Four Upcoming Fast Swings

In an attempt to put the methodology from my last piece into practice, we can identify which young hitters with high bat speed and a high hard-hit rate might be worth targeting next season. Having used a 200 plate-appearance threshold in the first piece to ensure a reasonable sample size, I lowered it to 50 PA here to include hitters with limited roles or late-season promotions who might be able to make the step up next year.

Unsurprisingly, the options were not abundant; having a fast swing and hitting the ball hard is… hard to do. Below is the same chart as in the first piece, with the PA threshold lowered to 50 PAs. The further right the dot, the faster the bat speed; the higher the dot, the louder the contact.

Encouragingly, lowering the plate-appearance threshold from 200 to 50 did little to change the results: 81% (17 of 21) recorded a wRC+ of 100+, while 71% (15 of 21) reached 110+. The methodology continued to identify a high proportion of productive hitters, even when including those with limited playing time.

So the four names labeled are the focus of this piece. Four promising bats, each with their own limitations but enough of a showing that we can underline them as we move into next season.

Disclaimer: these numbers come from very small samples, something I am fully aware of and will continue to highlight throughout the piece. With that caveat in mind, I will use the 2026 numbers to assess the four hitters, but I thought it was worth pointing out from the outset.

So let’s dive in.

Joshua Báez – St. Louis Cardinals

At 77.5 mph, only four names from this chart — Caminero, Kurtz, Smith, and Walker — have a faster swing than Joshua Báez, and only 7 hitters are faster out of 534 with at least 50 plate appearances. The sixth-ranked prospect in the Cardinals farm system, according to The Board, Báez exploded onto the scene with the most improbable debut of three home runs in his first three at-bats. He finished the year with a .230/.278/.510 line, seven home runs, 18 runs and 18 RBI over 108 plate appearances in 29 games, alongside a 3.7% walk rate, a 30.6% strikeout rate and a 113 wRC+.

I will come back to how much impact this kind of performance can have in such a limited sample size, so as not to get carried away with the above stat line. But taking the game in isolation, Báez showed the ceiling his profile can bring. All three bombs came against an established pitcher in the Cubs’ Matthew Boyd, where he showed his ability to take a fastball deep to center, pull a changeup down the left-field line for his second, and stay with a slider on the outside rail to the opposite field for number three. That ability to go to all parts of the field with that bat speed will put him in great stead, and I think he will have a big role to play for the Cardinals next season.

Not only does he have high bat speed, but he also swings it fast a lot. His FastSwing rate of 74% is more than 16 points higher than the next bat in this group, Montes, at 57.5%. That, paired with a HardHit% above 47%, gives him great fantasy potential from a tools perspective, considering his power and tendency to hit fly balls 50% of the time at the MLB and minor league level in 2026.

A three-home-run performance will skew numbers around 100 PAs heavily, and I went back and forth on whether to mention his numbers with that outing removed. It happened, so he should not be punished for that, but as I have pulled the numbers, people can take that information as they see fit. Without the debut in Chicago, his stat line is .208/.260/.406 with 4 HR and about an 83 wRC+, and his ISO falls to .198.

Naturally, I expect some struggles from this kind of profile. Báez struck out around 30% of the time in 2026 between Triple-A and St. Louis, and he rarely walks. Even so, there is tantalizing potential here that could make him well worth gambling on given his likely low cost in 2027. I think Coby Mayo’s end-of-season production offers an interesting benchmark for Báez, given their similar HardHit%, exit velocity, and strikeout numbers. Mayo’s strong finish despite his own plate-discipline concerns shows the kind of payoff Báez’s tools could offer, but Mayo himself has taken years to find some kind of success. However, Báez has the upside, as he has already shown, and will get his shot as he is projected to be in the lineup for 2027.

Lazaro Montes – Seattle Mariners

Despite falling below the 46% HardHit% threshold by three points, given his ranking as the fourth fastest new bat and that the HardHit was still well above average, I felt Montes was a worthy mention. Following his call-up at the beginning of September, he has the smallest sample of the four with just 59 PAs, and he ended 2026 with a .212/.305/.481 line in 21 games, hitting 4 home runs with 11 RBI and 7 runs scored over 59 plate appearances. He walked 11.9% of the time but struck out 40.7% of the time, and still finished with a 120 wRC+ across a limited sample.

Montes has always been one of the more polarizing prospects in recent years, ranging from as high as a top-30 prospect on some lists to not making a top-100 on another. The bat speed, barrel rate, and power numbers show his ceiling, but the strikeout rate shows his floor. His contact quality has the highest peaks of the group from 2026, with a 17.9% barrel rate, a 116.1 mph maximum exit velocity, and a 107.6 mph EV90. However, he also has the lowest HardHit% and average exit velocity of the four, at 42.9% and 90.0 mph, respectively.

Montes’ 17.9% barrel rate, more than double the MLB average of 7.6%, drives a .499 xwOBAcon that sits well above the MLB mark of .368. However, it comes on such a small sample — only 28 batted balls — that must be caveated. His 15.0% barrel rate at Triple-A in 2026 suggests this quality contact is part of his profile, if not 17% high. I would expect him to still be well above the MLB average of 7.6%, and the power ceiling is sky-high, as shown by his first home run at T-Mobile Park, the longest in the park’s history in the Statcast era.

