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Ryan looks at the fantasy baseball prospect busts for the 2024 season so far. He discusses the top MLB prospects who have not performed well, and if they can turn it around this season.
Rookies and prospects are, without a doubt, the most volatile part of fantasy baseball. Even the most-hyped prospects or rookies with the best pedigree are huge wild cards when they reach the Major Leagues. They have never reached those high-caliber pitchers or hitters, and many struggle to adjust. The 2024 fantasy baseball season has been no different, with many prospects struggling enough in their debuts that they had to be sent back down or sent to the bench for extended periods of time.
This season, the rookie pitchers have had a much easier path to Major League success than the hitters. Pitchers such as Paul Skenes, Jared Jones, Shota Imanaga, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Mason Miller, Mitchell Parker, and Luis Gil have been phenomenal.
Many of the top-hitting prospects have struggled immensely, with some resulting in demotions back to AAA. This piece will look at the five prospects who entered the year with high expectations and who are massive busts so far.
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Wyatt Langford, OF, Texas Rangers
After getting drafted fourth overall in 2023, Wyatt Langford was fast-tracked to the Texas Rangers after just 44 games and 200 Minor League plate appearances. After hitting .368/.538/.526 in a short AAA stint that year, the Rangers had seen enough and gave Langford a place in their Opening Day lineup. Langford had prodigious power in college and entered his professional tool with a rare 70-power grade by scouts. He hit nine home runs in 44 games after being drafted, so the Rangers were convinced the power was Major League ready.
So far, that has not been the case. Langford did miss three and a half weeks with a hamstring injury in May, but the power has been nonexistent since his arrival in the big leagues. In fact, his only home run has been a misplayed ball that turned into an inside-the-park home run. Langford's .296 slugging percentage would be the sixth-worst in the majors if he had enough plate appearances to qualify, and he only has three doubles as well.
While his expected statistics from Statcast (.395 xSLG) show he has been a bit unlucky, Langford has really struggled to make hard contact. His 39.8% hard-hit rate is the same as Ezequiel Tovar and lower than teammate Leody Taveras (40.1%). With injuries hopefully behind him, Langford has the right metrics to make a rise (.290 BABIP, 112 mph max exit velocity), but his power outage is not what fantasy managers expected from the highly-touted rookie.
Jackson Holliday, SS, Baltimore Orioles
There was no prospect more hyped (at least among hitters) this year than shortstop Jackson Holliday. He had the pedigree (his father Matt Holliday was an MLB All-Star), he had the draft capital (he was drafted first overall in 2022), and he had the performance (a career .311 hitter with a .935 OPS in the Minor Leagues) to become an instant star. Every organization and publication had him as the top prospect to watch for 2024 because his call-up was imminent by the Baltimore Orioles. The call-up was quick - he debuted on April 10th against Boston - but the performance was abysmal, eventually earning him a ticket back to AAA after just 10 games.
In that time, Holliday only hit .059/.111/.059 with a staggering 50% strikeout rate. He had no extra-base hits, one RBI, and just two walks. The strikeouts were the primary driver in what forced Baltimore to send him back down. After averaging around a 79% contact rate over 2023 and 2024, his contact rate in the Major Leagues was just 59%, a number that would be five five percentage points worse than the lowest Major Leaguer (Nolan Gorman) if he qualified. Holliday was sent down to focus on that effort, but his strikeout struggles have mysteriously continued back in the minors.
Jackson Holliday over his past 10 games:
.353 BA
.463 OBP
.647 SLG
1.110 OPSThe kid's heating up.
— Jacob Calvin Meyer (@jcalvinmeyer) June 2, 2024
His batting line back with the Norfolk Tides was acceptable in May (.260/.426/.440) with four home runs and three steals. However, he struck out 31 times in 27 games and has struck out three times in seven June at-bats through June 4th. For reference, he struck out just nine times in 54 plate appearances in AAA before the promotion. Until he can get those contact struggles under control, it will be hard to envision Holliday back with the Orioles anytime soon. But at just 20 years old, he has plenty of time to mature into the elite hitter everyone expects him to be.
Evan Carter, OF, Texas Rangers
Evan Carter set MLB on fire last season in his 23-game sample after first being called up to the big leagues. He helped propel the Texas Rangers to a World Series title after hitting .306/.413/.645 with five home runs and three steals in his limited sample (and .300 in the postseason). Like Langford, Carter also earned a spot in the starting lineup on Opening Day, but the results have been the exact opposite of his fantastic debut in 2023. The combination of injuries, poor plate discipline, and a power drop-off have caused his fantasy value to tumble off a cliff.
