There are a few obvious candidates in the top 10 of the FanGraphs Player Rater. James Wood and Pete Crow-Armstrong have been incredible so far, but both stumbled badly in the second half of last season, so until we see them run through the finish line, we won’t know they can. The same is true for CJ Abrams, who has been a second-half dude more than one time, while Ben Rice has never played at this level for a full season.
But the most obvious candidates are obviously the two biggest surprises among that top 10: Jordan Walker and Otto Lopez. I think Lopez is more obviously overperforming to date, with his underlying numbers suggesting he’s more like a .290 hitter than his league-best .334 mark; that this is also a huge outlier for his career makes it even more likely he won’t keep it up, hence his inclusion in my “Second Half Busts” earlier this week. I think he’s the most likely of this group to fall short.
Walker’s performance is way out of step with anything we’ve ever seen from him, and the fact that he slumped in June and then came roaring back with arguably his best stretch of the season in July before the break speaks well to his ability to adapt to his new skill level. I’m still not entirely sold – I didn’t have Walker in my “Re-drafting the first two rounds” piece while Scott White had him 18th overall in his – but with the underlying numbers backing him up and the breakout sustaining over basically four full months, I’m not expecting the bottom to fall out here.
The Yankees trade for Tarik Skubal
I know the cynical take is that he’s going to the Dodgers, and they certainly have both the prospect haul and aggressiveness to get it done. But it would be a huge luxury for the Dodgers, so maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I don’t know if that’s really how they want to spend their prospect surplus.
You could argue Skubal would be a luxury for the Yankees, and I’ve even seen some Yankees fans say as much. But Max Fried and Carlos Rodon are still recovering from elbow injuries, Gerrit Cole doesn’t look quite like himself since coming back from Tommy John surgery, and both Ryan Weathers and Will Warren have run into trouble over the past month-plus and carry pretty big question marks into the second half. The Yankees probably have bigger needs on offense, but Skubal is still the most impactful player who is likely to change hands this summer, and the Yankees have a much bigger need to get something big done. I think they do it.
One hitter currently outside the top-100 finishes in the top 10
Because it’s been such a strange season for the early-round picks, there’s no shortage of options to pick from here. There are six different preseason top-50 picks who currently rank outside of the top 100 hitters:
- Ronald Acuña Jr. – ADP: 5.26
- Cal Raleigh – ADP: 18.73
- Francisco Lindor – ADP: 25.35
- Manny Machado – ADP: 37.52
- Wyatt Langford – ADP: 37.75
- Brent Rooker – ADP: 42.11
Rooker is out for the season after knee surgery, so it won’t be him. But I think any of the other five are reasonable candidates to do it. Acuna seems likeliest, hence why I picked him as a second-half breakout, but I’m not sure I expect him to run much in the second half, so that’s an obstacle. Lindor is a perfect fine bet for this one, both because his current ranking is heavily influenced by how much time he has missed and because he’s a notoriously strong finisher. He was definitely in consideration for the second round of both Scott and my “re-drafting the first two rounds” exercise, so a top-10 finish the rest of the way would be well within the range of expectations here.
Paul Skenes finishes the season with an ERA under 3.00
Seeing as Skenes had an ERA below 2.00 in each of his first two seasons, this one wouldn’t have seemed so bold a few months ago. But Skenes has struggled lately, and combined with some declining fastball velocity, it seems like much of the Fantasy world is on the verge of panicking about one of the best young pitchers we’ve ever seen. And hey, I get it – declining fastball velocity and spin rate are often correlated with looming injury risk, and Skenes has had multiple starts with his lowest fastball velocity ever over the past month or so. I’m not saying there’s nothing there.
But if I thought the bottom was about to fall out for Skenes, I would want there to be more warning signs to get me there. The 4.60 ERA since the start of June certainly stands out, especially when combined with the declining velocity. But the rest of the numbers don’t really paint that picture. Sure, his 3.24 xERA in that span isn’t quite as good as he’s been in the past, but it’s still a borderline elite mark, and it has come with 30% strikeout rate and 6.5% walk rate, right around where we expect him to be. Skenes hasn’t been quite right, but when the worst stretch of your career comes with ERA estimators in the 3.00 range, you’re pretty good. I had to talk Scott and Frank Stampfl into including Skenes in our first two rounds re-draft, but my confidence in him hasn’t really been shaken.
Justin Wrobleski finishes the season with an ERA over 4.00
Wrobleski has improved as the season has gone on, finding a bit more strikeout upside over the past month or so, especially. However, even during a seven-start stretch where he has pushed his strikeout rate to roughly league average, his 2.22 ERA has come along with a 3.90 xERA. The Dodgers excellent defense helps, but Wrobleski has inarguably been one of the luckiest pitchers in baseball this season, and that luck is going to run out at some point. He’s been a boon for a Dodgers team missing Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, but I also think there’s some risk Wrobleski just ends up out of the rotation at some point in the second half when Snell and Glasnow are ready to return. If he struggles the way I suspect he will, that decision will be made even easier.
Cal Raleigh finishes the season with 25 homers
Another one that wouldn’t have seemed bold at all before the season, coming off a 60-homer season that still doesn’t feel real. Well, he has just nine in 65 games, so he’ll need to pretty much double that pace to hit this mark … and I’m betting on it. Raleigh’s been a disaster all season long and the underlying numbers buy it, but unless those oblique injuries just completely wrecked his athleticism, I’m only asking Raleigh to more or less be the guy he was prior to 2025 to get 16 more homers the rest of the way.
Mike Trout gets to 30 homers for the first time since 2022
The most important part here is that he’ll need to stay healthy. 78 games in the first half stands as a win for Trout, and he’s on pace for 130 games for the second year in a row. We’ll take that, seeing as he hadn’t even reached that relatively low bar since 2019 before last season. He’s on pace for exactly 30 homers if he ends up playing 130 games, so I’d like to see him pick that pace up a bit, and the good news for Trout is that his underlying numbers have rebounded after declining in 2025. That comes from both improvement in his strikeout rate to 24.6%, his best mark since 2020 (not counting a 29-game sample in 2024), as well as improvement in his quality of contact, with his barrel rate up to a career-best 20% mark and his expected wOBA on contact up to .497, his best since 2023. Prior to his June IL stint for a hamstring injury, Trout was showing improved sprint speed and defensive metrics from last season, so I remain optimistic about what he’s going to do as long as he remains on the field.
Eury Perez is a top-20 SP in the second half
My stance on Perez since his return from Tommy John surgery has been simple and consistent: He’s going to be an ace at some point, of that I’m certain. I didn’t want to put a timetable on it, because pitchers never develop in a linear fashion, but it sure looks like he’s starting to figure things out, putting together a 1.35 ERA and 2.50 xERA in his final six starts before the break. That those six starts were sandwiched around an IL stint that he rushed back from makes his dominance even more impressive. His stuff has remained consistently elite, but the biggest improvement has come from his command, with Perez’s Location+ metric jumping from 91 before this stretch to 96 since – still below average, but playable with his stuff. Command tends to come and go, so if Perez stumbles coming out of the break, I certainly won’t be surprised. But I also expect the light to stay on here once he figures it out, so I’m betting that he already has.
Esmerlyn Valdez is rostered in less than 50% of leagues by September
Nobody wants to throw cold water on the recent hot breakout, but sometimes we must. Valdez has real power, and his strikeout struggles aren’t totally the result of hit tool issues – he’s a very patient hitter at the plate, which is a virtue, even if it also leads to deeper counts that put him at strikeout risk. I point that out to say that I don’t think he’s a total fluke, nor is he someone who I think is going to flame out as something less than an MLB-caliber hitter. I think he can be one! But this feels a lot like Austin Riley’s rookie season, when he homered 16 times in his first 48 games but eventually slumped badly enough to be sent back to Triple-A. That didn’t foreclose Riley’s future as a productive hitter, but it does highlight the risk of buying into a player with these kinds of swing and miss issues, and I think the drop-off could come hard and fast for Valdez.
At least one current minor-leaguer is a top-50 player in the second half of the season
It could be Kade Anderson, who has probably been the single most impressive player in the minors this season but who doesn’t have an obvious fit in the Mariners rotation right now (but could by the deadline). It could be one of the Dodgers’ seemingly endless collection of corner infielders, like Mike Sirota, who is probably the only hitter who can match Anderson’s dominance on the mound.
Joshua Baez, Charlie Condon, Angel Sanoa, and Seaver King all seem like the most likely top prospects to be called up, according to Scott’s mid-season top-50 prospects update, and Baez and Condon especially have the upside to be top-50 players if all goes right for them. Baez mostly just seems to come down to the Cardinals having enough faith in his glove to trust him in center field, while Condon just needs the Rockies to clear out some playing time gluts – something I wouldn’t have had faith in them doing in previous years, but which I think they’ll do by the break this time around.
But it could be someone totally off our radars right now. Last season, Jakob Marsee emerged as a must-start player after getting called up on Aug. 1, and nobody saw that one coming. It happens often enough that you always have to be open to the possibility.
