Two years ago, I started this columnto prevent myself from having “The One Who Got Away” when we give up on a player we like too early. The impetus for it was Josh Lowe, who was one of my favorite young breakout hitters in 2022, but he struggled to start the year and was demoted a few times, so I was tentative about drafting him in 2023. Of course, that year he hit .292 with 20 home runs and 32 steals, and I was crying into my pint of ice cream at the end of the night.
I figured if we looked at highly regarded prospects who failed to live up to expectations in their MLB debuts but had solid underlying metrics, we might be able to identify which players not to give up on. The article that first year brought me to Lawrence Butler, Zach Neto, Brenton Doyle, and Jordan Westburg. Unfortunately, my ultimate choice out of that group for the “next Josh Lowe” was Parker Meadows. Still, the exercise proved useful, so I wrote the column again last year,and it led me to Ben Rice, Addison Barger, Kyle Manzardo, and Jackson Holliday. Of course, because I was unsure of Ben Rice's playing time, I chose Evan Carter as my top choice. So I think we've learned that the article is worthwhile, but my final choices need some work. Maybe this is the year that I nail it.
So what are the criteria that I use?
Breakout Second-Year Hitter Criteria
- A hitter had to have made their MLB debut in the previous season
- Can not currently have an ADP better than 200, using NFBC data
- Had to have at least 100 MLB plate appearances (That means no Griffin Conine, who had only 86 MLB plate appearances, or Sal Stewart, who had 58).
- Had to have an offensive WAR under 1.0. (That means no Dylan Beavers, Jakob Marsee, or Daylen Lile, who had offensive WARs over 1.0)
- I also looked for players who were legitimate prospects, either making top 100 lists or featured inside their own team’s top 10 prospects.
- The hitter had to have been at or near league average in barrel rate, swinging strike rate, chase rate, and contact rate.
That final step is personal sorting. I want to look beyond the surface-level stats (since the point is that they would have been bad on the surface), and look at underlying metrics that I believe point to a strong approach and plate skills. For me, that's barrel rate, max exit velocity, swinging strike rate (SwStr%), chase rates, and overall contact rate. Even in Lowe’s bad 2023 call-up, he had an O-Swing% under 30%, a slightly above league average SwStr%, a 5.2% barrel rate, and good minor league batted ball data, so there were hints of a viable fantasy profile (especially since we knew his scouting report).
When all that was done, I had 13 players I wanted to list in the article. However, three of them figure to start the year in the minors, and two of them are being drafted too high to outperform their ADP. That left eight hitters who could be the next potential breakout. We’ll go through the case for each of these hitters, and then I’ll anoint the next breakout hitter at the end of the article.
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Potential Young Hitter Breakouts for 2026 Fantasy Baseball
| Matt Shaw | CHC |
| Carlos Narvaez | BOS |
| Edgar Quero | CWS |
Both AgustínRamirez (ADP of 77) and Samuel Basallo (ADP of 178) are being drafted inside the top 200 in February drafts, so they don't qualify to be my breakout pick here. Also, all of Alejandro Osuna, Kristian Campbell, and Robert Hassell III are unlikely to break camp with their respective teams, but I believe they're all names to keep an eye on in case they get a chance at regular playing time, much like Addison Barger last year. I should also note that Jordan Lawlar had just 74 plate appearances, so he didn't qualify for this article, butI covered him in my post-hype hitters article and am a fan for this season.
I will admit that Marcelo Mayer was well below average in swinging strike rate and Jac Caglianone missed the mark in chase rate and overall contact rate, but they are two of the two highest-profile prospects on this list, so I felt it was warranted to keep them in the article to discuss them in more detail. There were some other players, like Thomas Saggese and Edgar Quero, who just missed the cut in one criterion or another, but I still felt they warranted a deeper dive before we fully wrote them off.
