Coming into 2024, the AL East was tabbed as the best division in baseball. Unfortunately, those expectations did not hold true. The New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles both finished with over 90 wins in the regular season, however, the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays had disappointing seasons, finishing with just 80 and 74 wins respectively. The one pleasant surprise from this division were the Boston Red Sox, who, coming into the season were projected to win only 77 games, ended up finishing in third place with a respectable 81 win season. 

Heading into 2025, a lot has changed in this division. From the loss of superstar players like Juan Soto and Corbin Burnes, to teams changing stadiums, like the Tampa Bay Rays. The AL East will always keep you on your toes as a fantasy player, but there is nothing to worry because we are going to guide you here, from players to watch, players to avoid and how to better navigate one of the deepest divisions for fantasy baseball.

New York Yankees

Key Off-season Additions:

The Yankees signed Paul Goldschmidt in December to a one year contract to start at first base. Goldschmidt is not the hitter he once was, but he has at least 651 PA in every season over the last nine full seasons and has hit 20 or more home runs in all but one of his full big league seasons (and he hit 19 that year). He should be an upgrade over Anthony Rizzo and everyone else who appeared at 1B for the Yankees in 2022. They also signed Max Fried in December, to an eight year, $218 million contract, strengthening their rotation and adding another star to their team. Fried had pitched only for Atlanta in his eight year career, but he’s just trading one East Division for another. Fried has a bit of an injury history, but has thrown 165.2 innings or more in four of his last five full seasons. Fried, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon form the best trio of starters in the AL East. They also trade catcher Jose Trevino to the Reds for RP Fernando Cruz and C Austin Jackson. Jackson will backup Austin Wells at catcher and Cruz adds further firepower to an even better Yankees bullpen. And that bullpen is better than in 2024 because of the addition of Devin Williams. The Yankees traded P Nestor Cortes and 2B Caleb Durbin to the Brewers for the incumbent closer, one of the best end-game arms in the big leagues. Williams will step into the closer role for the Yankees and should perform much better than Clay Holmes did last year.

Key Off-season Losses:

Clay Holmes left in free agency and will pitch for the Yankees cross town rivals, the Mets. The Yankees no longer felt his services were needed in the bullpen and he felt like he wants to give starting another chance, just in Queens instead of the Bronx. Gleyber Torres left in free agency, opting to sign with the Tigers on a one year prove it deal. Tommy Kahnle and Tim Mayza signed elsewhere, but the Yankees found easy, better replacements already. Obviously, the biggest loss for any team this off-season, was Juan Soto leaving the Yankees much like Holmes did, for the Mets. Bellinger and Goldschmidt probably won’t adequately replace Soto and Anthony Rizzo (who has yet to sign anywhere), but who could replace an MVP-type talent that is only 26 and one of the best players in the world at getting on base?

Fantasy Pitching Preview:

Gerrit Cole

To keep it simple as possible, Cole had the worst season of his career, due to injuries. Cole sustained nerve inflammation in Spring Training and eventually an edema in his right elbow, keeping him out of the rotation until June 19th. He was limited to just 95 innings over 17 starts, striking out 99, walking 29, allowing 11 home runs and 36 earned runs. His strikeouts rate dropped for the third straight season, from 12.06 in 2021 to 9.38 K/9 last year. His BB/9 was the highest it had been since 2018, his first season in Houston (it was 2.75 last year). He had the third lowest ground ball rate of his career (38.7%), a three year trend of his ground ball rate dropping, while also posting the highest fly ball rate of his career (44.1%). He wasn’t giving up too much loud or quality contact, with his statcast data pretty in line for the last four seasons, though his fastball was down nearly two miles per hour from 2022 and nearly one full mile per hour from 2023. His contact rates were up (in-zone and overall), while his chase, swing and swinging strike rates all dropped. He is projected perform somewhere in-between 2022 and 2024: around a 9.4 K/9, 2.5 BB/9, 1.32 HR/9 and north of 170 innings. No longer a top 10 or 15 SP, but projected to be just inside the top 35.

Max Fried

The lefty signed as a free agent after spending his entire eight-year career in Atlanta. Fried is a heavy ground ball pitcher who strikes out just shy of a batter per inning, limits home runs and minimizes quality of contact and limits hard contact. He had his highest ground ball to fly ball ratio (2.53) since 2018 and allowed a fly-ball just 23.2% of the time. Like Cole, his contact rates were up and his chase, swing and swinging strike rates were down, but he excels because he limits quality contact. Trading Truist Park for Yankees stadium should not impact his numbers too much, and he should still win double digit games and excel with a solid defense and great bats.

