We’re not quite at the point in the baseball schedule where we start to look ahead to 2026, but we’re not far, either. In points leagues, playoffs are starting soon, while many of you in Roto leagues should have a pretty good sense of what your chances of winning the championship this season are. A lot of you are pretty close to not having much to play for down the stretch.
But that doesn’t mean you need to just unplug entirely and divert 100% of your attention to Fantasy Football. You’re free to do so, of course, but you’re going to put yourself at a disadvantage for 2026. If you checked out in early August last season, you would have missed late-season breakouts from Pete Crow-Armstrong, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Eugenio Suarez that proved to be pretty predictive for how they would play in 2025.
So, with just four games on the schedule Thursday and much of the dust settled from the trade deadline, I thought this would be a good time to take a step back and offer a broader view of the Fantasy landscape heading into the stretch run. At the bottom of today’s newsletter, you’ll still find some notes on what you need to know from Thursday’s action, but the bulk is going to be dedicated to eight big questions to look forward to for the final two months of the season.
Let’s start with one big one we’re already getting a lot of questions about:
Eight big questions for the stretch run
1. Can Nick Kurtz play his way into No. 1 1B territory for 2026?
We’re already starting to have some discussions about this topic on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast, and why not? He’s spent the past two months seemingly homering every night, and not only is he the No. 1 first baseman in Fantasy since June 9, he’s also the No. 1 hitter in Fantasy at any position since then.
Of course, Randy Arozarena is No. 3 and Trevor Story is No. 4, and I don’t think anyone’s pounding the table for either of them to be the top players at their respective positions. But Kurtz is a rookie on the ascent, and those guys are established veterans, so it makes sense to buy into his strong stretch more. But is that enough to make him the best player at a position with luminaries like Bryce Harper, Vladimir Guerrero, Freddie Freeman, Pete Alonso, and Matt Olson? For as good as Kurtz has been (a 1.180 OPS over his past 45 games), it’s not like those veterans are strangers to that level of success; Harper, Guerrero, and Freeman have all had stretches of at least 45 games with an OPS of at least 1.100, and Olson had one as recently as 2023.
And, as good as Kurtz is, he’s probably a bit over his head right now. He’s sporting a .375 BABIP for the season, a mark only 13 hitters have matched from 2015 through 2024 (excluding the shortened 2020). His .269 expected batting average would still be an excellent mark for a slugger like Kurtz, but it shows that his .304 actual mark probably won’t prove sustainable. Kurtz is a terrific talent, and certainly the No. 1 first baseman in any Dynasty ranking. And the fact that the rest of the high-end competition at first base are either in their 30s, or in the case of Vladimir Guerrero, just defined by inconsistency, I think you can make a case for Kurtz as the top pick at the position.
But his is probably going to be a fairly volatile profile given the massive swing and miss issues, and I’d like to see him keep this up for a few more months before I anoint him the top option at the position. But he’s not far off.
2. Which unexpected breakouts can sustain their success?
I’m not talking about Pete Crow-Armstrong (yet), Jeremy Peña, or Geraldo Perdomo here; those guys have prospect pedigree and were at least somewhat established before their 2024 breakouts.
I’m talking about the more surprising recent breakouts, names like Andrew Vaugn or Isaac Collins on the hitting side, or Trevor Rogers, Ryne Nelson, Eric Lauer, Quinn Priester, or Edward Cabrera on the pitching side. Heck, you might even be able to throw a name like Colson Montgomery in here – he’s got plenty of prospect pedigree, but also hasn’t had an OPS north of .750 in a minor-league season since 2023, making his current .851 mark in his first 25 MLB games stand out as a pretty significant surprise. We’re all mostly assuming these are flash-in-the-pan situations that will peter out soon enough. But if any of these guys can truly keep it up, well, we’re going to have to have some real conversations about them for 2026.
3. Can Pete Crow-Armstrong keep it up?
Crow-Armstrong’s breakout has been arguably the defining story of the first four months of the season, and he just might be the NL MVP frontrunner right now. His swing decisions are still pretty bad – his 43.4% chase rate is in the first percentile among all hitters on the season – but his bat control has been surprisingly strong, helping him avoid strikeouts and consistently put the ball in the air to the pull side. He’s been one of the handful of best hitters in Fantasy, and I’m sure many of you think he belongs in the first-round discussion for 2026.
But it’s too soon to have those discussions. You can say I’m anchoring to my preseason “bust” take too strongly, but while I’ll grant he’s taken some of the low-end outcomes off the table – I think it’s unlikely he’ll ever be one of the worst everyday hitters in baseball, something I thought was on the table as a rookie – there’s still a lot of volatility in Crow-Armstrong’s profile. We’re seeing it in his recent slump, which has seen him go 11 straight games without a homer, while striking out 36% of the time with just two walks. His playing time still seems secure thanks to his elite defense, but if Crow-Armstrong puts together something like a .700 OPS over the final two months, it’s going to raise some serious questions about his value for 2026.
We know he has superstar upside. Can he avoid the low-end outcomes, too?
4. Can Mackenzie Gore turn the ship around?
Here we go again. As I wrote in Wednesday’s FBT Newsletter, Gore is collapsing in the late summer for the second year in a row. He hinted at some underlying, nagging injuries last year to explain it, but he didn’t have a good explanation for why he was tagged for eight runs in three innings in Tuesday’s start. Like Crow-Armstrong, we’ve seen some super high-end outcomes from Gore in each of the past two seasons, but he’s struggled enough after that to mostly give it all the way back. If he doesn’t manage to replicate last season’s late-season success – six quality starts in his final seven tries with a 1.55 ERA in that span – it may not be a question worth asking outside of the later rounds on Draft Day. At this point, Gore might be pitching just to make himself draftable for 2026.
