As the 2024 fantasy baseball season heads into the All-Star Break, which players are enjoying an unsustainable hot streak right now? Which players are uncharacteristically cold? And, which ones have simply been receiving too much or too little luck of late?
Each week in this article, players that are due for some positive or negative regression compared to their recent performance will be highlighted to assist fantasy managers in how to properly view each one. Digging underneath the surface stats, we will examine some hitting and pitching metrics to try to determine if a given player is overperforming or underperforming what should be expected.
The goal here is to identify players who are due for hot streaks and cold streaks and acquire them before the value rises or sell high before the crash. Below are four players worth considering.
- Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Assistant
- Fantasy Baseball Trade Tools
- Weekly Fantasy Baseball Content
- MLB Prop Bet Cheat Sheet
Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates
(Stats up to date through July 15, 2024)
Players Due for Positive Regression
For a consensus first-round pick in spring 2024 fantasy baseball drafts, Julio Rodriguez can’t be considered anything other than a bust more than halfway through the season. After a 2023 season where he hit .275/.333/.485 with 32 home runs and 27 stolen bases, plenty of people were thinking MVP, not crash and burn. Granted, there have been some recent value Rodriguez has given fantasy managers as we approach the midway point in July, and those signs of life might just continue after baseball resumes this weekend.
For all of those wondering, Julio Rodriguez is in fact BACK???? pic.twitter.com/KUcloHehfC
– EastCoastM’s???? (@EastCoastMs_) July 13, 2024
In terms of counting stats, Rodriguez’s 10 homers and 18 steals are just…good. They are both off of his pace in 2023, but the power and speed seem to be returning. Where Rodriguez has really struggled, however, is making contact at the plate. His batting average is down 10 points, his strikeout rate is up to over 27% and his walk rate has fallen to 5.7% this year. It’s all driven by a contact rate (71%) lower than last year and a swinging strike rate that climbed by 1.4 percentage points. That may not sound like a lot, but he is now swinging and missing 16% of the time at the plate.
The good news lies in his expected statistics. At a .458 expected slugging percentage (.372 actual number), Rodriguez has the third-highest differential between the two numbers this year (-0.86). His batting average is also 13 points too low and should be in the .280 range when it’s actually .267. Rodriguez is still 95th percentile in bat speed and over the 85th percentile in hard-hit rate and average exit velocity. His speed on the basepaths is still 98th percentile this year, so this looks to me like just a prolonged slow start with a turn-around coming very soon.
Speaking of slow starts, Francisco Lindor has had one of the worst starts to the 2024 season of any superstar-caliber player. When the calendar flipped to May, Lindor was slashing .197/.280/.359 with just five home runs and four stolen bases. In March/April, Lindor hit 42% of his balls in play on the ground and just 16% of those events were line drives. It was about as bad a start as fantasy managers could imagine. All managers started having visions of his abysmal 2021 season.
However, in May things started to turn around. Then Lindor started blowing the doors off his opponents in June. Lindor hit .290/.351/.520 for the month. That hot streak has extended into July. He is now at .288/.422/.558 for the month. Statcast believes it could be even better. Lindor’s .253 average this season is anchored down by the first five weeks and should be closer to .280 right now. His slugging percentage is also 64 points off, as his power is still not completely reflective of his barrel rate and xwOBA, which are both over the 90th percentile among all hitters.
Lindor also isn’t getting any favors from the batting average on balls in play (BABIP) gods. His .270 mark right now is 20 points under his career average. Someone with his plate discipline and speed should have a much higher number, which should pop back up in the second half of the year.
Players Due for Negative Regression
Fantasy managers love players with multi-position eligibility and a 40-steal pace like Luis Rengifo has this season. Rengifo was an afterthought in many fantasy drafts but has busted out of the gates with a .315/.358/.442 line with six home runs and 22 steals so far. If you’re in the market for middle infield or corner infield help heading into the home stretch, it’s important you not pay the full freight for a player likely to come back to earth soon.
Luis Rengifo gives the Angels an early lead! pic.twitter.com/EsY5Mmat2L
– Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 29, 2024
In five previous seasons, Rengifo has never hit anywhere near what he is doing this year. He is a career .254/.313/.398 hitter with seasonal highs of .264/.339/.444 before 2024. He has never had more than six stolen bases. Never more than 55 runs. And he has a career .290 BABIP, almost exactly league average. This year that BABIP is .349 (12th-highest in MLB if he had enough plate appearances to qualify). His walk rate dropped to 4.8%, half of what it was last year. And his first pitch strike percentage is a career-high 68.8%, which makes the fact that he has a sky-high BABIP all the more confusing.
Add it all up, and he has a batting average (.315) that is 47 points higher than his xBA. His slugging rate (.442) is almost 80 points higher than his xSLG (.368). None of this, of course, impacts his speed and ability to swipe bases. But if his ability to get on base at a 36% clip is affected (which I believe it will be), much of his fantasy value may go out the window when the average and on-base percentage (OBP) drop.
Seth Lugo has to get the trophy for first-half pitcher MVP (at least in the non-rookie division). Drafted around pick 293 in spring drafts, Lugo has crushed those expectations with a 2.48 ERA, 11 wins, 1.09 WHIP and 8.2 strikeouts per nine innings. His home runs per nine innings (0.78) are a career-low and he hasn’t been this good at limiting walks since 2019. He is fourth among pitchers in FantasyPros’ player rater as we hit the All-Star break.
However, problems are lurking underneath these stellar performances that might start to creep to the surface in the second half. According to Statcast, Lugo is under the 50th percentile in fastball velocity, average exit velocity, whiff rate, barrel rate and hard-hit rate allowed. His expected ERA (xERA) is almost a run and a half higher (3.93) than his actual production from the first half. His BABIP dropped 20 points from last season (.277 now).
Where his luck might turn around is in the home runs allowed department. For his career, Lugo allows a 12% HR/FB rate. It’s down to just 8% in 2024. This is despite his fly balls increasing by three percentage points from 2023 and allowing a 41% hard-hit rate this year. If the home run luck fades away, he could be a different pitcher. His left-on-base percentage (83.2%) is fourth-highest in the league. Some of those runners turning into runs on more bombs out of the park would go a long way to hurt his value.
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