For the 2026 fantasy baseball season, every team has about 100 games down and almost 60 games still to go after the first 17 weeks of the season. Since even 100 games aren’t nearly enough to draw any conclusions, we will spend these posts in the middle of the season looking at the risers and fallers in fantasy baseball from an under-the-hood stats perspective.
Even over a long Spring Training and seventeen weeks of meaningful games, this amount of production is not actually a lot of information to use when evaluating players for the rest of the season. That’s why it’s also important to look at usage, lineup placement, platoon splits, and other factors when trying to determine what to do with tough player choices.
This piece will look at some MLB fantasy assets that have seen their fantasy value rise and fall over the last few weeks. This will hopefully give us an idea of what to do with these players moving forward.
Fantasy Baseball Risers
Manny Machado (3B), San Diego Padres
FINALLY! Manny Machado is finally hitting like the mashing third baseman we know and love. Over the last 14 days, he is hitting .353 with four home runs and eight RBI to finally get his batting average over .200 for the season. Overall, he is hitting .204/.294/.433 with 22 home runs and 59 RBI. Anyone paying attention to Machado’s underlying metrics could have seen this coming.
Machado has had a history of starting slow in a number of his 14 seasons. But he always turns it around. Machado has not had a batting average lower than .275 or a slugging rate below .450 since 2019. So the fact that he has started his first 90 games with a batting average under a .200 slash line is concerning, but not the end of the world.
Machado is still only 33 years old and has a strong track record to back up his ratios, and his power (22 home runs) has returned this season. Machado’s BABIP is one of the lowest in the league at .202. For his career, Machado is above the Major League average at .298 and has never been below .265 for a season.
With that perspective, you have to assume that with such a low number over his first four months, his last two will have to be at or above his career .298 average the rest of the way. With that better fortune on batted balls, the power and run production has begun to return, especially over the last two weeks. With a 11% walk rate and a 21.5% strikeout rate, it’s clear Machado is seeing the ball fine at the plate.
Dillon Dingler (C), Detroit Tigers
Dillon Dingler proves you can have an elite season and STILL be in line for more positive regression. Dingler is, without a doubt, the best player on the Tigers through four months of 2026, but it could be even better. Coming into the Tigers’ game on Monday night, Dingler led the Tigers in home runs, RBI, slugging rate, and several other stats. He was also in the top five in the league in WAR. Dingler has 21 home runs and 63 RBI in just 379 plate appearances, despite being taken well after the first 250 hitters in spring drafts.
But Dingler does have a .291 BABIP, which is just league average. According to Statcast, his expected batting average (.288) and expected wOBA (.380) are both higher than his actual numbers (.272 and .372 right now).
Dingler’s average exit velocity, max exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are all slightly up compared to his numbers from last year and in the minors. Where he is outpacing his past numbers is in the contact department, with an elite mark. Dingler is now at 91% in zone contact rate, almost 3.5 percentage points higher than his career mark. If all of this keeps up and he starts to improve, a wonderful season for Dingler could turn into something historic.
Jake Bauers (1B/OF), Milwaukee Brewers
Jake Bauers has quietly become one of the biggest fantasy baseball values of the 2026 season because he has transformed into a legitimate middle-of-the-order power contributor. So far in the 2026 season, Bauers has posted a .259/.366/.489 slash line with 18 home runs, 59 RBI, 57 runs scored, and six stolen bases. That gives him an impressive .855 OPS and a 135 wRC+, all numbers that are the best of his career. He has bounced around a lot in his career, but he’s found a place to hit in Milwaukee.
The reason fantasy managers have overlooked him is that Bauers entered the year with a career .672 OPS and never fully developed into the power hitter he was expected to be. However, his 2026 production has shown a completely different hitter. He is getting on base, driving the ball hard, and contributing across multiple categories. His combination of power, patience, and just enough speed has made him far more valuable than his spring draft slot suggested.
Bauers is in a bit of a slump right now (no home runs since July 11), but we know his power can be switched on at any moment in that home park.
Fantasy Baseball Fallers
Kyle Tucker (OF), Los Angeles Dodgers
Uhhhh, yikes. It’s long past time to have a conversation about the key offseason addition for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Kyle Tucker and his .238/.332/.363 line (plus another 0-for-4 game on Wednesday) with seven home runs and six steals is a far cry from what the Dodgers were looking for when Tucker signed a four-year, $240 million contract this offseason. His BABIP, walk rate, strikeout rate, groundball rate, and flyball rate are all very similar to last year. So what’s keeping the production down?
In addition to the rumors that Tucker is still somewhat hurt, his barrel rate and exit velocity have fallen off a cliff this season. For a player with a 10.3% career barrel rate, his 5.6% this year is baffling. Combine that with a career-low home run to fly ball rate, and you have a recipe for a poor season. He has gone from strong home run parks like Daikin Park and Wrigley Field to Dodger Stadium, so that’s also working against him.
For a player who turns 30 in six months and relies on his power/speed combo for his success, he is still searching for the all-around game that brought him so much success in 2021-2025. So far, he is the bust of the season for fantasy baseball and the real-life game.
Garrett Mitchell (OF), Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers have the two highest individual BABIP producers in the league through MLB’s first 90 days. Garrett Mitchell (.417) and Brice Turang (.329) have both been so incredibly lucky this year, but Mitchell’s BABIP is 45(!) points higher than the next closest eligible player. It’s time to pay the piper.
While both will see regression come at some point, it might hit Mitchell harder. He is slightly older and slower, but he has also lost some of the bat speed and plate discipline that defined the last few seasons of his career. What’s concerning for Mitchell is that when he is not putting the ball in play, he has a 32.4% strikeout rate, more than five percentage points above last season. His exit velocity and hard-hit rate are all down from last season, which put his expected numbers much lower than his actual .280 average and .460 slugging rate.
Mitchell’s actual wOBA is .361, but his expected wOBA is just .354. That gap is going to start looking really bad when or if Mitchell’s BABIP and strikeout rate cause the regression to hit soon. No one has had a BABIP this high in at least 15 years.
Jarren Duran (OF), Boston Red Sox
Despite the Boston Red Sox 15-game winning streak, Jarren Duran has simply not been able to raise the level of his performance to match the play of the team. Simply put, Duran has been the most disappointing outfielder in MLB for most of 2026. After the 2024-2025 seasons, in which he hit .285/.342/.492 and .256/.332/.442, Duran is hitting .191/.254/.340 with a 30% strikeout rate.
So why exactly is Duran struggling so much? He still has strong counting stats with 13 home runs, 14 steals, and 52 RBI, but it comes with a hard-hit rate (38.2%) that is eight percentage points lower than what it was last year. What’s leading to that? It looks like it’s primarily his chase rate.
Last season, Duran had a 31% chase rate on pitches outside the zone. This year, that number has ballooned to over 34.4%, which has led to a low 41% outside-zone contact rate and a first-pitch strike rate of almost 58%. That number simply can’t continue if Duran wants to save his fantasy season. His expected stats say some improvement could be ahead (.224 xBA), but for now, Duran is the most disappointing healthy outfielder in fantasy baseball.
