Author Archive: Corbin Young

Today we will follow-up on the breakout hitters article, this time looking at highly drafted players who underperformed expectations. The table below shows bats who were among some of the biggest under-performers in 2026. All of these players were drafted in the top 150 of 12-team leagues and earned at least $15 less than they were projected to earn.

Many of the them fell short of projected volume, due mainly to injuries or other factors. For some, their skills were similar, but the luck factors regressed. For others, the outlier season coincides with unexpected skill changes. But they all fell short of what we expected when we drafted them.

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Today we’re looking at hitters who earned $10 in value that broke out in 12-team leagues. A breakout is a player who drastically outperformed their projected value, with some being drafted in the final round of 12-team leagues or going undrafted. We’re using those arbitrary cutoffs to find players who provided solid fantasy value but somewhat came out of nowhere. I imagine if we filtered by dates, some of these draft prices would change, so take that with a grain of salt.

Draft price aside, are those breakouts legitimate? Should we buy or sell those performances as an early look toward 2027? Is there something that could have predicted those breakouts to help us in the future? We hope to answer those questions when analyzing these players. Given the large sample, we’ll break this up into multiple articles.

We won’t discuss Jake Bauers, Jake McCarthy, and Jordan Walker, because we covered them in an earlier article on hitters who drastically outperformed their projected value this season. That said, Kazuma Okamoto, Munetaka Murakami, and Kevin McGonigle were highly sought-after hitters, but they don’t have an ADP listed on the Player Rater. In most 12-team leagues, Okamoto, Murakami, and McGonigle had an ADP around pick 200 or earlier.

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I’ve written a couple of late-season articles on overperformers and underperformers based on projected versus earned value. As someone who spends plenty of time examining pitchers, my fantasy teams admittedly struggled in pitching points. My team’s pitching ratios exploded due to blowup outings from Jack Flaherty, Luis Castillo, Logan Webb, and others.

On the hitter side, I rostered plenty of veteran players that might be seen as boring ones. Common hitters on my roster included Trea Turner, Jose Ramirez, Dansby Swanson, Ian Happ, Bryan Reynolds, and Seiya Suzuki. In one 12-team league, I started with Ronald Acuña Jr., Garrett Crochet, Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, and Geraldo Perdomo.

On another 12-teamer, I went with Shohei Ohtani, Treat Turner, Ketel Marte, William Contreras, Hunter Brown, Suzuki, Carlos Estevez, Corey Seager, Alex Bregman, and Spencer Strider with my first 10 picks. Unsurprisingly, that team struggled across the board.

I’ll walk through a few lessons from my draft and in-season strategy from the 2026 fantasy baseball season.

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We’re doing a follow-up article on pitchers who underperformed their projected value after looking at those who outperformed. Many of these pitchers were injured, including Brandon Woodruff, Cole Ragans, Daniel Palencia, Edward Cabrera, Garrett Crochet, Hunter Brown, and Spencer Strider. Meanwhile, several struggled relative to expectations, like Luis Castillo, Logan Webb, Bryan Woo, George Kirby, and others.

The table below shows pitchers who lost $10 in value compared to their projected dollars within the top 200 picks.

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Last week, we covered hitters who outperformed and underperformed their projected value. We’re doing the same exercise for pitchers, focusing on starters. We won’t discuss all these pitchers below, but here is the list of pitchers who outperformed their expected value by a least $10 this season.

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We’re following up on an earlier article about hitters who are outperforming their projected value this season. But there’s also the other side of that coin: 19 hitters among the top 200 picks who are underperforming their projected value by at least $20. Unsurprisingly, the hitters drafted within the top 50 picks who were injured or struggled have been the biggest busts.

The visual below shows hitters who have lost $20 or more this season.

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In 12-team leagues, 37 hitters earned $20 or more on the Player Rater. Of those 37 hitters, 24 were drafted within the top 100 picks. Meanwhile, four hitters went undrafted or were past pick 400: Jake Bauers, Jake McCarthy, Jordan Walker, and Liam Hicks. We want to hit on these breakout hitters in the draft or acquire them during the season. These are the waiver pickups that turn into regular starters on our fantasy squads.

The 37 hitters who earned $20 or more are seen below.

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At this point in the season, it’s about playing time and finding hitters that can produce in specific categories. Here’s a follow-up to a previous article on surprising starting pitchers who have been performing well since August. Today, it’s the hitter version, with seven players contributing in deeper leagues. We used a roster percentage cutoff of 50% or lower in Online Championships, with the exception of one catcher-eligible player.

We’ll examine seven hitters who have been contributing fantasy value over the past couple of weeks. Is it luck or skill? Or have they been earning more playing time down the stretch? Though these hitters won’t win weeks or leagues, they can be sneaky fantasy contributors for the final few weeks.

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When examining leaderboards over a small sample (say, the last two weeks or maybe a month), you find a mixture of high-end players and surprising ones. If you are looking for late-season adds, those high-end arms aren’t likely available, but what about some of the unexpected names? We’ll look at players rostered in less than 80% in Online Championships to identify and examine pitchers in these deeper, 12-team leagues.

This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into these pitchers because we have limited time for the rest of the season. Success can occur with strong skills, luck, or a mix of both. What have they been doing? Is it sustainable? How do we feel about the upcoming matchups? We’ll examine five starting pitchers who have performed well since August to see if they can be reliable down the stretch.

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Since July, several fantasy-relevant hitters have been barreling the ball less often. Some have been recovering and returning from injuries. With others, the power seems to have just disappeared recently.

The table below shows the hitters with a three-percentage point drop in their barrels per plate appearance since July, minimum 50 PA.

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