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I want to believe Shane McClanahan is about to have a huge bounce-back season. I want to believe McClanahan is going to be one of the best pitchers in baseball again. I really, really want to believe we're in for a healthy 2026 where McClanahan goes out there 25-30 times and just absolutely shoves. I'm rooting for it!

I just don't believe in it. 

McClanahan at his best was arguably the most electric left-handed pitcher in baseball. In 2022, he put up a 2.54 ERA and 0.93 WHIP while striking out 30% of opposing hitters, and it never felt like a fluke. He was big lefty who got huge extension with his release, making his 96-97 mph fastball feel like 99, and he complimented that with one of the best changeups in the game and two excellent breaking balls. From a skills perspective, he had it all.

And I'm just not sure he has it anymore. We haven't seen him on an MLB mound in two and half years, since he suffered an elbow injury in August of 2023 that required Tommy John surgery. That was the second of McClanahan's career, and though he was cleared to return last spring, he never made it back after a fitful spring. He dealt with nerve issues and ultimately ended up having surgery to repair that, giving him two consecutive lost seasons and two serious arm surgeries.

He was back on the mound on Tuesday, though! And unfortunately, he didn't look like the same guy. McClanahan averaged just 93.8 mph on his fastball over two innings, down nearly three mph from 2022, when he averaged 96.7. And it wasn't just the velocity – the pitch had just 15.3 inches of induced vertical break, down from 16.4 in 2022, which means it had less rise at a lower velocity. Which is how we had a world where Shane McClanahan, of all pitchers, registered just a 64 plvStuff+ marker from PitcherList, a well below average mark. And the rest of the arsenal wasn't much better!

Yes, McClanahan wasn't operating at full intensity, and that's worth noting. He'll ramp up from here and likely add some heat to that four-seamer. But, as with Spencer Strider in his spring debut last week, I was looking for reasons to be optimistic about McClanahan, and I didn't see any in this start other than the fact that he got through unscathed.

That doesn't mean McClanahan can't be a useful Fantasy option. But it does mean that, right now, I don't really have any reason to expect him to be. That's less of a problem for McClanahan than Strider, who is going off the board nearly 100 picks earlier. But McClanahan's price has been rising in recent weeks, and he's not far from the top 200 right now. You don't need him to be dominant to be worth that price, but you do need there to at least be some hope for upside.

After two lost seasons with injuries and surgeries on his left arm, we can't just assume McClanahan still has his former upside. We need to see some signs of it over the next few weeks, and in our first look, we definitely didn't see it. For me, that means McClanahan remains a purely speculative late-round pick. 

And if we see a more dispiriting outings like this one, it'll be hard to justify even that relatively mild optimism. 

So no, don't expect to see McClanahan on my breakouts list for 2026. I hope I'm wrong, but as I put together my Breakouts 2.0, I didn't even really consider him. Here are the 12 players I am planting my flag on for a career year in 2026:

Breakouts 2.0

MLB: Pittsburgh Pirates at Kansas City Royals
Jul 9, 2025; Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Kansas City Royals right fielder Jac Caglianone (14) hits a two-run home run in the fourth inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter Aiken-Imagn Images Peter Aiken

Eury Perez, SP, Marlins

I've made the case many times before, but it's worth noting again that just making it to the majors and pitching 90 innings as a 20-year-old, as Perez did as a rookie, should make you very confident that Perez is going to be an ace at some point. Here are the 10 other pitchers who have thrown at least 90 innings in their age-20 season since 2001: 

Not everyone there was an ace, but Hall of Famers (or future Hall of Famers) do outnumber the true busts by four to two, by my count. The median career outcome for this group is probably Rick Porcello, who had an up and down career but did win a Cy Young, notably. 

And Eury Perez is a lot more talented than Rick Porcello. He'll be just 23 this season and has a career 3.71 ERA and 1.09 WHIP with a 28% strikeout rate, to start with. If he just does that, he's probably a fine pick for this season around 100 overall, but it's worth remembering he was 20 as a rookie, and then was recovering from Tommy John surgery as a 22-year-old, which gives him a pretty high degree of difficulty so far in his career. He'll struggle with homers at times and is still searching for the best mix of breaking balls to attack hitters with, but he has some of the best stuff in baseball and should have better command a full year further removed from Tommy John. The arrow is pointing up here, and this might be your last chance to draft Perez as anything but an ace for Fantasy for the next half-decade. 

Jac Caglianone, OF, Royals

I'm not including Caglianone here entirely because he hit a ball 120 mph the other day, but it's not not because of that, either. That single batted ball served as a reminder that Caglianone has top-of-the-spectrum raw power, and he combines that with better than you'd think bat-to-ball skills – for everything that went wrong for him as a rookie, Caglianone struck out just 22.4% of the time. He didn't hit the ball in the air nearly often enough, nor to the right parts of the field when he did, but the underlying skills are clearly here for Caglianone to be a dominant power hitter. 

