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2026 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Busts 1.0 for Scott White, featuring Trevor Story and Alex Bregman
These 12 are either being overdrafted or have serious red flags
By
Scott White
•
19 min read
The term "bust" carries a heavy burden, connoting a complete collapse rather than just mild disappointment. So I try to tailor my list appropriately, emphasizing the players with true bottom-out potential while saving some of the mild disappointments for an "overrated" column that comes out later in draft prep season.
- Sleepers 1.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Breakouts 1.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Busts 1.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
I wouldn't say I adhere to that rule perfectly, and I should stress that there is a point when I would draft any one of these players. They're not avoid at all costs. Some I even like, to a degree. But I have concerns, and those concerns are significant.
Jackson Merrill, OF, Padres
NFBC ADP: 70.0
If you're questioning the sense of declaring a player a bust a year after he already busted, I would say, well, we clearly didn't learn the lesson the first time. Merrill is still being drafted like a stud outfielder -- ahead of the likes of Cody Bellinger, Jarren Duran, and Riley Greene -- when he was easily one of the most disappointing Fantasy assets last year. His 16 home runs in 115 games (a 23-homer pace over 162 games) shouldn't inspire much confidence on its face and, even worse, was only made possible by a seven-homer September. He also stole precisely one base, one, which means we can't count on him being even a viable contributor to that category.
The prevailing sentiment right now seems to be "Oh, well, he suffered a concussion early on, so clearly that has impeded him all year, preventing him from stealing bases and undermining his power potential until that final hot stretch. Maybe! It wouldn't be the first time a concussion had far-ranging effects. But without a track record to back it up, it's kind of just optimism. Merrill was a prospect in high standing when he arrived in 2024, but his production in the minors to that point was lacking. His 2024 rookie season is his only high-performing season on record.
Going back to my earliest days of Fantasy Baseball analysis, one of the clearest warning signs for a young hitter was a lack of patience. Major league pitchers are simply too good not to take advantage of that, and Merrill's walk rate for his career is only 5.8 percent. So that undermines his hit tool, which is purportedly his best, and then his power tool, which is more middle-of-the-pack (70th percentile average exit velocity in 2024 and 46th percentile in 2025), is undermined both by a ballpark that's long been known to suppress left-handed power and a pull-air rate that ranks firmly in the lower half of the league.
I don't think Merrill will lose his job or end up back in the minors or anything, but I do think, particularly if he doesn't turn out to be the base-stealer we once thought he would, he might end up ranking closer to the Brandon Nimmo side of the ledger than the Jackson Chourio side. I'm obviously giving him more credit than that by ranking him 23rd among outfielders -- alongside Michael Harris, actually, who's a similarly capable hitter coming off a similarly down year, only with a much clearer track record of success. ADP has them going two rounds apart.
Nick Pivetta, SP, Padres
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NFBC ADP: 94.1
Pivetta a bust? Didn't I just have him as a sleeper a year ago? And didn't it play out exactly as I suggested then, his move to a pitcher's park finally allowing his sparkling peripherals to shine through?
Well, yes and no. He did have a fantastic season, his ERA dropping more than a run as he placed sixth in NL Cy Young voting. But what the accolades hid is that his sparkling peripherals lost much of their luster. He had consistently delivered on, and at times even exceeded, 10 K/9 but dropped to 9.4 K/9 last year, including 8.5 in the second half. His swinging-strike rate, meanwhile, dropped nearly a full point from 2024, landing at 10.5 percent, which is about as middling as it gets.
And there were no improvements in other areas to account for these losses. He didn't allow lower exit velocities. He didn't induce more ground balls. His weaknesses remained the same, but his strengths weakened. So with that, he went from being a guy who consistently underperformed his ERA estimators to one who greatly overperformed them last year, the gap between his 2.87 ERA and 3.95 xERA representing the ninth-biggest among qualifying pitchers, and the gap between his 2.87 ERA and 3.49 FIP also representing the ninth-biggest.
Maybe the drop in strikeout rate was just a blip, and he returns to career norms next year, but seeing as he's already 32, decline isn't an unreasonable explanation. Yet his going rate -- 24th among starting pitchers by the latest NFBC ADP -- seems to take his 2025 production at face value, placing him ahead of a more bankable Framber Valdez and a more interesting Eury Perez.
Trevor Story, SS, Red Sox
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NFBC ADP: 102.4
So is Story injury-prone or isn't he? Given that he hardly played for a three-year stretch, averaging just 54 games from 2022 through 2024, the consensus view seemed to be that he was. But then he stays healthy for one year, playing 157 games in 2025, and it's all forgotten, at least judging by ADP.
