Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Nowhere Near There Yet

Pretend you are about to go on a road trip with the family. The trip is roughly 300 miles long, give or take. You figure you will be on the road for about five or six hours. Before you head out, you make sure the kids use the bathroom. You pack enough road snacks and entertainment to hopefully make it to your destination without stopping. “Maybe one stop, but only if it’s an emergency”, you think to yourself. You start up the car and head out on the road. About 20 minutes into the trip, you hear the inevitable question.

“Are we there yet?”

At that moment, you are probably wondering how in the world this tiny person dares to ask such a thing. The trip is going to take several hours, and you tried to explain to them beforehand that it was a long trip. Yet here you are, barely on the highway, and they are already getting antsy. Now, ask yourself this question – are they justified in freaking out already? Or do they need to truly understand that the trip is going to be long and that it may not always be smooth sailing?

Welcome to the first edition of my 2024 Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings.

Less than six percent of the Major League Baseball schedule has been played. I would strongly advise you not to panic about any of your players yet, injuries notwithstanding. Every single player has hot and cold spells that often go on for weeks. Sure, there are things we can glean from what we have seen so far. But when the dust settles at the end of the year, it will probably be difficult to differentiate between the past 10 days and a random 10-day stretch in June or August. Aside from the numerous ebbs and flows that take place during the season, weather has also been an issue early on. I am not going to freak out because a slugger who can barely feel his hands struggles out of the gate.

Please keep in mind that while I will update these rankings weekly, things change constantly. When I started working on these rankings on Friday, I was about to concede defeat on fading Shane Bieber this year. He looked filthy in his first two starts, and I was trying to decide how high I wanted to move him up. Hours later came the unfortunate news that Bieber will have to undergo Tommy John Surgery. In the same timeframe, news broke that Spencer Strider was having elbow issues. I would be lying if I said I know exactly how to rank Strider moving forward. For now, I ranked him below Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer, so I am not exactly optimistic. Hopefully, we get some good news in the coming days on the Atlanta ace.

Below are my rest-of-season (ROS) rankings. Based on my philosophy, the rankings did not change a whole lot from those I posted on Opening Day. For example, you may notice that Jared Jones is not in this week’s rankings and think I am crazy. Those concepts are not mutually exclusive, but for the sake of discussion, here goes. I had Jones ranked 427th overall before the year. I now have him ranked 368th. Some would argue that’s still too low, and they may be right. Maybe I was too low the whole time. However, a 60-spot increase is pretty significant in the grand scheme of things, so it is not as if I am completely dismissing him. If he continues to shove, it won’t be long until he becomes a fixture in future ROS rankings.

Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings