Go Make Your Own Luck

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.

Last Chance to Buy

Jac Caglianone had an ADP of 161 in March drafts at the NFBC. That draft cost baked in a lot of wishcasting, but that’s exactly what you do with a 23-year-old who is 6’4, 250 pounds and who hit the ball harder than just about anybody as a rookie last season. 

To start this season, he looked to have many of the same problems that plagued him as a rookie. Through May 10, which includes the first seven weeks of the season, the former Gator was slashing .238/.313/.400 with just four home runs and a 29.9% strikeout rate. His 44.8% groundball rate was better than the 50% he put up in 2025, but not enough better.

But you bet on the upside. Even at the end of that tough stretch, he showed signs of life. To end Week 7, Cags had a hit in four consecutive games, including two doubles, striking out only 18.8% of the time in those games. In Week 8, he hit his third home run of May, in the ninth inning against the Cardinals on May 16. 

In that game, Caglianone hit three balls over 104 mph, all in the air, two within that 20-30 degree range of launch angle that is ideal for home runs. This was the only hit of the bunch. 

When a player has a game like that, it doesn’t necessarily show up in the fantasy box scores. You don’t get points for hard hit balls that land in outfielders’ gloves. 

But it does signal to us that a breakthrough may be happening, with just a bit of batted ball luck. A changing process was leading to different results. A trio of hard hit fly balls for Cags? 

While he had no extra-base hits and hit just .217 in Week 9, he started in each of the Royals’ six games, which had not been the norm in the weeks prior, where he would often come in once or twice a week off the bench. He had two multi-hit games that week and stole a base. Now, the confidence was coming. 

In the nearly three weeks since then, he’s rewarded patient managers by going ballistic. Since May 25, Caglianone has slashed .400/.481/.644, heading into Thursday, with three homers, two steals, and five multi-hit games. The groundball rate dropped 10 points. He was spraying the ball to all fields with authority. He has looked like one of the strongest hitters in the game. 

But first impressions can be hard to change, even for a player with a pedigree and clear power upside like Caglianone’s.

The Team Italy star is rostered in just 57% of Yahoo leagues and in 71% of CBS leagues. Given the changes he’s made and the upside that tapping into his power could represent, I’d argue it should be much higher. 

Maybe you can still go add him in your shallower leagues.

But what about the players who haven’t gone on the Caglianone run yet. Can we find the players who are just on the cusp? Players where our investment of trust can net a higher return, thanks to the risk of them not having proven themselves to date.

Here are the hitters I have in mind. 

First up, Kyle Stowers. His 162 ADP in March drafts at the NFBC put him right around the range of Caglianone, though this was primarily due to an early end to the 2025 season and a tight right hamstring that caused him to miss time throughout Spring Training and to start this season on the IL. 

And to start the season, he struggled. Coming off of a breakout 2025, where Stowers hammered 25 homers and slashed .288/.368/.544, he hit just one home run through Week 8. More importantly, his flyball rate had tumbled down from 62% in 2025 to 46% to start this season.

While his average has not yet come around, he is starting to show managers why he was considered such a potentially potent bat in drafts. Since Week 9 began on May 17, Stowers has slugged .494 with four homers and 17 RBI. While the average sits at just .228 and he has yet to steal a base, he is clearly growing more comfortable at the plate. 

And the Marlins seem to trust him too. Since June 1, Stowers has hit second while bouncing between right field, left field, and first base. 

The change underlying this is that he is simply hitting balls in the air again, as he’s ran a 71% flyball rate since May 17, and he is continuing to square balls up when he does lift off. Here’s a visualization of this change via the Fangraphs Lab Squared-Up Explorer.

The blue represents last season, the gold his production through Week 8, and the pink his output since that point. Notice how similar the pink and blue lines are, in terms of launch angle, squared-up rate, and how frequently he is reaching that ideal combination for home runs. 

While managers in CBS leagues have largely held onto the 28-year-old (81% rostered), his ownership has fallen to 65% in Yahoo leagues. In either case, this could be one of your last chances to buy low on Stowers before he goes on a power binge this summer. 

And that power binge may just come in Week 15, when, as pointed out by Vlad Sedler, the Marlins get seven games, with four at Coors Field and three at Sutter Health Field against the A’s. 

Why can’t you roster him for that?

