Well, that came out of left field.
I don’t mean literally, of course, though you’d be forgiven for thinking so in an article about baseball. I’m referring to the idiom for something unexpected or surprising — in this case, the performance of certain players.
One-hit wonders, we call them, which is itself an idiom originating in the music industry. It’s when an already-established player exceeds his baseline production in a way no one could have reasonably anticipated. The prevailing response is, “Can he do it again?” and I’ve come up with a sustainability scale (using fun baseball icons!) to gauge the likelihood of that.
⚾⚾⚾⚾ – it’s a near certainty
⚾⚾⚾ – it’s more likely than not
⚾⚾ – it’s basically a coin flip
⚾ – I wouldn’t count on it
I’ll confess that some of these players may have been good in the past, which perhaps prevents them from being one-hit wonders in the truest sense, but it was so long ago that what they did in 2024 might as well have been entirely new. I’ll also note that I deliberately omitted younger players whose breakthrough seasons fit into what I would describe as a typical growth trajectory. Lawrence Butler and Mark Vientos may have surprised us in 2024, but they haven’t established enough of a baseline for me to describe them as one-hit wonders.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾⚾
FantasyPros ADP: 20.8
Some were touting Duran as an undervalued Fantasy asset at this time a year ago, but I don’t think anyone was expecting him to have the kind of season that would make him a second-round pick the following year. He’s an unconventional fit at that stage of the draft, standing out more for his batting average and speed than his power, and it does feel like he’s walking a bit of a tightrope to achieve stud production, with basically no margin for error in any facet.
That’s my biggest concern for him, that he’ll be just 80 percent of what he was last year because asking for so much to go right again is, frankly, asking too much. But to me, gauging the sustainability of Duran’s 2024 is as simple as comparing it to the previous year’s slash line. He slashed .295/.346/.482 as a part-timer in 2023. He slashed .285/.342/.492 as a full-timer in 2024. We’ve already seen that he can do it again.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾ 1/2
FantasyPros ADP: 50.0
Some might object to the “one-hit wonder” label for Rooker given that he was also a 30-homer guy in 2023. But he only batted .246 that year and hadn’t secured a full-time role yet. More to the point, nobody actually bought into him for Fantasy Baseball, which is why was only the 279th player drafted on average last year.
Still, what we can confirm now that we couldn’t confirm then is that his power will absolutely continue to play — and that he, too, will continue to play after signing a five-year, $60 million extension this offseason. What I’m less certain about is the sustainability of his .293 batting average. His expected batting average, according to Statcast, was only .266, and even that seems like a generous mark given his 29 percent strikeout rate. Then again, he cut that strikeout rate to a much more palatable 24 percent in the second half, so it’s possible the 30-year-old has even more surprises in store.
I was less inclined to place my trust in Rooker when I thought he’d be usable only at DH, but we learned in the offseason that a forearm issue limited him to that role in 2024. Manager Mark Kotsay has expressed enthusiasm for using him in the outfield again, making it likely Rooker gains eligibility there at some point.
Sustainability scale: ⚾
FantasyPros ADP: 68.0
Again, the “one-hit wonder” label may not be perfectly suited for Willy Adames, who has been a regular part of Fantasy lineups at least since joining the Brewers in 2021. But last year, he was an out-and-out stud, ranking 14th among all hitters in Head-to-Head points scoring and 13th in 5×5 categories, and in short, I think it was phony baloney.
