2026 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Jac Caglianone and Mike Burrows added to Frank Stampfl's Breakouts 2.0
These five players should provide excess value in 2026 drafts
In order to win your Fantasy Baseball league, you need to earn a profit on the players you draft. For me, sleepers are players who are obvious values, ones that should pay off their average draft position and then some. Breakouts, however, are the players who can provide that excess value, and maybe even deliver league-winning upside.
The five names below are all players who've flashed big upside already, whether that was in the majors, the minors, or right now in spring training. For most on this list, they just have to capitalize on the opportunity in front of them. For one (Mick Abel), he just needs an opportunity. Nonetheless, I'm very excited about each of these players providing surplus value this season.
- Sleepers 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Breakouts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Busts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
Emmet Sheehan is not as young as Eury Perez, Chase Burns, and Nolan McLean, but he seems to have just as much hype as those guys, and rightfully so! Sheehan made his return from Tommy John surgery last season, and he performed like an ace. He put up a 2.82 ERA and 0.97 WHIP, while generating whiffs and limiting walks. Among pitchers with 70 innings last season, his 23 percent K-BB rate ranked 14th, and his 15.6 percent swinging strike rate was tied for ninth. Sheehan started to take on more of a workload as the season went on, too. In his final seven games, he went at least 5.2 innings in five of them. He even went seven innings three different times, which is pretty shocking for a Dodgers pitcher returning from surgery.
Sheehan mainly gets the job done with three pitches: his four-seam fastball, slider, and changeup. The slider is ridiculous, posting a .200 xwOBA with a 44 percent whiff rate. He also does a good job generating whiffs with his four-seam and inducing weak contact with his changeup. The biggest question with Sheehan is the one we have with all Dodgers pitchers… workload. The Dodgers are expected to have a six-man rotation this season, which will limit volume for each of them. With that said, Blake Snell is already hurt, Tyler Glasnow has an extensive injury history, and Roki Sasaki remains a mystery. The only two Dodgers pitchers I'm targeting this season are Sheehan and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. I'm sure Sheehan will be limited at times, but when he's on the mound, I expect him to perform like a SP3 with the upside to be even better than that.
Man, there is a lot to like about first base this year. You have a bunch of talent up top, but also lots of fun upside later on. Sal Stewart is the hitter I love this season, but I also really like Jonathan Aranda. He was awesome last season. Technically, he already broke out! The problem is that his breakout was cut short due to a wrist injury that forced him to miss nearly two months. In the 106 games Aranda played, he hit .316 with 14 homers and an .883 OPS. Aranda does exactly what we look for in a hitter. He ranked 93rd percentile or better in each of xwOBA, xBA, xSLG, average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and launch angle sweet-spot percentage. Here's a graphic to prove it!
I think what's kept this ADP down is that his season was cut short last year, and he plays for the Rays. Aranda doesn't have gaudy numbers because he only played in the 106 games, but his rate stats were off the charts. Also, I think when most people see a left-handed Rays hitter, they just assume he'll be a platoon bat. That's a fair assumption for most, but I don't believe it to be true for Aranda. He held his own against lefties last year, hitting .274 with a .723 OPS. Also, the Rays can't platoon every left-handed bat in their lineup! They also have Gavin Lux, Cedric Mullins, Chandler Simpson, and Jake Fraley. Honestly, the Rays need Aranda in their lineup every day because, frankly, it's not a very good lineup. Given health, I can see Aranda hitting .280-plus with 20-25 home runs, which would be a steal where he's going in drafts.
Alright, it's time for me to join in on the fun. Everybody has Jac Caglianone as a breakout this season, including me. He's the perfect candidate. Caglianone was the sixth overall pick in the 2024 draft and, entering last season, was ranked as a higher prospect than Nick Kurtz at some outlets. Cags destroyed the minors last year, hitting .337 with 20 homers and a 1.025 OPS in only 66 games. He earned his promotion to the Royals but did not have the same success in the majors. In 62 games, he hit just .157 with seven homers and a .532 OPS. There were some positives, though!
While the surface-level numbers for Cagalianone were bad, he kept the strikeouts in check and flashed elite bat speed. His 114.1 max exit velocity was nothing to sneeze at. I had him on my short list of names that just missed out in Breakouts 1.0, but he's turning heads this spring and has earned a spot here. Probably the most impressive thing he's done this spring is hit a ball with a 120 MPH exit velocity. Only two balls were hit harder in all of last season. Next, he crushed a 460-foot homer off a left-handed pitcher. And most recently, he smashed another homer off lefty Ryan Yarbrough in the World Baseball Classic. It's a tiny sample, but it gives us confidence that the Royals should make Cags an everyday player to start the season. On top of all that, the Royals are bringing the walls in a bit at Kauffman Stadium this season, which should make it a more homer-friendly venue. Caglianone has all of the skills and pedigree to hit for a lot of power with a strong batting average as soon as this season.
Mike Burrows was acquired by the Astros this offseason in the three-team trade that sent Brandon Lowe to the Pirates. It's notable, however, that the Astros went out of their way to specifically acquire Burrows. They're an organization that typically does well with pitching development. Let's just start with Burrows at face value. Last year, he was solid in his first full season with the Pirates. He posted a 3.94 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, over a strikeout per inning, and a very respectable 12 percent swinging strike rate. Even before the Astros got their hands on him, Burrows had an awesome changeup. Last season, that pitch posted a .219 xwOBA with a 43 percent whiff rate, one of the better changeups in all of baseball. What he needed to improve was his fastball and slider. That's exactly what we've seen so far this spring.
Instead of improving the four-seam fastball, so far the Astros have had Burrows throw that pitch less while mixing in more sinkers. It's a good idea as his four-seam got hit really hard last season. The sinker gives him a pitch he can throw inside to right-handed batters. The slider, on the other hand, has showed lots of improvement. The velocity on that pitch has been up, and it's generating a good amount of whiffs. In his most recent spring outing, that slider generated four whiffs with a 57% whiff rate and 55% CSW. It's a very small sample, but this is what we wanted to see this spring. We know his changeup is lights out, but now he might have a strong slider and a different type of fastball that he can throw at opposing batters. I think he's capable of a full workload, too. Burrows got to 128.1 total innings last season, which should put him in line for about 160-plus this year, assuming he's healthy and effective. He's climbing up draft boards, but somebody you can still get way outside the top-200 picks.
I'm going deep on this last one. I'm not even sure Mick Abel will be in the Twins' Opening Day rotation, but he deserves our attention regardless. One of my New Year's resolutions was to not overreact to spring training. With that said, I think I would be doing a disservice if I didn't at least react to what I'm seeing. Abel has been one of the most dominant pitchers so far this spring, hurling 10 shutout innings with 13 strikeouts to zero walks. He's generated whiffs at an insane rate! In his first two spring outings, he had 22 swinging strikes on 89 pitches. There's no doubt he has swing-and-miss stuff. Last season in the minors, Abel posted a 10.4 K/9, 29 percent strikeout rate, and a 12.8 percent swinging strike rate.
Abel has a fastball that can generate whiffs and a good feel for spin. Last season in the majors, Abel threw his curve 21 percent of the time, and it generated a 38 percent whiff rate. Overall, his 39 innings with the Phillies and Twins combined were rough, but he did flash upside at times. His first and last starts of the season were both six shutout innings with nine strikeouts in each. The talent is clearly there; he just needs to tap into it more consistently. So far this spring, it's looked like he has. Abel is a deep-league flier for now, but if we get word that he's in the Twins' Opening Day rotation, he's instantly a name that needs to be drafted in every standard-sized league.
