4 Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates (2026)

After about five months of the fantasy baseball season, we have enough data to spot outliers and candidates for positive and negative regression, but time is running out for these players to course-correct. With the fantasy baseball playoffs ahead of us, we have to know which players will perform and which won’t.

What if a player performs as poorly as Manny Machado (.212/.297/.407) at this point in the year but has a .226 batting average on balls in play (BABIP)? Bench him or drop him to the waiver wire? I can’t endorse dropping him in 12-team leagues. What if he is just unlucky in the batting average department so far? Jordan Walker has 24 home runs and 17 stolen bases, but also sports a 25% strikeout rate and a .345 BABIP. Can that pace continue, or will he regress?

The decisions will get tougher as the season concludes. For now, 21 weeks of games are the 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 weekly performance, helping fantasy managers assess 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 21 weeks of the Major League Baseball season behind us and still about 40 games to go for every team, there will still 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 August 17th.)

Players Due for Positive Regression

Ozzie Albies (2B – ATL)

Despite smashing six home runs in the last 30 days, Ozzie Albies has a case to be made that his next 30 days could be even better. And the case is strong. He is batting just .192/.263/.375 with six home runs, 10 runs, 11 RBI and one stolen base across 28 games. The batting average is terribly low, but the underlying numbers suggest Albies has been much better. His .177 BABIP is the fifth-lowest of all batters. He has also struck out in only 16.7% of his plate appearances during the stretch.

If that .177 BABIP inevitably moves toward a more normal level (for his career, Albies is at .284), Albies should see a substantial improvement in his batting average and overall fantasy production, while the six-homer power he’s shown over the last month gives him a high offensive floor. He may have given up on steals this year, but there is still hope for a strong average and more home runs to finish the year.

JJ Bleday (OF – CIN)

JJ Bleday might be the unluckiest hitter in baseball over the last 30 days. He is hitting just .170/.297/.319 with four home runs, 10 runs, 10 RBI and two stolen bases across 28 games and 111 plate appearances. The counting stats are fine, but the batting average is ugly. But I see signs of improvement coming. Bleday has kept a strong 15.3% walk rate during the stretch, while his 23.4% strikeout rate is fine for a power hitter. Most importantly, his .188 BABIP is the eighth-lowest of any player in the last month.

Bleday’s season-long Statcast profile shows a .351 xwOBA compared with a .341 actual wOBA, along with a 40.9% hard-hit rate, 88.7 miles per hour (MPH) average exit velocity and 9.8% barrel rate. Those numbers do not suggest a hitter who should be batting .170. Bleday is still producing power even during the slump, as evidenced by his four homers and 10 RBI. If the BABIP normalizes while that power remains, Bleday could be the biggest turnaround player for the rest of the season.

Players Due for Negative Regression

Austin Riley (3B – ATL)

Austin Riley has had a poor season, but has been much better lately with five home runs and 15 RBI over his last 27 games. However, the .420 BABIP stands out, particularly when paired with a strikeout rate of over 40%. Riley has managed to maintain a decent batting average despite making an out on more than 40% of his plate appearances via strikeout. But that leaves little room for the results to improve if the batted-ball luck turns against him.

Riley’s .339 xwOBA is considerably below the actual level of .347 in that span. Those are still solid numbers, but they aren’t enough to completely overcome his massive strikeout problem. Riley’s 2026 xBA and xSLG percentile rankings have been bad as well, and the power is doing a lot of the work to prop up his production.

Brandon Lowe (2B – PIT)

Brandon Lowe has been one of the best hitters in baseball over the last 30 days, batting .276/.321/.457 with five home runs, 14 RBI and one stolen base in 26 games. Like Riley, though, the biggest red flag is his .414 BABIP, which is significantly higher than his career mark of .300. Lowe’s power is for real, but expecting a .414 BABIP to continue is foolish, particularly for a hitter who has a 37.5% strikeout rate in that time.

The numbers in the last month make Lowe a negative-regression candidate because they suggest his recent batting average is being helped considerably by batted-ball luck. His .280 xwOBA over the last 30 days is 59 points below his actual .339 wOBA. The expectation shouldn’t be that Lowe suddenly becomes a poor fantasy hitter, but rather that his batting average and overall production are likely to come down from these highs as his BABIP moves closer to a more realistic level.