The beginning of the fantasy baseball season is an easy time to spot outliers and candidates for positive and negative regression. With so few games and plate appearances for each player, we will see wild swings away from normal production, and the tendency is to overreact.
Regression often comes at players quickly. When we see a player on an extreme hot or cold streak, things are likely to course correct. That’s what we will try to predict here, with some advice on how to handle these moments.
The beginning of the fantasy baseball season is an easy time to spot outliers and candidates for positive and negative regression. With so few games and plate appearances for each player, we will see wild swings away from normal production, and the tendency is to overreact.
Regression often comes at players quickly. When we see a player on an extreme hot or cold streak, things are likely to course correct. That’s what we will try to predict here, with some advice on how to handle these moments.
Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates
This series highlights players due for positive or negative regression compared to their recent performance each week to assist fantasy managers in viewing each one properly. Digging underneath the surface stats, we will examine some hitting and pitching metrics to determine if a given player is overperforming or underperforming what should be expected.
Last week, this piece correctly predicted positive regression for Gunnar Henderson (two home runs and a .652 slugging percentage in the last seven days) and negative regression for Logan O’Hoppe (.167/.167/.292 with zero home runs over the last week). Regression, whether positive or negative, doesn’t always happen that fast, but the signs are often clear.
With the first three weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still 140 games to go for almost every team, there will be a lot of positive and negative regression moving forward. Let’s take a look at some of the past week’s largest outliers and see what their futures might look like.
(Stats up to date through April 21st)
Players Due for Positive Regression
Mookie Betts (SS – LAD)
When you need a few paragraphs on a struggling player like Mookie Betts, can you write “He’s really, really good and will get better?” and be done with it? Betts is the type of player we would never truly give up on in a fantasy season unless there was a long-term injury, but the slow start is beginning to become a bit of a problem through four full weeks.
Perhaps he is still recovering from the mysterious food poisoning that caused him to miss the MLB Tokyo series and caused his weight to drop over 15 pounds, but something isn’t right here. There doesn’t seem to be any other lingering injury concerns, but Betts is hitting .243 with a .432 slugging percentage over his first 87 plate appearances. It’s been worse over the last seven days.
In that span, Betts is hitting .056/.227/.056 with zero home runs and one stolen base. He also has zero RBI in that span as his offense has come to a complete stop. However, there are signs a turnaround could be just ahead of us. First, in the whole season and over the last seven days, Betts has a higher walk rate than strikeout rate. That tells me he is still seeing the ball very well and not reaching out of the zone for pitches. Second, he has a .067 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) over the last week, so he has been very unlucky as well.
Betts is too good and this offense is too potent for him to stay down for too much longer.
Luis Robert Jr. (OF – CWS)
There is no way to measure the general malaise surrounding the Chicago White Sox organization, so Luis Robert’s struggles could come from being a part of a toxic environment and offense. But just looking at the numbers we have available to us through his first 20 games shows Robert is headed towards massive positive regression sooner rather than later.
Robert’s line over his last 26 plate appearances is a horrific .100/.308/.250, although that does come with a home run and a steal. That’s not the only good news we can glean from this sample. His walk rate over that time is 23.1%, so he is finding ways to get on base. His BABIP in the last seven days is .083 and .178 this season. For his career, Robert has a .323 BABIP. He didn’t just suddenly forget how to hit at age 27.
Robert is in the peak of his prime years, although it is being wasted on the White Sox. My dream for Robert this summer is that he is traded to a contender, which could rejuvenate both his bat and his attitude. The under-the-hood numbers are fine. This might just be a case of needing a change in scenery.
Players Due for Negative Regression
Pavin Smith (1B, DH – ARI)
The Oklahoma City Thunder might be the only people having a better week than Pavin Smith. The new full-time first baseman/designated hitter for Arizona cranked another home run on Tuesday night to go along with multiple hits. He is now up to a .404 average and a 1.272 OPS on the season. Forget the elusive .300/.400/.500 club, Pavin Smith is currently in the .400/.500/.700 club.
Smith has four home runs and nine RBI, with most of that production in the last 10 days, and he also has a 24% walk rate to mirror his 24% strikeout rate. Just in the last week, his slugging percentage is .842. If you had the foresight to pick him up off the waiver wire and start him over the last two weeks, kudos to you. But this is not a player who sees this kind of power and average combination lasting for long.
Smith’s BABIP this year is an unbelievable .563, meaning over 56% of every ball that gets hit in play is landing for a hit. That number screams negative regression. No player has had higher than a .372 BABIP in a full season since 2019. What’s even more striking is that Smith also has a 30% strikeout rate this year, the worst of his career. Both of these extreme outlier stats can’t continue. Smith and the Arizona offense (.343 team wOBA, third in MLB) have been a nice story, but there are some leaner days ahead.
Matt Olson (1B – ATL)
The state of the 2025 Atlanta Braves offense is quite grim through four weeks of the season. They are 23rd in runs scored, 18th in slugging and 21st in team wRC+. Along with that comes Matt Olson and his .237 batting average and .408 slugging percentage through 93 plate appearances. He has four dingers on the year, but only 19 total hits and a 52.6% ground ball rate.
As bad as Olson has been overall, he’s been on a hot streak over the last seven days. In that span, Olson is hitting .368/.500/.737 with three home runs (including one Tuesday night) and a 17% walk rate. Is it a sign of things to come or just a lucky hot streak? Even though I think he improves overall in the last five months of the season, this hot streak is not sustainable much longer.
Olson’s BABIP this week is .500, and that doesn’t even count his home runs (which are not included in BABIP). He has a 16% walk rate, but that also comes with a 29% strikeout rate. That level of swing and miss ability does not bode well for a sustained batting average over .300 and slugging percentage over .550. Over time, the Braves first baseman should settle back into his career numbers around .250/.350/.500.
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