Fantasy baseball waiver wire: Juan Soto's unprecedented power-speed combo changes his 2026 outlook

How unlikely is it that Juan Soto is the first player with 30 homers and 30 steals in the majors this season? "Extremely unlikely" is the obvious answer, but it's not exactly a satisfactory one, so let's try to quantify this, shall we?

Soto's 30-30 season is also his first-ever 30-steal season, so that's already pretty unlikely. Though that's not as rare as you might think – since 2001, there have been 25 different players to produce a 30-30 season, and nine of them never had more than 30 steals in another season. Of course, I don't know how illuminating that stat actually is – Mookie Betts only has one 30-steal season for his career, but he has 196 for his career; Francisco Lindor similarly only has one 30-steal season to date, but he came one steal short of going 30-30 last season, five short in 2018, and is just four homers and two more steals from doing it again in 2025. 

Soto, by comparison, has 31 of his 88 career steals this season and has 19 (and counting) more than his previous career high. And that includes a league-high 20 since the All-Star break. For the past 48 games, Juan Soto has been running like Elly De La Cruz, putting together a 68-steal pace in the second half of the season.

Of course, it's not just that Soto hasn't really stolen bases before this that makes it unexpected. Plenty of players choose not to steal as many bases as they could, for one reason or another – Trea Turner stole just 19 bases in 2024 despite ranking in the 96th percentile in sprint speed, likely in large part because he suffered an early-season hamstring injury and didn't feel it was worth the risk to push it when he came back from the IL.

In Soto's case, what makes it especially unlikely that he has become one of the most prolific base stealers in the majors is that he has never been slower. Soto hasn't been an above-average runner since his first four seasons in the league, but he's lost even more speed this season, dropping to the 15th percentile in sprint speed, by far the lowest mark of his career. 

How rare is it for a runner as slow-footed as Soto to steal 30 bases? Well, there have been 111 30-steal seasons in the Statcast era, dating back to 2015, and only three have come from base runners with a below-average sprint speed: Elvis Andrus in 2019, Kyle Tucker in 2023, and now Soto. Andrus and Tucker have both been prolific base stealers in the past, but by that point in their careers, they weren't especially quick on their feet. And even both of them were much faster than Soto, with Tucker ranking in the 32nd percentile while Andrus was in the 39th percentile. Soto is, again, in the 15th percentile in sprint speed. Even acknowledging that there is some inflation going on thanks to the rule changes from a few years ago, this is an unprecedented display of baserunning prowess from a player this slow, at least in recent memory. 

This is legitimately one of the most unexpected developments in Fantasy Baseball in the 15 seasons I've been writing about this, and that makes it awfully hard to know how to approach this for 2026. Does this suddenly mean Juan Soto has to be traded like a true five-category start for 2026? I'm not sure I'm going to approach him that way, at least not as my baseline assumption. But I obviously have to account for the possibility that, yes, maybe Soto is just one of the premier power/speed threats in the majors. 

And that's a big deal, because Soto has spent most of his season as a late-first-rounder type player. He's an extraordinary hitter, but usually a more valuable one in real life than Fantasy – his RBI numbers can sometimes be underwhelming, he has just two seasons (back-to-back now, for what it's worth!) with more than 35 homers, and he hasn't hit better than .288 in a season since 2021. But he's going to put together his second straight 40-homer season, will easily clear 100-plus runs and RBI each, and now has 31 steals and counting. 

That's a top-five player in every Fantasy league. And he probably needs to be drafted that way in 2026. I'll still take Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani ahead of him, and I might be inclined to go with Bobby Witt in Roto leagues as well. But I think Soto is in the discussion for the No. 3 pick, at least, and with Ohtani running significantly less himself since he starts pitching again, I don't know if it's clear-cut that he belongs ahead of Soto. Ronald Acuna could play his way into that discussion with a big kick to close out the season, but as things stand, I think there might only be one or two players I would take over Soto for 2026.

And, of course, he might go back to being just a marginal source of steals next season. This was so unexpected, and such a massive outlier – for both Soto and for players with his speed – that I certainly don't feel comfortable expecting him to do this again. But I didn't expect it to begin with, and here we are, and he's showing no signs of slowing down. You have to at least account for the possibility of a repeat, and that puts Soto on the short list for best players in Fantasy. 

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Thursday's top waiver-wire targets

Dylan Beavers, OF, Orioles (32%) – Beavers has been impressive in his limited major-league time so far. After going 2 for 3 with a walk Wednesday, he's now up to a .305 average and .894 OPS in his first 20 games with excellent plate discipline. He isn't getting many chances against lefties (just one start so far), which limits how useful he can be, but he's shown enough to be worth using in categories leagues, at least. 

