We cross the midway point of the season this week. That means we are more than halfway done with our fantasy regular seasons. Now is a good time to take a real hard look at your roster and decide if this is a year to go for it, or potentially start looking toward 2026. Be honest with yourself, check your league’s trade deadline, and be aggressive either way. Sellers can often be better served by finding young players or prospects to target at the deadline rather than waiting for bidding wars (that may never materialize) for the players they want to part with. Likewise, wannabe champs and bubble teams can’t sit around and wait. Go get that big bat or RP that you need for a stretch run. Banners fly forever.
Fallers
Will Benson, Outfielder, Cincinnati Reds
3% Rostered
Benson appeared here as a riser way back in Week 8, but to be honest, I can’t say I’m all that shocked to see him return in the first half of the article. Back in Week 8, I was cautiously optimistic, even though Benson had a whiff rate just barely over 30% and a 27% K rate. After all, we had seen him put up solid power numbers a few years ago with whiff and K rates higher up in the mid-30s. So even though his contact rates were not good, they were improved.
Flash forward five weeks, and Benson has managed to keep his strikeout rate just barely above 27%, but his whiff rate has ballooned over 34%. That type of hitter profile lends itself to streakiness, and sure enough, after mashing five homers with a .278 average and .950 OPS over 18 games in May, Benson has slumped through June. He’s batted just .160 with a single homer and a .514 OPS through 18 games this month.
We can see via his process chart that the power hasn’t just evaporated. Benson still has top of the league exit velocity, as well as hard hit and barrel rates, but his contact rate bottomed out in early June, and even though he’s rebounded some, it’s still well below league average. Add to this the imminent return of Austin Hays and Benson may soon see a playing time crunch.
Tomoyuki Sugano, Starting Pitcher, Baltimore Orioles
23% Rostered
Sugano, the Orioles’ 35-year-old rookie, has been able to increase his strikeout rate each month since the start of the season. He punched out just 17 batters in 33 innings through April. Then he sat down 18 in 31 innings in May. So far, he’s up to 15 Ks in just 19.2 June innings.
On the other hand, Sugano has already allowed as many hits (26) this month as he did in May, and has walked more batters (7) in June than he did last month (4) as well. In fact, despite pumping those K gains, Sugano has watched his ERA inflate each month. He posted a 3.00 ERA in April, a 3.48 mark in May, and a 4.58 ERA in June.
Overall, Sugano has been excellent at limiting free passes with a walk rate under 5%. But he sits at the bottom of the league with a 3% whiff rate and has accumulated just 50 strikeouts on the year with over 80 innings pitched. He’s survived by limiting hard contact, and does have above-average exit velocity allowed and hard hit rates. However, he benefited from a “lucky” .250 BABIP in April and .223 BABIP in May. His June BABIP has regressed hard to .324, so he’s been a bit “unlucky” lately. But with his low K rate, Sugano needs a low BABIP to succeed.
Sugano has failed to complete at least 5 innings in his last 3 starts (NYY, LAA, ATH), but does get the Rangers for his next two, so I’d be willing to hold on for a couple more outings. Still, with the low K rate and lack of run scoring in Baltimore this season, Sugano’s upside is pretty limited.
Kyle Stowers, Outfield, Miami Marlins
23% Rostered
I did not include a Marlin last week, which is as long as I’ve gone without including a Marlin all year. Stowers set the league on fire in April, slashing .323/.396/.510 with four dingers, albeit with a .421 BABIP. May wasn’t as pretty, but a .250/.321/.490 line is still pretty solid, especially when it comes with six home runs. June has been another story, as Stowers is slashing just .212/.281/.346 with just a single homer and three RBI this month. His June BABIP is still well above league average at .294, so he’s been getting good batted ball luck all year.
His issue is the same as Benson’s, or Addel’s, or Toglia’s, or pretty much any of the 6’4″ hard swinging outfielders that seem to pop up here every week. They do not make enough contact.
So, we have the same two charts for Stowers as we did for Benson, and we see basically the same thing. Stowers is still making hard contact; he is still in the top 10% in terms of barrel and hard hit rates after all. But he’s not making enough contact. He’s in the bottom 10% in terms of whiff and strikeout rates. That contact ability chart is saddening since even when Stowers peaked in mid May he was just barely within foul-tip distance of the league average.
