Chad Young’s Most Rostered Players of 2026

I can usually tell you sometime in January or December who will show up in this piece. That’s not because I have started drafting – my leagues are all keeper or dynasty formats and I didn’t have any drafts until late January – but because I start to realize who I trust, who I am higher on than others, and who is likely to be on my rosters. This year, however, there are some surprises on my list.

I am not sure what to make of those surprises, but diving into these players, there are some patterns that might help me plan better for future seasons.

I cut back quite a bit this year, and will be playing in nine leagues – five Ottoneu, two Keep or Kut listener leagues on FanTrax, a dynasty on FanTrax, and a home league on CBS. While it only take five rosters for a player to be on more than half my teams, only one player made that cut.

Joey Cantillo – six rosters

That’s right, I have Cantillo on six of my nine teams, and he went undrafted in my shallowest league (the CBS league) and my pitching in that league is pretty suspect, meaning Cantillo is already on my radar there. Cantillo is not one of the surprises on my rosters. I had decided in January to keep Cantillo in four Ottoneu leagues, so he was destined for this list from way back then. Cantillo has struggled in Arizona, but a lot of that is an inflated HR/FB rate, which is a thing that can happen in any small sample, especially a Spring Training sample. Hi velocity looks fine, his walk rate is down, his swinging strike rate looks stable. Plus, in February, Eno Sarris told us Cantillo was the biggest gainer in the updated Stuff+ model. That still only took him to a 101 Stuff+, but it helps to explain why he was so successful last year, despite seemingly weak stuff. I like Cantillo, I trust Cleveland’s coaches to get the most out of him, and I think he’s going to be a solid option all year.

The Prospects: Esmerlyn Valdez and Travis Bazzana – four rosters each

I paired these two because there are always prospects I am a bit higher on than most (last year, Chase DeLauter and Colby Thomas showed up in this exercise), and I guess this year, it is these two. There were other candidates – DeLauter and Carson Benge show up on three rosters each – but these two jumped the line.

Bazzana isn’t a huge surprise. He was a number one overall pick, remains highly touted, even if the shine has come off a bit, and is widely expected to be in Cleveland this year. Honestly, he should be breaking camp, given the Guardians other options, but this isn’t a “Chad complains about his MLB team’s decisions” column, it’s a “Chad talks about his own decisions” column, so we will let that go. While some of his draft-mates are getting more chatter these days, Bazzana somewhat quietly had an excellent 2025, posting a 137 wRC+ across Double- and Triple-A. He has followed it up with a scorching Spring Training. His showing in the World Baseball Classic wasn’t great, but combined with his time in Arizona, he showed an improved K-rate and excellent power, striking out just 20% of the time (vs. 26.7% in Triple-A last year) and hitting four home runs in 40 PA. There is nothing keeping him out of the Cleveland lineup except the Cleveland decision-makers.

Valdez, however, is a surprise. He got some buzz in the Ottoneu Slack community, which maybe influenced my thinking on him. But he has big power (the FanGraphs prospect team rates his game power 50/60 and his raw power 60/65) and while scouts seem to view his bat as only okay, he seems to have a good sense of the zone and enough bat to ball skills to get to that power. In his first taste of the high-minors, Valdez struck out 24.7% of the time in Double-A, while walking 11.6% of the time. The six HR in 215 PA were a little disappointing, but he had 20 HR in 314 high-A PA and is still young. Valdez continued to impress in the Arizona Fall League and Eric Longenhagen has a great write up from that time about Valdez’s breakout and his path forward.

