Just a big old picture of TJ Rumfield as the featured graphic. What a strange season he had.

Today, we’ll look at batting average regressors. This is simple, easy, but good to do. And you guys like reading baseball articles in November, you sickos.

I remember when I first discovered BABIP. Probably back in 2010 or something. I was stupid about it. The logic in my head, I remember, was that .300 was the expected BABIP. Anything above that meant the guy would hit for a lower average next year. Anything below that, the opposite.

But it’s not that simple, and we now have expected batting average to use alongside of it.

So we’ll look at the hitters with the biggest gaps between their batting average and their expected batting average and look into some of the names.

AVG Above xBA

BIGGEST GAPS

I required at least 400 PAs for this. There were five hitters with at least a 30-point gap:

Chandler Simpson is the outlier of outliers in the batter’s box. He takes a different approach than almost anybody we’ve ever seen. He’s never had a barrel, he’s never hit an out-of-the-park homer in his professional career. He just slaps the ball somewhere and uses his league-leading 90 foot running splits to rack up knocks.

Fastest Hitters to First Base, 2026Chandler Simpson 3.68 secondsNasim Nunez 3.72 secondsHenry Bolte 3.73 secondsCorbin Carroll 3.73 secondsAJ Ewing 3.74 secondsDavid Hamilton 3.74 secondsWade Meckler 3.75 secondsGarrett Mitchell 3.75 secondsVictor Scott II 3.75 secondsSpencer Jones 3.76 seconds

There is one right-handed hitter on that list, Henry Bolte. It’s incredible that he’s #3 since all of the left-handers get a head start.

xBA, the way Statcast does it, does weigh in the speed of the hitter. So this gap isn’t explained away by him being faster than everybody else.

We should take the gap mostly seriously. The xBA was .261. I think it’s possible that the speed input they put into xBA didn’t really consider someone like Simpson. Like I said, this guy is unlike anyone else. Not only does he have speed, he also has this wizardry with the bat to where he’s able to put the ball seemingly exactly where he wants to.

FB%: 14% (lowest in league)
LD%: 22% (around average)
GB%: 62% (highest in league)

Lots of bunts, lots of intentional swinging bunts, persay. Just a guy who plays perfectly to his physical capabilities.

I’m not going to sit here on my computer in my living room and say that Simpson will hit .265 next year. But I’m also not going to ignore the xBA and say he’s going to hit .300 every year. I think you could see a drop to .280 in the future. Which is fine, you’ll still get your 40+ steals, and he did a whole lot of things this year that will give him a locked-in job next year. So he’s a fine pick, but maybe a bit overvalued by this .300 average in 2026.

TJ Rumfield is next. The posterboy. The big face of the post. His .331 BABIP was one of the highest in the league, and not something I see being repeatable. Coors helps (he hit .304 there and .294 on the road, so the splits weren’t wide), but nothing else in this profile supports a high BABIP.

He has 5th percentile sprint speed. I’m pretty sure I’m faster than that. No, I’m sure I’m faster than that. Give me some cleats, put the trackers on me, let me run. I bet I’m at least 40th percentile.

Rumfield also isn’t a line drive machine. The league average is 24%, he was at 26%. He hit 40% ground balls and 29% fly balls. His 38% Sweet Spot% was above the league average, but several points below the league leaders.

This looks like a lot of luck to me. To his credit, he does not strike out much at all (13.6%), so he’ll get some extra hits by virtue of just getting a ton of balls into play. But he’s like a .300 BABIP guy, so he seems like a big-time sell in the batting average department. Lots more on Rumfield in the Rockies preview that is published on the new site already, ready for you to read when we cut over.

Chase Meidroth is next. He has profiled in the past as a decent batting average guy, but I’m not seeing it in the data from 2026. Just a 35% Sweet Spot% (right at the league average), not very fast to first (ranked #335 in baseball), and the strikeout rate is only barely below league average (22%).

