Dynasty Fantasy Stock Watch: Assessing Value In Early April

Injuries Significantly Affecting Dynasty Value

The largest changes to dynasty value are typically to players whose primary dynasty value is heavily weighted to their 2024 performance, usually due to the fact that they are older players in the decline phase of their career. The most obvious changes occur as a result of an injury which significantly impacts 2024 value—especially if it also now clouds their future value. In these cases, their value plummets significantly. The players who fall into this category, unfortunately, are:

Shane Bieber
Devin Williams

Within this basket of injured players is a subset of interesting cases—where perhaps there may be an opportunity if you are willing to take the risk—where players who are perceived to be injury-prone get injured again or where the long-term effects of the current injury are still not known. The best examples of this are Gerrit Cole, Matt McLain or Luis Robert Jr. where it’s not yet known how long they will be sidelined with injury, and how productive they will be once they return to the field. With the benefit of retrospect in a few months, today may end up being seen as having been an incredible buying opportunity…or a catastrophic near-miss. To reflect this uncertainty, we’ve lowered the following players slightly:

Eloy Jimenez
Gerrit Cole
Luis Robert Jr.
Royce Lewis
Matt McLain
Trevor Story
Josh Lowe

Another subset of injuries are players where the injury won’t impact their long term dynasty value—either because they will be contributors for a long time or the injury shouldn’t impact them too much in the grand scheme of things. They too were revised downward in the rankings but generally to a lesser degree. The following players fall into this category:

Spencer Strider
Eury Perez
Nathaniel Lowe
Emmet Sheehan
Tommy Edman
Oswald Peraza
Eduardo Rodriguez
Jonny DeLuca
Geraldo Perdomo

Finally, because of the nature of their injuries and where they are on the development track, we removed Daniel Espino and Nick Frasso from the list entirely.

Changes in Roles (downward)

There were some players who were expected to have a valuable role in 2024 before the season started. Early on, we’ve seen managerial tendencies that are suggesting that this may no longer be the case. The clearest examples of this are players who were presumed to be the closer for a team but who do not seem to be so anymore. For example, Alex Lange in Detroit definitely is not the primary candidate—though it’s also not clear whether it is Jason Foley or Andrew Chafin or Shelby Miller (or…)—and also Joel Payamps who seems to have been supplanted by Abner Uribe in the Milwaukee bullpen pecking order.

Other players who were revised downward were players who either were (a) expected to make the major league club out of spring training but were demoted, (b) expected to have significant roles but who seem to be in danger of losing that role or having a lesser one, or (c) have not signed with a team yet. These players were lowered in the rankings accordingly and include:

Marco Luciano
Orelvis Martinez
Everson Pereira
Deyvison De Los Santos
Ben Joyce
Drew Waters
Spencer Horwitz
Edouard Julien
Alexander Kirk
Trent Grisham
Luis Rengifo
Tommy Pham
Brandon Belt

Players Who Seem To Be Hitting Their Upper Range Outcome

Now that we got a lot of the negativity out of the way, let’s move to the positive. There were a number of players who had a wide range in their potential outcomes coming into the season—either because they had a new role or there was murkiness surrounding how they would perform after a long layoff. To accommodate this uncertainty, we previously ranked them by their median “expected value”. So far, this year, a number of players suggest we were too conservative by looking healthy or sliding successfully into a new (more valuable) role. The players in this category and for whom we have now adjusted their ranking upward are:

Chris Sale
Garrett Crochet
Jordan Hicks
Mason Miller
Henry Davis
Taylor Ward
Yu Darvish
Tyler O’Neill
Kutter Crawford
Luis Severino
Casey Mize
Tanner Houck
Starling Marte
Jack Flaherty
Michael Conforto
Keaton Winn

Players Building Off Short-Sample Success in 2023

There were some players who showed a lot of potential in 2023 (or the second half of 2023) but this exceeded previous expectations and were therefore viewed with cautious skepticism. So far, a number of players have continued into 2024 exactly how we had optimistically hoped:

Cole Ragans
Tarik Skubal
Nick Pivetta
Bobby Miller
Spencer Steer
Jake Burger
Lane Thomas
Jarren Duran
Christopher Morel
Maikel Garcia
Cristopher Sanchez
Zack Littell
Reid Detmers

Increased Value After Spring Training

Recently, we’ve highlighted a number of players who impressed scouts in Spring Training. In some cases too, their path to production has accelerated tremendously—either by making the big league club out of Spring Training—Jared Jones, Jackson Merrill, Graham Pauley are clear examples of this—or who definitely seem to be much closer to promotion than previously anticipated.

Jared Jones
Paul Skenes
Jackson Merrill
Graham Pauley
Tyler Freeman
Jordan Leasure
James Wood
Chase DeLauter
George Lombard Jr.
Christian Scott
Jefferson Rojas
Jonny Famelo
Joey Loperfido
Alfredo Duno
Mike Vasil
Nelson Rada
Jeremy Rodriguez
Starlyn Caba
Caden Dana
Trevor Werner
Walker Jenkins

The final subset of players who were boosted in the rankings are those players who have been thrust into a more prominent role sooner than expected or who seem to be solidifying their standing in that role

Gavin Stone
Ben Brown
Max Meyer
Louie Varland
Brice Turang
Abner Uribe
Michael Busch
Jose Caballero

Some other updates were made to players who are on new teams since the last update:

Blake Snell, signing with the Giants.
Dylan Cease, traded to the Padres.
Drew Thorpe, traded to the White Sox.
Matt Chapman, signing with the Giants.
J.D. Davis, traded to the A’s.
Jordan Montgomery, signing with the Diamondbacks
Mike Clevinger, signing with the White Sox

Finally, there are a number of players who seem precariously close to the cliff, based on their early-season performance. We have not changed their ranking too much—but keep an eye on them:

Max Fried
Joe Musgrove
Kris Bryant
Anthony Rendon
Giancarlo Stanton