The all-star break is already here, giving a brief respite to the fantasy baseball season. While enjoying the All-Star Game-related festivities, it could be beneficial to evaluate your fantasy team’s needs in preparation for the eventual trade deadline, whereafter trades can no longer help fill holes in a lineup. Here are three players to keep in mind down the stretch of the fantasy season.
Addison Barger, 3B/OF, Toronto Blue Jays
Addison Barger has been blazing hot this season and has shown no signs of slowing down. So far in June, Barger has been hitting .293 with a .659 slugging, collecting plenty of doubles and home runs for the Canadian team. And though the 25-year-old has been exceeding expectations, it hasn’t come out of nowhere; Barger placed highly on the Fangraphs top-100 prospects board back in 2023.
In the big leagues, Barger has struck true to the skills that made him an explosive prospect: his explosive swing. Coming in at a 94th-percentile 75.8 mph average bat speed, Barger has been putting up some phenomenal exit velocities, including a career-high 116.5 mph mark earlier this year.
While he carried a similarly fierce swing last year, Barger just wasn’t quite able to put it together in his 69-game 2024 season. After posting a paltry .601 OPS, Barger came into 2025 with a tweaked swing. Though he’s employed a big leg kick in both years, he opened up his stance from 15° to 53° and pulled his feet a bit closer together. This change has helped him catch the ball more out in front of his body, leading to a strong 24.0% Pull AIR percentage and a resultantly elite 14.5% barrel rate.
Even with his strong launch angles and his hot bat, Barger has been underperforming his expected metrics. There is expected positive regression in his batting average and slugging percentage by a decent margin, likely improving his already strong numbers, assuming Barger can maintain his incredible quality of contact.
Though he may not have the elite swing decisions or elite contact rates necessary to ascend into superstardom, they aren’t major holes in his game. Though improvements would certainly be exciting, a 24.8% strikeout rate and 7.1% walk rate aren’t going to crater his game. Instead, the main barrier Barger is facing is in his platoon splits. While he seemed to handle same-handed lefty pitchers well enough in the minors (.818 OPS vs LHP in AAA compared to .781 OPS vs RHP), he hasn’t yet cracked the code in the majors with just a 51 wRC+ against southpaws. As a result, though he still pinch-hits later in games, Barger has often been sitting when the Blue Jays are facing lefty starters.
Verdict: Legit – Addison Barger should continue putting the ball in the air with force, as the power he brings is the real deal. He carries more value in daily-lineup leagues as he is mostly strong-side platooned for the Blue Jays, but he should continue his explosiveness when he is in the lineup.
Edward Cabrera, SP, Miami Marlins
Edward Cabrera has been an exciting name for a few years thanks to his strong set of pitches. Traditionally pitching from a low-40°s arm slot angle, Cabrera has usually leaned on his incredible changeup to get a strong combination of whiffs and ground balls. Though he’s flashed signs that he was putting it all together back in 2022, his 2023 and 2024 seasons left some meat on the bone. But so far, his 2025 season has been a different story with an improved 3.61 ERA in 82.1 innings of work.
Cabrera has made some changes coming into this season that have helped him access the potential he has been flashing. He has lowered his arm slot by a substantial margin from a 42° to a 36° angle. This has helped him to get additional natural drop out of his changeup and has also helped him get much more induced break on his curveball.
But a lower arm slot usually isn’t better for riding four-seam fastballs that make use of higher arm angles to get better verticality. And the four-seam fastball he featured was already an issue for him, grading out poorly by both stuff+ and location metrics. In 2024, Cabrera’s four-seamer accounted for 27% of his pitch mix while carrying an 8th percentile 46.5% Bad-Pitch percentage by PLV. Half of them were bad. Not even just not good, but bad.
To account for this, Cabrera has updated his pitch mix to de-emphasize his poor four-seamer and instead feature a more appropriate sinker that works better with his new arm slot. This has been a strong pitch for him, grading out at a strong 5.31 PLV and 107 plvLoc+. His ability to locate it well has been his saving grace, single-handedly upping his overall in-zone pitch rate from the mid-40s to a less problematic 51.6%. Though none of his other pitches have been in the zone at an increased rate this year, this one change has helped him sit at a walk rate of 8.6% on the season. Not great by any means, but it would be the first time in his MLB career posting a mark below 11%.
Verdict: Legit – Edward Cabrera has shown drastic changes this season by updating his arm slot and maximizing his pitch mix. His increased ability to pitch in the zone alongside an already impressive arsenal has led to strong results that should carry through the remainder of the season, assuming his recent arm injury doesn’t lead to significant missed time.
Trevor Story, SS, Boston Red Sox
Already collecting 15 HR and going 16-for-16 on steals so far this season, Trevor Story is finally looking like his vintage power/speed Rockies self again. Though he isn’t likely to see the .290 batting averages that he got playing at Coors Field, Fenway certainly is a fine consolation prize as it carries the 7th-best park factor for right-handed batters. Even with a middling batting average of .257, his power/speed combination has been valuable in category-based fantasy baseball formats.
But Story isn’t really doing what made him so successful years ago with the Rockies. Though he has always carried concerning strikeout rates, Story historically found success with his bat by pulling balls efficiently in the air. In his 30+ HR 2018 and 2019 seasons, Story had a 24% and 19.4% Pull AIR%. But so far in 2025, Story has seen the worst rate of his career at a below-average 13.7%.
This seems a little peculiar as a righthanded batter at Fenway, where pulled fly balls and line drives would have the benefit of the Green Monster. But as he’s still pulling the ball around at his normal rates, the biggest detractor to this has been a large 10 percentage-point jump in his ground ball rates to be the highest of his career. The ideal attack angle rate on his swing has even fallen from above-average to below-average, indicating this could be a deterioration in his swing mechanics.
Without the quality of contact that Story usually carries to maximize his slowing bat speed, Story’s poor plate discipline and contact rates should catch up to him. A 27.9% strikeout rate and 4.7% walk rate just aren’t going to cut it when he isn’t maximizing contact when he makes it. That said, his speed is undeniable. Assuming a continuation of his good health, it seems that even an aging Story is valuable on the base paths.
Verdict: Not Legit – Trevor Story is once again flashing his power and speed. But with his degrading swing mechanics and increased ground ball rates, the power seems to be more of a flash in the pan than something sustainable.
