Breakouts: AL Central
My favorite 2026 fantasy baseball picks from the five teams in the AL Central
Click here to view the whole Breakouts & Busts series
I thought about releasing one long thing with breakouts and one long one with busts. But then I remembered that… that would be stupid. The whole game here is to demand attention and eyeballs repeatedly. Not just one time! And those whole pieces were going to take until mid-February to publish since I’m still working through my team previews series.
So I’m turning two into 12. That’s a 6X. And it starts today. It starts right now, you’re looking at it.
Defining Terms
There’s a fair amount of disagreements and arguing over picks like these, although not as much as in the good old days when people didn’t feel like they had to be so nice online. I’d really like to encourage you guys to flame me hard in the comments. Make me regret some of these picks. Start a feud. Make me put a screenshot of your comment into my reminders app to check back on in September (to remind you if you were wrong and to delete it if you were right).
But you can’t judge a prediction as right or wrong unless you define what you were actually predicting.
I’m being pretty loose here.
Breakout = a player I think will overperform their expectation
Bust = a player I think will underperform their expectation
Pretty simple, right? But it’s important for that to be put out there. Because there are going to be old guys listed as breakouts and young guys listed as busts. And it’s not exactly proper phrasing to call Jack Flaherty a breakout since he’s 30. I’m also going to call Luke Keaschall a bust, and he’s 23, so that’s not really fair. But now you know what I mean! I guess it would be better to call these targets and fades, but that probably won’t get as many clicks! Lmao!
I’ve already written all of these players up in the team previews series, so I will link to those write-ups if you want the full details. The writings below on each player will be brief.
White Sox Breakouts
Kyle Teel
Smashed in the second half after getting acclimated
Catcher + DH reps could get him 135+ games played
Elite sweet spot / line drive rate
Shane Smith
Brilliant 54% Strike% on the four-seamer, 121 MLB DW grade
15.8% SwStr% on the changeup, 106 MLB DW grade
18% K-BB% in his final dozen starts
And that is curtains for the free subscribers. There’s no better time to become a paid subscriber than right now! This post is the launch of full-on 2026 draft content, and, in my opinion, the tools, resources, and projections alone are worth the small monthly fee. Come along for the ride!