Fantasy Baseball Draft Outlook: Eloy Jimenez, Maikel Garcia, Anthony Volpe, Blake Snell (2024)

While this isn’t your typical “breakouts” article, it’s meant to serve the same purpose. Fantasy X-Factors are players who will be difference makers for both their team and your fantasy baseball team. Sometimes that player may be a second-rounder looking to take their game to the next level. Other times it could be an 18th-rounder with the potential to end up as a top-five talent at the position.

With that in mind, let’s cut the intro short and get straight into the list. Here are all of our fantasy baseball draft X-Factors. Below we dive into a few notable names from the list.

Fantasy Baseball X-Factors

Blake Snell (SP)

He signed! Blake Snell signed! And now that he has, we can finally analyze the type of impact he can have on the… Giants?

The two-time Cy Young winner should perform nicely in the much more pitcher-friendly Oracle Park. We all hate the double-digit walk rate, I get it, but Snell was one of only two pitchers to have a 45+% whiff rate on three different pitches. His fantasy value slipped due to him not having a team. His real value was certainly in question with that walk rate. Snell landed with the perfect team to make him worthy of the X-factor title.

Anthony Volpe (SS)

Surprise, surprise… another all-around performer gets his name on the X-factor list. This one is slightly different, though. Anthony Volpe had a 21/24 season in his rookie year. Arguably the most overlooked 20/20 season in recent memory.

Yes, the batting average was rough but that’s where the X-factor comes into play. In the minors, Volpe was known for making great contact, limiting strikeouts, stealing bases and getting on base. His strikeouts and walks moved in the wrong direction at the major league level. He may have started and ended his rookie year on cold streaks but he did have a stretch from June to August where he slashed .240/.315/.455 with 26 XBH and eight steals in 74 games. Should we get something similar to that from Volpe in 2024, a 25/25 or better season is well within reason.

Maikel Garcia (3B, SS)

Everyone likes to do a “This year’s so-and-so” article. If I were to do one for 2024 it would be “Maikel Garcia is this year’s Yandy Diaz“. They profile very similarly on the batted-ball side of things. In fact, 2022 Diaz and 2023 Garcia could be the same player.

	Barrel%	Launch Angle	HH%	Average Exit Velo	xBA
2022 Diaz	4.8%	7.7 degrees	49%	92.2 MPH	.288
2023 Garcia	3.9%	6.1 degrees	50.6%	91.8 MPH	.274

One of the big differences between them is Garcia’s good speed. He stole 27 bases last season and has 30 stolen base upside this season. If he can follow this path and see a production jump in 2024, he could be a steal.

Eloy Jimenez (OF, DH)

As of writing this, the White Sox’s projected Opening Day roster is bad. Really bad. But you know who hasn’t been? Eloy Jimenez. His power has never been a question mark. He’s got a career average exit velocity of 91.5 miles per hour (MPH) and a barrel rate of 12.2%. For Jimenez, it’s always been health.

He played 120 games in 2023, which, to be honest, is probably 30 more than we all expected. He’s shown this spring that the hit tool is still there and he can still flash the big power, so should his health let him once again play 120+ games the value return on his current average draft position (ADP) of 177 has the potential to be significant.