Projecting Rest of Season Top 10 Hitters in 2025 Fantasy Baseball (Week 9)

May 28, 2025

Ryan Kirksey projects which 10 hitters will finish the season in the top 10 for the 2025 fantasy baseball season as we head into Week 9 of MLB action.

For the first time this season, a certain player shows up in the top 10 of fantasy baseball hitters, and this player had an abysmal start to the season. This player was so bad to start the year that fantasy managers were wondering about injury, offseason drama, position changes, and any other reasonable excuse to figure out what was going on.

Now, just nine weeks later, Rafael Devers is in the top 10. If you rostered Devers to start the year and held steady, you have been rewarded. If you were able to buy low on Devers, congratulations, you have a piece that will help you win a championship. It just proves the point that the fantasy baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. Having patience in a long season is always the best strategy.

In the case of many players, the numbers are starting to stabilize. In other players, 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 much baseball is left to be played. I will take a closer look at the current top-10 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 May 26, 2025.

Because Aaron Judge hit "only" .375 over the last week, his batting average fell below .400 for the first time since the beginning of the season. He still leads the American League in home runs and RBI, and stole his first base in three weeks. This is shaping up to be another special season for Judge, and his chase to hit .400 should be a fun one this summer.

It's been a home-run barrage lately for Shohei Ohtani, who has seven bombs since May 14th and now leads all of baseball. No other player in baseball has at least 15 home runs and 10 steals. After what was a relatively slow start to his season, Ohtani is fully locked in at the plate and is making progress toward pitching sometime around the All-Star break.

Shohei Ohtani leads off the game with a homer for the second straight night! pic.twitter.com/8BLsEyOUyD

— MLB (@MLB) May 26, 2025

It's wild how close of a carbon copy the two Chicago Cubs are right now. As part of one of the game's best offenses, both are hitting .280, and both have at least 12 home runs and 14 steals. The move back to sixth in the lineup to accommodate Ian Happ could hurt PCA's counting stats, but his game is otherwise showing no signs of slowing down.

Both Kyle Schwarber and Elly De La Cruz are showing this season that you don't have to have an elite batting average to be in the top 10 if you are elite in other categories. In Schwarber's case, that is his 19 home runs and 41 runs. Elly De La Cruz leads the National League in stolen bases and is starting to see his power come around as well.

Rafael Devers in May:

.400 AVG
1.198 OPS
5 HR
20 RBI

Safe to say he’s broken out of that slump pic.twitter.com/ayCZFYMMbn

— SleeperMLB (@SleeperMLB) May 21, 2025

Despite his horrific start to the season (he was 0-for-23 to start the season), Rafael Devers is hitting .300/.417/.660 with five home runs and 17 RBI in the last two weeks. His walk rate is up to 16%, and he is not striking out anymore (just 18%), so all appears to be right again for the man without a defensive position for the Red Sox.

Seiya Suzuki is the third Chicago Cub in the top 10 right now, as his power stroke has gotten him to ninth. In the last 12 games, Suzuki is hitting .370 and is slugging .804 with an 11% walk rate. With zero steals in that time, he is another example of a player who can catapult up the list even if they are relative dead weight in one offensive category.

James Wood of the Washington Nationals, who is just 22 years old, has also ridden a two-week hot streak into the top 10 leaderboard. In that time, he is hitting .325/.404/.550 with two home runs and two steals. In many ways, he is a younger Kyle Tucker clone who presents an elite power/speed combo with high average potential.

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 four months of the 2025 fantasy baseball season.

Aaron Judge could lose 45 points of batting average and still be leading the American League as things stand right now. Barring a catastrophic injury, Judge should finish top five among all players in home runs and RBI. The combination of those stats, plus another 100 runs and 10 steals this season, is enough to ensure that he will finish the season on top.

Ohtani not only leads all of baseball in home runs heading into Tuesday, but he also leads in runs. His RBI are finally starting to creep up after he seemingly only hit solo home runs for the first month of the season, and a 50/30 season seems to be firmly within his grasp right now.

Pete Crow-Armstrong - Chicago Cubs (14)
pic.twitter.com/kwk0fKgSFH

— MLB HR Videos (@MLBHRVideos) May 24, 2025

Pete Crow-Armstrong has started to see a slight uptick in his strikeout rate (25% in the last 30 days), and that was the biggest worry when he came into the major leagues. It's not at a level where we need to worry right now, but at some point, PCA might be so good that pitchers refuse to challenge him and try to get him out on pitches out of the zone.

I believe Elly De La Cruz will finish the season somewhere around 25 home runs (ATC predicts another 16 for him this year). If he reaches that number and finishes between 50-60 steals, it would take a cratered batting average to keep him out of the top five.

Bobby Witt Jr. continues to hover just outside the top 10 hitters because he only has five home runs on the season. With a .293 average and 19 steals this year (second in MLB), all he needs is a little more pop to plant himself firmly in the top 10 for the rest of the year.

José Ramírez during his career-best 19-game hit streak 🔥

.387 AVG
.446 OBP
.667 SLG
12 XBH
11 RBI
17 R@CleGuardians | #GuardsBall pic.twitter.com/QhIK5wnHsl

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) May 27, 2025

The two third basemen who round out the projected top 10 (Ramirez and Devers) are two of the hottest hitters on the planet right now. Devers has the harder task of staying in the top 10 because he does not steal bases. But if he can keep his average above .300 (or close to .310) this year, his power and runs combined with average should do the trick.

Only 15 qualified players are hitting .300 or better right now, and some of them (such as Jake Meyers and Kyle Stowers) are inflated and likely to move down.

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