I began writing this week's Barometer by comparing wOBA risers and fallers relative to last season. However, after beginning to write the article, it became clear that many of the "Risers" could fall into the generic category of looking like a post-hype breakout. Many of the "Fallers" were hitters who had found new levels of production the last couple of seasons, only to have fallen back toward their career norms to this point in 2026. The players discussed are hardly an exhaustive list, but they offer some of the more extreme examples of the categories just described and have seen a positive or negative shift in their skills.
Risers
Jung made his big-league debut in 2022 and was plenty intriguing thanks to a .214 ISO across 102 plate appearances. He looked to be joining the next group of elite power-hitting third baseman when he posted a .201 ISO across 515 plate appearances the next season. A combination of injuries and poor performance appeared to have derailed his career and made Jung an afterthought heading into the current campaign. Instead, Jung has produced at a strong clip, is Texas's everyday third baseman, and has hit exclusively between second and fourth in the lineup for the last two weeks. All of that suggests he's turned into the player many fantasy managers believed he would be a few years ago.
On the other hand, Jung has displayed a significant shift in his underlying skills relative to his productive years in 2022
I began writing this week's Barometer by comparing wOBA risers and fallers relative to last season. However, after beginning to write the article, it became clear that many of the "Risers" could fall into the generic category of looking like a post-hype breakout. Many of the "Fallers" were hitters who had found new levels of production the last couple of seasons, only to have fallen back toward their career norms to this point in 2026. The players discussed are hardly an exhaustive list, but they offer some of the more extreme examples of the categories just described and have seen a positive or negative shift in their skills.
Risers
Jung made his big-league debut in 2022 and was plenty intriguing thanks to a .214 ISO across 102 plate appearances. He looked to be joining the next group of elite power-hitting third baseman when he posted a .201 ISO across 515 plate appearances the next season. A combination of injuries and poor performance appeared to have derailed his career and made Jung an afterthought heading into the current campaign. Instead, Jung has produced at a strong clip, is Texas's everyday third baseman, and has hit exclusively between second and fourth in the lineup for the last two weeks. All of that suggests he's turned into the player many fantasy managers believed he would be a few years ago.
On the other hand, Jung has displayed a significant shift in his underlying skills relative to his productive years in 2022 and 2023. In the simplest terms, Jung is putting way more balls in play and is benefiting from the variance that creates. The flip side of that is that his quality of contact is greatly diminished. For example, his strikeout rate is only 16.0 percent, but his barrel rate is just 5.1 percent, and his Max EV is only 107.8. Perhaps most concerning is that his flyball rate has fallen all the way to 26.5 percent. For now, Jung's results dictate that we buy into these changes, though his rest-of-season outlook is more complicated.
There were questions about Vargas' ability to hit for power as a prospect, but his control of the strike zone and hit tool were never really in question. As his sample in the majors has grown, Vargas' skills largely tracked with that scouring report. He consistently maintained high walk rates, and he always had among the lowest chase rates in the league — even when he otherwise struggled at the plate.
So far in 2026, Vargas has found a way to use his control of the zone to make higher-quality contact and get better results. Vargas has only a 16.1 percent chase rate through Tuesday's games, good for the 99th percentile in the league. He's also walked more than he's struck out. As for his quality of contact, Vargas has already recorded the highest exit velocity of his career (112.9 mph), has nearly doubled his career barrel rate (15.9 percent) and is hitting enough flyballs to make an impact as a power bat. Perhaps it's because of low expectations for the White Sox, but Vargas doesn't seem to be getting enough attention for his performance this season and looks to be a true breakout performer.
Rutschman is a very interesting player to analyze. His 2025 season was a disaster in terms of his statistical output, yet he took a number of different positive steps in his underlying skills. For example, he's carried over increased bat speed and an increased fast-swing rate from last season to make the strongest quality of contact of his career by several different metrics.
The explanation for the improved results in 2026 could simply be that Rutschman is finally healthy. He dealt with multiple oblique injuries in 2025, which seem to have hampered his ability to pull the ball in the air. In 2025, Rutschman pulled balls in play at a 42.7 percent clip, yet his pulled air rate was only 16.9 percent, while his pulled groundball rate was 25.1 percent. Those marks have flipped so far this season, with his pulled air rate at 21.4 percent and his pulled groundball rate at 16.7 percent.