Jac Caglianone - OF, Kansas City Royals (ADP:
Caglianone is the biggest name on this list, so it makes sense to start with him. The 6th overall pick from the 2024 MLB Draft, Caglianone was a borderline top 20 prospect heading into the 2025 MLB season. He then hit .337/.408/.617 with 20 home runs and 72 RBI in 66 games split between Double-A and Triple-A, earning him a big league promotion. The big leagues were not as kind. He hit .157/.237/.295 with seven home runs in 62 games. So what's the argument for believing in him in 2026?
For starters, his quality of contact is impressive. Even with his struggles last season, Caglianone posted a 12% barrel rate and 114.1 mph max exit velocity. He also had a 53.2% hard-hit rate and 93.9 mph average exit velocity in Triple-A. Of all hitters who took at least 100 swings at the MLB level last year, Caglianone has the 8th-fastest bat speed at 77.4 mph, slightly better than Kyle Schwarber and Nick Kurtz. He can square the ball up with the best of them.
He also makes a decent amount of contact. While his 75% overall contact rate was essentially league average last year, he has always posted an almost 90% zone contact rate and has never run a strikeout rate above 21% at any level in the minors. There's a chance that MLB pitchers will drive that number up a little higher because Caglianone has a tendency to chase out of the zone a bit more than you'd like to see. If you look at Pitcher List's Process+ stat, which documents a hitter's overall power, contact, and swing decisions, Caglianone was well above average in his contact and power last year, but his swing decisions left a lot to be desired.
The swing decisions being poor are obviously not great, but Caglianone swung outside of the zone far less in the minors, so perhaps it was just a result of adjusting to big league pitching. His minor league data would suggest that he reins that in a bit this season, even though it will always be a part of his game to some extent.
The other concern is that Caglianone doesn't put the ball in the air a lot. He had just a 34% fly ball rate in his big league at-bats last year, but he also posted a 31.3% fly ball rate in Triple-A. Part of that, which we can see now with Statcast data, is that he has a really flat swing. That makes it hard for him to elevate pitches that are not up in the strike zone. As a result, he will always run high line drive rates, and that will help with his batting average, but his power production may lag behind where his quality of contact would suggest he should be. Which means that, even with the walls being moved in at Kauffman Stadium, it's hard to project Caglianone for much more than 20 home runs this season. However, that should come with around a .250 batting average and the chance to play nearly every day in what will be a solid lineup in Kansas City.
So does Caglianone hit .250-.260 with 20 home runs, 60 runs scored, and 70 RBI? That feels realistic and makes him about a $6.50 player. Something on par with Josh Lowe, who will have more speed but a worse average, or Alec Bohm, who will have a better average but worse power. It's not a bad profile, but it might not morph into a true difference-making one unless there's a swing path adjustment.
Marcelo Mayer - 2B/3B, Boston Red Sox (ADP:
In addition to struggling in his MLB debut, Marcelo Mayer also has to combat a troubling injury history and the likelihood that he will be a better real-life player than a fantasy asset. The 23-year-old played in just 87 games last season, split between Triple-A and the big leagues, and he played in 77 games in 2024 and 78 games in 2023. Staying healthy has been a bit of an issue. However, there doesn't appear to be anything chronic here. It was a shoulder injury in 2023, a lumbar strain in 2024, and a wrist injury in 2025.
However, I think those injuries and his struggles in just 44 MLB games last year are causing us to lose sight of how talented a hitter he is. He has a career minor league slash line of .273/.360/.466 and has more power in his bat than many expect. He had a 9.2% barrel rate in his brief MLB sample but also had a 48% hard-hit rate in Triple-A last year with a 111.2 max exit velocity. Which all makes sense considering he's 6'3" and 190 pounds; this is not a small, slap-hitting middle infielder. Mayer has registered some 25% strikeout rate seasons, but he also didn't chase much out of the zone at Triple-A and had an 87% zone contact rate.
The biggest question is whether the gains we saw at Triple-A early last year were legitimate or just him taking advantage of lesser competition because they disappeared when he got to the big leagues. Mayer had cut his swinging strike rate (SwStr%) by over 3%. He was making a career-high 77% contact, and he was being far more selective than he had been in previous seasons. Then, he got to the big leagues, and his overall swing rate jumped, his chase rate jumped, his swinging strike rate was back up near 14%, and he stopped pulling the ball. To me, a lot of that suggests a young player who struggled to immediately adjust to higher-quality pitching.