And he wasn't quite as far away from getting there as his very poor 2025 numbers might make you think. His .239 wOBA came along with a .321 xwOBA – hardly a superstar number, but not bad for a 22-year-old with limited reps in the minors. And Caglianone was dominant in the minors, by the way, putting up a 170 wRC+ that was even better than what Nick Kurtz managed. Caglianone's rookie season was a disaster, but that just means you can get a cheap look at a recent No. 6 overall pick in the MLB draft with elite tools. There are some pretty bonkers high-end outcomes here. 

Kyle Bradish, SP, Orioles

The biggest concern I have with Bradish is the workload. He acknowledged there will be some kind of limitation for 2026, but he didn't offer any details. Will it be some shortened early outings? Skipped starts? The occasional six-man rotation? It's unclear what the Orioles have in mind for Bradish after he threw just 54 innings in 2025 coming off Tommy John surgery. 

But I get the feeling he's going to have a longer rope than you might be thinking. He's already thrown over 170 innings in a season once back in 2023, and as a general rule with veterans, I think they can get close to their previous innings totals even coming off injury-plagued seasons. Bradish probably isn't a good bet for 180-plus innings, but 160? Yeah, I can see that. And hey, if 180 innings is the new 200, then 160 is the new 180, anyway! 

And if we get 160 innings out of Bradish, I think he's going to be an absolute star. It's giving real 2024 Tarik Skubal vibes right now, where the breakout already happened and now we're just waiting for a larger sample size to confirm it.  Skubal came back from elbow surgery in 2023 and showed elite skills, but only in a partial season, before truly blossoming into an ace with 2024. Bradish similarly came back last season and put up a 2.53 ERA with a 3.09 xERA, thanks to even better strikeout skills than he showed before the injury. I don't necessarily expect Bradish to sustain a 37% strikeout rate, but he does have a 34.6% strikeout rate in 71.1 innings since the start of 2024, so it's not like there's no precedent for it. A sub-3.00 ERA and 200 strikeouts is in play for Bradish even with innings concerns. 

Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers

Langford has been a disappointment in his first two MLB seasons. It's okay to say it, it's true. We expected superstar production and we've gotten … Randy Arozarena? That's fine, Randy Arozarena is a good player, it's just not what we hoped for from Langford.

But I think it's coming. 

It's worth acknowledging the pretty absurd degree of difficulty Langford has faced so far in his MLB career. He made the leap to the majors as a 21-year-old less than a year after he was drafted, and with just 44 minor-league games under his belt and held his own. He was a little better in his second season, and he did that – "that" being 22 homers and 22 steals in 134 games, by the way – while playing through four different oblique injuries, including one that disrupted his Spring Training. Oblique injuries are notoriously difficult to overcome and play through, and they have a tendency to mess a player's swing up, so again, going 22-22 in 134 games might be even more impressive than you realize.

Langford has at least plus raw power and a good approach at the plate, enough that I think expecting some improvement from his 26.4% strikeout rate last season isn't unreasonable. With a less bumpy road, I think 25 homers and 25 steals is a reasonable expectation from Langford, and the ceiling could be a 30-30 season with great run production. I still think there are some first-round seasons in his future. 

Chase Burns, SP, Reds

It's a 70-grade fastball and a 70-grade slider. The changeup is a work in progress, the command can be an issue, and there are real questions about his ability to stay healthy given how hard he throws (and last year's IL stint with a Grade 1 flexor tendon strain). It's not hard to see how things go wrong, and Burns isn't even guaranteed a spot in the rotation as of now!

But it's a 70-grade fastball and a 70-grade slider. At the risk of oversimplifying, players with this kind of stuff usually work out. It's a limited arsenal (he's working on the changeup and has a curveball, but neither are likely to be much more than show-me pitches), but it's the kind of limited arsenal that has made stars out of Hunter Greene and Spencer Strider. Turns out, when you can throw like those dudes, nuance matters a lot less. 

Roman Anthony, OF, Red Sox

Can I do the same thing here? It's 70-grade raw power and 70-grade plate discipline. He doesn't run much, there are some questions about how he'll handle lefties, and he didn't show the ability to lift the ball consistently enough to get to that power as a rookie, and those are fair complaints/drawbacks. They might be enough to hold Anthony back from being a first-round caliber hitter. But he doesn't need to be a first-rounder to be a successful breakout. Something like Cody Bellinger's 2025 season (.272, 29 homers, 13 steals, good counting stats) would get it done, and that's certainly not the best-case scenario here. 

Ivan Herrera, DH, Cardinals

Herrera is expected to make his spring debut behind the plate Thursday, but how often he'll actually catch for the Cardinals remains an open question. And it would certainly be a lot easier to make the case for him in Fantasy if I thought he was going to gain catcher eligibility early in the season, something we can't project right now.

