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.
Worried about that slow start from Rafael Devers? He is now hitting .244/.373/.390 after going hitless in five straight games to open the season. What about Eugenio Suarez from last week’s article? He hit five home runs in his first five games, but has just one hit in his last 24 plate appearances
Regression comes at players fast. When we see someone on an extreme hot or cold streak, things are likely to course correct. That’s what we will try to predict here.
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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 try to determine if a given player is overperforming or underperforming what should be expected.
With the first two weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still over 150 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 7th)
Players Due for Positive Regression
If you just look at Wyatt Langford’s counting stats over the last seven days, you would think everything is going exactly as planned for the talented MLB sophomore. During that time, he has two home runs, two steals, three runs and four RBI. However, he is somehow batting only .167 in that span despite also featuring a 16% walk rate.
Essentially, Langford is excelling despite some terrible luck. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is a mere .071 during the last week, the seventh-lowest number among all qualified hitters in that time frame. Even though he has seen terrible luck, he is still contributing to fantasy rosters with all of the stats he is compiling, but his under-the-hood metrics say it could get even better.
Langford’s slugging percentage on the year is a solid .459, but his expected slugging (xSLG) is up to .498. He has a 43.8% hard-hit rate and almost a 10% barrel rate. Langford is on the verge of truly breaking out, it’s just that the batting average hasn’t caught up yet. Once it does, watch out, he could be a first-round player heading into 2026.
The much-anticipated full-time role for Junior Caminero has gotten off to a disastrous start in 2025. He does not have a home run through eight games, and is hitting .250/.290/.286 overall. Those numbers look a lot worse when you look at just the last week — .071/.176/.071 with zero runs, zero stolen bases and just one RBI.
But all is not lost. Entering Tuesday’s games, Caminero had a .067 BABIP over the last week, so he has been a product of some extreme bad luck. More proof of that? He is striking out just 5.9% of the time in that span, so he is making tons of good contact. The problem is that contact has turned into outs 93% of the time over the last seven days.
That trend will not continue. Caminero hits the ball too hard (111 miles per hour exit velocity) and had a 12% barrel rate in 2024. In just 43 games last season, Caminero smashed six home runs, so it’s a matter of time before they start flying out for the Rays third baseman. His new home park at George M. Steinbrenner Field should help give him more power potential as well.
If Caminero finished the 2025 season with fewer than 20 home runs, I would be completely shocked.
Players Due for Negative Regression
If you’ve been searching for a second base replacement due to injuries to Ketel Marte, Zack Gelof or Gleyber Torres, you might have run across new Houston Astros second baseman Brendan Rodgers. Despite leaving Coors Field for Daiken Park, Rodgers is hitting .333/.407/.417 on the year, including .444/.500/.556 over the last seven days. He may seem like a viable option to fill a gap at second base.
I’m here to tell you don’t do it.
Over those seven days, no player in baseball has a higher BABIP than Rodgers (.727). That is sure to come crashing down soon, especially since he also has a 35% strikeout rate during the same timeframe. Rodgers has zero home runs or stolen bases over the last week and is relying just on batting average and RBI to prop up his fantasy value right now.
Jose Altuve has also played second base in two of the Astros’ first 10 games, so Rodgers is not even guaranteed a spot in the lineup on an everyday basis. Don’t get suckered into the hot streak over the last week and leave Brendan Rodgers (98% available in Yahoo leagues) on the waiver wire.
If you are looking for power, Logan O’Hoppe has been one of the best to deliver it over the last week. No player in baseball has more than his four home runs in that span, and he now leads all catchers in home runs this season. He is third in RBI at the position (nine) and sixth in batting average (.345). Anyone who took him in the 11th or 12th rounds of drafts this spring is ecstatic right now. But it’s not going to last.
O’Hoppe has a .500 BABIP in the last seven days to go along with a 28% strikeout rate. His percentage of pitches seen inside the zone is down compared to last year. His first pitch strike percentage is up. He does have a 36% barrel rate through the first two weeks, but his expected batting average is 45 points lower than his actual number.
O’Hoppe will continue to be a major power source this season; that much is true. But don’t pick up or trade for him expecting a .300 hitter with four-category upside. Projection systems align that this is a .245 hitter with about 15 more home runs the rest of the season.
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