Mayer has always registered walk rates near 10%, but his was just 5.9% in his 44 MLB games. He never pulled the ball less than 42% of the time in the minors, but he had a 38% mark in 2025 in Boston. He was thrown into a pressure-packed situation, filling in for an injured Alex Bregman at a new position on a team that was desperate to keep winning and fight for a playoff spot. I think we're going to see Mayer have some positive regression back towards the player he has been in his minor league career. Yeah, he'll probably still have a 12% SwStr% and a 24% strikeout rate, but he'll also probably hit .250 and club 15 home runs. He doesn't run much, so you're unlikely to get double-digit steals, so a lot of this speaks to a profile that's better for Boston as a team than for fantasy managers.
Coby Mayo - 1B/3B, Baltimore Orioles (ADP:
Thanks to an injury to Jordan Westburg, it appears that Coby Mayo will have a spot in Baltimore's lineup to start the season and could have the chance to hold onto it, given Westburg's checkered injury history. So, how excited should we be about that, considering Mayo had 294 plate appearances last year and hit just .217 with 11 home runs?
Well, for starters, he did sport a 10.1% barrel rate, but that came with just a 36% hard-hit rate and an 87.3 mph average exit velocity. His swinging strike rate was just under 13%, and his overall contact rate was just over 71%. The reason that's a mild concern is that those are close to what he did in Triple-A in 2025 and 2024 too. That's perhaps just the overall contact profile that Mayo has at the upper levels. He doesn't chase an egregious amount, he pulls the ball enough, and he's started to lift the ball more often, ranking 23rd in Pull Air rate among players with at least 200 plate appearances, so he's working to get the most out of his swing, which we like to see. He's also posted better exit velocities in the minors, so there is still a good chance that Mayo has enough power in his bat to be an impactful MLB hitter. Now that he has a starting job, I think he could push for 20-25 home runs if he's able to hold onto the job for the majority of the season.
However, I am increasingly under the impression that it will likely come with a batting average around .220-.230. When you pair that with limited speed and a questionable defensive profile, it's hard to get super excited about Mayo truly breaking out.
Cam Smith - OF, Houston Astros (ADP:
A lot of people are looking at Cam Smith's .236/.312/.358 slash line in his 134-game rookie season, and moving on from him without considering key context. For starters, he came into last season with just 20 TOTAL PLATE APPEARANCES above High-A. He was primarily a third baseman when the Cubs traded him to the Astros as part of the Kyle Tucker trade. Smith then moved to the outfield and played his way into a big league role while learning a new position and adapting to a new organization. That's a tall order for a 22-year-old.
It's no surprise, then, that he started the season slowly, hitting .205/.307/.352 in his first 27 games, with a nearly 30% strikeout rate, a 38% hard-hit rate, and an 85.7 mph average exit velocity. Then things seemed to click. Smith hit .271/.330/.386 in his next 76 games, registering a 27% strikeout rate, 42% hard-hit rate, and 88.6 mph average exit velocity. Of course, as should be expected from a young player making a jump from playing only 32 minor league games in 2024, Smith hit a wall. In his final 31 games, Smith fell back to .137/.256/.260 with a 29% strikeout rate, 39% hard-hit rate, and an 87.5 average exit velocity.
Yet, what I keep coming back to is that, throughout all of that, his overall approach at the plate remained solid.
His Process+ remained at or above league average for the entire season, and the only element that was ever truly below average was contact, which he pulled to a league average mark in the final stages of the season and finished at 73.8%, which is not much worse than the 75.9% league average. His 29.1% chase rate is better than the league average, and his 113.9 mph max exit velocity shows us that there is power in his bat. Smith also graded out as an above-average defensive right fielder, so I'm not sure why FanGraphs is projecting that Zach Cole will start over him.
