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. What if a player performs as poorly as Josh Naylor (0-for-15 to start the year)? Bench him or drop him to the waiver wire? That’s likely not a wise move. Rookie Chase DeLauter has four home runs. Can that pace continue? He’s now one of the most-added players.
The decisions will get tougher and tougher as the season goes along. For now, a few games are the only sample size we have to go by.
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.
With the first weekend of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still at least 155 games to go for every team, there will be a lot of positive and negative regression moving forward. Let’s take a look at some of the weekend’s largest outliers and see what their futures might look like.
Stats up to date through March 30th.
Players Due for Positive Regression
Agustin Ramirez (C – MIA)
In the offseason, much was talked about concerning Agustin Ramirez’s defense. He was a well-below-average defender at catcher last season, and he wanted to vastly improve that part of his game. Not much was written about his offense, as that was the elite part of his game in his rookie season. He was drafted as a top-eight catcher, and we all assumed the offense would be there. That hasn’t been the case through the first several days of the season, as Ramirez is hitting .167 with an identical .167 slugging rate. Ramirez does not have an extra-base hit this season.
However, Ramirez has a robust 25% walk rate and just an 11% strikeout rate to start the season. He is weighed down by a .222 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), and doesn’t even have an RBI on the season. But with all of those unlucky factors like BABIP working against him, and his batting eye looking better than ever, that fortune is bound to change. Ramirez will never be a .290 hitter unless something drastic changes, but for fantasy managers who drafted Ramirez hoping for another 20 home runs and 15 steals, don’t lose faith. Ramirez will turn the corner soon.
Alec Bohm (3B – PHI)
Alec Bohm has already popped a home run and has four RBI in four games, but he is stuck on a .143 average and a .357 slugging rate despite excellent plate skills so far. Bohm only has one strikeout and a 5.9% strikeout rate through his first handful of games. Compare that to an 11.8% walk rate, and it’s clear he is seeing the ball well, but being held down by an .083 BABIP.
Last season, Bohm was an under-the-radar great hitter. He had an expected batting average in the 88th percentile of all hitters and finished with a .287 number on the season. He is well above average in hard-hit rate, average exit velocity and strikeout rate. Just because he has started slowly in 2026 doesn’t mean he can’t quickly turn it around. Bohm possesses the patience and just enough power to be an everyday player in fantasy lineups moving forward.
Players Due for Negative Regression
Jake Burger (1B – TEX)
Jake Burger is a top-12 hitter through the first few games of 2026 and has eight hits and two home runs through four games. His power has never been in doubt, as his bat speed and barrel rate were both over the 85th percentile last season. All he needed was some good fortune in health and a full-time role. So far, he has them. Burger’s power has been off the charts to start 2026, and he has an .862 slugging rate.
However, there is a lot of good fortune happening in these first few games for Burger. He has a .750 BABIP (highest in MLB), which is close to three times his career average. He is striking out 39% of the time and has yet to draw a walk this season. The power will stay, but the average (.471) and on-base percentage (.500) will not. I still believe in Burger hitting another 30 home runs this season. However, if you can sell him for some kind of player drafted in the first four or five rounds, now is the time to do it.
Victor Scott (OF – STL)
When you draft Victor Scott, you are hoping for an overwhelming amount of steals. His track record shows that stolen bases are his one impeachable skill. For teams desperate for speed, he was a late-round target on a rebuilding Cardinals team that should offer Scott plenty of plate appearances. What I’m sure you didn’t count on when you drafted Scott was a batting average of .385 over his first four games. He does have two steals, so that end of the bargain is working, but his ability to get hits should come crashing down soon.
Scott is striking out at a whopping 40% clip through 15 plate appearances, and he has not drawn a single walk. His plate discipline is even worse than last year. Scott has no real power to fall back on, and he is being propped up by a .714 BABIP. His BABIP will always be higher than average because of his speed, but it can’t maintain this level for much longer. We will get the steals we bought with Scott, but be prepared for the trade-off to be a lower average and below-average run production.
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