Despite his plate discipline and exit velocity readings not changing in the slightest, he delivered career-best numbers more or less across the board. The .251 batting average was the one exception, but even it was his highest since 2021. He might have had a prayer of reaching 32 homers again if he had stayed with the Brewers, but he signed with the Giants, putting him in one of the most power-suppressing environments in all the majors. The lineup change also figures to bring his staggering run and RBI totals down to size, and his 21 stolen bases might be the least repeatable of any of his 2024 stats. He had never even reached double digits before.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾⚾
FantasyPros ADP: 120.0
Chapman’s 2024 was more like a return to form for Fantasy, but after four straight years of diminished production, it seemed to come out of nowhere. So why do I feel like he’s more likely to sustain it than not? Basically, I think his hip surgery in 2020 got his swing all out of whack — that’s when we first saw his strikeout rate climb to untenable levels — and his efforts to dig himself out of the resulting batting average hole in Toronto seemed to lead him down the wrong path. He cut his pull rate on fly balls in half in 2023, clearly looking to hit the ball the opposite way more, and while it indeed brought his batting average back up to the .240 range, it also undermined his penchant for hard contact, dropping him from 27 home runs the previous two years to only 17. It seemed like he’d have to trade off power to achieve a barely tolerable batting average.
But then he fixed the issue that caused the batting average slide in the first place. He cut his strikeout rate to 24 percent last year, which is about where it lived prior to his 2020 hip surgery. He delivered his usual high exit velocities and once again began pulling his fly balls at a reasonable rate, going from 16.4 percent to 27.4 percent. He also once again nailed that 27-homer mark, only this time with a more-than-tolerable .247 batting average. To quote Edward Brickma, it’s the best of both worlds.
Will he steal 15 bases again? Like Adames, he had never reached double digits before, though his 84th-percentile sprint speed makes it plausible. If he sustains the hitting gains, though, the steals will just be icing on the cake.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾⚾ 1/2
FantasyPros ADP: 131.5
I said in the intro that I wasn’t so interested in commenting on younger players whose breakthrough seasons fit into a typical growth trajectory, and seeing as 2024 was Luis Garcia’s fifth season in the majors, he wouldn’t seem to fit that description. But in actuality … he does. It’s just that the Nationals brought him up so young that you forget he was only 24 last year.
From that perspective, his transformation makes perfect sense. Just like in each of the three years prior, his exit velocities improved, signaling his physical maturation, and his reduced ground-ball rate was also a fairly typical developmental hurdle to clear. His low strikeout rate always gave him a shot at hitting for batting average, and he was finally able to put enough of a charge in the ball last year to do it while also putting it over the fence with some regularity. The 22 steals were more of a surprise, but they seem to fit in with the Nationals’ organizational philosophy. The lingering question is what if they play him against left-handers more? The runs and RBI would go up, but if it comes at the expense of his batting average, it may not be worth it.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾ 1/2
FantasyPros ADP: 136.3
Flaherty’s decision to return to the Tigers this offseason earned him that extra half a ball on the sustainability scale. After all, they’re the organization, through the efforts of pitching coach Chris Fetter and assistant Robin Lund, that brought him back to a level of success he hadn’t seen known 2021. There’s no one change to credit for his success, which makes it harder to buy into to some degree, but he reduced the drop in his fastball by a couple inches, threw strikes at a much higher rate, and ditched a cutter that was clearly doing him more harm than good. His production slipped a bit after he was traded to the Dodgers, but now that he’s back with the organization that knows how to bring out his best, I’d say it’s more likely than not that it happens again.
Sustainability scale: ⚾ 1/2
FantasyPros ADP: 145.8
Yeah, I’m just not buying it. A 33-year-old who hit .221 in the four years prior — not to mention .196 in the three months prior — suddenly turns into an MVP-caliber bat for the final three months of 2024, batting .312 with 24 homers and a .974 OPS? I’m going to need more of an explanation than the one Suarez gave after the Diamondbacks picked up his $15 million option in October.
“The hitting coaches talked to me a lot,” Suarez said. “They worked so hard with me and we made some changes, more mental than physical. [Manager Torey Lovullo] gave me confidence when he told me he was going to keep playing me. I always believed in myself.”
The best explanation I can come up with is that Suarez became less passive at the plate, seeing his fewest pitches per plate appearance since 2015. This brought his walk rate down, but also his strikeout rate slightly, and perhaps meant he was wasting fewer hittable pitches. Statcast still only gave him a .247 expected batting average and .447 expected slugging percentage, which were only slightly better than the previous couple years and obviously a far cry from how he was performing at the end of the season. Those changes in plate discipline are the reason I give him a sustainability score higher than one, but for a player his age and with his track record, I need something more compelling than that.
