We’re halfway through the season, and while you’re still mostly looking for the best players you can find, specific needs become more of a factor in roster moves — for you and others in your league. You might be about to get a nice haul from the person who is suddenly trying to add 50 steals.

Buy

Kyle Stowers, OF, MIA

Stowers started the year on the IL and seemed to need at least a month to figure things out again after he returned. He was chasing a ton at the start of the year with a 36.7% O-swing rate through May, but has since settled to just under 30% (league average is 32.7%). That drop has coincided with his return to being the player he looked like last year. His barrel rate is an excellent 17.3% in that stretch, which would look like an outlier hot streak if not for last year’s 19% clip. His slash line is .235/.333/.506 in June, compared to .221/.303/.360 before then. The full-season numbers still look pretty ho-hum, but I believe in the good version more than the bad.

Lars Nootbaar, OF, STL

It’s only 20 games, so I’m trying to temper my excitement, but I’m seeing the version of Nootbaar I’ve been waiting for. He’s always been selective, but now he’s one of the most patient hitters in the league. This has not led to a strikeout issue because he also has elite contact skills. Add in solid power, and you have a really good hitter who is a beast in OBP leagues. The .294 average will come down — that’s 50 points above his career mark — but his combo of patience, power and contact is hard to find.

Vladimir Guerrero, 1B, TOR

Or, what if you took Nootbaar, but you gave him more power and cut his K rate in half? That guy would easily be a top-10 hitter, right? Usually, but it’s been a weird year for Vlad. The hit tool is still elite, but four homers in half a season? He has an unlucky 4.8% HR/FB rate (his hit chart shows five doubles that look like they should have left the park), but that’s not the entire story. He’s hitting more grounders than usual, and it’s only gotten worse over the past month. His ground-ball rate is 53% in June, and he’s slashed an abysmal .195/.234/.264 during that stretch.

And yet, he still has elite bat speed and an excellent strikeout rate. His xwOBA of .346 indicates that he can still be a productive hitter even with this swing. This is more guess than analysis, but the All-Star break could give him a moment to get back to himself.

Landen Roupp, SP, SFG

A 26.2% K rate, 8.2% walk rate and 0.52 HR/9 — these are second-tier ace numbers. A .320 BABIP is a little high, but it shouldn’t be enough to throw everything off. So why does Roupp have a 4.07 ERA? His 66.4% strand rate is sixth-worst among qualified pitchers. His FIP is under 3.00, and other ERA estimators are in the low-to-mid 3s. He’s a really good pitcher disguised as a bland one.

Sell

Chase Meidroth, 2B, CWS

Meidroth is one of those nifty players who won’t give you everything you need, but he can patch things over in average and runs. The niftiness, however, will not hold up with his current approach. Meidroth, like Nootbaar, leverages his excellent contact skills to see a lot of pitches. However, that has lifted his strikeout rate more than his walk rate — you’d feel more comfortable with a 24.8% K rate from a power hitter. Still, the overall line looks good because he sports a .362 BABIP, but that’s hard to keep up if you’re not smoking the ball, and Meidroth isn’t a smoking-the-ball kind of guy. The xBA of .227 suggests the actual BA of .276 is inflated. Maybe the K rate drops for some balance, but I wouldn’t bank on it too heavily.

Ryan O’Hearn, 1B/OF, PIT

I actually love O’Hearn and have been patting myself on the back this year for being an O’Hearn believer. This is more of a light sell than a dump-him-now directive. The sell case: He probably can’t keep up this level of power. His bat speed is below average, as is his 6.6% barrel rate. Given that, his xSLG of .422 looks more believable than his actual SLG of .479. He hits a lot of pulled flies, which helps him cover some of that gap, but he’ll probably be more good than great going forward.

Gerrit Cole, SP, NYY

I considered all three categories for Cole, largely because I don’t have a great read on what his market is. The buy case is that his velocity and stuff have been trending in the right direction, and he was getting lots of whiffs against Detroit two starts ago, though the end results weren’t good. The sell case is that he still doesn’t look like his old self, and at age 35, coming off surgery, who knows what we’re getting here. In 37.2 innings this year, he’s been an average pitcher. His 15% K-BB rate would be his worst figure in a decade. He still has a decent arsenal, but no real wipeout pitch.

Maybe he’s still shaking off some rust, and the ace will reemerge, but if someone else wants to bet on that, you should let them.

Eduardo Rodriguez, SP, ARI

While looking at the LOB% leaderboards for the Roupp write-up, another name caught my eye. Rodriguez’s 86.6% strand rate is second to only Chase Burns, and the Red has just a bit more stuff to tap into with runners on base. I don’t trust Burns to keep that going either, but you can at least tell yourself a story around his ability to blow hitters away when he needs to. But E-Rod? He doesn’t miss a lot of bats; his 18% K rate is 11th-lowest among qualified pitchers, and his 9.8% walk rate is fine but not the kind of number you would need to Nick Martinez your way through life. He’s skating by with a .247 BABIP and .219 batting average allowed, but he hasn’t shown any historical ability to keep those numbers down. His ERA and WHIP are about to get in the elevator.

Hold

Luis García, 1B, WSH

García’s new strategy of hitting a home run every day is working well so far and is sure to be adopted by other players. Prior to his absurd power surge, he had a perfectly average 100 wRC+ on a .260/.283/.455 slash line. You’ll notice that’s a good amount of power and not a lot of walks. The lack of free passes adds some volatility to his profile, which isn’t always a bad thing.

Last year, Statcast thought he deserved a .470 slugging percentage, not the .410 he put up, but he had actually underperformed his xSLG the previous three years as well. This year, he’s finally getting his revenge. After 10 days in berserker mode, he now has a .543 SLG and .501 xSLG. He is swinging harder and making louder contact this year. He’ll run out of dragon blood, or whatever is fueling this, at some point, but he’s a good hitter with real power. Unless someone wants to pay like he’s the new Aaron Judge, you may as well hold and see where this goes.

Jakob Marsee, OF, MIA

This isn’t quite the season Marsee portended with his performance last year. The steals are there, but the bat is not. He went from hitting just under .300 to just under .200. He has mostly earned his .197 average too — he’s making a lot of weak contact and his xBA is .219. If we look at his entire time in MLB thus far, we get a .237/.336/.374 slash line with nine homers and 32 steals in 574 plate appearances. His .257 BABIP this year should rise, and he should be closer to those overall numbers going forward. All that said, the only place he’s adding value is in steals, so how you handle him will be team-specific.

Kevin Gausman, SP, TOR

Another “surely this Blue Jay isn’t this bad” take. I’m a long-term Gausman doubter, but I see enough to like here to put his rest-of-season ERA in the 3.70 neighborhood. The big difference between 2026 Gausman and previous versions is that his HR/9 has jumped from just under 1.0 to 1.33. There aren’t any real differences in his fly-ball rate, launch angle, hard-hit rate or exit velocity. His HR/FB rate is up a little to 11.9%, but even that increase is less than you’d expect, given everything else. The 23.6% K rate and 5.6% walk rate are excellent. He’s still worth a roster spot and is a “buy” if someone wants to dealí him for pennies on the dollar.