​The second half of the 2026 MLB season is around the corner, and there’s still time to make up ground in your fantasy baseball leagues. If you’ve dealt with injuries or poor performance or just can’t quite seem to string together consistent success, there is still time to make tweaks to get your team to a title.Similarly, there is still time for players to make tweaks to find another level of success. For some, we’ve been seeing the groundwork for that success laid already. In this article, I’m going to highlight hitters who may have failed to meet our expectations over the entirety of the first half but are doing some intriguing things with the bat over the last few weeks.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementTo do that, I created a leaderboard of hitters with at least 30 plate appearances between May 18th and July 12th (about six weeks). I looked at hard-hit rate, barrel rate, swinging strike rate, and overall plate discipline (which I used as Z-Swing% – O-Swing%). I then removed anybody who had been clearly below average in any category. I also searched by wRC+ and removed anybody who had clearly been above average overall, since most of those players have already been producing and don’t need to bounce back or break through. (I did leave on a few hitters with good wRC+ marks who weren’t rostered in enough fantasy leagues, but we’ll get to that soon).Since this article is based on recent MLB performance, I should make it clear that it does not feature injured players or rookies who will be making their debut after the All-Star break (Joshua Baez). It also doesn’t include players who have played well but might gain value in a new role (like Justin Foscue or Andrew Vaughn). I’m simply focusing on players who either struggled to meet our expectations in the first half, but are players I think are due for much better months in August and September.So who are they?These are all players whose wRC+ over the last 5-6 weeks is already good but are simply rostered in too few fantasy baseball leagues based on their recent production. For this, I used Yahoo roster rates. NameRoster%wRC+Barrel%HardHit%Z-O Swing%League Averages7.538.335.3Esmerlyn Valdez58%186.33720.2982460.5263160.411179Heliot Ramos46%149.24440.2093020.5813950.367071A.J. Ewing35%112.32530.0697670.4263570.345236Kyle Karros30%142.88540.1120690.4741380.438301Josh Bell25%137.32840.1180560.4513890.413697Garrett Mitchell22%153.40050.1485150.5049510.391445Spencer Horwitz14%144.29970.1470590.4117650.380053Cole Young12%108.19480.0320510.3717950.369145Owen Caissie7%138.94850.2031250.5156250.36708Colton Cowser5%113.06670.1234570.3827160.332602Tyler Stephenson4%121.31630.0697670.4534880.442028Joe Mack3%115.59780.0947370.3789470.421649Lane Thomas3%117.03210.0803570.43750.427302Anthony Seigler3%106.38220.049180.3606560.401968Andrew Benintendi2%110.58510.0784310.450980.464079Ty France1%122.30650.0842110.4526320.421404Listen, you don’t need me to tell you about what Esmerlyn Valdez is doing, a