So I’m not buying a .335 AVG. I think he can strike out less and hit a few more line drives next year, but this .239 xBA is scary, especially when you consider that he doesn’t hit the ball super hard or steal many bags. It could be a pretty rough fantasy year for Meidroth in 2027.

Ceddanne Rafaela comes in with a .336 BABIP, with a 36-point gap between the xBA and AVG. We have a few seasons worth of data on him already, so we can look at the past BABIPs.

• 2024: .312
• 2025: .289
• 2026: .336

That makes it tough to believe in the boosted BABIP this past year. It’s a 25% LD% and 36% Sweet Spot%. Nothing special there. Just a pretty lucky year for Rafaela.

He did change his approach in 2026 and cooled down on the swing rate. He was near 60% in years prior, and calmed down to 52% last year. That doesn’t say much about his BABIP by itself, but it does help bring more pitches into the hitting zone since pitchers can’t just feed him junk balls and get cheap outs on bad pitches he chases. So I’m encouraged by that.

But I don’t think he’s a .285 hitter. He hit .246 in 2024 and .249 in 2025. And his 2026 xBA? .249. Looks like a .250 hitter to me!

Luke Keaschall rounds out this first group. A .317 BABIP, which is nothing crazy. But a .282 AVG on a .251 xBA. He’s not super fast to first (#143 in baseball), and his line drive rate was nothing to write home about at 24%.

He’s done this two years in a row now. Last year, it was a .302 AVG on a .263 xBA with a .340 BABIP.

So maybe he’s a model-beater. But we’re talking about 201 games in the bigs, not enough to stabilize anything. I’m going with the xBA here rather than the actual average, and saying that Keaschall will regress down below a .275 average next season. That leaves him lacking for fantasy goodness. He’s hit 14 homers in his big league career and swiped 34 bags. Good steals guy, but a liability in homers, putting a lot of pressure on him to hit for a high average to be good for your fantasy squads.

MORE BIG GAPS

Here’s everybody else above a 22-point gap:

We’ll focus just on the more fantasy-relevant players.

Jackson Chourio has BABIPs of .320 (rookie year), .308 (2025), and then the .348 mark we’re looking at now. He hit .291 in his awesome 2026 season, but came in with a .265 xBA. He’s #40 in the league in speed to first, which is impressive for a right-hander.

So he’s really fast, really freaking good, and doesn’t need to hit .290 for fantasy value. But the .273 batting average he hit for in his first two seasons is probably more like the truth than the .291 we got this year.

Everything went right for Nolan Arenado and Randy Arozarena in 2026. If you took both of those guys in your draft, you probably did very well.

But they’re both old and primed for some batting average regression next year. I’d be really worried about a pretty nasty fall-off for Randy after he gets this multi-year contract and heads into his age-32 season. He’s a 20-20 machine with 53 homers and 57 steals the last two years in his 30s. Very good fantasy player, annually underrated.

I don’t think he’ll be drafted with the expectation of a 25-25 guy with a .280 average, but he’s certainly going to be more expensive in 2027 than he has been in recent years. He’s probably not signing back with Seattle, so there could be a positive park shift for him, but color me skeptical once again on big Randy.

This was his first time above a .240 batting average in the last four years, and it went all the way up to .281 with a .258 xBA.

I think he’s like a 24-homer, 20-steal, .260 guy next year.

Seiya Suzuki is another big-name free agent. I could see him returning to the Cubs, but he’ll be out there looking for the biggest offer. He hit .270 in 2026. He did hit .283 in 2024, but his xBA’s have been right around .250 every year.

His BABIPs have not been consistent.

• 2024: .370
• 2025: .282
• 2026: .330

Up, down, up. Who knows, man. He’s not fast, his line drive/sweet spot stuff is average. He’s a good ball player, and maybe he’ll beat the xBA again, but I’m not buying as a guy who will help a fantasy team’s batting average. His 25% K% is middling, and he’s kinda old now at 32 years old. Most of these guys coming over from Japan come over after they’re 25, so their careers feel short to us.

