Collette Calls: Are We Believing What We're Seeing?

I really wanted to title this Bona Fide or Bonifacio, but it's likely trademarked by the ESPN Fantasy Focus because it was one of the best bits of the podcast back in the day. We last saw Emilio Bonifacio in a major-league uniform when he played three games for the Nationals in 2020, but he was far from bona fide as he went hitless and was even caught stealing in his only attempt that season. He still plays on the Independent circuit, playing in 81 games across four teams last season and even played in 32 games in the winter league this year, at age 40, despite a .433 OPS. 

We are currently seeing several rather surprising performances in 2026, as I covered a few weeks ago looking at where the standard 5x5 category leaders were compared to 2025. However, I want to focus on things at a skills level with some players so you can decide if this new level of performance for the player is bona fide before you build your second half title run on a house of cards. We will start with the Big Amish, Nick Kurtz.

Kurtz is off to a tremendous start, and has particularly enjoyed hitting in Sacramento and Las Vegas with impressive counting category production from first base. However, his 20.6 percent walk rate, even in this season of adjustment with the ABS system, is the focal point here. Kurtz had a 12.9 percent walk rate in his rookie season but has greatly increased that despite little change to his chase rate. Kurtz had a 22.2 percent O-Swing% in 2025, and has slightly improved that to 21.3 percent this season. The bigger driver is the decline in pitches that Kurtz sees in the zone, which has dropped nearly five percentage points from last season. The high walk rate and the high, yet improved, strikeout rate combined with the home runs does results in fewer balls in play, helping Kurtz maintain a high BABIP. That figure is currently .386, running higher than the .364 he had last season. His current walk rate would be the highest we have seen post-pandemic since Juan Soto's 20.9 percent walk rate in 2023. Kurtz and Mike Trout, both this season, are the only batters other than Soto to get to a 20 percent walk rate over the first three months of a season. Kurtz is now halfway to his 36 homers from last season but behind his torrid pace from last year. The weather is warming in Sacramento, so anything is still possible here. We are either watching some history, or something gives this summer. I will lean toward the former.

Speaking of history, how about the tear James Wood is on this year?

Wood was coming off an overall strong 2025 and having one of those third-year breakout seasons this season as he is on pace to set career-highs across the board. His 17.4 percent walk rate is up five full percentage points from last season while his strikeout rate has dropped three percentage points. Wood, like Kurtz, has slightly reduced his O-Swing% while improving his in-zone contact to a career-best level thus far. Wood's current .415 OBP is one of the 10 best we have seen in the past five seasons and is currently bested only by Kurtz, Yordan Alvarez and Shohei Ohtani this season. 

Wood was a depreciated asset coming into draft season because of his league-leading 221 strikeouts in 2025 as well as the fresh reminder how his swing and miss fell apart as the season went on last year. His production was very front-loaded last year, with a 150 wRC+ in the first half compared to just a 93 wRC+ in the second half:

Wood is pacing toward a historic season, but he was also there last season as well before the wheels came off down the stretch. Watch the indicators for Wood as the calendar flips to July, but it will also get hot in the nation's capital this summer as well as the Nationals are already doing some things as a team offensively they were not getting done last season.

I am more concerned by Riley Greene and just how in the world he is going to maintain a .411 BABIP. I, as well as many of you, did not roster Greene this winter with expectations of a strong batting average as he, too, struck out over 200 times in 2025. Those who drafted Greene wanted his power, hoping he would settle somewhere between the 24 homers he hit in 2024 and the 36 he hit in 2025. Thus far, Greene is off the pace to even hit the low end of that measure, but he has recovered his lost walk rate from 2024 with a slight reduction in strikeout rate. I can accept that the increased walks will help the batting average, because Greene has indeed reduced his chase rate nearly 17 percent from last season while increasing his in-zone contact by five percent, but we only have to look back to last year to see what happened to the only other BABIPs higher than what Greene has done thus far.

Aaron Judge and Jonathan Aranda are the only two other hitters to post BABIPs higher than Greene's this early in the season. Judge's dropped to .307, but he still hit .300/.454/.648 over the final three months of the season with 23 home runs. Aranda was hurt in a collision at first base with the human statue that is Giancarlo Stanton on July 31 and did not return until the final weekend of the season. Aranda had just 110 plate appearances after July 1, but his .393 BABIP in that time was not much of dropoff from the .414 he had prior to July. His strikeout rate was nearly Greene-like after June with a 30.9 percent rate, but that has corrected this season despite the increased playing time against lefties. 

Greene, like Wood, was having a tremendous first half in 2025, but things also got ugly for him in the summer as his strikeout rate ballooned as his zone discipline evaporated in the summer heat:

It is pretty clear what you need to track with Greene to see where things could go wrong for him during the summer and your daily game logs and rolling graphs are your friends here.

Kyle Schwarber is doing his best to match last season's 56-homer total, and he is on pace to do just that with 24 homers in 69 games played. The big driver behind that is a career-best 30.8 percent home run to fly ball percentage. Schwarber was at 28.6 percent last season and 25.7 percent for his career, so his current HR/FB% is not a terrible outlier for him, but these are the previous hitters who were at this level in recent years before July 1st:

I would personally love to see Schwarber put up another 50-plus home runs this season, but he would need to maintain this HR/FB%, and the collection of names with a July-Sept HR/FB% of at least 30 percent in recent seasons is not terribly long:

There are indeed some unusual names on the list, but note that even Schwarber just missed this list with his torrid second half last season when his HR/FB% was 29.8 percent. The last time Schwarber had a HR/FB% over 30 percent in the final three months of the season was back in 2017 with the Cubs, when he closed that season at 32.1 percent. Schwarber has averaged a 25.2 percent HR/FB over the final three months of the season from 2021-2025 and a 26.3 percent rate over the first three months of each season. Simply put, the odds are not in his favor to repeat a 50-homer season, but the odds were also stacked against him doing so last year, and he made it happen. 

Hopefully this has given you some things to think about with some players who have clearly been foundational pieces for your offense this season. Next week, I'll take a look at some pitchers who have surprised us with their starts to 2026 and what the road ahead could look like as the weather warms and the balls begin to fly further.