4 Fantasy Baseball Trade Targets to Buy or Sell (2026)

With fantasy baseball trade deadlines approaching for many leagues, our analysts picked two hitters worth buying and two pitchers worth selling while their value is still strong. Here’s the full breakdown.

4 Fantasy Baseball Buy Low and Sell High Trade Targets: Players to Deal Before the Deadline

Buy: Jake Cronenworth (2B – SD)

Cronenworth’s season-long line looks rough at a glance, hitting just .217 with an 81 wRC+, but that number is skewed by missed time earlier in the year. Since returning, he’s been scorching in July, going 24 for 83 with two home runs and four stolen bases, good for a .324 average, a 141 wRC+, and an .844 OPS. That hot stretch actually fits his track record better than the season-long line suggests. He posted 11 home runs and a 117 wRC+ two seasons ago, and 17 home runs with five steals and a 105 wRC+ last season, making him a career bat that’s run roughly 10% above league average.

He’s also multi-position eligible, which helps him fit a variety of roster needs. He’s not the kind of name that should be the centerpiece of a trade, but he’s an easy, low-cost throw-in to attach to a bigger deal, someone who can quietly help fill out a lineup without costing much draft or trade capital to acquire.

Buy: Brandon Nimmo (OF – TEX)

Nimmo entered the season with real preseason buzz, but missed time and a disappointing team performance have dropped his overall perception. His season numbers, a .268 average with 10 home runs and four stolen bases, are still solid, but the underlying profile looks significantly better than the results. His barrel rate sits at 12%, up from 8.8% last season, and his hard-hit rate is a career high, ranking in the top six percentile of the league. His strikeout rate is down, and he’s getting the ball in the air more consistently.

Even more notable, his .268 batting average is being suppressed relative to a .291 expected batting average, suggesting real positive regression is still coming. He’s dominated left-handed pitching, and while most of his home runs have come against right-handers so far, that trend looks likely to continue. His form has been trending up for three straight months, hitting .302 in July and .324 since the All-Star break specifically. His team’s direction as a buyer or seller remains a real question, but a strong second half could still get him back to something close to last year’s 25 home run, 13 stolen base pace. He’s available at a discount right now, a price closer to a fourth or fifth outfielder despite underlying skills that support performing like a second or third outfielder the rest of the way.

Sell: Brandon Pfaadt (P – ARI)

Pfaadt was actually a buy-low recommendation on this show a few weeks ago, and that call has paid off well, but it’s time to cash in. He’s won five straight starts since returning to the rotation, a genuinely rare feat for any pitcher, but he’s doing it without missing many bats. Over that five-start, 27-inning stretch, he’s struck out just 14 batters total, with individual game totals of one, three, two, six, and two strikeouts. His expected FIP sits at 4.33 despite the tidy results, and since most advanced expected-stat formulas are built heavily around strikeout rate, a mark around 12% simply doesn’t look sustainable.

His team isn’t expected to be especially competitive down the stretch either, which limits his opportunities to keep piling up wins the way he has recently. There’s a real strikeout-upside history here, he once led all of the minor leagues in strikeouts a few seasons back, but that upside isn’t currently showing up in his results. The recommendation is to sell into the goodwill built up over this stretch, a strong ERA and WHIP over his last five starts, before a rough outing erodes that trade value. Low-strikeout pitchers who are winning largely on results tend to have a low floor once those results normalize.

Sell: Emerson Hancock (SP – SEA)

Hancock has had a breakout season by any measure, a 3.16 ERA over 105 innings with 97 strikeouts and a 1.01 WHIP, remarkable for a pitcher who was widely available on waivers entering the year. His sweeper has been the driving pitch behind that success. But there are real warning signs underneath the surface. He’s allowing a fair amount of hard, well-struck contact, and his expected ERA sits closer to 4.30, a meaningful gap from his actual 3.16 mark. He’s also significantly overperforming against fastballs specifically, allowing just a .176 batting average against compared to an expected mark in the .240s, an area with real regression risk.

There’s also real situational uncertainty. His team has reportedly discussed making him available in trades, and his performance so far has leaned on a real home-road split, a 2.93 ERA at home compared to 3.45 on the road, with his WHIP notably better at home too. A trade to a new team and park could hurt him further. Even if he isn’t traded, there’s a chance the team manages his innings more conservatively down the stretch, potentially through a piggyback rotation arrangement, adding more uncertainty either way. He’s still shown he can go deep into starts and limit damage in his most recent outings, but with contact quality, fastball regression risk, and situational uncertainty all working against him, the recommendation is to sell into the strength of his season-long numbers now rather than hold and hope the value stays this high.