Regression is a very fickle thing in fantasy baseball. Sometimes positive or negative regression can take almost a whole season to manifest itself. Sometimes, it can come and go as quickly as one hot or cold streak. Take Masataka Yoshida for example. He is the third-best fantasy hitter in baseball over the last week, and this is after he struggled with just a .696 OPS for the entire first half of the season.
Last week, this column correctly predicted negative regression for Zack Gelof (.111/273/.111) over the last six games. However, George Springer continued to struggle, with a .200 batting average and just a .300 slugging percentage. Sometimes, the expectation of regression doesn’t match what happens.
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This series highlights players due for positive or negative regression compared to their recent performance each week to assist fantasy managers in viewing each one properly. 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.
With the MLB trade deadline now in the distant past and the fantasy playoffs around the corner, the goal here is to identify players who are due for hot streaks and cold streaks and acquire them before their value rises or sell high before the crash. Below are four players worth considering.
Fantasy Baseball Regression Candidates
(Stats up to date through August 19th)
Players Due for Positive Regression
In terms of his power and run production, this has been a breakout season for Anthony Santander. His 36 home runs are already a career high and we still have five and a half weeks of the season left. He should cruise past 100 RBI and set a career-high in that category as well. But for as good as he has been this entire season, the last few weeks for Santander have been a struggle. He is hitting just .167/.259/.458 in his last 12 games.
He does have four homers to boost the slugging, but his batting average has gone in the tank, dropping him to just .240 overall this season. That is all about to change for the better.
In the last two weeks, Santander’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .133, the seventh-lowest mark among all qualified hitters. His career BABIP is more than 130 points higher than that, and he is hitting 100 points higher this season. Ironically, Santander’s walk rate (11.1%) is much better than his season number (7.8%), so he is still seeing the ball well. The batting average should return soon, which could give him another power burst to end the year.
Another player who has succumbed to the bad luck of the BABIP monster is Isaac Paredes. But his struggles have sapped his power as well. Paredes, in addition to his .160 BABIP in the last 15 days (11th-lowest in that span), only has two home runs and three runs. The Cubs traded for Paredes hoping to get his homer-friendly pull power, but all they’ve seen is bad luck so far.
Like Santander, Paredes is still showing elite discipline at the plate, signaling a turnaround may be coming. He is walking almost 13% of his plate appearances and striking out at just a 15% rate. Both of those numbers are better than his ratios for the full season, meaning he could also start his turnaround soon. The shoulder injury that caused Paredes to miss Monday’s game could be an issue. Hopefully, he doesn’t try to play anything like that, especially if the Cubs’ season is going down the drain. When healthy, Paredes should see his luck change for the better soon.
Players Due for Negative Regression
If not for someone named Shohei Ohtani (-6000 odds, AKA he is going to win), Marcell Ozuna (+1500) would be your odds-on frontrunner for the National League Most Valuable Player award. After 40 homers and 100 RBI in 2023, he should fly past those numbers this season with 36 home runs and 93 RBI with still 38 games to go. But for as good as he has been this year (.309/.381/592), he has been even better in the last two weeks; at an unsustainable rate, however.
In addition to his four home runs in that span, Ozuna is hitting .385/.448/.692, one of the three best lines in the league over those last 13 games. However, he also has a crazy .500 BABIP, which is also third-highest in the Majors. Ozuna’s season BABIP is already a career-high .355, so expecting something so far above that to last another five weeks seems shortsighted. There is no denying Ozuna is one of the game’s premier power threats right now, but we shouldn’t predict he will be this good for the balance of the season.
The negative regression for Jorge Polanco got an early start the past two days after he went a combined 0-for-7 on Sunday and Monday. Polanco had been one of the lone bright spots on the Seattle Mariners’ roster recently, hitting .256/.356/.462 with a pair of home runs, five RBI and a 13% walk rate over the last dozen games. That positive momentum came to a screeching halt in his last two games and there are signs Polanco could continue to flounder.
Polanco’s BABIP is .290 this season (the same as the league average), so that’s not been the issue. Where Polanco has been lucky lately is in his new-found power. His home run per fly ball rate is 14.5% when it is only 10% for his career. Even more confusing is he is hitting all these home runs this year (12 in 86 games) despite a four percentage point drop in his fly ball rate from 2023. This might be the crash beginning to come for Polanco, which might make a bad Mariners offense seem even worse.
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