We’ve had some time for the dust to settle on the 2026 fantasy baseball season, which means it’s time to look back on what we learned (or should have learned) before we turn the page to 2027. I figured I’d start by looking at “league winners.”
We love to throw the term “league winner” around, but what does it really mean? I could have looked at all the teams who won leagues and found the players who appeared on most of them. That would be valid, but I don’t have all that data at my fingertips, and I believe the players who “won” you something were the players who outproduced their acquisition cost by the most. So that’s what I looked at: which players produced the most fantasy value based on what it cost to get them. Which players gave you the biggest return on investment. Chances are, if you hit on one or more of these guys, you were in for a pretty solid season.
To measure what their return on investment was, I took the FanGraphs Player Rater dollar values for 12-team leagues and used the Player Rater’s ADP, which is derived from NFBC formats. I compared what each player earned with what his draft position should have earned. The “should have earned” part, I needed some help with, so I had Claude average the 2026 earnings of every player drafted within a reasonable range (about 22%) of the ADP for that pick. So, for example, if the player was the 100th pick, I looked at the value produced by players drafted 78th through 128th. That felt like a fair way to say, “this pick should have produced a value around this amount.”
I referred to that below as their “Slot Cost.” Every pick after pick 250, I also treated as a waiver wire add, which meant it cost nothing to acquire the player. By taking the final dollar value for each player and subtracting their slot cost, we’re left with the players who earned far more than it cost to draft/acquire them.
So who were those players in 2026?
2026 Fantasy Baseball League-Winning Hitters
| Player | Pos | 2026 ADP | Slot cost | 2026 $ | Profit vs slot |
| Pete Crow-Armstrong | OF | 33 | $14.1 | $49.5 | +$35.5 |
| Jordan Walker | OF | 512 | $0.0 | $29.4 | +$29.4 |
| Ben Rice | C/1B/DH | 53 | $9.7 | $36.6 | +$26.9 |
| Miguel Vargas | 1B/3B | 303 | $0.0 | $26.5 | +$26.5 |
| Otto Lopez | 2B/SS | 229 | $0.0 | $26.5 | +$26.5 |
| CJ Abrams | SS | 65 | $9.1 | $33.9 | +$24.8 |
| Sal Stewart | 1B/3B | 162 | $3.3 | $27.9 | +$24.6 |
| Jake McCarthy | OF | 507 | $0.0 | $24.4 | +$24.4 |
| Gabriel Moreno | C/DH | 181 | $0.4 | $24.2 | +$23.8 |
| Alec Burleson | 1B/OF/DH | 175 | $0.9 | $23.9 | +$23.0 |
Not a ton of surprises here. Even though Pete Crow-Armstrong was a top 40 pick, he still vastly outperformed his draft slot. His production so far has exceeded everyone else’s, so he was the ultimate “league winner.” Ben Rice and CJ Abrams were also early-round picks who returned far more than it cost to acquire them, keeping in mind that Rice is catcher-eligible and this is for two-catcher formats.
PCA, Rice, and Abrams also join a group of hitters here who were already pretty good in 2025. Alec Burleson, Miguel Vargas, and Otto Lopez all had flashed usable production in 2025 and were locked into full-time roles. We may not have seen this jump coming, but we likely could have been drafting them higher based on underlying skills and roles.
We have talked ad nauseuam about Jordan Walker‘s breakout and ways in which we could have seen it coming. Sal Stewart was a highly touted rookie who delivered in his first full season, while both Gabriel Moreno and Jake McCarthy earned far more playing time than they were projected to. Moreno had never had more than 380 plate appearances in a season, but had 550 this year, and McCarthy won a starting job in Colorado, which also made him our staff vote for comeback player of the year.
Some other waiver wire players (ADP after pick 250) who came close to making this list were: Dillon Dingler ($22 value in 2026), Liam Hicks ($22), Jake Bauers ($20.8), Carter Jensen ($18.8), Luis Garcia Jr. ($18.6), Kevin McGonigle ($17.8), Carson Benge ($17.8), and Brooks Lee ($14.1).