Sure, he was good, hitting 25 homers and stealing 31 bases, but plenty of shortstops are good. Bo Bichette is good, but without the same injury baggage. Corey Seager has injury baggage, but he's more reliably good than Story, who has performance questions on top of the health questions. He's among the least disciplined hitters in the league, his 26.9 percent strikeout rate ranking in the 12th percentile and his 5.0 walk rate in the 10th percentile, which scored him a lower xBA (.249) than his actual .263 mark. His strikeout rate was above 30 percent for each of the three years he was banged up, giving him an xBA right around the Mendoza Line.
There are so many ways Story could turn out wrong that it's hard to understand why he's going ahead of Bichette or in the same vicinity as Seager. Even Dansby Swanson, who wasn't a 20-30 guy last year but is more reliably 20-20, might represent better bang for the buck four rounds later.
Bottom line is that there are near-equivalent options at shortstop, so enthusiasm for Story isn't driven by scarcity the way it sometimes is for notable trouble cases coming off everything-goes-right seasons. Unbridled optimism is more the order of the day, which is a bizarre turnaround for a player who was discarded to the ash heap just a year ago.
Nolan McLean, SP, Mets
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NFBC ADP: 105.0
McLean is a talented pitcher. I recently ranked him third among starting pitcher prospects, in fact, so I wouldn't say I'm predisposed to calling him a bust. The problem is you guys -- or early drafters, anyway, who've elevated him beyond proven stalwarts like Tyler Glasnow and Brandon Woodruff in NFBC ADP. It presumes too much, taking his stat line in eight major league starts at face value.
You'll notice I said McLean ranks third among starting pitcher prospects for me. Well, the two ahead of him, Bubba Chandler and Trey Yesavage, also debuted last year and had their own high points. McLean had the most success of the three, which is why he's been pushed ahead of the others, but all signs point to him being the biggest overachiever of the three as well. His 10.7 K/9 rate was on par with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, great, but his 10.9 percent swinging-strike rate was only on par with Andrew Abbott. He issued walks at an 8.5 percent rate, which would have ranked in the lower third of pitchers with at least 100 innings, and he also fell short of six innings in half of his eight starts despite exceeding 90 pitches in all of them.
There are ways this could go wrong that his draft status doesn't seem to account for. It's not what I'd say is most likely to happen, but it's likely enough that I'd want to build in some buffer. The risk/reward calculation to me is on par with Yesavage, who goes 50 picks later.
Alex Bregman, 3B, Cubs
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NFBC ADP: 118.3
Bregman's decision to sign with the Cubs comes at a cost. For the first time in his career, he won't be playing in a venue that favors right-handed pull-side power.
And he's always depended on that for his home run output. For as frequent as those home runs have been, he doesn't actually impact the ball well; his exit velocities typically ranking in the lower half of the league. But by angling the ball just right, he could take aim at some of the shallowest points in the yard, namely the Crawford Boxes at Daikin Park and the Green Monster at Fenway Park.
Wrigley Field is on the other end of the spectrum as far as that goes, its unusual outline giving it the deepest outfield corners in all of baseball. It's 355 down the left field line, while Daikin Park is 315 and Fenway Park is 310.
We already have an interesting comp in Isaac Paredes, who went from Tropicana Field, which is also 315 down the left field line, to Wrigley and then to Daikin. He wore out the left field foul pole at Tropicana and Dakin, emerging as a viable power threat, but he hit only .223 with three homers and a .633 OPS in his 52 games for the Cubs. Bregman's pull tendencies aren't as extreme as Paredes', and his exit velocities aren't as slight, so I wouldn't expect the dip to be as extreme. But there will be one. Forty extra feet is no joke for a player with fringy power.
Some will point to Statcast's xHR stat, which suggests Bregman would have actually had one more home run playing every game at Wrigley last year, as reason for optimism. But Wrigley Field is particularly difficult to model, both because of its unconventional fence shape and its vulnerability to wind, and home run estimates there often come back high. No venue is impacted more by wind, and in recent years, it's blown in much more than out (51 times vs. 19 times this past year, according to Jesse Rogers of ESPN).
Between the wind and the dimensions, you couldn't have asked for a worse landing spot for Bregman's swing. I'd be surprised to see him hit 20 home runs for the Cubs, even with a full season of health, and if the home runs he's forfeiting turn into flyouts, his batting average may well dip below .250.
Jacob Misiorowski, SP, Brewers
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NFBC ADP: 131.5
The story of Misiorowski's rookie season was already written five starts into it, when his eye-popping radar gun readings earned him a ticket to the All-Star game while legitimate Cy Young contenders stayed home. His fastball is indeed impressive, averaging 99 mph and peaking at 103 for a 33 percent whiff rate, but what else is there? He throws a slider and curveball, but neither has an impressive whiff rate on its own, making them more like change-of-pace offerings. And while a wave of uncharacteristically good control propelled him to the majors, the control backed up after a few turns with the big club.
