| | | | Thursday, July 17, 2025 | | Talking about busts in Fantasy Baseball is tricky. When some people hear that term, they start seeing red. They lose all ability to understand nuance and just think you mean, explicitly, "This player is bad and there is no way they will ever be good." | | But that's not how anyone actually uses the term. Well, not never, necessarily, but usually not. It usually means, "This player is overvalued," or, if you want to be even more weaselly about it, "This player is probably good but comes with a lot of risk that makes their price tough to justify paying." | | But in the context of this week's exercise, where we're looking for sleepers, breakouts, and now busts for the second half of the season, it mostly just means, "This player won't be as good in the second half of the season as they were in the first." But even that requires some nuance. | | Take Cal Raleigh, for example. He probably won't be as good in the second half as he was in the first. If only because, when someone gets that much better, to the point where they are on pace to accomplish something historic – in Raleigh's case, "Break the single-season record for homers by a catcher by more than 15" – expecting regression shouldn't be taken as skepticism. Raleigh is putting together one of the best seasons ever by a catcher, and that would be true even if he is on a 50-homer pace in the second half rather than a 64-homer pace. | | So, no, I'm not saying Cal Raleigh is a "bust" for the rest of the season, even if I think he's likely to take a step back. That term doesn't fit for him. But it fits for the eight players I'm talking about in the rest of today's newsletter, and for more picks, plus some sleepers and breakouts – from Scott White and Frank Stampfl, make sure you check out last night's episode of Fantasy Baseball Today. We'll be back tomorrow with some bold predictions for the second half of the season and some help setting your lineups with games picking back up Friday, but for now, here are some bust picks for the second half: | | | | Second-half busts | | | | Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF, Cubs – Is it okay for me to say that I was clearly wrong about Crow-Armstrong being a bust before the season, and also think that he's clearly one of the most obvious sell-high candidates in Fantasy right now? Even ranking him 17th in my "re-drafting the first two rounds" piece wasn't enough for some people! I whiffed on Crow-Armstrong, but if you think his skill set is that of a clear top-10 player, then yes, I think you are probably overrating him at this point. As good as he has been this season, he's overperformed his expected stats, though by less lately than he was earlier, and there remains a lot of risk inherent in his profile because of how bad his approach at the plate is. He's made it work for him, obviously, and his speed will help keep his skill set afloat even if things go wrong for him. But Crow-Armstrong manages to combine one of the most aggressive swings in baseball with below-average (not bad, mind you, but below average) contact skills, and at some point, that's going to catch up to him. Not enough to make him one of the worst hitters in baseball, like I feared might be in his range of outcomes before the season – his extremely high pull-air rate should help him continue to post strong results when he makes contact – but enough that he could seriously disappoint down the stretch. | | Jacob Wilson, SS, Athletics – Wilson is such a fun player. He's got that weird batting stance, where it looks like he's riding a horse sideways (?), and yet he's somehow managed to ride that proverbial horse to the All-Star game and a well-earned reputation as one of the premier contact hitters in baseball. But here's the thing: Hitting .332 forever is really hard. Luis Arraez has managed that feat once in a full season, and while Wilson might be a better hitter than Arraez, it's probably a bit too early to declare that with confidence. Even for great contact hitters, batting average fluctuates a ton, and for as good as Wilson is, his expected batting average is only .287 – Arraez has bested that in four of his past five seasons, sometimes by more than 20 points. He also doesn't hit the ball as hard as Arraez, and only hits the ball to the pull side in the air marginally more frequently. Which is all to say, while Wilson looks like a better version of Arraez based on the first 90 or so games of this season, I'm not actually convinced he is. Wilson might just be a more dynamic player than Arraez in ways those stats can't quantify, but if his batting average slips to even the .280-ish range, he goes from looking like a star to a pretty fringe-y Fantasy player thanks to his lack of other skills beyond his batting average. | | | | Trevor Story, SS, Red Sox – Look, the fact that Trevor Story has managed to stay healthy and look like a viable major-leaguer at all is a huge win for the Red Sox after the way things have gone since his signing there. And, for all his flaws, which we'll get to, Story still has a remarkably Fantasy-friendly skill set, with 15 homers and 16 steals on the season. We'll take a 25-25 season, even if it comes with a poor batting average. But Story has already matched his high for games played since getting to Boston, so I think we have to treat him with elevated injury risk at this point, and I'm also just not sure it makes