The MLB All-Star break is upon us, which means it’s time to take stock of the first half of the fantasy baseball season. We run through a position by position breakdown of the studs and duds from the first half of the summer and review who has outperformed their pre-season projections and who is serving as an anchor on their respective fantasy lineups.
Yes we know Shohei Ohtani is good at baseball. But if he made it out of the first round of your home league draft you’re either playing in an AL only league or we have questions about where you found your “competition”. Instead we’re highlighting the players who have been propelling their fantasy squads to success with perhaps less fanfare than the icons of the sport that everyone had on their pre-draft lists.
Catcher: Ben Rice, New York Yankees
Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Despite the fact that Ben Rice has played almost exclusively 1st base and DH this season, he remains catcher eligible in Yahoo! leagues. And until that gets changed, he’s going to continue to run laps around the competition.
Rice currently leads all catcher eligible players in runs, home runs, RBIs, and OPS. Add in the fact that he’s been locked into a top 3 hitting role for the majority of the season in the Bronx, and it’s clear that he’s on the path to finish as the top overall fantasy catcher in 2026.
Enjoy it while it lasts folks, because he’s likely to get stuck with a 1st base designation in 2027 where he’ll have much improved competition fantasy wise.
Starting Pitcher: Foster Griffin, Washington Nationals
We knew Jacob Misiorowski would be good, as would Cam Schlitter, Paul Skenes, Cristopher Sanchez etc. And odds are, fantasy managers paid a premium to get them on draft night. But unless you’re a die hard Nationals homer, Foster Griffin likely didn’t even get considered on draft night.
The 6’3″ lefty played a total of 7 games between 2020 and 2022 at the Major League level, before signing with the Yomiuri Giants in the Japanese NPB league. He came back stateside with not nearly the amount of fanfare that we’ve seen players like Roki Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and others have, and was largely chalked up as a reclamation project for the Nats.
Well, nearly a K per inning (109 across 110.1IP), 10 wins a 2.77 ERA and 1.02 WHIP later, and suddenly the pitcher who was supposed to help eat innings in Mackenzie Gore’s absence is leading the team’s rotation in wins, ERA, WHIP, average, and a bunch more categories to boot. Talk about a steal.
Relief Pitcher: Louis Varland, Toronto Blue Jays
Jeff Hoffman entered the season as the Jays preferred closer, but was on a publicly acknowledged short leash. After a rough start to the season, Toronto made a change at their back end and turned the ball over to Varland who took it and ran with it.
Tied for 7th in the Majors with 19 saves, his 67 Ks across 49 innings trails only fireballer Mason Miller in terms of late game punch outs. Add in a rock solid 1.10 ERA and 0.98 WHIP and fantasy owners who were smart enough to handcuff Varland to Hoffman have to be thrilled with the steady production they’re getting out of their bullpen.
1st Base: Ryan O’Hearn, Pittsburgh Pirates
Nick Kurtz, Matt Olson, Bryce Harper, they’ve all been as advertised, and are performing at roughly their pre-draft ADP. But for O’Hearn to come in and hang with the fantasy elite despite being ranked in the 300’s in just about every fantasy platform before the season is how you build championship rosters.
The Pirates offence has been amongst the biggest surprises of the season so far, going from zero run support in 2025, to tied with Washington for the most runs scored in the league at the mid-summer classic. And O’Hearn is smack dab in the middle of that, hitting either 4th or 5th in the lineup most nights.
63 RBIs, a .288 average, and an .838 OPS is just rock solid production from someone you likely picked up as a depth piece or slotted into a utility role because you went pitcher heavy in the earlier rounds of your draft. Hopefully you didn’t have him on your bench the other night…
2nd Base: Luis Garcia Jr., Washington Nationals
There’s probably a few Nationals players who could make a case to be on this list, but given the fact that most fantasy leagues began the season with Garcia on the waiver wire, he’ll get the nod as the rep from Washington this time around.
Garcia isn’t new to fantasy owners, in fact, it’s likely he was undrafted in the vast majority of fantasy leagues specifically because he was a known commodity. The book seemed to be written on him at this point. A solid, if unspectacular infielder who will oscillate between being rostered during hot streaks, and buried on waivers when his bat inevitably went cold.
Well so far in 2026 that bat hasn’t gone cold very often. Washington’s offence is amongst the most high powered in baseball throughout the first half of the season, which translates to fantasy gold for Garcia owners. His 68 RBIs are tops at the position, while his 20 homers are good for 2nd, while his .871 OPS trails only Otto Lopez for 2nd basemen.
So long as the Nats offence remains hot, Garcia will be primed to shatter all of his career highs down the stretch in DC.
Shortstop: Otto Lopez, Miami Marlins
Once a castoff from the Blue Jays organization, Lopez has found a home in South Beach and is thriving with the Marlins this season. Most casual fantasy owners can be forgiven for overlooking the smooth swinging righty by virtue of the fact that the Marlins are rarely a primetime draw. But the league’s batting average leader (.334) is quickly becoming a household name.
You probably went into your draft hoping that the picks would fall for a Bobby Witt Jr. or an Elly De La Cruz to land on your roster. But Lopez has both of them bested in runs (61), RBIs (45), average, OPS and a slew of other categories at this point in time. Now can he keep it up over the course of a full season? Time will tell.
But with Miami at a feisty 52-45 in the NL East, sitting just 4 games back of the division leading Braves, it’s unlikely that the Marlins hold their semi-annual fire sale at the trade deadline this season. That means this 4 category contributor should continue to get all the starts he can handle down the stretch.
3rd Base: Miguel Vargas, Chicago White Sox
There’s a good chance your draft came and went and Vargas wasn’t so much as added to a “watch list”. And for good reason. Chicago’s breakout star of the first half has nearly set career highs in every statistical category and we’re only halfway through the season.
A career .215 hitter, with a .701 OPS, few could have predicted the offensive output we’ve seen from Vargas through 94 games in the south side of Chicago to date. His 21 home runs are good 4th most amongst 3rd basemen, while his 59 RBIs are 3rd best at the position.
There remains a gap between Vargas and the truly elite level talent at the hot corner (think Junior Caminero), but for someone you either took a late round flyer on, or scooped up from the waiver wire, there’s absolutely nothing to complain about production wise here.
Outfield: Jordan Walker, St. Louis Cardinals
Walker was positioned as a player poised for a bounce back season in 2026. After hitting a paltry .215 with only 6 home runs across 111 games last season, he was due to regress back to the mean. But if you had “leads all of Major League Baseball in RBIs” on your bingo card for the year, you may well be clairvoyant.
The performances of Walker and rookie JJ Wetherholt are a big reason why the Cardinals (50-45) find themselves in the thick of a playoff push in what was supposed to be a down year for the birds.
His 22 home runs is tied for 10th best in baseball, while his .294 average and .886 OPS are statistically relevant as well. Sprinkle in 13 stolen bags for good measure, and you can see why this preseason mid-rounder is suddenly ranked as the 5th best player across Yahoo! re-draft leagues.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: YESNetwork. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.