Fantasy Baseball 2025 Redraft Top 500 Rankings & Trade Value Version 2.24
Brandon Woodruff and Tyler Glasnow look like fantasy aces again, more on Dominic Canzone's exciting fantasy upside and a look at Alejandro Kirk's strong season at the plate.
In this week’s Top 500 update, two aces return to form after lengthy injured list stints, plus a look at an intriguing Mariners power hitter who could be in the early stages of a fantasy breakout season.
Elswhere, why we need to talk about Alejandro Kirk’s strong season at the plate (so far) more.
More on Brandon Woodruff, Tyler Glasnow, Dominc Canzone and Kirk after an updated Top 500 with plenty of change.
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Dominic Canzone (#285, 28 trade value).
The Seattle Mariners entered play on Thursday with one of the league’s better offenses. As a lineup, the Mariners ranked sixth in wRC+ and home runs, while sitting in the top half of the league in runs scored, on-base percentage and collective wOBA.
The Mariners aren’t totally devoid of quality lineup depth, but a non-small factor in Seattle’s standing as an above-average lineup comes from Cal Raleigh’s historic season at the plate.
Raleigh, for reference, had a 180 wRC+ and 36 home runs in just 396 plate appearances entering play Thursday.
The Mariners have enough lineup depth elsewhere in Randy Arozarena (133 wRC+), J.P. Crawford (130 wRC+), Luke Raley (109 wRC+) and Julio Rodriguez (101 wRC+) that there’s the potential for plenty of fantasy production for hitters outside of Raleigh.
Still, this isn’t the league’s deepest lineup. Jorge Polanco has a 70 wRC+ since the calendar flipped to May, Raley doesn’t hit much against left-handed pitching and top prospect Cole Young has just a 66 wRC+ in his first 116 Major League plate appearances.
Enter Dominic Canzone.
And while Canzone isn’t hitting much against left-handed pitching either, he’s making more than enough loud contact to make him an intriguing fantasy option moving forward, particularly if he can start regularly hitting further up the lineup near Raleigh and some of Seattle’s other top hitters.
Just 10 of Canzone’s 84 plate appearances have come against left-handed pitching, but he’s sporting a .376 xwOBA, a 14.9% barrel rate, six home runs, a 46.3% hard—hit rate and a .560 xSLG in total. And while a 36.2% chase rate is mildly concerning, the 27-year-old has more than made up for it so far with just a 16.7% strikeout rate.
It’s a small sample size to be sure, but there’s plenty of fantasy upside here if the outfielder starts hitting higher up in the lineup than seventh, somewhere where he’s logged 53 of his 84 plate appearances.
Brandon Woodruff (#44, 88 trade value).
Tyler Glasnow (#46, 86 trade value).
We’ll group these two together for the main reason(s) that both are frontline fantasy starters coming off extended stints on the injured list.
Both also turned in extremely promising outings in their first starts back.
For Glasnow, his recent return was his first Major League start since April 27. For Woodruff, it was his first Major League start since the 2023 campaign.
We’ll start with Woodruff, who was arguably more effective and impactful, particularly from a bat-missing standpoint.
The 32-year-old veteran struck out eight batters on 70 pitches, limiting the Miami Marlins to two hits and an earned run in six innings of work. On the day, Woodruff induced 10 swinging strikes, including four each with his four-seamer and changeup, and finished with an impressive 41% CSW rate.
Glasnow’s start came against much stronger opposition. Woodruff’s Brewers as it happens. And while his CSW rate (28%) wasn’t nearly as elite, the right-hander still logged nine swinging strikes and five strikeouts in five innings while limiting the Brewers to three walks, two hits and an unearned run in the process.
Both are firmly back in the top 100 overall moving forward. They would be anyways with these performances, but a rash of injuries to other frontline fantasy starters (like Corbin Burnes, Spencer Schwellenbach, Chris Sale, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki) certainly play a small part as well.
Alejandro Kirk (#148, 47 trade value).
Lost in the all the (rightfully deserved) talk about Cal Raleigh’s excellent season, not to mention the strong campaign Will Smith is enjoying in Los Angeles – Smith, it should be noted, has an xwOBA .020 points higher than Raleigh so far – is Alejandro Kirk’s strong first half.
Of course, Carson Kelly’s career resurgence, and the respective breakouts of Drake Baldwin, Hunter Goodman, Carlos Narvaez and Agustin Ramirez will also draw headlines.
Also, rightfully so. All four have had promising starts.
But, Alejandro Kirk has been really good as well. And we should probably be talking about his 2025 season at the plate more.
Kirk was hitting .306 with a .362 on-base percentage in 307 plate appearances as of Wednesday, adding seven home runs in the process. Which is… all that is great.
But Kirk is also sporting a .370 xwOBA, a career-best .384 xwOBAcon (at least if the season ended today) and just a 9.8% strikeout rate.
Perhaps most notably, Kirk is hitting the ball harder with more regularity than he ever has in a full season.
2020: 20 batted ball events, 50.0% hard-hit rate
2021: 145 batted ball events, 46.9% hard-hit rate
2022: 416 batted ball events, 45.4% hard-hit rate
2023: 329 batted ball events, 38.3% hard-hit rate
2024: 298 batted ball events, 40.9% hard-hit rate
2025: 251 batted ball events, 54.6% hard-hit rate
Kirk has never been an above-average home run hitter. He’s never logged more than 14 home runs in a season and his career best for full season from a barrel rate perspective was just 6.7%.
Still, if the Blue Jays backstop can maintain this type of hard-hit rate with the barrel rate he’s logged so far (9.6%) he should have no trouble finishing the year as a top-10 (or slightly better) fantasy catcher.
Fun fact, among players with fantasy eligibility at catcher, minimum 250 plate appearances, here are the players with a higher xwOBA than Kirk’s .370 number:
Willson Contreras, .373 xwOBA
Cal Raleigh, .388 xwOBA
Will Smith, .408 xwOBA
Ben Rice, .408 xwOBA
Tinker with the parameters to make it a minimum of 300 plate appearances, and that list shrinks to just Contreras and Raleigh.
Beware the Open Roster Spot (Or lack thereof)
Oh and one more quick note, beware the open roster spot, or lack thereof rather, in trades.
While a two-for-one or even a three-for-one or four-for-two deal might line up from a trade value standpoint, the roster spots are worth considering. Essentially, if you’re having to cut someone, it turns into you giving up another player or players in addition to potentially the best player in the deal. It’s obviously a different story if you’re working with a flexible roster or open roster spots, but it adds another layer to deals that can potentially change the calculus of things considerably.
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