David Schoenfield Sep 4, 2026, 07:00 AM ET Close Covers MLB for ESPN.com Former deputy editor of Page 2Been with ESPN.com since 1995 Last October, Cal Raleigh and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. faced off against each other in the ALCS. Raleigh was coming off a 60-homer campaign, and Guerrero went off over the course of the postseason, hitting .397 with eight home runs and 15 RBIs in 18 games. Their encore performances in 2026, however, have been a disaster.

Raleigh, while hot of late (he was the AL Player of the Week last week), is still hitting just .172 with 20 home runs, with fewer hits (64) than the 65 home runs he totaled in 2025. Guerrero has a .693 OPS and remarkably hasn't homered in Toronto all season. Those two aren't the only stars of 2025 who have suffered through injuries or performance issues this season.

Reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge hasn't played since May 31 due to a stress fracture in his right rib. Garrett Crochet, last year's AL Cy Young runner-up, has missed most of the season. Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor and Hunter Brown missed time with injuries.

Jose Ramirez has had his worst season since he was a part-time player in 2015. Julio Rodriguez is on track for the lowest batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage in his five seasons in the majors. Paul Skenes is trying to keep his ERA under 4.00 instead of 2.00.

Trea Turner finished fifth in the NL MVP voting a year ago with 5.4 WAR but has been below replacement level in 2026. Indeed, this has been one of the most important storylines of the season: the fallen stars of 2026. We'll look at how some of these performances have affected the playoff races, but first let's check: Is 2026 an outlier? You would expect any group of players who had great seasons to be collectively less valuable the following season.

To check out how 2026 compared to other seasons, I went back to 1995 and used Baseball-Reference WAR to see how the top 10 players in the MVP voting and top three in the Cy Young voting fared the following season. This gave a list of 21 to 26 players for each year, depending on how many pitchers finished in the top 10 of MVP voting (for National League pitchers in the pre-DH era, only pitching WAR was considered). WAR numbers for 1995 were prorated to 162 games, as were the current figures for 2026.

It turns out that, yes, 2026 has seen a pretty extreme decline in value -- and these numbers don't even include Guerrero, who finished 13th in the MVP voting so wasn't included in the study. The 2025 group of 23 players combined for 145.1 WAR and are on pace for 87.2 WAR in 2026, a 39.9% decrease. That would be the third-largest decline since 1995:1. 2011-12: 44.0%2. 2009-10: 42.8%3. 2025-26: 39.9%4. 1995-96: 39.5%5. 2004-05: 38.0%The average year-to-year decline in value is 31.3%, with a low of 16.6% from the 2017 group.

While a high starting value of collective WAR can affect the following season's decline, that wasn't the case for our 2025 group of top 10 MVP/top three Cy Young finishers. The average WAR of 6.3 per player is right at the overall average of 6.3 over the 29 years in the study. Obviously, these declines have had a big impact on the success of these players' teams this season.

Let's dive into the causes behind their down years, as well as the extent of that impact. Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (7.2 WAR to 0.9)Primary cause: Higher strikeout rate; much lower hard-hit rate; can't catch up to fastballs; might have played through an oblique strain earlier in the season before finally going on the injured list for a month. The Mariners finished ninth in the majors in runs per game in 2025 with Raleigh leading the way.

This year? They're last, at 3.96. That's not all on Raleigh, but after creating an estimated 49 runs above average in 2025, he's at seven runs below average in 2026, a 56-run difference. The Mariners are on pace to score 124 fewer runs than last season.

Julio Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners (6.6 WAR to 2.5)Primary cause: Declining hard...