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 Vinnie Pasquantino (.160/.267/.310) to start the year? Bench him or drop him to the waiver wire? Surely not. Munetaka Murakami has 12 home runs but a 33% strikeout rate and a .255 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). 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 weeks of 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 five weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still at least 130 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 20th.

Players Due for Positive Regression

Fernando Tatis Jr. (OF – SDP)

Fernando Tatis Jr. should be a strong candidate for positive regression over the rest of the 2026 season. How soon that might start is really anyone’s guess. Through the first month of the season, Tatis has given fantasy managers a disappointing .257/.336/.295 line with absolutely zero home runs. That slugging rate (below .300) is like a punch in the face for a player who has been so elite for so long.

Tatis’ 94.6 miles per hour (MPH) average exit velocity and 67% hard-hit rate are elite, and he is still showing more than a 10% walk rate. That clearly shows more discipline at the plate, but it just hasn’t resulted in much power.

Much of his weak production has come from poor luck on balls in play (a .346 BABIP but 0.0% HR/FB rate) and a 50% groundball rate that is unlikely to stay this high based on his career norms. Based on his Statcast numbers, Tatis’ slugging rate should be .417, so it’s only a matter of time before he gets going with the power.

Michael Harris II (OF – ATL)

Michael Harris II has been one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball so far, with a .241 batting average and .620 OPS despite elite batted ball metrics and power that has come off the bat that has just not shown up all the time in the box score. Statcast data shows Harris at about the 92nd percentile in both average exit velocity and barrel rate, with a big gap between his actual slugging rate (.559) and expected slugging rate (.679).

Harris has shown pretty good power with six home runs, but imagine if he were delivering like his batted ball metrics say that he should be. He would be one of the game’s best hitters. That kind of discrepancy will usually correct itself over a full season. Harris is consistently driving the ball with authority, and his overall production should move into elite fantasy territory quickly. Bank on it and acquire him if you can.

Players Due for Negative Regression

Moises Ballesteros (DH – CHC)

Just 22 years old (although in his sixth professional season), Chicago Cubs designated hitter Moises Ballesteros is already breaking out. How is someone so young, with fewer than 50 MLB games under his belt, hitting so well?

Ballesteros is hitting .397 with five home runs, 16 RBI and 11 runs. He is ninth in the league in hard-hit rate. And he is better than the 80th percentile in expected batting average, expected slugging rate and expected wOBA. If Ballesteros had enough plate appearances to qualify, his .486 wOBA would be third-best in the Majors behind only Yordan Alvarez and Ben Rice.

So where is the regression going to come from? Home run and BABIP luck, primarily. Ballesteros’ BABIP is .413 on the season, and he has an unsustainable 27.8% home-run-to-fly-ball rate.

Ballesteros had a reputation for low strikeout rates and high walk rates. In 2026, that is now clearly evident in his profile, and it’s helping everywhere, but it can only account for luck to a certain point. At some point, his BABIP will regress to around league norm. He will be a very good hitter, just not this year’s Babe Ruth.

Andy Pages (OF – LAD)

Another negative regression candidate is Andy Pages of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has opened 2026 by hitting over .325 with a .538 slugging rate, but that production has been heavily pumped up by an unsustainably high BABIP (.382). Because of this, he is also one of the league leaders in RBI with 25 through the first four and a half weeks of the season.

Pages can still be a productive hitter, but expecting him to remain among the league leaders offensively is not going to last. His Statcast numbers show his average should be 27 points lower, and his slugging should drop around 70 points. Pages will lose some power and run production when that happens, but can still be a great asset because he is part of an elite lineup of hitters.