4 Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates (2026)

The beginning of the fantasy baseball season is a relatively 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 Kyle Manzardo (.063/.211/.063) to start the year? Bench him or drop him to the waiver wire? What is the best move? Rookie Chase DeLauter has five home runs. Can that pace continue? He’s now universally rostered.

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 10 days of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still at least 150 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 April 6th.

Players Due for Positive Regression

Francisco Lindor (SS – NYM)

It would be easy to blame Francisco Lindor’s slow start on his hamate bone injury that kept him out of a large chunk of spring training. And while there certainly is some truth to that, and certainly some rust that has to shake off as Lindor gets games and plate appearances under his belt, his performance at the plate shows that he is more unlucky than unproductive so far. While Lindor is a couple of weeks behind his peers in terms of reps at the plate, things could turn around soon.

Coming into Tuesday, Lindor was hitting .135/.333/.243 with zero home runs or RBI. His power has been nonexistent so far, which, again, may be a result of the hand injury. But under the hood, things look strong. Lindor is walking at a 20.8% clip and only has a 16.7% strikeout rate. More walks than strikeouts is a good sign of plate discipline returning. In addition, he has a .172 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), which is one of the 20 lowest marks in the league.

When that regresses to his career norms, the hits, average and run production should come. His expected wOBA is 70 points higher than his produced wOBA, so this is a bat that’s about ready to explode.

Landen Roupp (SP – SFG)

When you look at a pitcher striking out almost 12 batters per nine innings, has a 63% groundball rate and has not allowed a home run on the season, nor has he allowed a single barrel, you would think that pitcher has been the best player on the mound in this early part of the season. Well, that pitcher is Landen Roupp, but somehow he has a 4.22 ERA to start the season. Something doesn’t add up here, so what’s contributing to it?

First, it’s helpful to note that all of Roupp’s expected statistics show he should have an ERA of about 2.10 (Baseball Savant) to 2.15 (FanGraphs). He has one of the highest differences between actual ERA and expected ERA among all qualified starters this season. But if he is striking hitters out and mostly giving up groundballs, and doesn’t allow home runs, how are teams scoring on him?

Roupp’s left on base percentage (LOB%) is only 41.7% this season. Meaning 59% of the men who reach base against him have scored. The league average LOB% this season is 66%. This is simply something that won’t last with a profile this strong. As soon as it course-corrects, Roupp should become one of the best under-the-radar pitchers in baseball for 2026.

Players Due for Negative Regression

Christian Yelich (DH, OF – MIL)

The Brewers have the two highest individual BABIP producers in the league through MLB’s first 10 days. Garrett Mitchell (.615) and Christian Yelich (.538) have both been so incredibly lucky this year that they are getting on base on more than half the balls they put in play this season. So while both will see regression come quickly, it might hit Yelich harder. Yelich, of course, is older and slower, but he has also lost some of the bat speed and plate discipline that defined the early part of his career.

What’s concerning for Yelich is that when he is not putting the ball in play, he has a 27% strikeout rate to just a 7% walk rate. His barrel rate, exit velocity and hard-hit rate are all down from last season, which put his expected numbers in the tank. His actual wOBA is .443, but his expected wOBA is just .274. So far, the league average wOBA for all hitters is .315. That 40-point gap is going to start looking really bad when Yelich’s regression hits soon.

Teoscar Hernandez (OF – LAD)

Teoscar Hernandez is hitting .353/.389/.559 through nine games, which is a wild deviation from his career .261/.316/.484 line. This is certainly a small sample size, but it’s still enough to help us understand that these numbers will not last forever, especially when you compare them to his career and the context of his hitting profile so far in 2026.

Hernandez is not far behind the two Brewers with his own .476 BABIP (sixth-highest in the league). It’s inflating the power and the on-base ability, but it’s also propping up what should be a much lower average thanks to a staggering 30.6% strikeout rate through nine games. Add in the fact that Hernandez has only walked in 5.6% of his plate appearances, and you have what appears to be a house of cards in his hitting profile. Both Hernandez’s average exit velocity and barrel rate are below the 55th percentile among hitters this season.

Hernandez won’t be a bad hitter this season (xwOBA of .347, per Baseball Savant), but this kind of production can’t be maintained.