It’s tough to call any fantasy baseball players overvalued or undervalued just one month into the 2025 season. No team has played more than about 15 percent of their games, and sample sizes are infinitesimal compared to what we normally need to make long-term judgments on players.
However, based on early performance, team usage, and changes to a player’s approach or mechanics, it’s already clear some players were undervalued in fantasy baseball draft rooms while others appear to have been overvalued.
This weekly piece will look at the past seven days of fantasy baseball performances to see who should be considered overvalued and undervalued going forward. When necessary, I will reference the Fantrax top 500 rotisserie rankings for the 2025 fantasy baseball season.
(Stats are up to date as of April 28)
Undervalued Fantasy Baseball Assets
Jorge Polanco (2B/3B – SEA)
Dylan Moore going down with an injury and being forced to the IL should mean big things for Jorge Polanco over the next few weeks. Moore has been playing all over the field, including outfield, second base, and third base. That has relegated Polanco to DH, and he has played just five of the Mariners’ last eight games.
Now, Polanco will seemingly have a full-time role, and it comes in the midst of one of the best offensive starts to his career. Polanco is hitting .377/.405/.739 with seven nine home runs and a steal to go along with 20 RBI. Clearly, he is not going to hit .377 or better the rest of the season, but he has made major improvements at age 31 that show he could be valuable the rest of the year.
Polanco has increased his barrel rate from 8.9% in 2024 to 16.1% this season, while adding three and a half miles per hour on his average exit velocity. Even if those numbers regress, his expected numbers back up what he is doing. His expected batting average is .371, and expected slugging is .640 this year.
(And literally while I am writing this part on Polanco, he his a three-run homer on Tuesday night.)… and another one…
Steven Kwan (OF – CLE)
Steven Kwan was a sneaky strong outfielder for fantasy baseball in 2024. Always known for a high batting average, Kwan chipped in 14 home runs and 12 steals in addition to a .292 average. He traded a little bit of speed for power in 2024, but so far in 2025, it appears he has come back for both.
Kwan is not only hitting .345/.395/.500, he also has four home runs and four steals already, putting him just underneath a 25/25 pace. If he were to hit .300 and go 25/25, it would be almost unprecedented in modern fantasy baseball. Only Bobby Witt Jr. and Shohei Ohtani did that last year. No players got there in 2023.
Kwan’s BABIP is a tad high at .358, but he is at .310 for his career, so even a slight regression would mean a batting average still over .300 and a decent amount of power and speed.
Nathan Eovaldi (SP –TEX)
In last week’s piece, we looked at another undervalued Texas Rangers pitcher, Tyler Mahle. This week, it’s Nathan Eovaldi’s turn. The seemingly ageless pitcher (who is also from Texas) has tuned teams up with a 2.21 ERA, 0.74 WHIP, and 38 strikeouts in 36.2 innings this year. He has two wins (with the Rangers offense doing him no favors), and is having one of the best seasons of his career.
Eovalid has his best strikeout rate since 2021, the best walk rate of his career, and his lowest home runs allowed per nine innings in five years. It’s all coming together for Eovaldi this season, and his increased usage of breaking balls deserves the credit.
Eovaldi is only throwing his fastball 28.5% of the time this season, and that’s a good thing since it’s down almost two miles per hour since 2024. This year, he is throwing his splitter 30% of the time and his curve 22%. The curve has been a pleasant surprise as it comes at batters at 76 miles per hour, and it is not a pitch Eovaldi ever threw more than 18% of the time in his past seasons.
Overvalued Players
Ozzie Albies (2B – ATL)
Is it possible Ozzie Albies is in the process of putting up a third disappointing fantasy season in the past four years? Albies gets a lot of traction out of his stellar 2021 and 2023 seasons, and he continues to tantalize fantasy managers with the possibility of 30 home runs and 20 steals again.
So far in 2025, Albies has a respectable four home runs and four steals. But his .228 average and cratering hard-hit rate are not a recipe for future success.
In two of the past three seasons, it was injuries that derailed any hope of a solid season. Albies appears to be healthy this year, but he is caught up in the overall offensive struggles of the Braves this season. There will surely be better days ahead in the hot summer months. But for now, Albies remains stuck in that “could be great if only…” category.
Brenton Doyle (OF – COL)
Just about everything associated with the Colorado Rockies offense has been a trainwreck this year, and 2024 fantasy stud Brenton Doyle is, so far, not exempt. Doyle hit .260/.317/.446 last year with 23 home runs and 30 stolen bases. With a couple of games missed this year sprinkled in, Doyle is only at .240/.293/.400 with three homers and two steals this season.
That’s far off the 2024 pace, which is what helped propel Doyle to a top-70 pick in fantasy drafts this season. Even if he regressed some, he has half his games at Coors Field, right? So far, no park has given him any kind of real advantage, and Doyle appears to be caught up in the malaise that is the Rockies’ 2025 season.
Doyle’s strikeouts and walks are almost identical to 2024, but his groundballs are way up, and his line drives are way down. Even for a speedy guy like Doyle, that kind of profile is not going to lead to good fantasy results.
Chris Sale (SP – ATL)
Negative regression was always on the table for the 36-year-old Chris Sale after a career year and a Cy Young Award in 2024. But it has hit him and hit him hard in 2025, and if not for the high strikeouts, Sale might be bench-worthy at this point.
Sale has a 5.40 ERA and a 1.59 WHIP this season after those were 2.38 and 1.01 last year, respectively. He is still striking out more than 11 batters per nine innings, but the walks have jumped up almost a full batter per nine innings compared to last year.
Sale’s velocity on his fastball is unchanged since last year, but he has lost more than a mile per hour on his sinker and his changeup this year. That kind of drop is something major league batters can take advantage of, and they certainly are. His barrel rate allowed of 9.5% this year is almost double the rate he allowed in 2024.
