As we move into the dog days of summer, we called upon the resident gurus to take up pens and pencils, keyboards and abacuses and put together our annual mid-year positional rankings. The rankings in the table below are the composite rankings of our staff, and for each position a couple of us will profile some risers, fallers, and names to know.

Riser: Shea Langeliers, Athletics  (Preseason: 9, Current: 5)

Shea Langeliers entered 2025 already in the top 10 of our catcher rankings after a 2024 season that saw the backstop belt 29 home runs as a 26-year-old. Langeliers had the advantage of trading Oakland for Sacramento as his home park for the next few seasons, but his .224 batting average and 27.2% strikeout rate suggested that he was going to have to show some growth at the plate in order to enter the upper-echelon of dynasty catchers. Well, Langeliers has made those adjustments in spades in 2025, and hasn’t missed a beat despite missing nearly all of June with an oblique strain. A lot of the underlying data year-to-year looks very similar for Langeliers from 2024 to 2025, but the most encouraging change has been the drop in strikeout rate all the way to 18.3%. This is largely driven by a 5+% increase in contact rate, with Langeliers jumping from 73.4% last year, to 78.6% this year. To make this jump while holding his walk-rate steady and not sacrificing his power is a huge deal, which is why Langeliers has made the jump into our top-5 in the mid-season rankings.

Faller – Francisco Alvarez, New York Mets  (Preseason: 7, Current: 18)

Rankings lists should always be viewed as a snapshot in time, and Alvarez’s ranking at 18 on our mid-season list is likely already outdated. Despite being just 23 years old, 2025 represented Alvarez’s third season in the big leagues. He showed tantalizing power ability in 2023, belting 25 home runs as a 21-year-old, before an uneven, injury-plagued season in 2024. 2025 seemed like a prime opportunity for Alvarez to bounce back, but he suffered a broken hamate bone in his left wrist in early March, delaying the start of his season. Alvarez joined the Mets in late April, and his body of work between April 25th and June 21st is largely what accounts for his drop here; just 3 home runs in 138 plate appearances, a .236 average, and a 91 wRC+ that resulted in a demotion to Triple-A Syracuse in hopes of getting the young Venezuelan back on track.

To put it succinctly, Alvarez raked in Triple-A, hitting 11 home runs in just 21 games, and has continued to do so since coming back to Queens on July 21st. In 55 plate appearances since re-joining the Mets, Alvarez has hit .304/.418/.640, and doubled his home run total, tallying 3 more long balls, including a two-homer game on August 12th. While it would be unfair to expect such extreme production from Alvarez the rest of the way, it’s fair to say his star is rising again, and he may find himself back in our top-10 by season’s end.

Player to Watch – Joe Mack, Miami Marlins (Preseason: 49, Current: 34)

My player to watch is Marlins catching prospect Joe Mack. Mack was a 2021 draft pick by the Marlins out of high school who has been steadily making his way up through the minors over the past few seasons. He is known for his plus-plus arm, but Mack turned heads with his bat to start the 2025 season when the 22-year-old put up a .318/.464/.614 slash line in 13 games at Double-A Pensacola to earn a quick promotion to triple-A. Triple-A has proven to be more of a challenge for Mack as he’s mustered just a .241 average and his strikeout rate has jumped from 21.4% to 28.5% while his walk rate has dipped from 17.9% to 7.9%. The good news however is that Mack has started the season at the level where he ended the previous year each of the past two seasons, and he has shown significant improvements offensively in his second go-around. If Mack can show the same progress to start 2026, it’s likely the lefty will be arriving in Miami sometime next season. He could serve as the primary backstop, with the Marlins finding opportunities to get Agustin Ramirez’s bat in the lineup as a DH/1B/backup catcher. If you’re looking for a deep league player on this list who could see their ranking continue to rise, Mack is as good a bet as any.

(David Gofman)

Riser: Hunter Goodman, Colorado Rockies  (Preseason: 43, Current: 7)

I think it’s less of a surprise that Goodman has risen to seventh on our current ranking than it is that we ranked him so low in the preseason based on one bad year. (see below, Adley Rutschman was treated much differently under similar circumstances). To be fair, many of us, self included, believed that Goodman was destined for the outfield and would not be maintaining catcher eligibility. Looking back, we had him ranked as our number 163 outfielder so clearly we whiffed on Goodman this year.