2026 Fantasy Baseball League-Winning Pitchers
| Player | Pos | 2026 ADP | Slot cost | 2026 $ | Profit vs slot |
| Jacob Misiorowski | SP | 114 | $6.3 | $41.7 | +$35.4 |
| Cam Schlittler | SP | 117 | $5.2 | $37.6 | +$32.4 |
| Drew Rasmussen | SP | 132 | $4.9 | $28.9 | +$24.0 |
| Parker Messick | SP | 294 | $0.0 | $23.0 | +$23.0 |
| Jacob Latz | SP/RP | 731 | $0.0 | $17.6 | +$17.6 |
| Logan Henderson | SP | 413 | $0.0 | $17.4 | +$17.4 |
| Cade Cavalli | SP | 305 | $0.0 | $16.5 | +$16.5 |
| Nick Martinez | SP | 738 | $0.0 | $16.4 | +$16.4 |
| Dylan Cease | SP | 75 | $7.9 | $23.6 | +$15.7 |
| Yoshinobu Yamamoto | SP | 27 | $15.2 | $30.7 | +$15.6 |
Again, we start the list with names that are not particularly surprising. Jacob Misiorowski and Cam Schlittler were the best two pitchers in the league this season, and neither one of them was drafted inside the top 100 picks. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Dylan Cease were the only two other semi-highly drafted pitchers who produced a “league-winning” return on your investment. I guess we can include Drew Rasmussen in there too.
Of this group of ten pitchers, five of them (Misiorowski, Schlittler, Logan Henderson, Parker Messick, and Cade Cavalli) were high strikeout rate arms who didn’t pitch enough innings in 2025 to be among the top arms drafted. In fairness to drafters, Parker Messick wasn’t officially in the rotation until the end of May, and Cade Cavalli was fairly mediocre until a pitch mix change and velocity bump in the middle of June. Still, betting on strikeout arms coming off limited workload makes sense.
The majority of the other names on here had a clear role/situation change. Drew Rasmussen was another year removed from injury and went up over 170 innings. Nick Martinez was given a chance to be a full-time starter, Jacob Latz was turned into a closer, and Dylan Cease changed organizations, which led to massive improvement from his changeup and attack plan.
So who could fit this bill in 2027?
Potential League-Winning Hitters in 2027
| Player | Pos | 2026 age | 2026 PA | Barrel % | 2026 $ |
| Heriberto Hernández | OF/DH | 26 | 505 | 12.7 | $4.1 |
| Spencer Torkelson | 1B | 26 | 612 | 12.2 | $6.0 |
| Colson Montgomery | 3B/SS | 24 | 638 | 12 | $7.6 |
| Munetaka Murakami | 1B | 26 | 553 | 20.5 | $9.1 |
| Chase DeLauter | OF/DH | 24 | 559 | 6.3 | $10.5 |
| Jac Caglianone | 1B/OF | 23 | 553 | 13 | $14.2 |
| Riley Greene | OF/DH | 25 | 592 | 14.8 | $14.6 |
| Garrett Mitchell | OF | 27 | 531 | 11.7 | $8.3 |
| Wilyer Abreu | OF | 27 | 681 | 12.5 | $13.2 |
| Luis García Jr. | 1B/2B | 26 | 543 | 12.2 | $18.6 |
If we’re going to identify who were league winners in 2026, then it makes sense to use that information to project who would be a league winner in 2027. The hitters who made the league winner list seemed to fall into two categories: Players who had already shown flashes of success and were underpriced (Rice, Burleson, Vargas, PCA, Lopez) and players who experienced a significant bump in playing time from the previous season (Walker, Stewart, McCarthy, Moreno).
