Ryan Kirksey | Wed, Jul 8th 2026, 7:31am EDT

4 Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates (2026)

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

What if a player performs as poorly as Jakob Marsee (.192/.316/.296) to start 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? Garrett Mitchell has eight home runs and six stolen bases, but also sports a 33% strikeout rate and .406 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, 15 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 15 weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still about 70 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 6th.

Players Due for Positive Regression

JJ Bleday (OF – CIN)

One of the absolute unluckiest players in Major League Baseball over the last month has been Reds outfielder JJ Bleday. Despite a 15% walk rate and just an 18% strikeout rate, Bleday has only slashed .159/.299/.295 because of a horrific .167 BABIP.

Among all qualified batters, that is the third-lowest mark in baseball over the last month. The fact that Bleday is seeing the ball so well at the plate has not translated into production.

Bleday is better than the 70th percentile of batters in bat speed, walk rate, chase rate, sweet spot rate and xwOBA. His overall batting average is just .233 on the season, but his expected batting average is 30 points higher at .263.

Bleday’s expected slugging rate is 80 points higher than his real number. Bleday has 13 home runs halfway through the 2026 season. If luck turns back in his direction in the second half, he could pass 30 home runs before the season ends.

Austin Riley (3B – ATL)

Here is one of the most interesting stats from the last 30 days of fantasy baseball: Austin Riley has one of the top-30 fly-ball rates in the league over the last month (48%).

But he also has the 12th-lowest home run-per-fly-ball rate during that same period (3.8%). That means almost half of his batted balls are hit with the speed and launch angle we want for power, but almost none of them go over the fence.

That has to come back to the mean at some point, as Riley has been a strong home-run-to-fly-ball hitter his entire career (17.6%). Riley has only a .250 slugging rate during that time, with one home run since June 8th. The walk rate (9.4%) is still strong, and he is hitting the ball well, but they just aren’t going over the fence or dropping in for extra-base hits. Look for that to change soon.

Players Due for Negative Regression

Nasim Nunez (2B – WSH)

I fully understand that Nasim Nunez is one of the fastest players in baseball. He has a 97th-percentile speed score, according to Statcast. But even the fastest players shouldn’t be getting as many hits as Nunez has over the last 30 days. In that time, Nunez has a .532 BABIP and a .351 average. This is from a player who struggled to stay above .200 in the first two months of the season.

Nunez’s batting average is so high that his slugging rate is .473 over the last month, despite hitting only one home run. That .473 is the same as someone like Christian Walker, who has 20 home runs on the season.

No matter what, Nunez should remain an elite option for runs and steals (his 33 steals lead MLB). But if you plan to continue to count on Nunez for a batting average with his .532 BABIP and 31% strikeout rate, you are likely to be disappointed.

Riley Greene (OF – DET)

Riley Greene is a power hitter with just 13 home runs in 90 games. Is he due for negative regression? The discouraging fact about Greene is that he has struggled with power this season despite some exceptional luck and success in all other aspects of his hitting. Those have probably propped up his home runs.

Greene is slashing .292/.380/.474 this season, but has the third-highest BABIP in the league at .383. He is only five points behind the American League leader in the category this season (Nick Kurtz). Greene is also 35 points above his career average in that department. Because of the high number, he is racking up runs (46) and RBI (44), but something has to give.

Greene also strikes out 27% of the time and has a barrel rate that has dropped by over three percentage points since 2025. If you were hoping for a home run surge from Greene soon, his mini one recently will likely have to do. The numbers suggest his average and on-base percentage (OBP) should drop sometime in the second half.

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