The In-Season Adds: Kyle Stowers, Jorge Polanco, and Noelvi Marte – four rosters each

None of these guys surprised me, because I was busy picking up them months and months ago. All three of these guys jumped onto my radar last year, in different ways. Marte was someone I always liked as a prospect, but then backed off on (like almost everyone else did) when he struggled to adapt to MLB and then got hit with a PED suspension. Maybe because I always liked the tools, when he returned for a full season in 2025, I noticed fairly early that his K-rate was way down in Triple-A and when that continued in MLB, I was ready to pick him up. Marte remains a bit of a free swinger, which limits his walk rate and hurts his OBP. This might be the one thing that makes it surprising he is on so many of my rosters, given I play almost exclusively in OBP leagues these days. But he has improved his chase rate and continues to have a Z-Swing% – O-Swing% over 35%, with a zone contact rate around 85%. Those numbers aren’t great, but they are very close to league average and give him plenty of opportunity to get into a strong swing (116.7 max EV). He needs to get into the higher end of his exit velocities more often – a thing he is doing this Spring – and he needs to improve his defense enough to have a regular job, but I still really like the upside, especially in that park.

Stowers was a small surprise to me at the end of 2025, as he showed up on a lot of my rosters despite being a guy I wasn’t super high on in the past. Unlike Marte, this wasn’t me coming back around to (or remaining too optimistic on) a guy I had always liked. But like Marte, it was a case of believing in the upside of a bat that was showing an improved K-rate. Stowers still has too much swing and miss, but last year his plate discipline did all the things you would want – he chased less, swung in the zone more, and made more contact. Often it seems increased contact rate and better plate discipline comes from less aggression and results in less hard contact, but he also increased his average EV, set a new career-high max EV, boosted his hard-hit rate and posted an obscene 19% barrel rate. The fact that I held him everywhere I picked him up is no surprise. The only bummer is that he was voted off my CBS team and while I got a discount on him at our auction last night, the combination of his injury, needs at other positions, and some concerns about all that swing and miss resulted in a decision tole him go to another team. If bidding on him stopped a buck or two earlier, he would be on five of my rosters, instead of four.

Polanco is something like Marte, in that I have been a fan of Polanco for years, but injuries and a bit of a performance roller coaster kept me from investing too much. But as long as he is healthy, he should produce. As good as his 2025 was, and as surprising as it was relative to fantasy expectations, it’s very much in line with what healthy, effective Polanco was doing in the past. Playing DH last year seemed to really help him stay on the field, and hopefully playing 1B will do the same for him this year.

The Holdovers: Kyle Bradish and Spencer Torkelson – four rosters each

Calling these guys holdovers is a little misleading, as they weren’t in this list last year. But they are both players that I was higher on than the market was last year, but actually might be lower on than the market this year. Six of my eight Bradishes and Torkelsons were keeps from last year and the other two were trades from early enough in the off-season that any boost they were getting from the market hadn’t really happened yet. In the drafts and auctions they were available in, I didn’t pick up either.

That’s not because I don’t like them. If so, I would have traded them away. But I do have concerns about both. Bradish has looked excellent when he has been healthy, but he hasn’t been consistently healthy. At age 29, he has less than 360 career innings spread over five MLB seasons. If he does stay healthy, that limited mileage might prove a benefit, but it is also a bit of a warning flag. He’s also achieved his results without super-impressive Stuff+. I am not super concerned about that, given his performance track record, but all of that leaves me a little surprised how often we are seeing him ranked as a top-20 SP. I had him just outside my top 20, so it is not like I am particularly low on him, but I think I have swung from being one of the highest on him to being just below everyone else. That leaves him as an obvious keeper at the prices I have him, but not an obvious trade candidate as I still like him a lot.

Torkelson is in the same boat for different reasons. I am not concerned about his health or playing time, but he’s been very up-and-down early in his career and that makes him a bit hard to predict. Last year, coming off a poor 2024, I was not exactly sky-high on him (hence him not showing up on this list last year), but I was pretty sure he would at least be an effective hitter and worth rostering. So I bought in when he showed progress. This year, however, I find that in almost every league I am in there is at least one manager who is convinced 2026 will be continued progress, and I am not so sure. Nothing in 2025 looks unsustainable to me, but nothing screams “secondary breakout coming!” either. The pedigree is enough to make that secondary breakout possible, but I am not willing to bet on it. So, like Bradish, I bought in early enough that I have him at a price well below market value and below what I think he is worth. But the gap between the market and my valuation isn’t big enough to justify a trade, either.