It’s hard to use 2026 numbers to project who will have a playing time boost in 2027, so I’ll leave that part to the side for now. To find potentially underpriced hitters, I wanted to look at the commonalities behind the hitters who were “league winners” this year. Among all qualified hitters, having a 12%+ barrel rate or a 91+ mph average exit velocity, combined with being age 26 or younger, doubled the rate of $10+ profits returned. Meanwhile, strikeout rate, walk rate, chase rate, and swinging-strike rate had no relationship to profit.
That means, if we’re looking for players to break out in 2027, we should be looking for players entering their athletic prime who hit the ball hard. Not a shocking revelation, and I already write an off-season column about hitters entering their athletic prime years. This year, that column mentioned Rice, Vargas, Lopez, Ryan Jeffers, Wilyer Abreu, Alejandro Kirk, and a collection of hitters who did not break out (Brett Baty, Heliot Ramos, Andrew Vaughn, etc.)
In addition to the list above, there are a few players who fit the hard contact and age profile but will likely already be priced up by the market. I’m not going to list them as potential league winners, but they should be targets for you in drafts, even at cost: Walker, Stewart, Vargas, Drake Baldwin, Hunter Goodman, Carter Jensen, James Wood and Jackson Chourio. All earned $18–30 this season and could see a sizeable boost from that in 2027.
Of the others listed, Jac Caglianone might be the best fit based on age and his 13% barrel rate and 93.3 mph average exit velocity. We already know why Riley Greene is an exciting fantasy option, but he produced just $15 of value in 2026. There’s a path for him to be a $30+ guy. Heriberto Hernandez and Chase DeLauter could take big steps forward with more playing time; Luis Garcia Jr. has a full season in Yankee Stadium, and all of Spencer Torkelson, Munetaka Murakami, and Colson Montgomery have the batted ball quality but major contact issues. If they can make strides in their contact rates, their power could lead to a massive return on investment for fantasy.
Potential League-Winning Pitchers in 2027
| Player | Team | Pos | 2026 IP | K/IP | 2026 $ |
| Didier Fuentes | ATL | SP/RP | 73.1 | 1.26 | $9.1 |
| Jonah Tong | NYM | SP | 30.2 | 1.13 | -$3.6 |
| Tatsuya Imai | HOU | SP | 76.2 | 1.27 | -$7.3 |
| Gage Jump | ATH | SP | 98.2 | 1.10 | -$15.4 |
| Brandon Sproat | MIL | SP | 97.0 | 1.04 | -$16.3 |
| Jack Leiter | TEX | SP | 80.0 | 1.04 | -$12.8 |
| Jackson Jobe | DET | SP | 46.0 | 1.11 | -$2.1 |
| Mason Montgomery | PIT | SP/RP | 68.2 | 1.54 | $13.3 |
| Grant Taylor | CHW | SP/RP | 84.0 | 1.26 | $13.8 |
Looking at the starting pitchers who made our “league-winners” list earlier in the article, the key is strikeouts. Among all starters drafted at an ADP between 90–400, those who threw under 100 innings in 2025 and posted a 1.0 K/IP or higher averaged $4.40 or more when compared to their slot, and 31% of them returned $10+ profit. So we need to be looking for starting pitchers like that. The names that came up were Didier Fuentes, Jonah Tong, and Logan Henderson. Of course, Henderson already was a “league-winner” in 2026, so his price will be high.
Younger pitchers who had the strikeouts but a poor ERA also fit the bill. Remember that Misiorowski had a 4.36 ERA in 2025. He was missing tons of bats, but the surface-level ratios weren’t ideal. Pitchers like Tatsuya Imai, Brandon Sproat, Jackson Jobe, and Jack Leiter all fit the bill. So did Gage Jump and Mason Barnett, but factoring in the element of pitching in Sacramento muddies those waters.
The other names on this list, Mason Montgomery and Grant Taylor, are either elite closers or potentially breakout starters if they’re moved back into the rotation. There is obviously a lot of uncertainty with their roles in 2027, but they are names to keep an eye on, especially if we have a better idea of their role.