Sustainability scale: ⚾ 1/2
FantasyPros ADP: 150.8
Lugo’s transition from the bullpen to the starting rotation in 2023 was successful enough, turning him into a borderline contributor for most Fantasy leagues, but last year, he performed more like an ace, placing fifth among starting pitchers in Head-to-Head points leagues and sixth in 5×5 categories. It’s just hard to understand how. He’s no one’s idea of a bat-misser, his 9.5 percent swinging-strike rate placing him in the bottom 25 percent of all qualifying starters, and his ground-ball rate, while solid, isn’t the sort that would explain a 3.00 ERA on its own. His 3.75 xERA and 3.83 xFIP were more in line with his 3.57 mark from 2023, and I say he’s more likely to wind up there again in 2025.
What I think happened is he began mixing up his nine-pitch arsenal all the more, which added an element of unpredictability, but it’s a trick that could only work for so long, which is why he had a 4.15 ERA over his final 14 starts. He’s being drafted so late that he doesn’t need to come anywhere close to repeating his 2024 stat line to justify his price tag, and I’m generally fine with taking him at his going rate. Just don’t be fooled into thinking it’s the steal of the draft or anything.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾
FantasyPros ADP: 151.0
How literally do we want to take the concept of a repeat season? A 1.99 ERA is such a mathematical oddity even for Hall of Fame-caliber pitchers that there’s truly no chance Lopez could do it again. But if we’re operating in the realm of the reasonable rather than the literal, yeah, I think he may continue to thrive. I understand that in his previous stints as a starter, he struggled to keep his ERA below 5.00, but he learned the importance of controlling the count during his years in the bullpen, getting his first-pitch strike rate over 60 percent for the first time. Last year, it was a career-high 64.2 percent.
“When you’re in the bullpen, you just have to focus on one inning,” Lopez recently told MLB.com. “So, every pitch matters, and you have to attack the hitters. That’s what I’m doing as a starter. I’m trying to attack the hitters with strike one. I think that’s the difference between last year and previous seasons.”
I was more of a Lopez skeptic through the first four months of last season when he was averaging less than a strikeout per inning with a modest 11 percent swinging-strike rate, but over his final seven appearances, even while being interrupted by forearm and shoulder injuries (both of which turned out to be minor), he seemed to find another gear, registering 13.4 K/9 with a 15 percent swinging-strike rate. I wouldn’t expect him to sustain that over a full season, but it led to him having a 2.92 FIP and 3.44 xFIP for the year. I would expect his ERA to fall somewhere in between those two marks this year, which would be plenty good enough to justify the pick.
Sustainability scale: ⚾⚾
FantasyPros ADP: 169.0
Any assessment of how likely or unlikely Profar is to repeat his breakout 2024 is, frankly, moot when you look at his ADP. Even though he placed sixth among outfielders in Head-to-Head points leagues and 11th in 5×5 categories, he’s the 42nd drafted on average, which means any chance of a repeat, no matter how small, is enough to justify the pick. It’s why I included him in my Sleepers 1.0, even while acknowledging the absurdity of declaring the most unlikely breakthrough of 2024 to be a “sleeper” the following year.
At the time, I also acknowledged that I didn’t know where his improved exit velocity readings came from. Well, his signing with the Braves late this offseason shed some light on the matter. He apparently worked with former major-leaguer Fernando Tatis Sr. prior to the season, which is something Ronald Acuna also did prior to his MVP season. Tatis has reportedly also played a role in Elly De La Cruz’s swing development, so he’s developing a reputation as a hitting guru. Meanwhile, Braves president of operations Alex Anthopoulos, who runs one of the sharper front offices in the game, was effusive in his justification of the Profar signing.
“Based on last year, we had Jurickson as the second-best free-agent bat,” Anthopoulos said. “We believe who he was last year is who he is going forward.”
I’m still not totally convinced, but I’m halfway there. And again, the price is too good not to take a shot.
