlying improvement, which could be worthwhile. The 24-year-old is making hard contact 4.6% more often than last year, and while his fly-ball rate has normalized from his ridiculous 53% showing in a small sample size, Baldwin is pulling the ball almost half the time so far this season, which helps explain how he's tripled his HR/FB rate thus far.

Well alright then Brooks Baldwin pic.twitter.com/5MUKwPkQVf

— Dylan Barnas (@NotCease) July 4, 2025

More strikeouts are not ideal for the 2022 pick out of UNC Wilmington, but everything else seems to be trending in the right direction. The power surge in Charlotte to start this year hasn't completely followed Baldwin to the majors, but this recent stretch is promising.

Verdict: There's not enough here to make Baldwin relevant in most leagues yet, but the positional versatility and the recent hot streak are certainly catching the eye of deep leaguers looking for a potential power boost. Baldwin seems to have secured his spot as the White Sox center fielder for at least the following week.

Let's see if he can follow up his promising holiday weekend with more production leading up to the All-Star Break.

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