There are certainly some issues Smith has to work out. It seems like there will always be some mild swing and miss in his game, and he ranked 296th out of 348 hitters in Pull Air rate, which means that his power ceiling will be capped until he starts elevating the ball in the air more. Still, I see a 23-year-old who showed a better-than-league-average process at the plate despite having played just 27 games at the lower levels of the minors before being given this opportunity. It would not surprise me to see Smith take a big leap this year. I just don't think the power will truly come without a change in his attack plan.
Thomas Saggese - 2B/3B, St. Louis Cardinals (ADP:
Saggese may not have been the prospect that some of these guys were, but his minor league numbers were strong. In 2023, he posted a .306/.374/.530 slash line in 139 games between Double-A and Triple-A with 26 home runs and 12 steals. In 125 games at Triple-A in 2024, he hit .253/.313/.438 with 20 home runs and nine steals, and he was hitting .317/.402/.445 in 42 Triple-A games last year before getting an extended look in St. Louis. With the Cardinals now in full rebuild mode, there is a strong likelihood that Saggese should get regular playing time at either second base or third base, depending on how much contact Nolan Gorman can make or how aggressive the Cardinals want to be with prospect JJ Wetherholt. Or if they now want to start Ramon Urias (I truly don't get that signing from a rebuilding team).
So, if Saggese does see 400 or more plate appearances, what can we expect? For starters, you should get a strong contact profile. In his time in the upper minors, Saggese has produced zone contact rates in the upper 80% range with overall contact rates just under 80%. His SwStr% hovers around 12%, and he has rarely produced strikeout rates above 23%. When he does make contact, Saggese posted solid hard hit rates last year of 41% in Triple-A and 44% in the big leagues. His 100 mph max exit velocity isn't tremendous, but it also isn't awful; however, his barrel rate was below league average in large part because he had just a 32% fly ball rate. In previous minor league seasons, he has been closer to 38%-40%, so maybe Saggese was simply adjusting to MLB pitching.
Another potential issue is that Saggese swings outside of the zone more than average. He has posted solid contact rates on pitches outside of the zone, but it's much harder to succeed with that kind of approach in Major League Baseball. If he maintains that approach, Saggese could be more of a .250-.260 hitter with 15 home run power, unless he starts to lift as he did in the minors. However, Saggese does have 78th-percentile sprint speed and stole 12 bases in 2023 and nine bases in 2024, so it wouldn't be a huge shock if he swipes 10 bases for a team that won't really be in contention. All of that makes for a solid deep-league target, but maybe not a true breakout.
Matt Shaw - 3B, Chicago Cubs (ADP:
Matt Shaw was one of the top rookies heading into fantasy baseball draft season last year. He seemed like a sure-fire bet to be the Cubs' starting third baseman, but he struggled out of the gates and got sent back to Triple-A. Even though he was better when he got another chance, he still finished the season slashing .226/.295/.394 with 13 home runs and 17 steals, which caused him to register just a 93 wRC+ and a -1.8 offensive WAR. On top of all of that, the Cubs added Alex Bregman in the offseason, and it's looking like Shaw will head into the 2026 season without a starting spot.
So what is enticing at all about Shaw? Well, for starters, in the second half of the season, Shaw slashed .258/.317/.522 with 11 home runs and six steals in 61 games. That was good for a 130 wRC+. Even though his strikeout rate was up 4% in the second half, Shaw clearly felt more confident in his approach, pulling the ball over 20% more and lifting the ball over 10% more. Over that span, he also posted a 10.1% barrel rate despite having just a 32% hard-hit rate and 86.7 mph average exit velocity, which shows us that the concentrated approach to pull and lift the ball more helped with the barrels and power production despite not stinging the ball as much as you'd like to see.
On top of that, Shaw sports an 80.6% contact rate overall and a 9.2% swinging strike rate, which means there's plenty of contact in his approach. So we have a young hitter who struggled in his MLB debut and then made an approach change or simply began attacking with more confidence, which allowed him to make more quality contact. The exit velocities will never be loud, but if he pulls the ball in the air enough, he could hit 20 home runs in a full season and be a 20/20 or 20/25 hitter with a .260 average. He just doesn't have a starting job to prove he can be that type of hitter, which makes it hard to choose him as the breakout pick.
