Mid-Season Report Cards 2026: Flunking Hitters

Much like late July, this marks the beginning of the second half our series covering the first half report cards around the league and, again much like the second half of the season, these last two parts will be much more depressing for some fans. In part 3 we will be taking a look at the bottom-of-the-barrel among hitters this season, but with a bit more nuance than when we looked at the top performers. It's easy to find the best-in-class, just follow the A's, but when it comes to poor performances, some context is required. I could focus on Taylor Walls having a historically bad season at the plate, but Walls makes it a habit to struggle offensively, so that doesn't make for much of a story. What we'll be focusing on instead are the guys that, in theory, don't belong on this list. How did the fall into the D's and F's? Can they turn it around? Will they have to retake Algebra 2? All this and more will be answered.

First, if you need a refresher on how our grading system works, take a look at our grades explainer.

Hitless in Seattle

Image of Cal Raleigh Once thought to be unstoppable, it turns out Cal Raleigh is not only stoppable, but heading in reverse.

There aren't many words capable of describing how bad Cal Raleigh has been this season. An A+ darling last season, crushing 60 bombs, and having his name thrown around in MVP talks, it seemed like the mid-level, defense-first catcher with some pop had finally made it. This year he's decided to give all that much and so much more. If we exclude his 148 plate appearances his rookie season, he's on his way to setting a career high strikeout rate and career low AVG, OBP, SLG, wOBA, home runs, and basically every other stat that requires swinging the bat. That's an important distinction, because his walks and walk rate are doing just fine, albeit a couple points lower than last year. Regardless, Raleigh has never been worse.

What happened to all that power and what little contact skill he had? He's always had short hair, so we can eliminate a Samson-esque betrayal by a fickle lover. That leaves us with looking at his actual numbers to try and figure this out (blegh!). To save a full blown player breakdown for another time, I'll sum up the investigation as succinctly as I can: pitchers have decided to start nibbling more, especially with fastballs, and Cal hasn't figured out how to lay off. His swing and whiff rates are near identical to last season and that's working to his detriment, because it means a lot more out-of-zone contact, which has resulted in pulling a lot of weak grounders. With very little change to his mechanics, all signs points towards pitchers exploiting a weakness in Raleigh's approach and Raleigh not adjusting well enough to fix it. Whether or not he's able to finally find the cure for his ailment isn't clear, but what is clear is that an A+ to a D- earns him the place of honor among flunking hitters.

Austin Needs a Hand

Image of Austin Riley Injuries and a steady decline have plagued Austin the past three seasons, but this season has been especially bad.

Austin Riley has been one in a long line of young Braves that seemingly come out of nowhere, bringing star power just when the Braves need them most. From his first full season (2021) through 2023, Riley was just that, earning himself a B+ and two A's, it seemed like the Braves had finally found a third baseman that could anchor the hot corner in a way that hadn't been done since Chipper played. This continued into 2024, where Riley was having a slight down year, but had all his peripherals sitting comfortably around his career levels. Unfortunately, he never got a chance to let his numbers catch up, after a HBP broke his right hand and ended his season in mid-August. Freak injuries are one of the worst things to happen in professional sports, it's one thing for an ongoing issue or a known risk to cause someone to miss time, but for a player in their prime to lose precious playing time because of something random is very unfortunate. That being said, there is a silver lining to freak injuries, they are often one-offs and the player can come back good-as-new, rather than constantly worrying about a recurring issue. It looked like that might be the case for Riley's 2025, with his peripherals still looking very strong, but his results lagging behind. Yet again, Riley never got the chance to catch up to his periphs. A core strain in early July ended his first half prematurely, but it also served as a portent of things to come, by mid-August, Riley was yet again ending his season with surgery, this time to address the recurring abdominal issue that was the source of his earlier strain.

That brings us to 2026, fully healthy coming into the season, Riley was looking to reestablish himself as a premier third basemen and help the Braves bounce back from a rough 2025. Unfortunately for both Riley and the Braves, something is amiss for Riley this year. Rather than solid numbers, lagging behind stronger peripherals, like the previous two season, this year Riley's numbers are just flat out bad. Everything, excluding walk rate, is down and he's the not-so-proud owner of a D grade going into the second half. Where is that unexpectedly poor performance stemming from? Perhaps it's a coincidence, perhaps not, but Riley seems to be suffering from a very similar ailment as Raleigh. Pitchers have significantly increased the rate at which they tempt Riley out of the zone and he has obliged them with a much higher chase rate this season. It's rare to see such a league-wide jump in out-of-the-zone pitches for every pitch type against a hitter, but make no mistake when I say every pitch type, I mean every pitch type (excluding the cutter). Even four-seam fastballs are being thrown out of the zone 10% more often this season to Riley. Riley has done a slightly better job adjusting than Raleigh, managing to lower his swing rate in the face of all these balls, but it hasn't been enough. Here's hoping he can actually have a full second-half and here's hoping he uses those extra at-bats to make those much-needed adjustments.