Carlos Rodon

Year two in the Bronx was a stark improvement for Rodon. He knocked nearly three full runs off his ERA (6.85 to 3.96), struck out more batters (8.95 K/9 to 10.03 K/9), gave up less home runs (though still much higher than his career average), walked fewer batters (and fewer than his career average) and won more games (16 vs 3). He still gave up some loud, quality contact (9034 MPH avgEV, 11% barrel rate, 40.7% hard-hit rate), but even those numbers were lower than in 2023. He is projected to maintain the bounce back, if not improve upon it a little bit, though his ADP right now reflects exactly what he did last year (he finished 33rd among SP; he is being drafted as the 33rd SP), so there is little room for profit.

Luis Gil

Gil is destined to regress. The strikeout numbers are great and always have been, but he had a well below league average BABIP (.237) and an above average strand rate (78.8%) and the worst walk rate out of all starters with more than 100 innings pitched (126 pitchers total). He also had one of the worst ground ball rates, in the bottom 9% of all SP. That is not a recipe for repeated success. He has three pitches, a fastball, slider and changeup, with his slider his best pitch and his changeup right behind, though hitters performed their best against his fastball. The reigning Rookie of the Year will not have much of a burden this year, with the Yankees signing Fried, Cole (hopefully) healthy to start the year and plenty of depth in the Bronx. Even if he stumbles, his team will pick him back up.

Clarke Schmidt/Marcus Stroman

They should compete for the fifth spot in the rotation, with the loser moving around in the bullpen – from long relief, to follower, occasionally opening for one of the other starters or bullpen guys. Schmidt is younger, strikes out more batters and had more success in fewer innings last year, but struggles with injuries. Stroman is an innings eater, when healthy, whose best days are behind him, that throws six pitches, all of which were some degree of below average last year. Schmidt is a wild card, Stroman is a streamer at best.

Devin Williams

Williams will close for the Yankees, there is no denying that, but how effective will he be in a tougher park to pitch in and in a much more difficult city to play? Only time will tell. What we do know, is that after coming off of the injured list last year, Williams looked as good as he ever did, posting the second highest strikeout rate of his career (one of only two relievers who threw 20 or more innings that had a K/9 over 15; Mike Soroka was the other), throwing his fastball far more often than he had since his first year in the big leagues and just overall being his dominant self. He’s probably a top five closer on the year.

Fernando Cruz

Brought over from the Reds in the Jose Trevino trade, he joins Williams as a newcomer to the Yankees bullpen and as an arm that will make an impact. He struck out 14.72 batter per nine innings in 2024, tossing 66.2 innings, with a 4.86 ERA (3.27 FIP, 2.67 xFIP) and a 1.34 WHIP. He had some particularly bad batted ball luck, as batters had a .336 BABIP against him and he was unlucky with the long ball, setting a career high in HR surrendered and per nine innings (9; 1.22, respectively). His splitter is a particularly dominant pitch, creating the fourth best run value of all pitchers to throw the pitch in at least 50 plate appearances. He struggles with his location, but also has some tough to hit stuff. He can be an impact middle innings reliever for the Yanks and a decent producer of holds for fantasy managers.

Luke Weaver

Weaver was a big loser after the Devin Williams trade, since it seemed like the Yankees were going to give him a shot at closing games full time after the elite relief performance he put on in 2024. In his first only relieving season, Weaver threw 84 innings, struck out 103, walked just 26, allowed 10 home runs and 27 earned runs, for a tidy little 2.89 ERA and 0.93 WHIP (3.33 FIP, 3.42 xFIP). Now, he did have batted ball and strand luck (.233 BABIP, 79.4% strand rate), but he also struck out 11 batters per nine innings, walked less than three per nine innings, allowed limited contact (68.6%) and had a swinging strike rate of 15.4%. He should be a dominant holds reliever again and would become a top 10 closer if anything were to happen to Devin Williams.

Fantasy Hitting Preview

Aaron Judge

We were robbed of three straight 50 or more home run seasons because of a toe injury in 2023, but were still rewarded with possibly the great right-handed hitting season of all time. 58 homers, 10 stolen bases, a .322 batting average, 122 runs, 144 RBI, .476 wOBA and a TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN wRC+. Absolutely insane. What will he do for a follow up? Who knows, though, so long as he is healthy, we should consider that like 47 or 48 home runs is the base line, 100+ runs and RBI are going to happen, a handful to 10 stolen bases and a batting average north of .280. Cody Bellinger isn’t Juan Soto, but he will contribute and who knows what a full season of Jazz Chisholm Jr. could do for this lineup. He’s a top 3 fantasy player until he proves he’s not.

Jazz Chisholm Jr.

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