Ryan Kirksey | Wed, Jul 22nd 2026, 7:04am EDT

4 Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates (2026)

After more than four months of the fantasy baseball season, we have enough data to spot outliers and candidates for positive and negative regression. With the All-Star Break behind us, we will see wild swings in production, and the tendency is to overreact.

What if a player performs as poorly as Manny Machado (.201/.292/.416) at this point in the year? Bench him or drop him to the waiver wire? I can’t endorse dropping him yet in 12-team leagues. What if he is just unlucky in the batting average department so far? Hunter Goodman has 30 home runs and five stolen bases, but also sports a 33% strikeout rate and .303 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Can that pace continue, or will he regress?

The decisions will get tougher as the season goes on. For now, 17 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 relative to their recent performance each week, helping fantasy managers view each player accurately. Digging beneath the surface stats, we will examine some hitting and pitching metrics to determine whether a given player is overperforming or underperforming expectations.

With the first 17 weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still about 60 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 week’s largest outliers and see what their futures might look like.

(Stats up to date through July 20th.)

Players Due for Positive Regression

Geraldo Perdomo (SS – ARI)

Geraldo Perdomo is one of the strongest positive-regression candidates for the last two months of the 2026 season because his elite plate discipline has remained intact while his results on balls in play have been unusually poor.

After a breakout 2025, Perdomo has continued to be one of baseball’s most patient hitters, carrying a 14.5% walk rate, well above the league average and nearly identical to the approach that made him so productive before. His 11.8% strikeout rate is also among the best in the league, giving him an outstanding walk-to-strikeout ratio. Hitters who consistently control the strike zone this well tend to have stable offensive numbers over time, making it unlikely that his current batting average (.341) accurately reflects his talent.

The biggest culprit behind Perdomo’s disappointing batting average has been an abnormally low .259 BABIP. For a player with back-to-back seasons hitting over .270, excellent contact skills, and above-average speed, a BABIP that low is difficult to sustain over a full season. That .259 number is one of the 20 lowest in the entire league. More of the ground balls and line drives he’s putting in play should begin falling for hits during the second half.

Dillon Dingler (C – DET)

Dillon Dingler proves you can have an elite season and STILL be in line for more positive regression. Dingler is, without a doubt, the best player on the Tigers through four months of 2026, but it could be even better.

Coming into the Tigers’ game on Monday night, Dingler led the Tigers in home runs, RBI, slugging rate, and RBI. He was also in the top five in the league in WAR. Dingler has 21 home runs and 63 RBI in just 379 plate appearances, despite being taken well after the first 250 hitters in spring drafts.

But Dingler does have a .288 BABIP, which is below league average. According to Statcast, his expected batting average (.285) and expected wOBA (.374) are both higher than his actual numbers (.268 and .366 right now).

Dingler’s average exit velocity, max exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are all slightly up compared to his numbers from last year and in the minors. Where he is outpacing his past numbers is in the contact department, with an elite mark. Dingler is now at 91% in zone contact rate, almost 3.5 percentage points higher than his career mark

If all of this keeps up and he starts to improve, a wonderful season for Dingler could turn into something historic.

Players Due for Negative Regression

Bryan Reynolds (OF – PIT)

Bryan Reynolds is, without a doubt, the best offensive player on the Pirates through four months (in the non-Esmerlyn Valdez division, since he is clearly the next coming of Babe Ruth). He has been better than Oneil Cruz, Ryan O’Hearn, and Brandon Lowe overall (which his .385 wOBA tells us).

Coming into the Pirates’ game against the Yankees on Monday, Reynolds not only led the Pirates in on-base percentage (OBP), runs, offensive WAR, wOBA, and wRC+. According to Stathead, he is the ONLY player in baseball with at least a .280 average, 14 home runs, 70 runs, and 55 RBI.

Reynolds also strikes out 24% of the time and has expected statistics in his batting average, slugging percentage, and wOBA that are way above his actual numbers in 2026. Will that regress over the next two months? We will see, but those indicators, plus the seventh-highest BABIP in the league (.355), say there has been some luck involved. It could run out over the next two months.

Garrett Mitchell (OF – MIL)

The Brewers have the two highest individual BABIP producers in the league through MLB’s first 90 days. Garrett Mitchell (.424) and Brice Turang (.329) have both been so incredibly lucky this year, but Mitchell’s BABIP is almost 50(!) points higher than the next closest eligible player.

While both will see regression come at some point, it might hit Mitchell harder. He is slightly older and slower, but he has also lost some of the bat speed and plate discipline that defined the last few seasons of his career.

What’s concerning for Mitchell is that when he is not putting the ball in play, he has a 32.7% strikeout rate, more than five percentage points above last season. His exit velocity and hard-hit rate are all down from last season, which put his expected numbers much lower than his actual .263 average and .461 slugging rate.

Mitchell’s actual wOBA is .363, but his expected wOBA is just .354. That gap is going to start looking really bad when or if Mitchell’s BABIP and strikeout rate cause the regression to hit soon. No one has had a BABIP this high in at least 15 years.

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