By admin 
The All-Star break means different things to different players. If one of your players is red hot, you hate to have a four-day pause in the middle of his streak. On the other hand, a player who is ice cold can use the time to go home, play with his kids, and reset for the second half.
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But the reset works both ways: It can halt a hot streak and it can ignite a cold player. This week’s Winners and Losers is built around that very idea. Who has caught fire and who has cooled off in this Small Sample Size edition of Winners & Losers.
It’s not every day we can label both James Wood and Shohei Ohtani as “losers” so let’s get to it before it’s too late.
Winners: The Break Was a Reset, Not a Rest
Trea Turner is the headline. Since the All-Star break he is hitting .323 with four home runs in eight games, and the underlying contact backs it up: a 14.3 percent barrel rate and a 61.9 percent hard-hit rate, both well above his season norms. His wOBA since the break sits at .488 against a .362 xwOBA, so some of this is running a little hot, but a hitter posting that kind of barrel rate is not doing this on luck alone. This also lines up with the broader run he has been on since early July, five home runs in a seven-game stretch from July 9 through July 19, the best home-run pace by a Phillies player in any month since Ryan Howard in 2007, and 21 hits over a separate seven-game stretch, the first Phillies player to do that in 95 years. Buy, and buy with confidence.
Jeff McNeil has been outstanding since the break: .444 with a home run over seven games, and the skill indicators back it up better than almost anyone in this column, a .520 wOBA against a .499 xwOBA, a 5 percent strikeout rate and a 10 percent walk rate. His season line remains weak overall, so this is a small sample, but it is a small sample with real contact quality behind it rather than a lucky week. Worth an add in deeper formats, not just a watch.
Steven Kwan has hit .483 with a .491 wOBA over his last eight games since the break, and a .457 xwOBA confirms the results are not a mirage even though his barrel rate sits at zero percent and his hard-hit rate is only 7.4 percent. That is not a contradiction, it is Kwan’s game. He has never hit for power, and a contact-and-plate-discipline hitter posting a near-.500 xwOBA on soft contact means he is simply finding the gaps and getting on base at an elite rate, exactly what his profile is built to do when everything is working. This is worth reconciling with our own earlier piece on Kwan’s contact-profile decline, which was written before this stretch began. The swing has not changed, the results have, and the two pieces are describing different chapters of the same season.
Losers: The Break Interrupted Something That Was Working
James Wood is hitting .167 since the All-Star break with zero home runs, a .192 wOBA and a 41 percent strikeout rate over his last eight games. His xwOBA, .247, is better than his results but still well below his season standard, so this is not purely bad luck, something about his timing is off. The contrast with what came before is real and dramatic: Wood entered the second half in the middle of a historic stretch, five home runs and a .500 average over six games from July 6 through July 12 that earned him NL Player of the Week honors. This is also not a new pattern for him. He went through an almost identical split last season, 24 home runs and a .915 OPS in the first half against just 7 home runs and a .689 OPS after the break. Hold him. The talent has not gone anywhere, but a rough stretch immediately after the break is a known tendency for Wood, not a one-time fluke.
Ryan O’Hearn is hitting .172 since the break with zero home runs over eight games, a .183 wOBA against a .192 xwOBA, meaning the cold stretch is not bad luck sitting on good process, the contact quality has dropped too. This comes right after the best individual game of his season, a Pirates franchise-record three home runs and 10 RBI on July 7, so the whiplash is real. His season overall remains strong, 16 home runs by the middle of July, which makes this read as a short-term cold stretch layered on a good year rather than a decline in his underlying skill. Monitor rather than drop.
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Shohei Ohtani is hitting .176 since the break with zero home runs, a .174 wOBA over eight games. Before anyone panics, look at the xwOBA: .329, a 155-point gap between what has happened and what the quality of his contact says should have happened, and his hard-hit rate since the break sits at 63 percent, in line with his usual standard. This is the clearest case in the column of results running well behind the underlying skill. Hold him, and expect the results to catch back up to the contact quality soon.
The Bottom Line: Split Happens
Same four days off, and it split these six hitters in opposite directions. The winners are backed by real contact quality, not just a hot week, and the losers split into two different stories: Wood and O’Hearn have seen their underlying numbers slip too, while Ohtani’s expected stats say his results will correct on their own. Neither effect is permanent, but knowing which kind of cold stretch you are looking at is the difference between holding a player and panicking on him.
Questions Answered About The Impact Of The All-Star Break, Answered
Why does the All-Star break affect some hitters more than others?
The All-Star break gives struggling hitters a chance to reset while interrupting the rhythm of players who were already locked in at the plate. Those effects are usually temporary, but they can create meaningful short-term changes in production immediately after the break.
Is James Wood’s cold stretch since the break something to worry about?
It is worth monitoring, but not panicking over. He has experienced a similar first-half to second-half split before, and while his expected statistics have declined along with his results during this stretch, the overall talent level remains unchanged.
Is Shohei Ohtani actually struggling right now?
His recent results have been poor, but his underlying contact quality remains much stronger than those results indicate. The sizable gap between his wOBA and xwOBA suggests he has been hitting into poor fortune more than suffering a genuine decline in skill.
Is Trea Turner worth adding after his hot stretch?
Yes, although acquiring him would likely require a trade rather than a waiver claim. His increased barrel rate and hard-hit rate since the break support the production, indicating the surge is backed by improved contact quality instead of luck.
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This story was originally published July 26, 2026 at 7:29 AM.