Joe Musgrove- P- SD- Hot- Musgrove bounced back last night from a bad start in his previous outing to toss his 4th quality start in 5 outings. He threw 6 shutout IPs, allowing 3 hits, walking none, and striking out 8. Out of Musgrove's 17 starts in 2024, he allowed 5 or more runs in 3 of them. Take them out and he has an ERA of 2.70 instead of 4.23. Since 2021 Musgrove has not ended a season with an ERA above 3.18. This year the occasional implosion has impacted more due to small sample size. Overall he is finishing strong which bodes well for 2025.
Jonah Heim- C- TEX- Stats- Heim set career highs in several categories in 2023. He slashed .258/.317/.438 with 18 homers, 61 runs, and 95 RBI in 501 PAs. 2024 has been a different story. Heim is slashing .214/.261/.326 with 12 homers, 41 runs, and 53 RBI in 449 PAs. Luck has played a part, with a .238 BABIP but his xBA is still only .229. A major factor in Heim's decline has been his drop in BB% from 8.0% from 5.3%. Don't expect Heim to bounce back to 2023 performance in 2025.
Willy Adames- SS- MIL- Hot- Adames has really turned on the power in his walk year. He hit 2 homers last night to give him a career-high of 32. Adames is slashing .253/.334/.476 with 18 steals. He has bounced back nicely from a subpar 2023 when he slashed .217/.310/.407 but still with 24 homers but only 5 steals. Adames saw his Statcast numbers slip last year but brought those back to his career norms with an EV of 88.3, HardHit% of 39.6%, and Barrel% of 11.9%. It looks like his 2023 season was the outlier and 2025 is likely to see solid production from Adames.
Ryne Nelson- P- ARI- Injury- Nelson was placed on the IL with shoulder inflammation. It was backdated to September 11 and Arizona is hoping he will be back for the postseason. Nelson made strides in 2024, lowering his ERA to 4.33, his FIP to 3.77, and his xFIP to 4.00. Nelson's fastball was up to 95.2 mph. His K/9 went from 6.00 in 2023 to 7.62 in 2024. Nelson will have his age 27 season in 2025 and is on an upward trend.
Javier Assad- P- CHC- Stats- In his first season as a full-time starter, Assad has a 3.27 ERA and 4.19 FIP in 137.2 IP. The initial reaction would be to think Assad has been very lucky and not likely to repeat that ERA in 2025. However, he has managed to repeat this same sort of difference for each of his three MLB seasons and has increased his IPs in each of them. Once a player has repeated a trait across a larger sample size it looks like a trend. One thing that Assad has improved recently is his stamina. In his first 22 starts of the season he lasted 5.2 IP or more in 7 of them. Assad has met or exceeded that length in each of his last 5 starts. He has shown mediocre strikeout talent (7.58 K/9 this year and 7.59 for his career) but if he continues to increase his IPs and get the GB% he is used to (43.7% for his career) his value for 2025 will increase.
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