I wouldn’t give up on Stowers. He doesn’t look to face a playing time crunch like I expect to see with Benson, but an average closer to .230-.240 with some power is a lot more reasonable of an expectation than anything he did over the first two months of the year.
Risers
Mickey Moniak, Outfield, Colorado Rockies
9% Rostered
Moniak had such a slow start to the season that I didn’t even realize he was in Colorado now until a couple of weeks ago. The 27-year-old posted a .704 OPS in April and a .606 mark in May. Since the start of June, though, he’s slashed .359/.419/.923! He has more homers (6) over 12 games in June than he did in the 54 games prior to June. He also has a .364 BABIP in June, but you don’t hit .359 without a bit of batted ball luck.
But like Benson, we have seen hot streaks from Moniak before. He has a 29.6% whiff rate and 24.6% K rate, so a bit better than the two sluggers we just checked out, but still well into the league’s bottom third. Moniak also has less impressive barrel and hard hit rates. Both rates are still above average, but they however around the fringe of the league’s top third, well below what Stowers and Benson are doing.
Moniak’s process and contact ability charts don’t even suggest a whiff of real improvement either.
Quite frankly, I was shocked when these data visualizations were generated. He’s performed so much better on the surface in June than he did previously! But we can see it loud and clear. Moniak made his best contact during his least productive month, and his decision quality has been poor all season. In short, this appears to be just a hot streak. Ride it if you’ve got him, ignore it if you don’t.
Isaac Collins, Outfield, Milwaukee Brewers
4% Rostered
Collins has not been an everyday player for Milwaukee until recently, but has started nine of the Brewers’ last ten games and is 11-33 with two homers, a stolen base, eight runs and eight RBI over than span. He’s batted as low as 7th, but as high as 5th, which puts him close enough to the Frelick/Chourio/Yelich trio up top to get some good RBI opportunities.
Collin’s best skill is his batting eye, as evidenced by his strong chase and walk rates, both of which are just barely outside the top 10% of the league. His whiff and K rates are a bit below average, but his ability to work a walk, lay off pitches out of the zone, and a .330 BABIP have helped him to a respectable .260/.363/.404 line on the year.
His process chart bears out what we see in his underlying rates pretty well, too. We can see his roughly average to slightly below average contact ability and power output. We can also see how his decision quality has increased and recently peaked. Garret Mitchell re-injured himself during his recent rehab assignment, so Collins should continue to get playing time. I like him as a less risky, less volatile option than players like the few we’ve looked at already today, even if he doesn’t have the same power upside.
Casey Schmitt, The Entire Infield, San Francisco Giants
16% Rostered
The mighty Casey has been filling in at third base for the injured Matt Chapman and has been the 12th-best fantasy hitter in standard formats over the past two weeks. Over that span, Schmitt has gone 17-41 (.415) with four homers, nine runs, and 14 RBI.
Schmitt has some pretty interesting underlying metrics, too. He’s been able to amp up his bat speed the last couple of seasons. He was at 70.5 MPH back in ’23, got up to 71.6 last season, and is up to 72.5 MPH this season. If his goal was to increase his exit velocity (Why else?), he’s succeeded. He was at 88.1 MPH in ’23, 89.2 MPH last year, and clocks in solidly above league average at 90.8 MPH this season. That is some real, incremental growth.
His whiff and K rates have also increased a bit too though and now stand at 28.9% and 25%, which are solidly below league average, but not high enough where I start to expect prolonged slumps. Especially since Schmitt carries a pretty strong 9.6% walk rate.
Schmitt doesn’t have enough at bats on the season to make any of the rolling ability charts particularly useful, but I like what I see here a lot more than I expected when I first eyed his recent production and decided to feature him this week.
The big question here is whether Schmitt continues to see the field consistently when Matt Chapman returns. It looks like he’ll be out at least till the end of June, so I would be happy running with Schmitt till then. Also, since Schmitt has such wonderful positional eligibility, he can help fill almost any spot on your roster and would be an excellent bench bat if the Giants do find at-bats for him once Chapman is back. I think Schmitt is definitely worth a speculative add.
