hitter-friendly venue<\/a> for right-handed hitters.<\/p>\nMaking contact can be an issue for Robert, but he crushes the ball when he hits it. What\u2019s somewhat impressive involves Robert showing improved plate discipline by chasing less often over the past two seasons. He went from a 38.6% chase rate in 2023 to 35.6% in 2024 and 32.1% in 2025. That coincided with Robert\u2019s zone swing rates dipping to 71.7% in 2024 and 74.3% in 2025, four percentage points below the league average. Robert looks like he made an actionable approach to improve plate discipline, which can be challenging, while continuing to hit the ball hard.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m looking for a discount on a solid player, it\u2019s Bryan Reynolds, who averaged 24 home runs and five or more stolen bases for four straight seasons. He had his worst season from a production standpoint since his rookie year in 2019 when we toss out the 2020 season. From a skills standpoint, most of Reynolds’s advanced metrics look similar. Reynolds had a 73.5% contact rate, 10.1% barrel rate and 72.2 mph bat speed, all within 1-2 percentage points of his career norms.<\/p>\n
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He expressed frustration with the outcomes in 2025 after feeling like he was hitting the ball well, which the underlying metrics indicate. Buy the dip on Reynolds because there\u2019s a good chance he makes a mechanical adjustment and the skills point to a similar player moving forward. \u2014 Corbin Young<\/p>\n
Pitchers were most excited to draftA Tale of Two Logans<\/p>\n
I hope a handful of my pitching staffs are helmed by either of the two Logans \u2014 Gilbert and Webb. Both righties are in big parks and tied to good defenses and competitive teams. I also like how both have proven the ability to succeed without maxing out on velocity, which could give them an assist in staying healthy (I acknowledge that Webb did have a Tommy John surgery, but it was 10 years ago). I\u2019ll have both names on speed dial as I navigate the third and fourth rounds. \u2014 Scott Pianowski<\/p>\n
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Don\u2019t Mis out on this potential<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll take all of the Jacob Misiorowski shares. Remember the 2025 MLB All-Star Game and the controversy surrounding the decision to name Misiorowski as the NL starter? If you told me at that time that he would be available past pick 100 in 2026 drafts, I would have thought you were crazy. Misiorowski struggled at times in the second half (5.36 ERA) but still recorded a ridiculous 12.1 K\/9 rate and solid 3.93 FIP over that stretch. And when many fantasy managers had turned their attention to football, he was one of the stars of October. In the NLDS, the flamethrower earned two wins while allowing one run over seven innings. He followed up that performance by striking out nine Dodgers over five innings in his lone NLCS appearance.<\/p>\n
Among starting pitchers, only Hunter Greene logged a higher average fastball velocity than Misiorowski, who has 200-strikeout potential in his first full season. Managers who are passing on Misiorowski in favor of boring veterans such as Kevin Gausman or Sonny Gray are making a big mistake. He\u2019s one of the most talented youngsters to enter the Majors in recent years and benefits from being part of an organization that consistently maximizes the effectiveness of their starters. After all, if Milwaukee pitching coach Chris Hook and turn Chad Patrick and Quinn Priester into effective starters, he can make Misiorowski a superstar. \u2014 Fred Zinkie<\/p>\n
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Don\u2019t sleep on Cease<\/p>\n
This is the year that I\u2019m planning to wait on starting pitchers to attack those breakout picks in the middle and sleepers late in the draft. Trust the skills of Dylan Cease, though we have WHIP concerns. Cease was unlucky from a BABIP perspective, yet maintained a strong 20% K-BB% and 15.6% swinging-strike rate. A reminder from an advanced stats piece that K-BB% strongly correlates with Skill Interactive ERA or SIERA. Cease had a 3.58 SIERA in 2025, similar to 2024 (3.46).<\/p>\n
He has a dominant slider that generates a swinging-strike rate above 20% (21.3%), which he relies on heavily to right-handed hitters (45.3%), leading to positive outcomes (.273 wOBA, .233 xwOBA). The challenge comes against left-handed hitters, with the slider and curveball performing well when he finds success. Cease toyed with a changeup, but look for him to throw more sinkers or make a small tweak to the arsenal against left-handed hitters. He provides volume and strikeout upside at the price. \u2014 Corbin Young<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2026 MLB season approaching, you\u2019re likely preparing for your fantasy baseball drafts. Yahoo analysts Scott Pianowski,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2276],"tags":[1749,145,5,3800,5343,4838,39,76,2102,11714,134,389,369,2291,101,843,4,1586,33,2248,13862,1587,5167,396],"class_list":["post-622893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-draft","tag-andrew-vaughn","tag-arsenal","tag-baseball","tag-brice-turang","tag-bryan-reynolds","tag-chad-patrick","tag-dodgers","tag-dylan-cease","tag-hunter-greene","tag-jacob-misiorowski","tag-juan-soto","tag-kevin-gausman","tag-luis-robert","tag-major-league-baseball-draft","tag-mets","tag-milwaukee","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft","tag-nico-hoerner","tag-quinn-priester","tag-scott-pianowski","tag-sonny-gray","tag-strikeout-rate","tag-white-sox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116225637346403422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}