2024 was not a good year for Goodman. He started the year well in Triple-A Albuquerque before being called up to Colorado. At the major league level, he showed some power but not much else, hitting .190/.228./.417 with 13 home runs, while playing outfield more than catcher. In spite of hitting over 30 home runs in each of the previous two years in the minors, it looked like Goodman wasn’t going to hit major league pitching well enough to  be a significant fantasy contributor.

This year, he flipped the script. First off, he has only played catcher, solidifying his position eligibility. More importantly, he increased his hard hit rate an eye-popping ten percentage points from 39% to 49%, lowered his ground ball rate to 37%, and his fly ball + line drive combined rate is 63%. Hitting the ball hard into the Colorado air is apparently a very good idea. His contact rates are average and strikeouts will always be part of his game, but taking everything into account, I believe the player we’re seeing in 2025 is closer to what we’ll continue to see in the immediate future. There are a lot of good names on the catcher ranking list, but I think we’ll see Hunter Goodman remain in the top ten for a few years to come.

Faller: Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles (Preseason 2, Current 4)

Admittedly, I’m being a little opportunistic here because a drop from two to four is not analogous to falling off a cliff, but it does give me the chance to dig into a player I’ve been curious about lately. Statistically, one can argue whether 2022 or 2023 was a better year for him, but it cannot be argued that 2024 and 2025 have been statistically worse than either of the former two. In 2024, he posted a wRC+ of 102, barely above league average for all hitters, with career lows in batting average (.250), on-base percentage (.318) and slugging (.391). In spite of that, we ranked him high in our pre-season rankings, not just because it takes more than one bad year to move  a first overall pick down the list.

A closer look at his 2024 statistics reveal that there wasn’t much there that would predict further decline. His BABIP had fallen from .300 to .272, which was due to more than just bad luck. He was uncharacteristically impatient at the plate; his chase rate on pitches out of the zone jumped from 24% to 30%, infield fly rate went from 7% to 10%, and hard hit rate fell from 38.4% to 36.4%. It’s no surprise that swinging at more pitches out of the zone created these results in addition to a lower walk rate and resulting drop in OBP.  It’s also correctable and when we’re ranking a smart player with access to major league level coaching, we expect those things to work themselves out and that the former number one draft pick will return to form.

We were partially correct. In 2025, his chase rate is the lowest of his career, zone and overall contact rates are the highest of his career, and his hard hit rate is, you guessed it, the highest of his career. Instead of the bounceback that these numbers might project, he’s posted a .232/.318/.386 slash line, with a below average 99 wRC+. In this case, the answer might lie in the very low .254 BABIP. We often refer to it as Bad-BABIP-Luck, which I don’t like to do because there’s (almost) always an underlying answer, but in this case, I think Adley Rutschman just had a very unlucky April and May. In June and July of this year he posted a .309/.364/.515 slash line, 142 wRC+, and a more reasonable .315 BABIP.  He has cooled off a bit in August, but that could be good for fantasy managers who want to make some trade offers this off-season. Will Smith and Cal Raleigh will remain at the top of the charts, and there are some fun young guns coming up, but Adley will be a top tier catcher that you might be able to trade for at a second tier value this off-season.

Player to watch: Harry Ford, Seattle Mariners (Preseason: 34, Current 32)

Harry Ford is not a new name to our readers, but you couldn’t be blamed for forgetting about him lately. He’s a former first round pick with a good all-around game who has the unfortunate fate of being blocked in Triple-A by MVP candidate Cal Raleigh. It may be tempting for us to keep looking at lesser talents who we think have an open path to playing time, but I think it would be a mistake to move off of a 22 year-old who is posting a .295/.412/.473 slash line with 14 home runs, 7 stolen bases and a 129 wRC+ at Triple-A Tacoma. Good bats will play their way into the lineup and it wouldn’t take much to convince the Mariners to give Raleigh a few days a week at DH.

One of the eye-catching statistics in Harry Ford’s profile is his very low swing rate, currently 40.3% overall. If he were to do that in the majors, he’d have the 20th lowest swing rate, but among those 20 current players with lower swing rates, there are 14 with contact rates higher than Ford’s 79%. The good news is that he swings at strikes, but not very often at balls out of the zone (17% chase rate). Ford is a hard hitting pull hitter and once he adds a little more loft to his swing to increase his fly ball rate (30% currently) he’ll be an intriguing source of power and OBP. Even with the Big Dumper firmly ensconced in Seattle, when Ford gets the call, he’ll be in the lineup often enough to provide value to your fantasy team.

(Drew Klein)