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Ryan Kirksey projects which ten hitters will finish the season in the top 10 for the 2025 fantasy baseball season, as we head into Week 4 of MLB action.
It's time for the Week 4 edition of our Top 10 Hitters series for fantasy baseball and the 2025 season. Every team in Major League Baseball has now played approximately 25 games in the 2025 season. While it is still early, a sufficient sample size has emerged to begin examining performances around baseball and identifying which hot starts might continue and which players might cool off.
Certain young hitters like Pete Crow-Armstrong, Brice Turang, and James Wood are dominating the fantasy leaderboards right now, while aging stars like Ozzie Albies, Trea Turner, and Rafael Devers have gotten off to very slow starts. Do these early numbers shake our belief in what we thought they would do in 2025?
In some cases, the numbers are starting to stabilize, while in others, more plate appearances are needed to make a firm decision. But in fantasy baseball, the stats we have are all that we can use. Making future judgments based on current data is the name of the game! It's a long season, and there is a lot of baseball left to be played. I'm going to take a closer look at the current top-ten hitters in fantasy and make some predictions about who ends up there when it's all said and done in October.
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Current Top 10 Hitters for Fantasy Baseball
According to Yahoo's player rankings, here are the top 10 most valuable hitters in 5x5 roto leagues as of April 24, 2025.
| Hitter | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG |
| Aaron Judge | 23 | 7 | 26 | 3 | 0.415 |
| Kyle Tucker | 25 | 7 | 25 | 7 | 0.314 |
| Corbin Carroll | 23 | 9 | 22 | 4 | 0.327 |
| Fernando Tatis Jr. | 23 | 8 | 17 | 7 | 0.333 |
| Pete Crow-Armstrong | 21 | 5 | 17 | 10 | 0.294 |
| Brice Turang | 24 | 3 | 14 | 8 | 0.350 |
| Elly De La Cruz | 15 | 5 | 22 | 10 | 0.245 |
| Pete Alonso | 15 | 6 | 26 | 0 | 0.341 |
| Tyler Soderstrom | 19 | 9 | 19 | 0 | 0.283 |
| Cedric Mullins | 16 | 6 | 19 | 4 | 0.297 |
Aaron Judge still sits atop the hitter leaderboards for the third straight week. However, the sneaky thing going on here is that he has only homered once since April 4. It's not time to sound the alarm bells yet, as he is getting numerous other hits and driving in runs; however, one home run in three weeks is ominous.
Kyle Tucker and Corbin Carroll have both been going nuclear the past two weeks. In that span, Tucker is slugging .581, while Carroll is up at .647. Carroll's four home runs and four stolen bases over the last two weeks have shot him up the fantasy leaderboards - and a .333 average doesn't hurt either.
Corbin Carroll's 9 HR are tied for the Major League lead. pic.twitter.com/CVvkkJNxGQ
— MLB (@MLB) April 24, 2025
Fernando Tatis Jr. and Elly De La Cruz both had mildly slow starts to the season, but now have evolved back into the power/speed threats that should keep them both at the top of fantasy baseball offenses for years to come. Cruz may not be on another 70-steal pace, but right now, he is projected to finish the season in the 30/60 club, although Tatis can hit .300, while Cruz's high strikeouts make that unlikely.
Milwaukee Brewers' leadoff man Brice Turang has been a one-man wrecking crew for the Brew Crew over the last week or so and now finds himself as one of the top six hitters in rotisserie baseball. Turang has a .373 average and six steals over the last 57 plate appearances and looks like someone who also could finish near the top of the league's leaderboard in runs this season.
The surprise of the first month for fantasy baseball has been Pete Crow-Armstrong. Over the past two weeks, no player has a higher slugging percentage than PCA's .915, and only two players have hit more than his five home runs (Mike Trout and Cal Raleigh). PCA was always projected as a 30-40 steals player, but right now he is looking like he could join De La Cruz in the 30/60 club.
Pete Crow-Armstrong so far this year for the @Cubs:
5 HR
10 SB
15 XBHHe's the first player in MLB history to reach those marks before the end of April. pic.twitter.com/nlOhSu1Cdd
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) April 24, 2025
Pete Alonso and Tyler Soderstrom just keep mashing baseballs and getting tons of hits. These two won't net you many steals, but they both have a barrel rate higher than 15 percent and a hard-hit rate over 50 percent. They both may play in pitcher parks, but that shouldn't stop either from reaching 35+ home runs in 2025. That's par for the course for Alonso, but Soderstrom is proving his power is legit.
Can Cedric Mullins keep up this torrid pace to start the season? The Orioles are believers because they have now inserted him in the leadoff spot in most games instead of sixth or seventh, which is where he started the season. Now on the wrong side of age 30, can he maintain a career-high in average, walk rate, slugging percentage, and OPS? Likely not, but it's clear that whatever you paid in the draft room, Mullins is going to pay off that investment many times over.
Projected Top 10 Hitters for Fantasy Baseball
Using a blend of ATC projections, Nick Mariano's projections, and my own opinions, here is my projected top-10 finish for hitters in the last five months of the 2025 fantasy baseball season.
| Hitter | Projection | Current Rank |
| Aaron Judge | 1 | 1 |
| Shohei Ohtani | 2 | 5 |
| Kyle Tucker | 3 | 2 |
| Elly De La Cruz | 4 | 8 |
| Corbin Carroll | 5 | 3 |
| Fernando Tatis Jr. | 6 | 4 |
| Oneill Cruz | 7 | 24 |
| Juan Soto | 8 | 168 |
| Bobby Witt Jr. | 9 | 74 |
| Gunnar Henderson | 10 | 563 |
Notably, Shohei Ohtani, the No. 2 overall pick in 2025 fantasy drafts, is not on the current top-ten list. He is currently ranked 29th with a .261 average, six home runs, five stolen bases, and eight RBI. It's the weird eight runs driven in and the good-not-great batting average that's holding him down right now.
However, he currently has a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) more than 20 points below his career .337 average. He is walking more than last year (understandable, no one wants to pitch to him), and he missed a few games for the birth of his first child. I have no doubts he will end up on this top-10 list by year's end.
Bobby Witt Jr. has a 15-game hitting streak where he's hit .358.
His teammates have hit .182 over that time.
— Royals Review (@royalsreview) April 24, 2025
Bobby Witt Jr. has everything going his way right now (.308 average, seven steals, 15 runs), except the power. He only has two home runs and has a slugging percentage 110 points lower than last year through 24 games. His flyball rate and his home run per flyball rate are both down significantly to start the season, so when they course-correct, he will shoot back up.
Juan Soto battled a major slump after the first week of the season, but is starting to recover from that after five hits and four RBI in his last five games. He may only have a .233 average, three homers, and two steals as of Thursday, but if he finishes with those numbers projected out for a full season, I would be shocked.
Gunnar Henderson is still technically in spring training mode. After missing a few weeks with an oblique strain, Henderson has just 16 games over the last five weeks. He will also be back up to speed soon, and as long as he doesn't have any lingering injuries from the oblique, he has plenty of time to catch up to this list over the next five months.
Witt and Henderson both had amazing 2024 seasons, so it's too early to write them off after just four weeks. Both have the hit tool ability, contact rate, power, and speed to make their way back up this list, and it would be foolish to count them out yet.
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