Let’s get back to looking at some more hitters to target in points leagues, which is where I think the majority of trade deadline focus should be. Since about half of starting pitchers end up on the injured list at some point in any given season, this strategy minimizes the risk of giving up major assets for a top-tier arm who then ends up on an IL slot during the fantasy playoffs. And while many leagues don’t set their trade deadlines until July, it’s best to begin your shopping a little early to start seriously scouting the players you’re interested in targeting and to then beat your competition to the punch. The following three hitters are worth targeting right now for their consistently elite production.
2025 Stats: .302/.356/.478 ; 9 home runs ; 47 RBI ; 34 runs ; 9 stolen bases
Third percentile sprint speed? Josh Naylor doesn’t want to hear about it. Despite (or maybe even because of) being clocked at only 24.4 ft/second, a sprint speed slower than 97% of his peers, Naylor has figured something out in his first year with the Arizona Diamondbacks that is causing him to take off on the base-paths at an unprecedented level for his career. His nine stolen bases so far on the year leave him only one shy of the career-high ten bags that he stole for Cleveland in 2023, and he has only been thrown out twice. An intelligent player who is clearly always hyper-aware of his surroundings, Naylor has chosen the perfect pitches to run on, gets great jumps, and takes off for second base like his life depends on it—and he understandably looks a little proud of himself when he succeeds.
The stolen bases have been an unexpected bonus, as most managers who drafted Naylor did so because of his pure hit tool and the relatively large amount of power that comes with it. He’s provided the hits at a consistent clip to the tune of an impressive .302 batting average, and while the power has been a bit slow to come by early in the season, there are encouraging signs from this past week that suggest Naylor’s bat is about to take things to another level. Starting with a walk-off grand slam that capped off a wild come-from-behind win versus the Seattle Mariners on June 10, Naylor followed that blast up with his ninth homer of the year three days later, belting this ball to right-center field. Both of those swings were balls that he had been putting into the gap for doubles instead of over the wall for home runs for most of the year prior, making it very encouraging to see that extra bit of juice back in the swing of a slugger who smacked 31 home runs last season for Cleveland.
Naylor’s Process+ chart bears out the relative lack of power in his season thus far.
He has been able to maintain above-average metrics due mainly to his fantastic contact skills, with a small amount of power splashed in. This has been enough to put Naylor in the top-25 in most points leagues, so if the power can continue to trend in the direction that we saw in Week 11, Naylor will become an indispensable part of many championship-winning teams. It’s worth trying to package together some spare parts, a prospect or two, and some draft picks to lock in this level of production.
2025 Stats: .269/.327/.545 ; 17 home runs ; 57 RBI ; 37 runs
Summer in Wrigley (when the ball starts really flying out of the park) hasn’t even really started to heat up yet for the 2025 season, but Seiya Suzuki has been tearing the cover off of the baseball regardless. The 30-year-old Japanese slugger has wasted no time this year getting going, slashing .269/.327/.545 through 66 games with exceptional power numbers—his 17 home runs and 57 RBI have him on pace for a whopping 42 home run/140 RBI season. Suzuki’s Process+ rolling chart more than confirms the fact that his power is outstanding.
A consistently elite hitter for the majority of the past two months, Suzuki is doing most of his damage by scorching balls into the gap and over the wall. His compact, quick swing makes efficient use of his core, and it’s easy to see why most of the balls he hits are line drives.
Suzuki is not only barreling the ball at a better rate than all but 3% of his peers, but he is also making contact at the perfect angle to drive the ball, as can be seen by his 98th percentile launch-angle sweet spot rate. This has allowed him to turn his hard contact into consistent production, rather than hard groundouts or lineouts right at a defender. A very good hitter for his first three seasons in Chicago, Suzuki seems to have found an extra level of both comfort and aggression in his fourth year in the Windy City, no longer content to just hit for a good average. After hitting 20 and 21 home runs in 2023 and 2024, respectively, it would have made sense to expect a similar number from Suzuki this season to go along with a respectable average. With his current approach, though, it is now much more reasonable to expect 35-40 home runs, even if he does slow down a bit at times throughout the remainder of the year.
Summers in Wrigley are known as being an especially hitter-friendly time because more often than not, the prevailing wind in Chicago shifts to the south/southwest in the summer months, which happens to be the direction out towards the outfield from home plate inside Wrigley Field. The fact that we haven’t even begun this portion of the season gets me all kinds of excited for the ceiling Suzuki has this year with his power-heavy approach. He is looking like a real league-winner, and it makes the most sense to go get him now before summer heats up.
2025 Stats: .333/.386/.498 ; 9 home runs ; 40 runs ; 34 RBI ; 14 stolen bases
Jeremy Peña is someone who was mentioned early in the season in this column, and this repeat appearance here is to reiterate that he is showing zero signs of slowing down his elite points production anytime soon. The one thing that might tail off a bit is his power, but Peña is hitting at a high enough level right now where he can be expected to continue to pick up knocks consistently, score plenty of runs, and continue to steal bags from his now firmly established lead-off role with the Houston Astros. And yet he still remains pretty underrated—I’ll even admit I tried to trade him away a few weeks ago for some pitching help, and couldn’t find any suitors. That worked out for the best, though, as Peña has done nothing but continue to be one of the more consistent points producers in the entire league since then. Not only are his surface numbers great, but there are also enough underlying metrics that suggest his success is sustainable.
Peña is mostly excelling in the non-power metrics. His average exit velocities and barrel rates aren’t all that impressive, which is probably why he isn’t discussed among some of the other hitters surrounding his name in the current top-25 points league players for 2025. His contact-heavy approach, however, has his strikeout rate down to a career-low 15.1%, an important statistic for points leagues in particular. His expected batting average is lower than his current actual average, but still stands at a very respectable .284, hinting that any future slumps in Peña’s season are likely to not last very long nor be very profound.
The 14 stolen bases that Peña has racked up so far this year have him on pace to obliterate his previous career-high of 20. The increase we are seeing in his running game doesn’t come as too big of a surprise given the fact that Peña was moved up to the lead-off role on April 27 and has been locked into that role ever since. Previously stuck in the bottom half of the order, hitting sixth or seventh most nights, it was hard to get too excited about his potential, regardless of how well he was hitting. The lead-off spot has unlocked a new level in his production, though, both in runs scored and stolen bases, and it’s something we can expect to see for the remainder of the season. Even more impressive is the fact that Peña has been doing this without the added benefit of prodigious slugger Yordan Alvarez in the lineup, who has been sidelined on the IL for a significant amount of time, and with new addition Christian Walker having by far his worst season at the dish. If Yordan can return by the second half of the year and if Walker can regain even a semblance of the form he showed in Arizona for so many years, it becomes easy to imagine a season for Peña that includes 115 runs scored and 35 stolen bases. Along with an average that’s currently at .333 and could very well remain above .300 for the rest of the season, Peña is one of the most underrated hitters to target for points league production. Likely to not cost nearly as much as a name like Naylor or Suzuki, it would be wise to go after Peña now for a set-it-and-forget-it utility player who pours in the points.