He was so inefficient over his final nine outings, issuing 4.7 walks per nine innings, that he went five innings, the minimum required for a win, in just three of them while compiling a 5.89 ERA and 1.50 WHIP.
Not what you remember, is it? Yes, many tuned out for the Mr. Hyde side of Misiorowski, which was confined mostly to the months when football overlaps with baseball, and his hot start effectively serves to mask it, making his final stat line seem not so bad. My own prediction for Misiorowski this year is that he struggles to stay in the majors amid the Brewers' surplus of viable arms, made less effective by a too-limited arsenal and thwarted by longstanding control issues that cut his outings short.
He made a name for himself last year -- and that name has stuck with many -- but he's still too much of a project for you to make him an integral part of your Fantasy rotation. A mid-round upside play, sure. A top-36 starting pitcher, as he's currently being drafted? I don't see it.
Jackson Holliday, 2B, Orioles
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NFBC ADP: 136.8
We so badly want this to work, don't we? A former No. 1 overall pick with ties to Fantasy royalty (his father, Matt Holliday) who happens to play the position most lacking in high-end talent right now really has the makings of something special.
But how has that line of thinking gone for us so far? For two years, we've given Holliday the benefit of the doubt, and for two years, he's let us down. Granted, the second year was better than the first. He was at least usable in leagues that require a third middle infielder. But he didn't live up to his 184 ADP and offered no real hints of latent potential. His Baseball Savant page is splashed with blue, showing exit velocities in the lower 30 percent of the league, and he lacks the lift-and-pull tendencies to overcome that. Even his plate discipline isn't what it was promised to be.
You might say it's unfair to assess a 22-year-old at face value, and I agree with that. But potential doesn't come with a timetable. To presume a breakthrough without evidence for it is foolhardy.
And I don't want to hear that a position like second base requires you to take bigger chances in the name of upside. It may be lacking in bankable talent, but there are upside plays apart from Holliday. Marcus Semien was showing signs of coming around prior to breaking his foot last August and will now be playing at a venue much better suited for his swing. Matt McLain had a miserable first year back from shoulder surgery, but he was on a 29-homer, 25-steal pace as a rookie in 2023, batting .290. Jorge Polanco will be batting behind Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto, and Bo Bichett,e only a year after hitting 26 home runs. All three are being drafted at least 80 spots behind Holliday. Those are your lottery tickets, if that's all you're asking Holliday to be.
Ceddanne Rafaela, 2B/OF, Red Sox
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NFBC ADP: 140.1
Apparently, we haven't learned our lesson with Rafaela yet. He's on this list for a second straight year. I'll admit the numbers he put up in June and July -- a .285 batting average, 11 homers, and .861 OPS -- gave me pause, but his August and September were more true to form, seeing him hit .224 with two homers and a .622 OPS.
My case against him isn't as simple as "he was cold to end the year," but I wouldn't say it's complicated either. All the blue on his Baseball Savant page goes most of the way to telling the story. The guy has few redeeming qualities as a hitter.
About the only one is an above-average contact rate, but even that ends up working against him because he swings at too many bad pitches, his 45 chase rate ranking fifth among qualifying batters, according to FanGraphs. Even if he did make better swing decisions -- an attribute that's unlikely to change -- he wouldn't impact the ball well enough for it to matter.
Could he eke out 20 homers by taking aim for the Green Monster in left field? Maybe. He's already come pretty close. But it's a hollow total because of his minimal on-base ability and poor run and RBI production batting at the bottom of the Red Sox lineup. If he's 80 spots better than Otto Lopez and Heliot Ramos, as ADP currently shows, I don't see why.
Jakob Marsee, OF, Marlins
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NFBC ADP: 146.7
The bust case for Marsee is an easy one -- so easy that I'm surprised early drafters have left it on a tee for me. It would be more complicated, perhaps, if you took his stat line from his two months in the majors at face value. A .292 batting average, .842 OPS, and what amounts to a 40-steal pace is indeed impressive and would be enough to make you reconsider your priors about the player if it were to continue uninterrupted.
But unfortunately, it was interrupted by the second month of Marsee's two months. Here's the breakdown:
August: .352 BA, 3 HR, 9 SB, .988 OPS in 30 games
September: .231 BA, 1 HR, 5 SB, .619 OPS in 25 games
Anything good that Marsee did came in August, and it was so good that not even a bad September could ruin the overall stat line. But the bad September happened, creating such a sharp contrast that it's worth examining who Marsee was prior to his August debut, and you aren't going to like the answer.
Between 2024 and 2025, Marsee hit .219 in the minors. He reached base at a nice clip and stole an ample number of bases, but he had poor contact quality and wasn't trending toward being more than a reserve outfielder in the majors. He was in nobody's top 100. Few would have even described him as a prospect except by way of technicality.