Cole Young - 2B, Seattle Mariners (ADP:
It may surprise you that Cole Young made this list, and it surprised me a bit as well. You may see Young's .211/.302/305 slash line with an 80 wRC+, just four home runs, and one steal, and think "There can't possibly be upside here." But that's what this exercise is for.
First of all, Young's 9.1% SwStr%, 26.7% chase rate, and 79.3% overall contact rate indicate a strong contact profile. That makes sense since he never had a strikeout rate over 16% in the minors and had a 91.4% zone contact rate in Triple-A. Young is always going to put himself in a strong position to put the ball in play. When he does put the ball in play, his 5.6% barrel rate may not be that alluring, but he did also post a 114.1 max exit velocity, which is tied with Jac Caglianone, who we think of as a power hitter. Now, that doesn't mean Young will consistently hit the ball that hard, but it does show us that he can make authoritative contact.
So that alone makes Young a bit more intriguing than I had thought previously, but then I found something else when I looked at his Process+ chart.
As you can see, Young's Process+ shifted in late July to become above league average. His swing decisions and overall contact were fueling that process grade since his power was still below average, but we love to see a young hitter improve his process as his rookie season goes on. So, surely, Young performed better in the second half, right? Well, actually, he slashed .254/.305/.347 in his first 35 games and .162/.299/.257 in his last 39 games. Hmmm, so why did the Process+ grade go up?
Well, Young had just a 5.4% walk rate and 22.5% strikeout rate in those first 35 games and improved to a 16.4% walk rate and 14% strikeout rate in his last 39 games. Part of that his second-half struggles were due to BABIP luck. He had a .318 BABIP in the first 35 games and a .174 mark in the final 39. He regularly had BABIPs over .315 in the minor leagues, so that second-half mark feels very fluky. However, he also had a 30.8% hard-hit rate and 7.7% barrel rate in the first 35 games and a 31.5% hard-hit rate and 3.4% barrel rate in the final 39 games. So part of it is that, by pulling the ball less and hitting the ball in the air more often in the second half, his quality of contact regressed.
Still, this is a 22-year-old who made better swing decisions as the season went on and showed the ability to make hard contact, but perhaps changed his approach incorrectly in the second half or began to be pitched differently. If we can merge the improving swing decisions with the pull-centric approach we saw when he came up, there's a chance that Young could be a .250-.260 hitter with 10/15 upside. That's more of a deep-league target, but it's more intriguing than we may have expected before digging in.
Edgar Quero - C, Chicago White Sox
On one hand, there is a lot to like about Edgar Quero's rookie season. He hit .268 in 403 plate appearances and sported a 81.9% contact rate, 21.7% chase rate, and 8.4% swinging strike rate, which were all well above league average. That kind of elite plate discipline is part of the reason that he always sported high walk rates in the minors, and we should expect the walk rate and on-base percentage to tick up in his second season. He also had a 90.4 mph average exit velocity and 46.3% hard-hit rate, which suggests that there is at least a little bit of power in his bat. That's all the stuff we like.
However, he also had just a 3.7% barrel rate, a 50% groundball rate, and really struggled to pull the ball. Of the 348 hitters who had at least 200 plate appearances last year, Quero ranked 340th in Pull Air rate.
Now, he has pulled the ball more in the minors, but he's also never had more than 17 home runs in a minor league season, so I don't believe we are going to unlock some untold level of power production if he just lifts the ball more. On top of that, Quero is not a particularly great defensive catcher. He had a -9.7 defensive WAR last season and a -14 Fielding Run Value. With Kyle Teel also on the White Sox, it's hard to see Quero becoming their starting catcher. So his best chance for regular playing time is as a DH, but how many teams are going to DH a .260-.270 hitter who has 10-15 home run power and doesn't steal bases? Can that profile really hold off Lenyn Sosa for the full-time DH job? What if Luisangel Acuna takes a step forward and the White Sox need to move Austin Hays, Miguel Vargas, or Andrew Benintendi to DH? There are just far too many paths for me where Quero doesn't bring much to the table in 2026.
