The Good Phight will be previewing the 2026 season by going over each position on the field. We’ll talk about the players that will occupy them, the players behind them, their strengths and weaknesses and give a few takes about how we think the season will shake out.
Can Bryson Stott maintain his second half surge and hot spring over a full season?
Bryson Stott has never had an above average season in the major leagues. Not exactly a bold statement, but one that still makes the brow furrow. Making
that statement requires context and for that context, we can look at one of the better, more all encompassing stats we have publicly available, wRC+. A stat that takes all offensive production a player has and puts it into one handy, dandy number where 100 is average and anything above is good, anything below is bad. Nothing Hogwartsian about it, it’s basically just a big math equation.
Bryson Stott has never been above 100.
He’s hit 100 twice, including 2025. Yet his other two seasons in the major leagues, he’s been below average at the plate. His play in the field has helped him maintain decent WAR numbers, but vacillating between bad and meh at the plate casts doubt on the future of the player. I am of the opinion that an extension would be more appropriate than casting him aside once he has completed his required six years of time with the team, but many are probably already counting down the days until he is elsewhere.
However…
His 2025 overall season stat line doesn’t tell the whole story of how his season went. Closer inspection reveals the team may have stumbled onto something with Stott that has turned him around for the better, if one wants to be that cock-eyed optimist like Billy Mumphrey.
2025 1st half: .234/.303/.333, 6 HR, 38 RBI, 59:31 K:BB
2025 2nd half: .294/.368/.487, 7 HR, 28 RBI, 32:23 K:BB
We know that Stott worked with hitting coach Kevin Long all season and made some kind of in-season adjustment at the plate. Based on the results we see from splitting his 2025 season in half, that adjustment worked splendidly.
So, the adjustments have been made. And there seems to be a clearer plan for what Stott is trying to accomplish at the plate: trying to pull as much as he can, getting on the plate more to turn middle-away pitches into middle pitches, taking the same swing each time.
Stott has managed to stick to his plan during Grapefruit League play, with good moments interspersed: a pair of homers and five walks through his first four games.
When players that have previously not done well in seasons past do well in spring, there has to be at least a shred of skepticism. Who are they having that success against? What kinds of under the hood data are they showing? These are the questions that need to be asked with a critical eye. Yet we see that Stott is carrying over the adjustments that he made last year to this year so far and the results are there. He’s had a good spring.
The real test comes next week when he finally see major league pitching with regularity. Will he continue to find success with the adjustments that he has implemented into his game? It would be helpful to the entirety of the offense if more players upped their game in 2026. There is a real possibility that steps back are coming through natural regression. Too many players taking a step back requires others to take a step forward if the offense is function at a high level. Stott is one of those players. It’s past time he started to show improvement at the plate, lest he become another middling offensive player.
So far, it looks like maybe it is happening.
