Ottoneu: Chad’s 2026 Keep or Cut Decisions at OF

It feels like it has been forever since I last updated this series by reviewing my tough calls at MI and that is what the holidays do to us. A couple of weeks of family time and travel and suddenly it’s 2026, we’re just over a month out from pitchers and catchers reporting, and I am running out of time to make these decisions. Today, we turn our attention to the OF and debate whether to hold these OF bats or kick’em to the curb.

Wyatt Langford
Salary: $24
Average Salary: $16
2025 P/G: 5.36
Projected 2026 P/G: 5.70

Langford hasn’t quite lived up to the hype some placed on him, but his 2025 season was strong, if not $24 strong. He was the 26th best OF by P/G and according to the auction calculator, the 37th  most valuable OF overall. In. 4×4, where I have him, he rated out even better, as the 29th best OF per the auction calculator. That’s plenty useful, but is it $24 useful? In my 2025 rankings, I had 19 OF at $21 or more. In my 2026 rankings, I will end up around the same point. With inflation, that puts Langford very close to a fair price at $24, but maybe still a bit much.

But his projections this year are better. In Points leagues, I have him priced anywhere from $21-$25 in points leagues and $24-$27 in 4×4, depending on what projection system you use and what assumptions you make in creating values. That’s pre-inflation, and makes $24 Langford in 4×4 and easy keep, but why is he projected to be better than he was last year?

From ’24-’25, Langford improved his BB rate but also struck out more, going up from 20.6% to 26.4%. He was a bit more patient, but saw a big drop in contact rate outside the zone and a small increase in swinging strike rate, which would increase his K-rate. But all of the projections see that K-rate improving, falling back closer to 23%, around his career rate. Looking deeper at Langford’s plate discipline, this makes a lot of sense to me. His swinging strike rate (10.4%) and CSW (27.9%) both put him in the company of guys whose K-rates are lower. His closest comp in those two stats is Heliot Ramos, at 10.4% and 27.4% and his K-rate was 22.7%.

I am buying what the projections are selling on K-rate. They also project more games played and PA, pushing up his HR and R totals (and, for points leagues, his points total). I am buying that, too. The net of this is a projected wOBA (.343 from THE BAT X, .346 from Steamer) that is more in line with his 2025 xwOBA (.344) than his 2025 wOBA (.337).

But I think there is more potential here. Langford made adjustments last year, resulting in plate discipline gains and increases in EV, Hard Hit rate, and barrel rate. Part of that adjustment appears to be dialing back his swing speed, which was down from 74.5 mph to 73.1 mph. This wasn’t because he couldn’t swing as hard  – if you look at his swing speed distribution, he was able to reach the same high-end speeds and the low-end didn’t get lower.

Source: Baseball SavantThis doesn’t look like a drop in bat speed so much as a decision to be more controlled with his swing. And this suggest two things to me:

1. At just 24 years old, he is still adjusting and developing.
2. He could get into more high-end bat speed if he wanted.

Combine those two things, and it feels like his chances of taking another big step forward are higher than for most players.

Keep or cut?

I am keeping. I have no issue keeping him up to $25, and would be thinking about it up to $30.

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Cam Smith
Salary: $4
Average Salary: $6
2025 P/G: 3.48
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.53

This is a different story. It starts the same: Langford Smith hasn’t quite lived up to the hype some placed on him. But it goes sideways after that. While Langford was good, if not elite, Smith was bad. His P/G tell the story, but in case you were wondering if he just got pulled for PH often, or something like that, no, his .298 wOBA confirms he was simply not good. And while the projections call for improvement (.302 wOBA from THE BAT X, .310 from Steamer), going from “abysmal” to “still below replacement level” isn’t helping much.

It’s never as simple as that, though. If it were (below replacement level player projects to be below replacement level), this paragraph would be over and the keep or cut decision (cut) would be easy. But Smith showed us something last year. He had a .336 wOBA through the All Star Break. If you remember just a few paragraphs ago, Wyatt Langford had a .337 wOBA last season.

After the break, Smith’s ISO and BABIP plummeted. The latter was unsustainably high (.378) before the break, but it overcorrected to .208 after. Some of this is pitcher adjustment. Smith did most of his damage, particularly on fastballs, on pitches up and in. By the second half, pitchers were going up and away with fastballs more often, into a zone where Smith was less effective. Part of it might also be the drag of a long season on a guy with basically no pro experience. He had 134 PA in 2024; he played in 134 games in 2025. By May he was in uncharted territory.

Complicating all of this is lack of clarity on Smith’s role in 2026. Roster Resource shows him as the small side of a platoon with Jesús Sánchez. That’s a tough sell for fantasy managers, but it also raises a question: if he is going to only start a couple times a week and otherwise pinch hit, would Houston be better off giving him regular PA to work out some challenges in Triple-A until there is a clearer opportunity for him to play? Back in November, Asstros GM Dana Browne said that was a possibility.

Keep or cut?

I am going to keep, for the same reason I would keep a $4 J.J. Wetherholt – this is a top prospect with a path to playing time in 2026 and big upside. But at this point, Smith is just that and just like I wouldn’t keep many other prospects into double figures, I am not holding him at prices close to $10 either. I am glad I don’t have to make a choice at $8 or so – that is where it would get tough.

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Brenton Doyle
Salary: $5
Average Salary: $6
2025 P/G: 3.56
Projected 2026 P/G: 4.50

Doyle’s 2025 was disappointing after his breakout 2024, but there are both mitigating factors and some positive signs that impact how I view his season.

1. In April, Doyle shared that his wife had suffered a miscarriage, and he took time away from the team to be with his family. Without getting to deep into this, I’ll just say that, as much as I like to rely on stats and projections and numbers in general, people are people, and it’s hard to know how this impacted his play and for how long.
2. This came immediately on the heels of a quad injury that kept Doyle sidelined for a chunk of April. He had been trying to work through the quad injury and it is hard to know how this might have impacted his preparation for and start to the season. Sometimes these things snowball, even if it doesn’t show up in a more serious injury or an IL stint.
3. Doyle walked a bit less, but didn’t suffer a jump in K-rate, and across the board his plate discipline looks similar to his 2024 season.
4. His average EV, max EV, barrel rate and hard hit rate were all better than his excellent 2024 season.
5. His struggles came primarily from regression in his launch angle. After hitting more FB and LD in 2024 than 2023, he lost those gains in 2025. Maybe those gains just represented a one-time thing that happened, but if he did it once, it isn’t hard to imagine him doing it again.
6. He had a .359 wOBA at home. That’s Jose Ramirez, Junior Caminero territory. And yeah, that is at Coors and so it is inflated. But guess what? Your fantasy league doesn’t deflate those stats. A Coors Field double is worth the same as a Petco Park double.

Keep or cut?

Keep. I have him in a 5×5, where he adds some speed, which helps his value, but he might be even more valuable in FanGraphs Points leagues, because “part-time” or platoon guys are more valuable in that format. Doyle isn’t exactly a platoon guy, but if you were stuck using him only at home for 81 games and getting that Coors boost, you’d get $5 of value from him, even if he doesn’t return to 2024 form. I am a bit more hesitant in 4×4, where 20-30 steals have no value and part-time players take a bigger hit, but in FGPTs, I would hold him up to $10 easily, and maybe even a buck or two beyond that. In 5×5, I would get very close to that same range, though in 4×4 it is probably no more than $6-$7.