Given that background, which of Marsee's two months in the majors seems more legitimate? I think he had a Shane Spencer moment, arriving on such a heater that he took the league by storm, but then quickly returned to status quo, possibly never to be heard from again. OK, so the Marlins will need someone to man center field, which grants Marsee a longer leash, and with that sort of job security, his stolen bases alone might make him worthwhile in Fantasy. But as a hitter, I think he rates closer to Jose Caballero than to the Brandon Nimmo and Lawrence Butler types that he's often drafted alongside.
Robbie Ray, SP, Giants
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NFBC ADP: 149.0
By his full 2025 stat line, Ray is being drafted appropriately, and the most analytically pure among us will be quick to remind me that full-season numbers are more predictive than partial-season numbers. But good players do eventually get worse, especially injury-prone 34-year-olds, and it can sometimes happen in-season.
The second half of last season saw Ray get worse in most every measurable way. First, the surface level. He had a 5.54 ERA and 1.45 WHIP in his final 12 starts. His K/9 rate went from 9.7 to 8.2, and his swinging-strike rate from 13.1 percent to 11.6 percent. He struggled so mightily with his command that he failed to go the minimum for a win in five of those 12 starts. He was, in a word, terrible.
That ain't great for a pitcher in his first full year back from Tommy John surgery. The first half offered a sigh of relief, even earning him a nod in the All-Star game, but the second half should have us all wondering how much he really has left. He was walking a tightrope to begin with. Though a former Cy Young winner, he's always given up some of the loudest exit velocities of any pitcher, and his control has tended to come and go. If he's not a premier bat-misser, he's not much of anything, and that's what we saw play out in the second half last year.
Taylor Ward, OF, Angels
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NFBC ADP: 159.0
There are some who view Ward as the epitome of safety and stability, and I'll admit that the bottom-out potential here is low. But I think anyone who anticipates him repeating last year's career-high home run total is sorely mistaken, and without that, I'm not sure how useful he is in most Fantasy contexts.
That second point is a longstanding dispute I've had with Ward truthers who insist that a .250 batting average, 25 home runs, and 75 RBI is actually quite valuable in Fantasy, usually by pointing to where Ward finished according to whatever scoring format they were using. But the truth is that any viable hitter who manages to stay healthy for a full season, as Ward typically has, will finish ahead of superior ones who don't stay healthy.
You still want the superior ones. Just because they missed time last year doesn't mean they will this year, and if they don't miss time, they'll obviously be much better than Ward. Meanwhile, if they do miss time, you'll also get the stats of whatever player you add to replace them, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison with Ward. The 32-year-old offers more assurances, but it's assured mediocrity and not the kind of production that will set your team apart. Your mileage may vary based on league size -- in 15-team Roto leagues with sparse waiver wires, his dependability counts for more -- but in anything shallower, which is what most people play, he's decidedly blah.
But he wasn't last year, which is the reason why we're discussing him here. His 36 home runs represented a near 50 percent increase over his previous high, but there was no underlying skill change. He didn't make more contact or harder contact or contact at angles more conducive to home runs. The increase is owed mostly to variance in a sport that tends to be high variance. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for this is xHR. With those 36 home runs, Statcast suggests Ward exceeded his expected home runs by seven. Only four players exceeded it by more.
Edward Cabrera, SP, Cubs
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NFBC ADP: 201.4
The enthusiasm for Cabrera in Fantasy is fairly restrained relative to the headlines, some of which touted him as an ace when the Cubs acquired him from the Marlins.
Is this the same Edward Cabrera who's been an eternal headache for Fantasy Baseballers, such that I've branded him a Charizard for his tendency to inflict just as much damage on yourself as your opponent? We're calling him an ace now? Really?
I'll admit he was less of a Charizard last year, finally finding consistency from mid-May through mid-August, especially, but the ERA was still in the mid-threes with a WHIP approaching 1.25. Is that an ace? Certainly not by Fantasy Baseball standards. And how likely is he to sustain those numbers, even?
The improvement wasn't just natural variance but the product of a substantive change. He finally began fading his four-seamer, a pitch he could never control, for a two-seamer, which put him ahead in the count more and allowed his secondary offerings, long the reason for optimism, to shine. So it's a legitimate fix.
But how durable is the fix? Old habits die hard for a player as established as Cabrera, and even if he follows through on the strategy again, the league may catch up to it. It reminds me of Sean Manaea dropping his arm slot to Chris Sale levels two years ago. He thoroughly dominated with that change, beyond even anything Cabrera accomplished last year, but it simply didn't work as well in 2025.
My concerns for Cabrera are more about the player himself than the approach. How many times in the past have we been fooled by some tweak he made that got better results for a time but ultimately saw him revert to his characteristically erratic ways? Last year's fix may have been the best yet, but I don't trust him to execute it as well this year. I've been burned by the Charizard too many times before.
