Even after almost three full months of the Major League Baseball and fantasy baseball seasons, it’s important to look for players who could experience positive and negative regression. With so few games and plate appearances for each player through eight weeks, we will see wild swings away from normal production, and the tendency is to overreact. Sometimes we think a player is what he has been after eight weeks, but that is far from the truth.
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.
Even after almost three full months of the Major League Baseball and fantasy baseball seasons, it’s important to look for players who could experience positive and negative regression. With so few games and plate appearances for each player through eight weeks, we will see wild swings away from normal production, and the tendency is to overreact. Sometimes we think a player is what he has been after eight weeks, but that is far from the truth.
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 Elly De La Cruz (.476/.522/1.095 with four homers and one steal over the last week) and negative regression for Spencer Steer (.158/.158/.316 with one home run in the past seven days). Regression, whether positive or negative, doesn’t always occur quickly, but the signs are often clear.
With the first 12 weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and about 100 games still 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 June 16th)
Players Due for Positive Regression
Junior Caminero has had some wild swings to his season so far in 2025. In March and April, he was merely good, hitting .257 with a .469 slugging percentage and 12 extra-base hits. In May, his average spiked up to .276 with a .561 slugging percentage and 14 extra-base hits.
Now that we have hit June, the summer months when everyone thought bats would explode with power in the outdoors at George M. Steinbrenner Field, Caminero has gone cold. Is this just a player prone to wild swings that must be considered along with his great power? The evidence shows that this could all improve soon.
Caminero is hitting .189/.306/.472 with just seven extra-base hits in June. His batting average over the last week is even lower at .182. But hope is far from lost here, and I think some more months like May are in store. First, Caminero’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is a woeful .118 in the last week, seventh-lowest among all hitters. He is walking 18.5% of the time and striking out just 11%. This screams bad luck. I want to buy into his power in the summer months when it is 100 degrees with 100% humidity in Florida.
Seattle outfielder Randy Arozarena has one of the weirder stat lines you will ever see from his last week at the plate. He hit .167/.423/.333 in his last seven games. That almost 300-point difference between his batting average and his on-base percentage is because he has a .143 BABIP but a 23% walk rate in that time. Somehow, Arozarena has still been helpful in fantasy baseball because he has a home run and three stolen bases, but this is a profile screaming for positive regression in the weeks to come.
Not only is Arozarena walking in almost a quarter of his plate appearances, but he is also striking out just 11% of the time. Someone seeing the ball that well doesn’t stay below a .170 batting average for too long. Arozarena’s barrel rate and hard-hit rate are well above his disappointing season in 2024. He is hitting the ball with a higher exit velocity as well. This should be a very temporary cold streak for Arozarena. Seattle needs him to wake up and start hitting.
Players Due for Negative Regression
Jeremy Pena has been one of the best fantasy baseball stories of the 2025 season. Inserted into the leadoff spot for Houston after so many injuries, Pena is now hitting .320 with nine home runs, 15 stolen bases and 42 runs. He is striking out a career-low 16% of the time, and the 27-year-old is running straight into his prime seasons with a dominant season. But he has been even better the last week or so, hitting .357/.379/.464 with seven runs in 30 plate appearances. Pena is smoking hot at the plate right now.
The problem is, however, this can’t continue. Pena not only has a .526 BABIP over that time, but he also has a 31% strikeout rate compared to a 3% walk rate. Pena’s BABIP on the season is already high at .360, but this kind of production is simply unsustainable. I do expect the power to go up somewhat in the months ahead. Pena has been somewhat unlucky with his fly balls not turning into home runs. But this is a batting average likely to settle in around .290 for the rest of the season. Still great, just not utterly dominant.
There is a strong case to be made that Hunter Goodman is the National League’s best fantasy catcher this season. His average sits at .287, and his slugging percentage is .517. Those have propelled 13 home runs, 43 RBI and 37 runs. Goodman is in the top 10 among all catchers in home runs, average, slugging percentage and wOBA. However, his expected statistics show this is another case of production that’s about to crater.
According to Statcast data, Goodman has the highest difference between his slugging percentage (.517) and his expected slugging percentage (.473). That is still a very good number, but shows the power might cool down in the weeks ahead. Similarly, his batting average (.287) is way above his expected batting average (.262), and could foreshadow a fall that’s coming. See what you can get for Goodman now in a trade. His profile looks good, just not this level of good.
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