Tyler Wells, SP, Orioles (10%) – In the long run, I think Wells is likely to end up being a pretty fringe-y Fantasy option. But at this point in the season, there is no "long run"; there's just the next start. He gets the White Sox next week, and while that is no longer quite the cupcake matchup it was earlier in the season, I'm still willing to stream Wells against them with just three runs allowed (with 10 strikeouts to one walk) in his first two starts back from Tommy John surgery. 

Jake Burger, 3B, Rangers (35%) – Burger has always been streaky, and he's riding one of the heaters right now. He went 2 for 3 with a couple of homers off Freddy Peralta Wednesday, and he has four homers in his past six games while starting each. Burger is pretty much an all-or-nothing power hitter, but he's been hitting much better lately and is worth using in deeper leagues now that he's playing regularly again. 

Parker Meadows, OF, Tigers (13%) – Meadows is kind of the opposite of Burger, where I think there's a lot more long-term potential than short-term utility. But he went 2 for 4 with a walk and three runs Thursday and has six hits, including a couple of homers, in four games since returning from a five-week absence with a quad strain. Meadows has been a productive power/speed combo at Triple-A, and even as he has struggled this season, he still has 16 homers and 20 steals in 160 career games in the majors, enough to at least make him useful in categories leagues. And in the long run, I think he can be more than just useful. 

Here's what else you need to know about from Wednesday's action around MLB: 

Wednesday's standouts

Paul Skenes, Pirates @BAL: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K 

64 pitches. They let him throw 64 pitches before pulling him from this one. I get it, the Pirates have nothing to play for this season, so there's nothing to really be gained by pushing him – heck, with Zack Wheeler out for the year, Skenes all but certainly has the NL Cy Young wrapped up barring something extremely unexpected happening over the final two weeks. 

Still. The Pirates have one of the best pitchers in baseball, a generational talent who has exceeded even the loftiest expectations in his two seasons in the majors, and what do they have to show for it? Nothing, because they aren't trying to actually win games, and their treatment of Skenes is symptomatic of that. Winning games isn't the goal here. I don't know what the goal actually is, but it ain't that. 

Skenes is one of the best pitchers in Fantasy, but the unseriousness of the Pirates certainly holds him back at least a little bit – he has just 10 wins in 30 starts despite a sub-2.00 ERA. The margins separating Skenes, Tarik Skubal, and Garrett Crochet at the top of the pitcher rankings are razor-thin, but Skenes being on by far the worst team of the three could be reason enough to prioritize the other two ahead of him in 2026. It's an utter shame that would even come into the discussion. 

Logan Gilbert, Mariners vs. STL: 4.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K

I know it's been a weird season for Gilbert, who missed about a month with a flexor tendon strain in his right elbow and has had a few too many of these starts that aren't bad but aren't necessarily super helpful for Fantasy. It's been a frustrating experience, but I still think Gilbert deserves to be in the discussion for the first pitcher taken after that tier of three super-aces at the top of drafts. The 3.54 ERA isn't great, but if you can look past that, there's still a lot to like about what we've seen from Gilbert this season. His WHIP is still elite at 1.03, and his strikeout rate has jumped to 33.9%, by far the highest of his career (though also the fourth straight season that number has ticked up). Gilbert's splitter has been one of the best putaway pitches in baseball since he introduced it last season, and after spending a few years experimenting with his arsenal, it seems like he has landed on an approach that should work. The recent elbow injury is a bigger red flag than the slightly inflated ERA (especially given his career-best 2.82 xERA), but with no obvious choice for SP4, he's certainly on the short list. 

Geraldo Perdomo, SS, Diamondbacks – 2 for 4, 1 HR, 1 SB, 

Perdomo has been unbelievable this season. And I still think a lot of Fantasy players and analysts are going to treat this season like it's literally unbelievable. And I get it. Perdomo was a fringe top-100 prospect who never really put up big numbers in the minors, and prior to this season, he looked more like an overqualified utility man than a star. But he's absolutely been a star all season, and matter of fact, is only getting better as the season goes on – he's hitting .319/.406/.516 in the second half now. 

And I'm leaning toward buying in. Not at face value, mind you, though I suspect I won't have to. There will be plenty of skepticism, to the point where I could see him falling out of the top-100 in a lot of 2026 drafts. And, with underlying numbers that totally back up what Perdomo is doing despite low-end raw power, if all it costs to acquire a guy with a top-25 season on his ledger is a pick around 100th overall, I'll gladly take that chance. We'll see where his price settles, but Perdomo deserves quite a bit of respect for how good he's been in this, just his age-25 season. 