5. How high can Jacob Misiorowski and Chase Burns climb up the rankings?
We’re going to have a lot of time to argue about these two in the offseason. In Burns’ case, there might only be so high he can climb – with Nick Lodolo and Hunter Greene likely to be back in the rotation before the end of August, he might be shut down or sent to the bullpen for the stretch run. He’s been impressive in some ways – 36% strikeout rate – but also has a 6.04 ERA through his first seven starts, so there might not be quite as immediate a demand that we rank him like an ace. The upside is there, and at this point, given how impressive the stuff is despite the iffy results, I’m inclined to think Burns should be ranked as a top-36 starting pitcher next season, and he’ll likely only go up from here.
Misiorowski is a different beast altogether. Though he’s currently on the IL with an injury that seems as much about managing his innings as anything else, the hype has already gotten out of control. He famously made the All-Star game after just three starts, and I think if we were drafting for 2026 right now, plenty of people would make the case for him as a top-12 SP. The upside is clearly there – an identical strikeout rate as Burns, but with a 2.70 ERA thanks to elite quality of contact suppression. And the quality of the stuff is absurd – he’s like peak Jacob deGrom in an NBA small forward’s body. The command lags well behind the rest of the profile, but that clearly hasn’t mattered so far.
Will it? Major-league hitters have a tendency to catch up quickly when pitchers take the league by storm, and Misiorowski’s minor-league track record wasn’t all smooth sailing. I’m inclined to rank him as a top-24 SP for 2026 right now, but I also don’t know if the talent gap between him and Burns is as big as the consensus might suggest right now.
6. Can Kyle Stowers keep it up?
Did you realize Stowers is fourth in the NL in OPS? Or that his underlying numbers actually totally back it up? He is sitting on a .396 wOBA for the season, with a .390 xwOBA that ranked 19th in the majors, in a virtual tie with superstars like Manny Machado, Kyle Tucker, Bryce Harper, and Fernando Tatis. And he’s been remarkably consistent throughout the season, with an xwOBA of at least .379 in each of the first four months of the season. That is at least in part because the Marlins have grown increasingly aggressive about sitting him against the toughest lefties, though it’s worth noting that he has a .327 xwOBA against left-handed pitching for the season, which isn’t good but is at least playable.
Stowers is also a 27-year-old who was viewed as a Quad-A player this time last year. He’s been incredible this season, thanks in large part to a swing that is both unusually compact – 205th in swing length out of 217 qualifiers – for how hard he swings – 23rd in average bat speed. That kind of direct, fast swing could help explain why Stowers has been able to remain so productive despite some pretty alarming plate discipline metrics. But if I’m going to ding Crow-Armstrong for poor plate discipline, it’s hard to overlook his fourth percentile whiff rate and eighth percentile strikeout rate. He could be the next Brent Rooker, who hasn’t quite lived up to last year’s numbers but has still been a pretty excellent value in 2025, and I suspect Stowers will have a pretty heavy discount on his 2025 production for next year’s drafts even if he closes out the season strong.
7. Can Gunnar Henderson play his way back into the first-round discussion?
Here’s the problem with Henderson: He hasn’t really played like a first-rounder for over a year. He was incredible in the first half of 2024, nearly matching Aaron Judge homer-for-homer, but he hasn’t been that guy since last summer. Over the past year, Henderson is hitting .274 with 88 runs, 21 homers, 70 RBI, and 21 steals in 155 games – just about what he’s managed in 2025. That’s not bad production, but it’s pretty close to your typical Randy Arozareano season, and nobody’s banging the table for him to be a first-rounder next season. Henderson still hits the ball plenty hard, but he isn’t maximizing his raw power well – his barrel rate is just in the 50th percentile, while his expected ISO is in the 37th percentile. In large part, because, while he’s in the 92nd percentile for average exit velocity overall, that drops to 65th percentile on line drives and fly balls. Henderson is still young enough to tap back into more real power, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen it.
8. Which disappointing ace can salvage their value the most?
I have a lot of faith in the relatively disappointing likes of Logan Gilbert and George Kirby to close out the season strong, and I suspect Blake Snell is about to go on one of those runs that makes everyone forget that he usually only has about two good months every season. So I’m talking about the truly disappointing names that have a lot of work to do to rebuild their value. And here are three I’m expecting to do exactly that down the stretch:
- Dylan Cease – 4.60 ERA, 3.41 xERA. That kind of explains it. He’s been a huge disappointment and one of the most frustrating pitchers in baseball, but he’s still tremendously talented and should remind us of that down the stretch.
- Bryce Miller – Miller’s elbow injury seemed like it would wreck his whole season, but now he’s down on his rehab assignment in Triple-A and was sitting at 96.4 mph in his most recent start, up nearly two mph from his season average and even 1.2 mph higher than last season’s. That’s no guarantee Miller will pitch well – or stay healthy – but it’s the best reason we’ve had to be optimistic about him all season.
- Spencer Arrighetti – Okay, this guy’s not an ace, but he could be one. It’s been a rough season so far, but I still believe in the stuff and the organization he pitches for, and if he goes on a run down the stretch like he did last season, he could pitch his way into the top-36 discussion.
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