We want to know (or remind ourselves) which hitters had the biggest breakout seasons in 2026. More importantly, we want to know if their new prices in 2027 will be worth it. My preference, generally, is to buy low and sell high. But the best way to prep for next year is to do so on a case-by-case basis.
Some of these guys will be too expensive next year; some of them might not be expensive enough!
Jordan Walker
The price will be a point of discussion for next year. I think he’s going to be an early-second-round guy. That’s my guess.
There’s no doubting his physical skill. We’ve always known the guy has the physical goods to be a stud player.
What made the breakout happen was better launch angles and a lower strikeout rate. Here’s the launch angle histogram from 2025:
Here’s 2026:
Those aren’t the easiest plots to interpret, but just focus on the 0 and you’ll notice that there are more and higher bars to the left of it in 2025 (the first one). He still burned his share of worms, but his GB% fell from 47% to 43%, which pushed his barrel rate from 10.9% to 13.2%.
You can see it here in this FanGraphs data app I made:
Career high line drive rate and fly ball rate. A lot of ground balls turned line drives and fly balls, which I think was the main reason for his breakout.
He also cut off six points from his K%. Which is huge. Walker had 667 PAs this year. Last year’s 32% K% turns into 213 strikeouts. This year’s 26% mark is 173. So that’s 40 more plate appearances available where he wasn’t striking out and able to do stuff we like for fantasy.
Will these improvements stick? I spotted that his zone contact rate did not change from 2025 to 2026. He’s been at 79% both years. That’s not a bad number for a guy who swings this hard, so maybe we should have picked that out as a reason to believe in him for last year. He did make more contact out of the zone while chasing slightly more.
I’m not one to spend a ton of time looking at every data point for every player. I think you can often go too far and just confuse yourself if you do that.
If it’s really a second-round value, that’s too much of a buy-high for me. He had slumps; he still struck out a good bit, and there’s always potential the launch angle stuff can regress to what it always had been. I’ll probably have him as more of a third-round hitter.
Buy or Sell Decision: Sell as a top 25 pick
Ty France
This was one of the more surprising hitter breakouts. He signed a minor league deal with the Padres in February and ended up being a key piece of their lineup.
You don’t often go to San Diego and see a breakout as a hitter. But this seems mostly fake.
2025: .279 xBA, .337 xwOBA, 16.3% K%
2026: .248 xBA, .326 xwOBA, 21.6% K%
So worse quality of contact with more strikeouts, and yet a +187 in OPS. He’s a free agent again, and he did enough to get himself a job for someone next year. That landing spot will matter a good bit, but he doesn’t seem like someone I’d want to put any real investment into right now.
Buy or Sell Decision: Sell
Oneil Cruz
What could have been had he not gotten hurt and missed almost half of the season! He played just 97 games, ripped 20 homers, stole 30 bags, and hit .280.
The GB% came up from last year, the barrel came down, and he kept the same K% and BB%. Those are bad things to see. He really didn’t make any significant improvements on the things he’s always struggled with. But the power played. He did go for a .249 xBA and .351 xwOBA, much better than last year. It’s just the K% and GB% not getting any better that make me wonder how he ended up with such a better OPS.
We’ll see what the price will settle. Probably pretty high. He now has 40 homers and 68 steals in the last two seasons while missing those games this year. People aren’t going to let a guy like that split very far. The risk is there with Cruz, and you don’t want to take a ton of risk in the top 50 picks.
Buy or Sell Decision: Sell