Fantasy Baseball Player Notes

Eury Perez's 2025 surface stats (4.25 ERA) mask how dominant his underlying skills remained, as he held hitters to a .195 average with a 27.3% strikeout rate and elite bat-missing ability despite limited innings. The fastball velocity and swing-and-miss profile were fully intact, while improved contact suppression (lower BABIP and HR%) highlights just how difficult he is to square up when healthy. Entering 2026, projections point to a return toward his frontline-starter upside if his workload can safely ramp up, making him a high-impact fantasy arm on a per-inning basis. Durability and innings volume remain the only things separating Perez from ace-level production, but the skills clearly support a breakout if he's allowed to go deeper into games.

Sandy Alcantara's 2025 season was a clear step back from his Cy Young peak, as his ERA ballooned to 5.36 with a diminished 19.1% strikeout rate and a career-worst 45.1% hard-hit rate allowed. His average exit velocity spiked to 90.6 mph, and his ground-ball rate dipped under 47%, a troubling shift for a pitcher who has historically relied on weak contact and heavy sink. While his walk rate (7.7%) remained manageable, the combination of louder contact and fewer whiffs led to a 4.28 FIP and negative run value metrics across the board. The 2026 projections expect some normalization — particularly in ERA and WHIP — but not a full return to his 2022 dominance. Without a rebound in strikeout rate or ground-ball lean, Alcantara profiles more as a volume-based SP3/SP4 than a frontline fantasy anchor. The innings floor still carries value in deeper formats, but managers drafting him as a bounce-back ace are assuming skills growth that hasn't yet reappeared in the underlying data.