For starters, Carter has been on the IL since May 28th with a back injury. It was recently classified as a stress reaction, and the Rangers believe Carter will miss extended time, possibly a month or more of the season. Was the back injury or other nagging problems to blame for Carter's horrific first few months? Perhaps, but Carter claimed he was healthy, but just wasn't hitting the ball up to his normal standards. As of the time of his injury, Carter was hitting .188/.272/.361 and had not hit a home run since April 26th.
Evan Carter has been placed on the 10-day IL with back tightness pic.twitter.com/36xPTj2PXf
— Rangers Nation ⚾️ (@rangers__nation) May 28, 2024
From April to May, Carter's monthly OPS dropped from .776 (well above league average) to an abysmal .382. He started striking out more inexplicably (33% in May), and his BABIP went into the tank at .206. Add it all up, plus the possibility of an injury that was hiding, and Carter went from an ultra-promising prospect and postseason hero to a player who doesn't deserve to be anywhere near our fantasy rosters. In order for him to get picked up onto any of my teams going forward, he will have to prove he is fully healthy and can still hit for power and average at a sustained rate.
Jackson Chourio, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
The months of March and April started strong for outfielder Jackson Chourio, even if his batting average was lagging way behind his counting stats. Jackson Chourio looked like a major fantasy contributor when he finished the month of April with four home runs, five steals, 12 runs, and 13 RBI, even if it did come with a .206 batting average attached. But since that time, Chourio has a combined two home runs, two steals, nine runs, and six RBI. His batting average also stayed low at .215. All the fantasy goodness he gave us in the first month has dried up.
JACKSON CHOURIO
pic.twitter.com/D1XL3yJYNc— SleeperMLB (@SleeperMLB) April 16, 2024
As a result of the poor play, Chourio is seeing diminished playing time. He used to be a fixture in the Milwaukee lineup at the seventh or eighth spot but has now sat six of the last 12 games heading into Wednesday night. The combination of decreased playing time, diminished skills, and unpredictability has all but killed any fantasy value he once had. Chourio is 223rd among fantasy hitters over the last week and is now ceding playing time to Sal Frelick and Blake Perkins.
The biggest culprit in the drop in skills has to be his groundball rate. It was already high in March/April when he was hitting 48% of his batted balls into the grass, but since then, it's been about 55% of his batted ball contact. His hard-hit rate is slightly up, but that doesn't matter as much when the ball is not being lifted into the air. His strikeout rate dropped, but so did his walk rate. As of now, Chourio is in danger of getting a demotion back down to AAA in favor of Tyler Black or Joey Wiemer in his backup outfield spot.
Heston Kjerstad, OF/DH, Baltimore Orioles
It's clear, based on this list, that the Rangers and Orioles have had the worst luck with top prospects this year. But that also means they have the most to gain if one or two of their prized rookies begin to turn things around as the summer months heat up and offensive production begins to rise. Almost as bad as Jackson Holliday was for the Orioles, outfielder Heston Kjerstad was right there with him. In fact, Kjerstad's might have been even more of a surprise because of his age (25 years old) and the massive power potential he showed in AAA this year (14 home runs in 40 games).
Heston Kjerstad hit another home run. His 14th of the season. pic.twitter.com/TeZ1VHBCHi
— Mason Choate (@ChoateMason) June 2, 2024
No player had more power in the minor leagues when Baltimore called up Kjerstad on April 23. But he lasted less time than Holliday, only getting in seven games before he was demoted. His .143/.294/.143 line did nothing to inspire confidence and he had no home runs and no extra-base hits in his games with the Orioles. He went back down to Norfolk and performed well in May, hitting .291/.400/.564 with three homers and six doubles.
Kjerstad's main downfall in his short time with Baltimore was his inability to lay off pitches in the outside of the zone. He swung at 42% of the pitches he saw that were not strikes, leading to an unacceptable 20.5% swinging strike rate. He made improvements on that over the course of the last month in the minors and only has two strikeouts in the month of June heading into Wednesday's game. Kjerstad is a bit more concerning than Holliday because of his age, and it's something to keep an eye on. He should be ready to hit Major League pitching at 25, so if he fails in his next attempt, it's a huge red flag.
