Orrico’s Observations: Has Oneil Cruz Actually Improved This Season?

Oneil Cruz was one of the most polarizing players throughout the winter draft months. He had his believers, those who were still firmly bought in on his raw skills and the potential for growth. Others (this writer included) weren’t not nearly as sold, and advised people to avoid Cruz in their 2026 drafts considering that he was still priced as a Top 100 player in most leagues.

Well, after ~10% of the season, his detractors aren’t feeling too great about themselves. Entering play on Wednesday, Cruz is the #1 hitter on the FanGraphs player rater, and the #2 player overall behind Jose Soriano.

The question we have to ask ourselves now is how real this hot start to the season really is. Could Oneil Cruz be an MVP candidate this season, or is this simply a heater that will be over before the ink dries on this article?

Let’s start with his batted ball data. Cruz has a ridiculous 20.5% barrel rate and 61.4% hard hit rate to begin the season. For his career, Cruz has a 16.4% barrel rate and 53.5% hard hit rate, so while these gaudy numbers are an improvement, there are actually pretty close to his output through the first stretch of his career. Being over 20% and 60% in those metrics, respectively, is a lot to ask even for such a powerful man like Cruz, so I think it’s fair to expect a touch of regression in that area.

One big issue for Cruz in his career has been the huge groundball rate. We have seen a lot of players with massive raw power struggle with ground balls rates over the last several years. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Elly De La Cruz, and James Wood are a few names that come to mind with 95th+ percentile exit velos that don’t translate to the HR totals we are expecting. To this point in his career, Cruz has an 8.8° launch angle and 48.1% ground ball rate. So far in 2026, Cruz has a 7.8° launch angle and 47.7% ground ball rate. When he puts the ball in the air, great things typically happen, but he still puts the ball on the ground far too much for my liking.

The next big part of his game to address is his plate discipline. Cruz’s chase rate has never been a huge concern, and it’s only up marginally from 2025 (28.1% to 29.5%). The bigger issues for me are with his contact rates. As a whole, he is making contact just 61.7% of the time this season. He was at 67.8% last season which was second to last among qualified hitters. There are a lot of great hitters with poor contact rates, but for the majority of his career, Cruz has not been one of them. His Z-Contact last season was 78.3%, which was 8th worst among qualified hitters. That number has dropped even farther this season to 77.4%. It’s hard for me to not see this as a massive problem that will eventually catch up with Cruz and lead to prolonged cold stretches.

Swinging strike rates correlate pretty strongly with contact rates, and this is another area where Cruz is not exactly excelling to begin the year. His 16.6% SwStr is the highest of his career to this point, as is the 35.5% CSW he has produced through 75 plate appearances.

One final thing to address is his performance against LHPs. Cruz has a .184/.258/.341 slash line with a 65 wRC+ against lefties in his career. Over 22 PA’s in 2026, those numbers are .400/.455/.850 with a 250 wRC+. It’ll be great for him in the long run if he can improve against southpaws, but I’m just not ready to believe he is that much better against them this soon, considering most of his profile looks the same as it has in previous seasons. I could easily be proven wrong, but it feels like a small sample size that people are reading too much into.

Oneil Cruz has all of the raw talent in the world. He could have the potential to be a Hall of Famer if everything comes together for him in his career. That being said, I don’t see anything below the surface to point to this being the massive breakout campaign that it might appear to be on the surface. If you are in a trading league, I think it’s well worth kicking the tires and seeing what someone might offer you for him. I would aim high and I’m not saying that he is a “must-sell” or anything like that, but I expect that his hot start to the season will not be sustainable the way some managers may think it is.