The landing spot will dictate a lot. He has power, he’s definitely a legit big leaguer, and a bat any team would welcome, but I’ll sell as a batting average contributor in 2027.

Zach Neto is an interesting character. He has poor plate discipline (31% K%, 9.8% BB%, 37% Chase%). He hits a ton of fly balls (36%) with his uppercut swing.

So that’s a horrible recipe for batting average. Strikeouts and fly balls. Somehow, he managed a .320 BABIP, the highest of his career.

His xBA was .216 this year. That is awful. But he hit .239 after hitting .249 in 2024 and .257 in 2026.

So I’m not thinking he’s truly a .210 hitter. But I’m very confident he’s going to be a batting average liability.

The good news is that he’s a 25-25 guy. He’s cleared 23 homers in all three seasons and has a minimum of 23 steals (2026) on his ledger. Neto is very good at HR+SB, but you might look up a year from now and see that he put a .220 batting average on the board.

I’m also worried about his steals, as you’ll see in the Angels preview. He didn’t run as often in 2026 and got thrown out a lot. They might ease up on that part of his game.

HIGHEST BABIP EXAMINATIONS

Some guys can go .350 year-in and year-out. Brandon Marsh and Riley Greene are examples of that.

But nobody’s doing .387 consistently, so it’s a bit of a red flag on the .262 average with his high strikeout rate. However, the .268 xBA wasn’t that far off. The bigger concern with Mitchell is health and how often he pounds the ball into the ground.

There are a lot of really good hitters on the high BABIP list. Lots of guys who hit the ball really hard, run fast, and hit to very good angles. You shouldn’t just see a .350 BABIP and assume automatically they were lucky.

The biggest concern on this list is probably Nick Gonzales, who doesn’t do much for fantasy leagues other than hit for batting average. And I don’t think he’ll be able to repeat a .360 BABIP. If he falls down to .280, you’re left with a guy not helping you very much since he hit just six homers and stole seven bags in 2026.

Carson Benge is here. He had a fantastic rookie year and was somewhat in the ROY conversation. He developed very well through the year. Over the final three months, he hit .309/.375/.472. And he was able to get to 20 homers and 22 steals in his rookie campaign.

Maybe there’s a sophomore slump coming. Not every young player improves in their second year. Sometimes pitchers get the book on a guy and figure out a way to get him out in year two. But Benge’s skill set looks to give him a pretty high floor. Very solid 86% Zone Contact%, 27% LD%, 40% Sweet Spot%. It’s a short, compact swing. I’d be more worried about his power falling off than his batting average (.277 xBA, but a 7.3% Brl% and 103.6 EV90 on fly balls). But he could also just improve as a player since he’s still just 23 years old. No reason not to feel pretty good about Benge as an OF2 on your team next year.

AVG Below xBA

Let’s flip it around and look at guys who should see their batting average come up next year.

Nico Hoerner hitting .263 doesn’t make a lot of sense. He hit at least .270 in every season prior, and his career batting average is near .280. He has a short swing, he runs fast, he makes contact in the zone at a rate of 95%. This was by far the lowest BABIP of his career, so we’re buying him as a .280+ hitter again next year.

Jose Ramirez had a bad regular season by his standards. And he’s 34 now. So we’re a little worried about the age. He’s never been a super high BABIP guy with his fly ball swing. But he’s been around .280-.290 for most of his career, so falling 40 points on that looks like some bad luck. His average EV was really close to what it was in 2023-2025, so that’s good. But his barrel rate did fall to 4.1%. He hasn’t been a double-digit Brl% guy since 2021, usually coming in around 8% (the league average). I do think there’s some physical degradation involved with this, and the fact that he hit only a dozen homers will reduce the price a good bit. But he still stole 37 bags with awesome plate skills. I’m willing to buy low on J-Ram, but how low will it be? I doubt he falls out of the top 25 in drafts, so you’ll be really hoping the power outage was a fluke rather than the new norm. But I’m confident the BABIP will come up, and we’ll get another .270+ AVG with 30+ steals and hopefully 20 homers or so next year. Betting against J-Ram doesn’t usually work.

