Fantasy Baseball Overvalued and Undervalued – Rookie Making Waves

The Major League Baseball trade deadline is a great time to take stock of how we did with our teams and how they look with two months to go. Just because a player was selected in the high rounds of a draft does not mean he needs to stay on our squads if we have more than half a season of data to show he is overvalued. Just like teams will be turning over their rosters this week, we should be mining the moves to find hidden gems for our fantasy baseball rosters.

Overvalued or undervalued in fantasy baseball usually means relative to acquisition cost. We don’t care too much if a free pickup off the waiver wire doesn’t live up to expectations. But if our early-round picks aren’t working out, those are the hard decisions we have to make.

Undervalued Fantasy Baseball Assets

(Stats are up to date as of July 28)

Matt Shaw (3B – CHC)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate a truly undervalued fantasy baseball month that Matt Shaw is having right now. In his last 10 games, Shaw is hitting .387/.406/.839 with four home runs, 10 RBI, and three steals. While the first half of the season was all about Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Seiya Suzuki, July has been about Matt Shaw.

The 23-year-old is doing it all as he finally breaks out of a season-long malaise. He is striking out just 12% of the time in this hot stretch and is playing a strong third base every day for Chicago. His .523 wOBA is fourth-best in all of baseball in the last 14 days.

He has 11 hits in his last nine games and has now started in nine of the last 10 games for the Cubs. He has relegated Justin Turner and Jon Berti to the bench and is finally giving the Cubs what they wanted from his bat after they have stuck with him for some tough stretches this season.

C.J. Abrams (SS – WSH)

After three steals, three hits, two runs, and a walk on Tuesday night, it’s clear that C.J. Abrams is on another heater right now for Washington. After hitting .246 for three seasons in a row, C.J. Abrams has taken the leap in his age-24 season, even with Washington struggling on offense.

He is hitting .272/.339/.471 with 14 home runs and 26 stolen bases in 93 games, including Tuesday. He is on pace to soar past his career high in home runs and is only five steals away from passing his 31 steals from 2024.

Abrams has taken this step by cutting down his strikeouts to just 17% this year (19% for his career, 21% in 2024), and he has bumped up his exit velocity to elite levels in 2025. Add in a spike in line drive rate this season, and that’s a recipe for a career year, even at a young age.

Abrams went off the board around pick 50 this year, so it’s not like he was an asset in the later rounds. But he is now one of the elite five-category players in fantasy baseball, and is likely to finish this season well above the price paid to acquire him in drafts.

Drew Rasmussen (SP – TBR)

Drew Rasmussen had perhaps one of his best starts of the season on Monday night against the Yankees. He held them to only two runs, allowed four hits, and struck out five batters against a tough lineup. It wasn’t a dominant strikeout performance, but it shows how he always gets the job done.

As of Tuesday, he had allowed more than two runs in just one of his last eight starts, which has led to a 2.96 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and eight wins in his first 21 games. The 87 strikeouts are nice in 100 innings, but that’s not why you roster Drew Rasmussen.

Rasmussen’s ground ball rate is up over 50% this season, and his home run per nine innings rate is just 0.90. Keeping the ball on the ground instead of out of the park is a recipe for a good season, particularly since Tampa Bay plays in a new stadium this year, which is not as conducive to the great pitching environments of Tropicana Field. Rasmussen is already on pace to cruise past the 11 wins that are his career high. If he finishes with 13-15 wins, he will go down as one of the best pitcher picks in the entire 2025 fantasy draft season.

Overvalued Fantasy Baseball Assets

Brenton Doyle (OF – COL)

Even with his eight hits in his last four games, Brenton Doyle has not come close to paying off the investment you had to make at the draft table to secure his services this year. By the time the dust settled on spring drafts, Doyle was a top-75 pick after hitting 23 home runs and stealing 30 bases in 2024.

So far in 2025, Doyle is hitting a horrific .217/.265/.331 with seven homers and 10 steals. That power/speed combo is severely off last year’s pace, and Doyle (like all other Rockies) caught up in a general offensive funk that he hasn’t been able to shake all season. Even at home, he has not shown signs of improvement, even though it’s a park that should benefit his speed.

Doyle’s hard-hit rate and barrel rate are higher than last year. His BABIP is 40 points below his career average, and he is striking out the same as in 2024. Some of the terrible 2025 season can be attributed to bad luck, but it’s clear he is nowhere close to the .260/.317/.446 player with elite power and speed last season.

Ozzie Albies (2B – ATL)

Will Ozzie Albies ever live up to his potential that we have seen in prior seasons? When will the Braves ever start to turn their offense around this season? Are these two things tied together? Certainly they are. When your team is 19th in baseball in wOBA, there is plenty of blame to go around, and Ozzie Albies and his inconsistent bat deserve a large chunk of it.

Albies is a lot like Bo Bichette or even Michael Harris II, where fantasy baseball managers seem to constantly be chasing one of his early seasons (.295/.352/.500 with 24 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 160 games as a 22-year-old), but have come up wanting each time. This year, Albies is on pace for fewer than 15 homers and steals.

Albies has a .218/.297/.322 line this year with only nine home runs and just a 9% walk rate. Both his hard-hit rate and barrel rate have suffered huge losses from his 2024 numbers, and he is hitting almost 36% of his batted balls on the ground. Maybe the Atlanta Braves break out of their offensive funk after the trade deadline (although it’s unlikely since Ronald Acuna Jr. just went on the IL), but Albies has shown no signs of turning his season around.