In the same way that pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training eases us all into the marathon of the regular season, I’ve spent my time aggregating some high-level, easily-digestible trends worth knowing for fantasy baseball managers looking to get a leg up in their drafts. Seeing as how many fantasy baseball leagues are some mad-lab blend of dynasty/keeper/auction/legacy-something-or-other, it’s especially important to find whatever market advantages are available. Consider this your abbreviated 2025 Fantasy Baseball Cheat Sheet and Draft Guide, specifically, here, re. stats relevant to your roster construction.
Broken down into four major categories below, I’ve noted a trend from the 2024 baseball season that will likely have a trickle-down—or, alternatively, a total-trend-setting—effect on our decision-making headed into our fantasy baseball drafts for 2025.
Trends worth knowing headed into the 2025 fantasy baseball season
Hitting
Downtick in Average Fly Ball Distance YOY 2024-2025
Here are some metrics comparing the average fly ball distance over the past two seasons:
2023: 318.4 feet avg fly ball distance; 28.1 degree launch angle; 93.4 mph exit velocity
2024: 316.5 feet avg fly ball distance; 28.4 degree launch angle; 93.1 mph exit velocity
The decline is marginal, but the sample size is massive enough for it to matter in fantasy baseball consequentially. For example: Outfield BABIP was down last year, too, from .402 to .388. Chalk that up to the launch angle—the gloves roaming the outfield had more of a chance to shag 28.4 degree fly balls than 28.1 degree ones. A weakly-hit fly ball is a weakly-hit fly ball. Cans of corn galore, etc.
It’s reductive, of course, but this has a lot to do with the baseball itself—like, as instrument of play. 2023 was the season of the juiced ball. 2024 was a mystery, and 2025 remains as such. One imagines the sweet spot is somewhere between the 2024 and 2023 numbers, seeing as, in 2022, the average fly ball metrics were 316.5/28.2/93.0.
All to say, we’re praying, by the end of 2025, we’re looking at a season-long average fly ball distance line of something like 317.5/28.3/93.2. That’s a fine compromise between what felt like a circus 2023 and a 2024 that didn’t set anyone but the purest sluggers up for success. So let’s construct our rosters this way.
What it means
Fringe sluggers might be due to see some positive regression; these are the hitters most affected by the marginal drop in these metrics. They’re, indeed, the very same people for whom a small margin of distance matters when it comes to an off-the-wall double or a just-beyond-the-reach-of-the-leaping-outfielder home run. Look for disparities between xHR (expected home runs) and total home runs in your pre-draft evaluations.
Upgrade hitters whose 2025 projections are based on a marginal power downtick in 2024. Given that the shift legislation is still in full effect, we’ll hope that the .389 outfield BABIP will regulate closer to .395. Think Bo Bichette, here, for a mold.
Other side of the same coin: perhaps be a bit dubious about pitchers whose fly ball rates tend to be higher than their box score ratios might suggest.
Pitching
Wins are down, but rest—not the rest; just pure between-start rest—is up for starting pitchers
I’m not introducing anything novel, here. The fantasy baseball public has been enraged about starting pitching innings since they failed to regulate after a post-pandemic year in 2022. We could chalk the real start of the trend in 2021 up to the strangeness of the pandemic having topsy-turvied the 2020 season, with many pitchers not ready for a full workload after fractured training/ramp-up regimens.
But 2022 should have been the year we started to see more starting pitcher Wins and Quality Starts, and it just did not happen. And it’s still not happening. Consider the following:
| Year | Average innings pitched for SP per start | Starts on five days rest | SP average win percentage |
| 2021 | 5.02 | 1782 | 34.0% |
| 2022 | 5.21 | 1731 | 35.0% |
| 2023 | 5.14 | 1987 | 35.0% |
| 2024 | 5.22 | 2053 | 34.3% |
As you can see, we’re getting more starters pitching on five-day rest than ever. Starters haven’t averaged over 5.50 innings pitched per start since 2017 (5.51), and it’s been fluctuating ever since.
One thing is entirely plausible: even discounting 2021 (because, you know, post-pandemic uncontrolled variables all season long), it appears that with more starters pitching in five-to-six man rotations in which they can get more regular season rest, SP W%age is going down.
Let’s look at starts on four-day rest and average quality start percentage, now:
| Year | Starts on four days rest | SP average quality start percentage |
| 2021 | 1610 | 32.6% |
| 2022 | 1790 | 36.5% |
| 2023 | 1583 | 34.6% |
| 2024 | 1528 | 36.1% |
What it means
Starts on four days rest are plummeting, decreasing chances on doubling up on ace starts throughout a given fantasy week. This likely has to do with the bevy of devastating injuries to star flamethrowers that defined a lot of baseball’s marketing in 2023-2024. Teams are more trepidatious with young pitchers, searching for more ways to build rest into their rotations, and are certainly letting pitchers nurse their injuries with more of a temporal leash than ever. No one’s being rushed back anymore.
Having said that, QS%age seems to be holding more steadily than W%age for starting pitchers. But it’s been a balancing act with a mostly downward trajectory since that ever-important 2022 season we referenced earlier. As a result, we’re seeing a lot of leagues shift to QS+W as a single category. We’re even seeing Total Innings being added as a category over any sort of QS/W counting stat.
Value voracious innings-eaters from the SP position, even in lower tiers. Look at Bailey Ober, for example. But be wary of his fly ball rate, of course.
Baserunning
Pay attention to teams with high RER scores; SB attempts are way up, SB%age is down (slightly)
Which is to say: catchers are getting better at sniping hopeful base-stealers, even despite the pizza box bases. We’re now two years since the implementation of that change. Here’s how the stats shake out:
| Year | Stolen Base Attempts | Total Stolen Bases | Stolen Base %age |
| 2022 | 3297 | 2486 | 75.4% |
| 2023 | 4369 | 3503 | 80.2% |
| 2024 | 4578 | 3617 | 79.0% |
We’re not projecting this to change much this year, but it’s worth paying attention to the trend that teams are adjusting defensively to the massive uptick in the stolen base game as a part of the modern offense.
To take this a step further, as we’re evaluating building speed into our roster construction, let’s take a look at the teams who were most successful and efficient on the base-paths last year.
Run Element Ratio (RER) is a sabremetric that approximates, in this case, a team’s ability to create runs on the basepaths without needing a high slugging percentage or batting average. The exact math in determining RER is:
Total Steals + Total Walks / Total Bases – Total Hits
Here’s 2024’s top-five team leaders in RER. And, no, the numbers are not that surprising when you consider how willing all of these teams are to run:
| Team | Total Stolen Bases | Total Walks | Total Bases | Total Hits | Aggregate RER |
| Milwaulkee Brewers | 217 | 597 | 2205 | 1359 | .96 |
| Washington Nationals | 223 | 456 | 2014 | 1306 | .96 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 178 | 493 | 1973 | 1241 | .92 |
| Seattle Mariners | 140 | 571 | 2004 | 1195 | .88 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 207 | 496 | 2067 | 1230 | .84 |
What it means
These are your five teams to target for value base-stealers, considering their team philosophy is to create fantasy production on the base-paths regardless of massive production in the batter’s box.
And, to boot, here are the five teams, in order, who led the league in baserunning runs above average (BsR): Brewers, Reds, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Cubs. Three of those teams aren’t on the above RER rankings, so guys like Nico Hoerner and Jordan Lawlar might run wild this year, given their teams’ baserunning success.
Prospect Class Outlook
Plenty of good, a lot of potentially really good, but nothing like 2024
How could we ever expect it to be? 2024 saw—just off the top of my head—prospects like Paul Skenes, the three Jacksons (minus Holliday, if we’re counting success over hype), Pete Crow-Armstrong, Masyn Winn, James Wood, Jasson Dominguez, and more all enter the league with great expectations, and many of them lived up to the hype. I’m sure I’m leaving off many key names, here. But I was just spitballing, and that was the point. Look at how many!
All to say, while the incoming 2025 prospect class is exciting, it’s far less likely to be league-shifting. It feels, just a little bit, like the incoming quarterback class for the 2025 NFL season. There are plenty of guys who have the tools, but no one has yet to stand out as the clear-cut best of them all.
Hitting prospects
We got a taste of Jordan Lawlar in 2023 before injuries derailed his 2024, but he’d be my first target as a hitter in this prospect class, obviously. The power is there; he was 20/30 last year between the first two stages of the minors in Arizona’s system.
His mold, however, might be the most common of the hitters. Guys with some pop, but mostly great bat-to-ball skills with decent speed that should translate well to modern baseball. Other prospects I’m targeting on the hitting side in my 2025 drafts, if they’re available, are: Dylan Crews, Jasson Dominguez, Coby Mayo, Roman Anthony, Matt Shaw, and Kristian Campbell.
Pitching prospects
As always, it feels like there are more high-profile, highly-ranked pitching prospects headed into the year than there are hitters. But I’m trying to target guys with proven control, and high-level command of the strike zone. In past years, I’d be looking at flamethrowers like Max Meyers was for the Marlins a few years back, what with his nasty longsword that sent hitters packing.
But since we established earlier that teams are being more careful with arm-types like that than ever, give me long looks at guys like Logan Henderson, Braxton Ashcraft, Tom Harrington, Rhett Lowder, and, of course—and a bit outside this archetype—Andrew Painter.
This is just the first of many installments in what will be my 2025 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit. Follow along on my handle @dansby_edits for more as Spring Training ramps up and fantasy drafts approach.