Ketel Marte hit .292 in 2024, .283 in 2025, and then this .249 in 2026. He was flying below his xStats for most of the season. His K% was actually a three-year best at 13.8%, and the EVs and angles were good. The age is up there at 33 years, but his best tool has long been the batting average. I don’t think he’s suddenly a .250 hitter now after what he had shown in the prior years, and the xBA backs that up.

I told you that Cam Smith would be in every post! Here he is again. A poor .235 xBA driven by the launch angles not being well distributed. That’s the thing he needs to fix, we know that he has stud-level tools if he can get that done.

And even if he doesn’t figure that out, it seems like the .210 average he hit for was unlucky. I think he improves and gets to at least a .240 average next year, and hopefully the home runs and steals come in bunches with how good he is.

But there’s no guarantee. I don’t want to draft Cam Smith on every team thinking there’s no way he can fail. He can fail again, just like he has the first two years. You’re betting on the tools and on him finally taking the next step with the bat control and swing decisions. But the good news here is that he should have had more hits than he had last year even with those problems going on.

The .231 BABIP on Manny Machado was way, way down from prior years. He had a .302 BABIP in 2024 and .307 mark in 2025. This was uncommon for him.

There were other bad signs, though. His .243 xBA was down 30 points from the prior year, his .420 xSLG was down 70 points from 2025. The age is a factor here, and that home ballpark isn’t very forgiving when guys start losing some quality of contact.

I don’t think we’re getting back to a .275 batting average for Machado, but I’m betting on a much better future than the .711 OPS he posted last year.

My guess is like .250/.320/.440 with 26 homers. Very solid, albeit boring player at third base.

Next group:

Kyle Tucker and Gunnar Henderson were first round picks in a lot of leagues, and they both depressed us. But there’s some good news here in that Tucker had a .257 BABIP (career .280) and Henderson was at .261 (.300 career). They had problems, and they didn’t play very well in a lot of ways, but their BABIP was driven by some bad fortune and they should be hitters we’re willing to take the 2027 discount on with hopes that they realize some of the ceiling we know they have.

I don’t think they’ll be “my guys” candidates, but I’m always looking to buy talented players at a lower ADP.

Bobby Witt Jr. was a .340 BABIP guy in the prior two years. He fell down to .320. So this is a good example of weighing BABIP at the individual level. Witt’s one of the best players in the game and should be expected for a very high BABIP every year. So while his .320 mark was above the league average, it’s below our expectations for him.

He had a .302 xBA while putting up his worst batting average of the last three years. The thing that has kept him from being the most valuable fantasy bat in the game is the lack of a big home run total. Just 23 in 2025, 18 in 2026. He’s not up there trying to club 40 bombs. His swing is built for high-EV ground balls and line drives. But we’ve seen him get to 30+ bombs already, and I think we’ll see that again at some point.

His “down year” in 2026 was an .800 OPS with 18 bombs and 45 steals. If that’s the floor, we’ll take it in the early first round. But you should probably prioritize a 30+ homer bat with one of your next picks if that’s how you start.

Jarren Duran is the last name I want to hit on. I don’t think anybody’s going to want to draft the guy after this .627 OPS season. He hit .207 with a .266 OBP. Those are gross numbers.

But his xBA shows that he should have maybe hit .240, and he still got to 20 homers and 21 steals. You’re looking at a potential .250 hitter with something like 25-25 if things go well. And he’s going to be very cheap.

Here’s the data file if you want to see the full thing.

I’m doing detailed analysis on all fantasy-relevant players during the team previews series. So be ready for a lot more! Thanks for reading.