The end result is that when Rutschman is making hard contact, it's more likely to be in the air and do damage. Another way to illustrate that is that his exit velocity on flyballs has improved to 94.3 mph from 92.3 mph last season. There's no guarantee that Rutschman can stay healthy given his heavy workload behind the plate, but he looks to have a strong chance at surpassing 20 home runs in a season for the first time in his career.
No one will confuse Edwards with being a great power producer, but he's quietly shown considerable growth in the area. He already has nine barrels on 134 batted ball events this season (6.7 percent). That matches his total number of barrels from his first three seasons in the league, spanning 763 batted ball events. Edwards has also progressively improved his overall bat speed, which jumped from 64.5 mph in 2024 to 66.9 last season, and finally has settled at 67.9 mph this year. While still well below average, there have been incremental gains.
This has been paired with a similar moderate jump in flyball rate. He's still hitting 1.23 ground balls for every one fly ball, but that is the lowest mark of his career by a considerable margin (1.57 career ratio). Even better is that Edwards hasn't sacrificed contact to make these improvements, so he remains an excellent source of batting average, on-base percentage and runs scored, all while no longer being a zero in power.
Walker's days of being a very strong power producer looked to be over after consecutive seasons of a declining ISO and increasing strikeout rate. Early on in 2026, he's reversed that trend by maintaining a very low 18.8 percent strikeout rate paired with a .239 ISO. Much like Jung, Walker's contact rate is up across the board, though the reasons why aren't particularly clear. He's last on this list because there doesn't look to be a substantial change to his profile, making his surge less believable and less interesting to analyze. Nevertheless, his past track record makes him a player to note.
Fallers
It's not common for a player to set their career-best barrel rate in their age-35 season, so it's not a surprise that Springer has experienced regression to begin 2026. There are also some concerning signs that go beyond simply regression. Springer's max exit velocity is only 108.8 mph, the lowest mark of his career. Similarly, he has career-worst marks of a .202 xBA, .353 xSLG and .303 xwOBAcon.
Contrarily, there are other signs that his skills may not have bottomed out as much as they appear. Springer's barrel rate, hard hit rate and average exit velocity are all in line with his pre-2025 norms, when he regularly hit 20 home runs with solid counting stats and a .260 batting average. Given that combination, I'd expect his pace to return to that range, making him a player I wouldn't seek to sell in a panic.
Marte's .287 xBA and .458 xSLG suggest there's very little to worry about despite his slow start to the season, but his increased aggressiveness at the plate should raise some red flags. His increased swing rate isn't inherently a bad thing, but that increase has come on pitches outside of the zone. That's a particularly stark change given that Marte has consistently been among the better hitters in the league at not chasing pitches.
In an unsurprising corresponding shift, his quality of contact has declined. Marte is hitting the ball on the ground at his highest rate since 2018 (49.6 percent). After posting double-digit barrel rates each of the last two seasons, he has fallen back into the single digits. Many of these skills resemble those of past seasons when he was a mediocre fantasy option, rather than the elite contributor he's been across the last two campaigns. That doesn't mean that will continue for the rest of the season, but his start should be alarming relative to his draft cost this spring.
If fantasy managers were asked to speculate about why Jazz Chisholm is struggling, it likely wouldn't be the top guess for many that he was becoming too passive at the plate. However, that's been exactly the case through mid-May. Chisholm's overall swing rate is 43.9 percent, in contrast to his career rate of 45.9 percent, and his lowest mark since 2023. Even worse is that the entirety of his decreased swing rate has come from watching pitches inside the zone. Not only has that resulted in a slightly inflated strikeout rate, but Chisholm's quality of contact has fallen significantly. He has only a 5.9 percent barrel rate and 35.3 percent hard-hit rate, both the lowest marks of his career in any meaningful sample. Put another way, he ranks in the 10th percentile or worse in xwOBA, xBA and xSLG.
The positive from Chisholm's start to the season is that he is still running aggressively. He's 11-for-14 on stolen base attempts, tied for eighth in the league. He's also still hitting primarily fifth in the Yankees' order, which should bode well for his counting stats should he heat up at the plate.
The analysis for Rooker can be concise, because the explanation for his lagging results is relatively straightforward. His strikeout rate has topped 30 percent, while his flyball rate has ballooned to 50 percent. That combination will almost always lead to a disastrous batting average, and Rooker's current mark is .185. The positive news is that Rooker's barrel rate and general quality of contact are intact, so better power results should come. His batting average and ability to get on base and score runs are significant concerns, but Rooker could improve as he becomes further removed from the oblique injury that sidelined him for much of April.