sense to keep betting on him being as productive as he has been. His underlying numbers aren't far off what he has produced so far, but we're talking about a guy with some of the worst plate discipline in baseball, and we've already seen what the downside can look like when he goes cold – he had a .158/.200/.232 line with a 34% strikeout rate in May. Expecting something like a low-.700s OPS and decent power and speed from Story is reasonable, but the downside outcomes are significant enough that I think cashing in on Story right now is the best move. | | Zach McKinstry, 3B, Tigers – It's a remarkable story. McKinstry made his first All-Star game as a 30-year-old and has been a key contributor to one of the best teams in the league. It's incredible. It's also almost certainly not real. McKinstry does have better underlying numbers than ever before, but they aren't anywhere close to what he's actually produced, as seen by his .324 xwOBA compared to his actual .360 mark. And his batted ball profile and plate discipline numbers don't look so different from last year, in a way that makes me think even the underlying numbers are probably pretty flukey. I don't know how much value McKinstry has out there in trades, so your best bet might be to just ride the hot hand until he inevitably falls apart, but if I could get anything useful for McKinstry in trade, I would. | | | | Kris Bubic, SP, Royals – I haven't seen any official word from the Royals on limiting Bubic's workload in the second half of the season, but they've got to, right? He has an extensive injury history and has already thrown 24 more innings than he did in 2023 and 2024 combined. Are they really going to let him throw the 190-plus innings he's currently on pace for when he's never thrown more than 149.1 in a season before/ It is, of course, possible – as Scott White has pointed out on the FBT podcast multiple times, Bubic only has one year of team control left after this year, so it's not like the Royals have to keep an eye on the long-term ramifications of his usage – but there aren't a lot of examples of pitchers seeing this kind of workload bump from one year to the next, either. Bubic has already looked a bit more hittable of late, as he has an ERA over 4.00 and a WHIP over 1.40 since the start of June, and it's possible he just falls apart in the second half, too. As great of a story as his breakout has been, carrying it over into the second half might be asking too much. | | Drew Rasmussen, SP, Rays – The Rays used Rasmussen as an overqualified opener for his final two starts of the first half, limiting him to just two innings in those two starts as a way to manage his innings – he's already up to 91.1 after throwing just 36 last season while recovering from elbow surgery – and while the Rays have said they'll likely give him a longer leash in future starts, he has a 150-inning limit for the season, per the Tampa Bay Times. With about 14 turns through the rotation remaining, you'd hit that 150-inning limit well before the season ends, even if he was averaging just five per start, and that would leave nothing for the postseason, a problem for a Rays team just 1.5 games back of a postseason spot. Even with some skipped starts and extra days of rest there, 12 more starts at five innings per would push him right to that limit. The math is just hard to make work without Rasmussen being severely limited in the second half. As good as he is, I think Rasmussen's value is likely to be pretty fringe-y in the second half, unfortunately. | | Clay Holmes, SP, Mets – The Mets haven't said anything specific about limiting Holmes' workload, but this is one where I'm not sure the concern is really about him being limited in the second half. I think Holmes is just going to struggle. He hasn't gone six innings since June 7 and has 18 walks to 18 strikeouts in 30 innings in that time, despite somehow maintaining a decent enough 4.20 ERA. His elite groundball rate will help in that regard, but I don't think it's going to be enough to overcome what has become both a below-average strikeout rate and an above-average walk rate. His xERA of 4.19 suggests he's been very lucky so far, and that's without even accounting for the likelihood of some fatigue-related regression. | | Aroldis Chapman, RP, Red Sox – The other thing we have to account for coming out of the second half is the trade deadline. The Red Sox's active 10-game winning streak significantly lowers the chance we're going to see a sell-off here, so maybe Chapman stays put as the team's closer. But with two weeks left until the deadline, there's a lot that could go wrong between then and now that could force the All-Star closer out of the picture. If not him, then we could see the likes of Kenley Jansen, Kyle Finnegan or David Bednar moved somewhere they might not necessarily be assured of a closer job – higher-end names like Felix Bautista, Mason Miller or Emmanuel Clase could be moved at the deadline, though all three would almost certainly be sent to an even better team where they would likely remain the closer, so it's less of a concern. But the next two weeks could really change how Chapman, Jansen, Finnegan, and Bednar are valued. | | | | | | | | Canadian Football League | | SailGP | Don't miss the Toronto Argonauts taking on the Montreal Alouettes tonight at 7:30 ET on CBS Sports Network!
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