But I have no doubts he's going to hit. Potentially enough to be a must-start Fantasy player even if he's just the full-time DH. We're talking about a career .283/.392/.437 hitter in the minors who has come up to the majors and basically been exactly that good. In just 107 games in 2025, he hit .284/.373/.464 with 19 homers in 107 games – I'll save you the time and point out that's a 29-homer pace over a full season. And he did all that with underlying numbers that were perhaps even a little bit better than his actual numbers. That'll play at DH. It'll make him a superstar at catcher. And he might even play some first base or outfield, where he'd be a must-start player, too. Let's just keep that bat in the lineup somewhere, okay? 

Francisco Alvarez, C, Mets

This isn't the first time I've made this case for Alvarez this offseason – it might be about the 12th time, in fact – but: I just think he figured it out in 2025. He got sent back to Triple-A to work on his swing in June and promptly clubbed 12 homers in 26 games to force his way back to the big leagues. When he returned to start the second half, Alvarez hit .276/.360/.561 with a 93.4 mph average exit velocity and 25.2% strikeout rate, the latter of which would be within one-tenth of a percentage point of his career-best rate. He's sticking with the batting stance upon his demotion, and the former top prospect is still (somehow) just 24 years old – younger than Agustin Ramirez and Drake Baldwin, to name just two rookie catchers from 2025. 

Mackenzie Gore, SP, Rangers

The pieces are all there. Gore is one of just 13 pitchers in 2025 who had an above-average whiff rate on at least four different pitch types, and he was with one percentage point on the four-seamer of making it a clean five-pitch sweep. He has the stuff to be dominant, and the strikeout and swinging strike rates all back it up. He just has to find the command and the consistency to put it all together. I have a lot more faith in the Rangers to figure that out than the Nationals at this point, and a nice ballpark upgrade won't hurt, either. Will he put it all together? If you're skeptical, it's because you've heard this all before. But I'm betting on a change-of-scenery fueled breakout here. 

Luke Keaschall, 2B, Twins

It starts with this: Across just 77 games in 2025, Keaschall stole 25 bases on 30 attempts. He was aggressive in both the majors and minors, in a way that makes me think that's going to be a huge part of his game. He combines that with a good approach at the plate (14% strikeout rate, 9.2% walk rate, with very good plate discipline metrics under the hood) and what I think will be around average pop – he had just an 86.2 mph average exit velocity in the majors, but it was 87.7 mph in Triple-A, and most of his MLB experience came after suffering a fractured forearm, so I'm willing to give a bit of the benefit of the doubt there. Keaschall might max out as a 15-homer guy, but with his approach at the plate and speed, he doesn't need to be much more than that to be a very good Fantasy option. I can dream on some outcomes that look a lot like 2025 Trea Turner here. 

Ozzie Albies, 2B, Braves

Breakout? Bounce-back? Call it whatever you want, Albies is gonna do it. He's had a lot of trouble staying healthy in recent years which is surely scaring many off, but the actually injury history doesn't suggest there's much to be worried about moving forward: 

  • June, 2021: 60-day IL with fractured left food
  • September, 2022: 10-day IL with fractured right pinky
  • August, 2023: 10-day IL with strained left hamstring
  • April, 2024: 10-day IL with fractured right toe
  • July, 2024: 10-day IL with fractured left wrist
  • September, 2025: 10-day IL with fractured hamate bone in left hand

Six IL stints in five seasons isn't nothing, obviously. It's scary stuff. But unless you think Albies has some kind of unknown proclivity for broken bones – hollow bones, like a bird? – there doesn't seem to be much reason to worry about this continuing to be an issue moving forward. Obviously, I can't see into the future, but it just doesn't worry me too much.

The down production in 2025 does, but even that has a pretty compelling explanation once you look past the surface: He just wasn't healthy for most of the season. Albies talked about not feeling like himself until around the All-Star break after the previous season's wrist surgery. But he started to feel like himself around the midpoint of the season and hit .272/.330/.439 with a 23-homer, 18-steal pace in the second half. You're looking for more than that, but let's not forget he's just two years removed from a 33-homer season. If he stays healthy, I still think he can get back to that kind of level. 

Ryan Pepiot, SP, Rays

Pepiot is pretty good already. He strikes hitters out at an above-average rate, he walks them at about an average rate, and he does a pretty good job of limiting damage on balls in play. It all gives him a solid floor, which we've seen over the past few seasons. The question is where the upside projection comes from for a 28-year-old with nearly 400 career MLB innings comes from.

It comes from his home park. Pepiot saw his fastball whiff rate dip from 31.4% in 2024 to 25.4% in 2025, and a lot of that can probably be explained by the Rays home park. Tropicana Field has an inflationary effect on pitchers' stuff, and that's especially true for their four-seamers. The reasons for that are intuitive, when you think about it – because Tropicana is the only fully enclosed, entirely climate-controlled venue in baseball, the ball is going to move differently there than anywhere else. That's especially true in comparison to the Rays' temporary home in 2025, George M. Steinbrenner Field, which was an outdoor stadium in the muggy Tampa air. The ball is going to move a lot more true in Tropicana Field than there, and I'm expecting Pepiot's fastball dominance to return. With a wide arsenal to support it, getting the elite swing-and-miss back on the four-seamer should help Pepiot to a career-best season.