Nick Pivetta, Padres vs. CIN: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K 

Pivetta has just been phenomenal all season, and he's now down to a 2.73 ERA and 0.95 WHIP for the season, with an outside shot at his first 200-strikeout season. But there are more red flags here than you might think at first glance, starting with a 3.80 xERA that suggests there has been (for the first time in his career) some honest-to-goodness good luck on Pivetta's side. And then there's the track record. We're talking about a 32-year-old having his first season with an ERA below 4.00, let alone 3.00. Even this season, he has underlying numbers suggesting that kind of result wouldn't be out of the question.

Playing with a great supporting cast, in a very good ballpark for pitchers, should continue to help mitigate Pivetta's downside risk somewhat, but I think I'm going to end up taking the same approach with Pivetta I've adopted over the years with Dylan Cease: I'll never draft him coming off the good seasons because there seems to be a lot of room for things to go wrong here, despite how good he's been. 

Andrew Abbott, Reds @SD: 8 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K

Abbott is going to be one of the most interesting players to rank in 2026. 15 years ago, a 26-year-old coming off a 2.88 ERA in more or less a full season would probably be viewed as a burgeoning ace. As the Fantasy analysis world has grown sharper and embraced more sabermetrics-inflected thinking, we can look at Abbott's middling strikeout skills and extreme flyball rate and see that the sub-3.00 ERA is a fluke – and his 3.70 FIP and 4.36 xFIP suggest he's been a rather large fluke and might not even have much value for 2026. 

But what the more advanced Statcast metrics can capture that those more primitive "advanced" stats miss is that Abbott really does have a knack for forcing hitters to hit 'em where they are, as it were – his .357 expected wOBA on contact over the past three seasons is the 16th-best mark among 100 pitchers in that span who have thrown at least 5,000 innings. Which is how you get an expected ERA based on Statcast stats nearer to 3.50. It's a risky profile, but like with Perdomo, I think it's one a lot of people are going to be skeptical enough of that Abbott could still be a decent value in 2026 as an SP4 or SP5. 

Byron Buxton, OF, Twins 

Let's focus on one more playing, I really don't think you're going to have to pay face value for. We know the story on Buxton – he can't stay healthy – and for some people, that's enough to totally take him off their draft boards. And that might be reasonable in some of those high-stakes leagues that drive so much discussion in the Fantasy Baseball space, because those leagues tend to be 15-team Roto leagues with no IL spots, where the replacement level on the waiver wire is extremely low. But for most people who play Fantasy baseball, you're not going nearly that deep into the player pool and typically play with IL spots, which makes weathering the eventual Buxton injury much easier. 

I'm sympathetic to the idea that buying Buxton coming off his healthiest season since 2017 probably isn't a good idea, but I just don't expect his price to be high enough to where there's actually that much risk involved. At least not relative to the upside of grabbing a guy coming off a season with at least 31 homers and 22 steals. Buxton's price is almost certainly going to be a lot higher than his 218.4 ADP entering this season, but I don't think anyone is going to push him aggressively into the top-100. And there's plenty of value to be found if all he costs is a mid-round pick. 

Taj Bradley, Twins @LAA: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 5 K

We're always chasing upside in this game, especially among pitchers, and Bradley is really good at reminding us every few weeks that he does indeed have a lot of upside. I just don't really think I'm interested in chasing it anymore. Sure, he's only 24, and comes armed with some wicked stuff – including a fastball that generated a whopping 10 swinging strikes Wednesday. However, we are nearly 400 innings into Bradley's career without much more than glimpses of his upside to go on. His command has just never really improved enough to catch up to the staff.  There's been no consistency to speak of, and even since getting to the Twins, he has alternated decent starts with really bad ones since getting back to the majors. If all it costs is a bench pick in most drafts in 2026, then it's hard to argue against taking a flier on Bradley, but he certainly won't be a high-priority target for me. 

Jason Alexander, Astros @TOR: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K

That's a 2.20 ERA and 0.98 WHIP over the past seven starts for Alexander, and some of you are surely considering riding the hot hand next week with starts against the Rangers and Mariners on the way. And maybe that will work out – two-game samples are basically impossible to predict with any accuracy, so Alexander could enjoy a very useful start. But I don't see many talent-based reasons to believe Alexander is worth trusting. He has a good changeup, but not much else going for him, and even in this stretch where his results have been excellent, the underlying numbers don't really back it up – it's a FIP close to 4.50 and an expected wOBA against north of .320 in both August and September. For some context, Jack Flaherty and Nick Martinez both have an expected wOBA against of .322 this season. That doesn't mean Alexander can't be useful, and he's probably a decent streamer in a points league, especially with the length he's been providing lately. But Alexander is widely available this late in the season for a reason.