What I like about Montes is that his power and patience allow him to spray the ball, with a 39.3% pull rate and a 28.6% opposite-field rate. His bat speed allows him to wait an extra tick, and he is still able to target all areas of the field and take his walks. However, his 40.7% strikeout rate is alarming and will need to come down closer to the 30% range for him to have success. His above-average walk rate helps offset some of that concern, leaving him with a K-BB% almost identical to Báez’s despite the significantly higher strikeout rate, as well as a better BB/K ratio.

What might alarm me more for 2027 specifically is the 73% Z-Contact%, placing him ninth worst league-wide for batters with at least 50 PAs. His plate discipline numbers are very similar to that of Munetaka Murakami, and Murakami’s success does give a pathway for success. For next year, that narrow path to success and his inexperience make him a difficult one to take seriously.

Additionally, from a fantasy perspective, he’s a strong platoon bat and has not shown anything against left-handed pitching in a very small sample. But he will rightly garner interest as he will have the opportunity to compete for a roster spot given the Mariners’ vacancies in the outfield and at DH, so well worth monitoring in the spring.

Leo Bernal – St. Louis Cardinals

The second Cardinal on the list and the surer bet of the two, Leo Bernal has the most well-rounded profile of the four, and I think the most likely to have major fantasy success in 2027. With Iván Herrera likely to shift to the DH, Bernal looks poised to be the starting catcher for 2027, having started every game since making his debut on September first, even playing some first base. So immediately, he has the highest floor due to simply having the clearest pathway to regular at bats, but beyond that, his contact profile makes him incredibly appealing.

While his HardHit% means he qualified for the exercise easily, he actually does not swing fast that often, with a 73.6 mph bat speed and a FastSwing rate of just 32%. However, his HardHit% at 56% is well above the rest and is only eclipsed by Wood and Kurtz; even at around 100 PAs, I think the rest of his numbers will prove that this is a number that can hold. He squares up 36.5% of his contact and has a 20.6% blast rate on contact. This is backed by a 92.6 mph average exit velocity, 8th of the 118 on the chart, and a 10.0% barrel rate. That contact is spread across line drives (25.7%) and fly balls (42.9%), with the lowest ground-ball rate of the group making him the strongest overall contact profile of the four.

Additionally, Bernal’s results match this contact quality: his .284 average sits just above a .270 xBA, his .474 SLG just below a .487 xSLG, and his .351 wOBA is almost identical to a .347 xwOBA, so he is the only one of the four whose production pretty much matches his underlying numbers. His plate discipline is close to average, with a 24.5% strikeout rate that is the lowest of the four and above the MLB average of 22.2%.

Bernal is certainly the one who will have the highest ADP come draft season, and the floor is the reason for that, but the ceiling is there as well. I will be high on Bernal going into 2027.

Lucas Spence – Houston Astros

This last one is a bit of a wildcard, but given the turnover in Houston, the lack of young talent, and a legitimate shot to make the Opening Day roster, whenever that may be, Lucas Spence seemed to be an interesting addition given he made the threshold. Similarly to Montes, he has an even smaller sample than the Cardinal pair, and like Báez, it is heavily skewed by a single game, so there are some caveats, as well as more drawbacks.

Lucas Spence slashed .218/.317/.509 in 63 plate appearances over 19 games, with 4 home runs, 12 RBI, and 9 runs scored. He walked 11.1% of the time but struck out 34.9% of the time, and still finished with a 130 wRC+. Like Bernal, despite clearing the bat speed threshold, he doesn’t swing fast often, with just 32.7% fast swings and the shortest swing of the four, but the two share similar contact numbers, as Spence posted 35.5% squared-up on contact and 21.0% blasts on contact, against Bernal’s 36.5% and 20.6%. Given the swing mechanics and his launch angle of 10.6 degrees, the lowest of the group, I think he could end up hitting a lot of ground balls and may have some struggles similar to Henry Bolte, who also has a very high bat speed, at the beginning of the year. In his short stint in the majors, he was equally split between ground balls and fly balls at 42% each, but over an extended period of data, I would expect that GB% to increase. He also shares similar concerns with Montes with contact, with just a 61.9% contact rate.

But he has some pop, as proven in his own three-homer outing, and Bolte, to his credit, was able to carve out a nice end to his campaign in 2026, which gives a player like Spence optimism. However, this outing has heavily skewed his stat line, and Spence has the largest gap between his actual results and expected numbers of the four hitters as a result. His 28.6% HR/FB rate, based on a very small number of fly balls, may be contributing to that overperformance, particularly given his ground-ball tendencies. The table below illustrates this discrepancy, showing how far each hitter’s results sit above (+) or below (-) their expected numbers.

So Spence will certainly be one for deeper formats, but may be worth a stash and will not cost much to acquire, and he is worth monitoring in spring, along with his outlook for playing time next year.