Welcome back once again to Position Player Playing Time Changes. As a refresher, the table now includes new columns to better detail the percent changes. League-wide, the 30 teams average 90 remaining games, so the remaining plate appearances are right-sized to that number.

Every Monday, this column will break down the most popular waiver wire and free agent acquisitions of the weekend.

Fantasy baseball managers know that our game is the ultimate test of grit, grind, tenacity, and patience. Unlike fantasy football, where league titles can be won with minimal in-season activity, fantasy baseball leagues require incessant attention and activity. Particularly when it comes to free agent adds and drops. Real-life baseball managers are constantly adjusting batting orders, players are frequently optioned to and promoted from the Minor Leagues, and injuries occur almost daily. There’s no resting on our laurels. We must always stay vigilant with league news and notes and remain active on the waiver wire if we want to win our leagues.

Every week, I’ll dig into the top adds on the ever-popular Fantrax and in the NFBC Online Championship (OC), a national mid-stakes contest with 240 total leagues of 12 and a six-figure grand prize. Reviewing player adds between the two should provide us with a well-rounded perspective and barometer of the fantasy baseball marketplace.

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At this stage of the season, the impact of luck, or lack thereof, starts to take form and become a meaningful predictor for the rest of the year.

But BABIP can be a noisy stat in isolation. I wanted to identify which hitters were getting lucky when putting balls in play, but also wanted to add a layer that allows us to assess that luck relative to fantasy value and overall offensive production.

The idea for this piece actually came from a curiosity around one specific hitter, which I will come to later, but it is a useful exercise to get a broader sense of the BABIP landscape as we enter the summer months.

So which hitters are potentially providing an unsustainable output, and which could be worth buying low on or holding onto?

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It’s been a few weeks since we covered several rookie hitters. Rookies have been making a significant impact on the fantasy baseball landscape from a pitching and hitting standpoint. Several rookie hitters and pitchers have been starting in fantasy lineups instead of simply being stash candidates. These rookie hitters have name value, so they could be possible candidates to buy, sell, or hold based on their underlying metrics, skills, playing time, and peak projections. Read the rest of this entry »

With all of the preparation that goes into draft season, it’s easy to throw that all out of the window when you come into June and a guy is hitting .180 and has fallen far outside of the top-ranked players in the majors. 

This is especially true for managers in 10- and 12-team leagues. In these formats, the quality and depth of the waiver wire is never better than it is in April and into early May. 

Contrast that with the struggles and small sample size bloated ERAs and miniscule counting stats, and it is easy to see why so many of us contemplate dropping players we considered ourselves excited to draft just a few weeks before the season. 

In this article, I’ll look back at some of the hitters the industry liked heading into this season, noting their current roster rates and player rater values, and why you should consider buying back in while you still can. I’ll start with players who have already demonstrated some value of late and wrap up with blurbs on some names who could be next.

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Only Crooks in the Building!

Congrats to Jimmy on his first home run of 2026.

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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You must be able to see it, Mr. Manager. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Manager? Why? Why do you persist?

Because you choose to. Because sifting through recently discarded hitters is your jam. Because the occasionally interesting platoon bat may just be set up for an interesting occasion. 

So, why do we persist? Because we all do. Why play fantasy baseball if not to savor the constant oneupsmanship. Oh yeah, pal o’ mine, you’re going to burn your FAAB on the hot young prospect? So what, I’ve got the entire Rockies lineup in Bing Bong Ballpark in Vegas this weekend. 

Beat that. 

In this article, I’ll use the Fangraphs Lab Baseball Sim tool to highlight some potential hitters to stream in this weekend’s juiciest matchups. And I’ll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes and the extent of how you can use the Sim tool yourself. 

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He says he wants to be the “face of the franchise.

His name is Bryce Eldridge.

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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In mid-April, I introduced my process of reviewing matchups and schedules in two- to three-week windows to identify outliers and potential short-term gains. The basic premise is that rest-of-season (ROS) analysis has high margins of error and that it is better to compartmentalize fantasy decision-making into short-term timeframes. We do not know who will get hurt and whether a specific team would be a good or bad matchup one month or two months from now. In that April article, the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets stood out as positive outliers. The White Sox crushed over the 3.5-week window, ranking fourth in runs and top three in isolated power and wRC+. The Mets were a huge letdown, though they were without offensive leader Juan Soto and other key hitters for parts of that stretch. Soon thereafter, Francisco Lindor joined the injury party.

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Welcome to this week’s iteration of Position Player Playing Time Changes. As with last Friday’s post for pitchers, I added some new columns to better contextualize the percent changes. Since each team has, on average, 96 games remaining, the rest-of-season remaining plate appearance totals are pegged to that number, in addition to showing the percentages as usual. That should help you better wrap your head around the impact of the changes.