The story is similar for Alec Bohm. After a disappointing 2025 season, where the third baseman hit just 11 home runs and drove in only 59 RBI in 120 games, his ADP in March drafts at the NFBC was 229. 

And through much of the early part of this season, he wasn’t even living up to that price. Through Week 7, Bohm was slashing an abysmal .184/.250/.279. Hitting fourth on Opening day, Bohm was quickly dropped into the lower half of the order, hitting primarily seventh or eighth through April.

But as the team turned itself around under Don Mattingly, who took over the Phillies on April 28, so too did Bohm. Mattingly toyed with putting Bohm back near the top, hitting him fourth on May 3, before giving him a pair of games off to reset. 

A few days later, Mattingly was watching him homer twice in a game against the Rockies on May 9. 

After smacking hits in each of the next two games, Mattingly elevated him back up to the five spot on May 13.

Fantasy output is not purely about player skills. If Player A and Player B each are hitting .300 with 20 homers at the end of the year, in most cases, if Player A plays for a better team and hits higher in the order than Player B, he’ll end up with more runs and RBI. 

Well, moving up Bohm back into the part of the Phillies’ order where the big dogs live could only help. And help it has. Since that promotion, Bohm has rewarded his manager by slashing .283/.330/.485 with five home runs. 

He had 30 runs+RBI in his first 152 plate appearances this season. He has 24 runs+RBI in the 102 plate appearances since moving back into the top half of the lineup. And he’s running even hotter lately, hitting .314 with 13 runs+RBI since the calendar flipped to June. 

The pending free agent seems hungry to prove his worth. And he could still be a free agent in your league, as Bohm is rostered in 51% of CBS leagues and 40% of Yahoo leagues.

Who Could Be Up Next

I’ll wrap up with a rapid-fire round of some players who could be the next batch of relatively high ADP bats who were cast aside early but have the underlying skills to turn things around. 

Ezequiel Tovar: The young shortstop for the Rockies played just 95 games in 2025 while fighting through hip and oblique injuries, so his ADP in March drafts was down at 192, despite having demonstrated mid-twenties homer power in 2024. 

After putting on a show for Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic, Tovar has struggled to start the season, sitting at a .215/.263/.338 slash with five homers and four steals through Wednesday. Like Bohm, Tovar has spent a lot of time in the eighth spot in the lineup. 

But since being elevated to the six-hole on May 16, Tovar has seen some improvements, especially in the power department, as four of his five homers have come during that stretch. 

If you play in a points league, any version of Tovar may not work for you given his consistently high strikeout rate. But for categories managers, especially in head-to-head leagues where a big week can be the difference, Tovar represents a buying opportunity. 

Again citing Vlad Sedler’s piece on upcoming outlier offenses, the Rockies have one of the most hitter-friendly schedules over the next three weeks, as the team will play 13 of their next 19 at home. And Tovar’s home-road splits are about as clear as can be. 

He’s rostered in 29% of CBS leagues and 41% of Yahoo leagues.  

Matt McLain: McLain, who led off for the Reds on Wednesay, has been one of the more mercurial players this season. His hot spring training helped his March ADP jump up to 141, but struggles have seen his roster rate fall back down around 50% in both CBS and Yahoo. 

Since the calendar flipped to June, he’s slashed .308/.419/.731 with three homers and three steals. Before Elly De La Cruz comes back and the Great American Smallpark gets really jumpy this summer, now may present a strong buying opportunity. 

Colton Cowser: With Dylan Beavers injured, and Jeremiah Jackson and Tyler O’Neill both scuffling, the outfield in Baltimore should include Cowser on most days this summer. He has sat against every lefty over the last few weeks, but with the home run on Thursday, Cowser is up to four homers in his last 10 starts and is alternating between hitting fourth, sixth, or seventh of late. In daily lineup leagues, he should be must-start while the going is good, yet he is rostered in just 32% of CBS leagues and 14% of Yahoo leagues.

Lars Nootbaar: If you roster Cowser, you probably should consider Nootbaar. With a homer and a double on Thursday, the Cardinals longest-tenured player has been hot since coming off the IL on June 5. Since then, he has hit fifth and started each game, all against right-handed pitching. He’s right back to walking around as much as he strikes out, around 20% for each mark, and he already has popped a pair of homers. Nootbaar could be an attractive add in deeper leagues, and is on just 17% of CBS rosters and 4% of Yahoo teams.