Fantasy Baseball: Buy Low, Sell High
Players you should buy who will bounce back and players you should sell who will fall off
The trade deadline window is open. If you're in a competitive league, this is the time to be aggressive — either selling guys riding hot streaks or buying the names everyone's given up on. Here's where I'd be targeting right now. (Go to fbaseball.com for more articles like this)
Buy Low
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 1B — Toronto Blue Jays
The panic around Vlad Jr. is real, and honestly, it's your opportunity.
His 2026 line — .262/.346/.357 with 6 home runs through 91 games — looks bad on the surface. And yeah, it is bad. That .357 slugging would be a career worst by a mile. But before you write him off, look at what the underlying numbers are telling you.
His xBA is .287. His xSLG is .406. His xwOBA is .343. None of those are MVP numbers, but they're all meaningfully better than what's showing up in the box score. The exit velocity is still sitting at 90.0 mph and he's hard-hitting 44.3% of the time. The barrel rate at 6.9% is low for him, but the contact quality hasn't cratered.
Here's the real culprit: ground balls. Vlad is pounding the ball into the ground at an elevated rate this season, and that's killing his power numbers. Ground balls don't become home runs. They become weak singles or double plays. When a guy with his raw power starts suppressing his launch angle like this, the slugging tanks fast — and that's exactly what you're seeing. But this is also the kind of thing that corrects itself. It's a mechanical issue, not a talent issue. Hitters figure it out.
This is a 27-year-old who hit .323/.396/.544 in 2024 and followed it up with a .292/.381/.467 line in 2025. The talent is real. What we're seeing right now looks more like a ground ball spike and BABIP issue than a skills collapse.
League managers are selling low on him right now. You should be buying. Offer a package built around his current depressed value and make the deal. When Vlad gets back to lifting the ball — and he will — you'll be the one who benefits.
Paul Skenes, SP — Pittsburgh Pirates
Skenes hasn't been himself lately, and managers are starting to get nervous. Don't be one of them.
The stuff hasn't changed. That's the only thing that actually matters when you're trying to figure out if a rough stretch is a real problem or just noise. The pitch mix looks the same. What you're seeing isn't a pitcher who's lost anything — it's a pitcher who's going through the kind of short-term variance that every starter deals with across a full season. The league figured out a pattern, the results went sideways for a few weeks, and now people are ready to move on.
That's where you come in. The sell-low crowd is loud right now, and if you go to that owner with a reasonable offer, you might actually get a deal done. Skenes is 23 years old and one of the best pitching prospects to come through the league in years. You don't trade those guys away because of a bad month. You buy them.
Sell High
Jazz Chisholm, 2B/3B
Jazz is one of the most fun players in baseball and also one of the most volatile fantasy assets you can own. When he's hot, he looks like a top-10 player. But you know how this goes — the strikeouts spike, the injuries creep in, and suddenly you're staring at a two-week IL stint.
If he's been carrying your team lately, this is the moment to cash in. Find the manager who's been watching Jazz go off and is desperate to add him. You'll get more than fair value right now. Sell into the hype.
Dansby Swanson, SS
Swanson has been genuinely scorching lately — we're talking an extended stretch that has people reconsidering his overall ranking. Don't get caught up in it. Hot streaks make players look like something they're not, and Swanson's history tells you this ends.
Look at the batted ball data when he's running hot like this. The BABIP inflates, the counting stats stack up, and suddenly he looks like a first-round pick. He's not. His floor isn't nothing — he plays every day and contributes across categories — but his ceiling gets oversold hard during these runs. The managers in your league who don't watch closely enough are seeing the recent numbers and drooling. That's your exit ramp.
Find someone chasing a shortstop and let them have him at absolute peak value. You won't get a better offer than right now.
The best trades happen when one side is reacting emotionally and the other is thinking clearly. Right now, Vlad Jr. owners are panicking and Swanson owners are euphoric. Neither of those feelings lasts. Be the calm one and take advantage of both.
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