Surprise! It's Taylor Walls Time

Experts continue to argue over whether this is an image of Taylor Walls or the Titanic sinking.

Did you really think I could resist discussing the only qualified hitter in the league with an F-? Taylor Walls has been inarguably one of the worst players to grace the diamond since his debut in 2021. A strikeout rate far too high for a hitter with truly zero power, a wOBA that couldn't break .300 if the fate of the universe depended on it, and a batting average constantly undulating above and below the Mendoza line, how Taylor Walls gets any at-bats, let alone actual starts for the Tampa Bay Rays is beyond me. "Come on, shortstop is key defensive position, there are a lot of defense-first shortstops." That's a great point, Strawman Jones. The one issue is that Taylor Walls is also an awful defender. To be fair, he can drift into the realm of "average" on offense, but with a D+ so far this year, this isn't one of those seasons.

To his credit, Walls does have two skills that aren't absolutely abysmal. First, he's reasonably fast; he was a dangerous pinch runner in his first two seasons, with a B+ in speed both of those years. Unfortunately, he's lost a couple steps since then and is limited to "slightly above average" speed at a C+ nowadays. His other skill is the ability to draw walks. He consistently manages a double digit walk rate, sometimes putting him in the top 5% of hitters. This year he will have to settle for a meager top 30% of hitters, which is admittedly good, but when your BB% is above 10 and you still struggle to keep your OBP above .300 (currently at .311), you know something has gone terribly wrong.

If we were following the trend of Raleigh's and Riley's segments, this is the point at which we would dissect why exactly Walls is so bad, but with a player with such consistently low performance, it's very hard to pinpoint a single thing that is the source of most of his issues. That being said, in the spirit of giving hope to the hopeless, there is a curious aspect to Walls's makeup that might lead one to believe there is a possibility for reinvention.

If you were to remove all references to power from Walls's profile, then asked someone that understands baseball stats to guess the slugging of this player, don't be shocked if you got multiple guesses at .450+. Despite his utter lack of anything resembling power, Walls bats like a power hitter. High walk and strikeout rates? Check. Seems to sit fastball every at-bat this season (he has a .263 avg against fastballs and .111/.193 avg against off-speed and breaking balls respectively)? Check. Has an above-average flyball rate? Check. Has a respectable square-up rate? Check. Everything points to having a little pop in his bat, but he doesn't. The reason? A bottom-of-the-barrel (pun intended) bat speed that turns every ball in-play into a lifeless groundball or lazy flyball. I don't want to give Taylor Walls fans too much hope, but an offseason spent either really focusing on improving his bat speed without damaging his already rough contact or giving up this pseudo-power hitter profile to try and spray singles around the field, akin to Luiz Arraez, and Taylor Walls might actually serve a purpose in this league.

The Other Flunkers

Image of Marcell Ozuna As Marcell Ozuna's career nears its end, so does his offensive production.

There are plenty of other flunking hitters we could have discussed, but none of them have a storyline quite interesting enough to warrant the extra attention. But to make sure everyone gets their due, let's quickly run through a few more of our poor performers. Marcell Ozuna and Logan O'Hoppe are the other two F's, along with Walls, this season. An F from Ozuna, whose had a notably volatile career, at age 35 is far less surprising than his A's at ages 32 and 33. O'Hoppe had flashes of power his rookie season, but those have dwindled and his hit tool never matched up to Major League pitching. Cedric Mullins, Adolis Garcia, and Lawrence Butler are three players whose respective teams were really hoping to reignite past successes for one more season, but things didn't work out that way. Mullins and Garcia continue already long strings of disappointing offensive performances and Butler, someone who's had a truly strong year at the plate as recently as 2024, has regressed even further this season, with no signs of life thus far. All three of them are sitting at D-'s.

Up Next

That concludes our journey through the dark depths of depravity that is very bad hitting performances and part 3 of our series covering first half performances around the league. The next and final part of the series will dive right back into the realm of failure, but this time for pitchers.