Carlos Narvaez - C, Boston Red Sox (ADP:
Yes, another catcher on this list, but we had quite a few intriguing rookie catchers last year. Narváez may have been the one who came out of nowhere the most. The 27-year-old was known as an elite defensive catcher, but not much was expected of him offensively, so slashing .241/.306/.419 with 15 home runs was a bit of a surprise. Yet, this exercise gave me reason to think that there is more left in the tank.
For starters, Narváez was league-average or better in every one of the categories I used for this article. Yes, his 74.6% contact rate was just under the 75.9% league average, and his 12.3% SwStr% is higher than the 11.6% league average, but we're talking about marginal differences here. He was essentially league average in both. He then also posted a 9.1% barrel rate and 28.3% chase rate, which were far better than league average. So he makes good swing decisions, hits the ball with authority, and makes a league-average amount of contact? That's pretty appealing, especially for a catcher who posted the 7th-highest defensive WAR of any catcher who had over 200 plate appearances in 2025.
Yet, there's more to be excited about. Narváez saw his numbers drop significantly in the second-half, but he wasn't just a rookie catcher who wore down; he was playing through a knee injury for the final three months of the season before having to get offseason surgery. According to Narváez in that linked interview, before the Red Sox's West Coast trip, which began on June 16th, he felt knee pain so bad that he was brought to tears, and the MRI showed that he would eventually need knee surgery. So if we use that as a cut-off date, Narváez was hitting .282/.366/.457 with six home runs and a 12.4% barrel rate before June 16th. From June 17th until the end of the season, he hit .205/.251/.386 with nine home runs but a 6.3% barrel rate.
What's more, his pull rate dropped from 44.5% down to 30.2%, which is not a surprise since the knee he had surgery on was his left knee. When a hitter strides, their front heel (on the left leg for a righty) plants into the ground, and their back hip then rotates and creates the torque necessary to turn on the ball. However, if your front leg can't withstand that pressure and remain strong, your front hip tends to fly open, and you don't hit the ball to the pull-side with as much authority. That was clearly at play here with Narváez. His fly ball rates and hard-hit rates remained similar, but he didn't appear to be able to hit as many balls hard to the pull side, and his walk rate also fell from 11.7% before the knee injury to 5.6% after, which may (unless we knew exactly what zones he was swinging and missing in) just indicate a lack of comfort in the zone.
All of this is to say that I think we are ignoring Narváez at our own peril. He may have been hitting over his head in the first two and a half months of the season, but his second-half swoon was also very clearly connected to injury. There's a really good chance that he's a .250 hitter who will hit 15-20 home runs while catching at least 120 games for the Red Sox. That's a major value at his draft cost.
Who is the breakout hitter choice?
So the “finalists” for this award, considering Samuel Basallo and Agustin Ramirez are not eligible, are Matt Shaw, Jac Caglianone, Cam Smith, and Carlos Narváez. I'm tempted to make Matt Shaw the final answer, but I don't see a clear path to playing time for him. Of course, playing time concerns are the reason I chose Evan Carter over Ben Rice last year, and that didn't work out for me. Still, I'm going to stick with the logic.
That leaves Narváez, Caglianone, and Smith as my choices. As much as I like Narváez and believe he will vastly outproduce his current ADP, I can't choose a catcher who is only going to play around 120 games this season. So now we're down to two hitters. When I input the stats I think are most likely for both hitters into Tanner Bell's SGP sheet, it spit out Caglianone as a $6.50 player and Smith as a $4.19 player, so that helps us get to our final answer. I like Cam Smith's swing decisions a bit more and think there is power in his bat, but I think Caglianone's approach is more likely to produce a higher power output in 2026, and he also has a longer runway for production since Kansas City has so few options in the outfield. I like both of them and think they'll both produce for fantasy managers, but I just think Smith may be a couple more tweaks away from reaching the ceiling that I know he possesses.
