A dynasty-first read on the 2026 MLB Draft class: the five names at the top of our board, the discipline and exit-velo values the FYPD market will sleep on, and the early picks we are letting someone else pay for.
Leading up to the 2026 draft we have compiled a list of our favorite 300+ prospects and added them to our 2026 Draft Room. Our goal is to look at this strictly from a dynasty lens to see which players are potentially more valuable than their draft pedigree and which players to fade. If you have a FYPD or are just excited at these players' availability for your dynasty draft next year, we think this will be a great resource to help you understand where these players ultimately fit into the dynasty landscape.
Some thoughts on my favorite players in the draft, some guys I am higher on than the consensus view and which players I'm fading are below:
Five names anchor our board, and no, they are not in consensus order.
I know I'm breaking my own rule: never take a pitcher at the top of an FYPD. Flora is the guy who makes me strongly consider repenting. The fastball touching 100 is the headline, but the changeup is the whole story, a pitch scouts are already hanging a 70 on that missed bats at close to a 50 percent clip this year. He threw 102 innings of 1.06 ERA ball with 133 strikeouts, and he does it with a five-pitch mix, which is just not something college juniors show up with.
Could the command force him into the bullpen? Did he do this in a softer conference than the SEC/ACC powerhouses? Sure, these are the risks scouts keep flagging, and it's the reason he isn't a completely stress-free pick. But the Giants push polished college arms, the ETA is 2028 with a late-2027 look if things click, and going fourth overall at exactly the slot the industry had him is about as clean as a draft outcome gets. If my roster needed pitching, I would take him 1.1 and not think twice. Even if it doesn't, he shouldn't get out of the top two.
Cholowsky is my kind of boring. A .329 career average at UCLA, more walks than strikeouts for most of his college career, and a contact rate that got up near 87 percent this spring. Evaluators are split on the power, Pipeline says 60 and Baseball America says 45, and honestly the data explains why both camps feel right: the average exit velo is a modest 93, but the barrel rate is 98th percentile because he pulls everything in the air. That is how you slug .636 with 21 homers without elite raw juice.
He doesn't run, so the profile is average and counting stats at shortstop, and the thing to watch is whether pro breaking balls can get him chasing. I doubt it. This is the safest bat in the class, a 2028 ETA on a team that will absolutely rush a former 1.1, and he's the other half of the 1.1/1.2 conversation with Flora depending on what your roster needs.
A catcher who hit .397/.519/.772 with 20 homers, walked more than he struck out, and has 34 career steals? I keep waiting to find the catch, and the honest answer is that the catch is sample size: this was largely a one-year breakout on top of two quieter seasons from a historically glove first catching prospect.
But think about what you're actually rostering at catcher right now. Replacement-level catchers are where category juice goes to die, and Lackey has a real shot at .280 with 20-plus homers and double-digit steals at the position. That's a cheat code if it holds. Even the downside, a good defensive catcher hitting .250-.260 with 12-15 bombs, is startable in most formats. The ETA is 2029 and catching always adds a degree of noise, but I have him top five in this FYPD class and I wouldn't argue hard against top three. My only lingering question is if he sticks that catcher. All reports point to yes but sometimes when the bat is good enough, teams don't want to risk that much value behind the plate (ahem Bryce Harper).
The best pure prep hitter in the class, and it isn't particularly close. The hit tool grades 60-65, the swing is clean from the left side, and he sprays hard contact everywhere instead of selling out to pull. The power is more projection than production right now, but he's 6-foot-3 and 185 with obvious room to grow into 20-25 homers, and he stole 31 bags as a senior. Some of that speed goes away as he fills out. Not all of it.
The reason he sits behind the college guys for me is purely the clock: 2029-2030 if everything goes right, and prep bats have a way of not going right on schedule. There's also a real question about whether he stays at shortstop; Pipeline says lock, other evaluators aren't so sure. None of that changes the FYPD math much. He's the top prep bat and belongs at the front of round one.
Booth's plate discipline line as a Mississippi prep is the kind of stat you double-check: 45 walks, 4 strikeouts. That is not a typo. Add the fastest sixty in the class (6.33, an 80-grade run tool that shows up in games) and you have a leadoff profile that steals 25-plus bags without punting your batting average.
I'm still unsure where the power ultimately lands. Scouts had him pegged as fringe pop coming into the spring, and then he went out and hit five homers and won the Perfect Game derby, so the arrow is pointing up, but that's one spring of thump stacked on years of speed-first reports. If it's real, he's a five-category center fielder. If it's not, you still own a plus defender who hits .260 and steals bases, which isn't nothing but isn't pick-seven-of-your-FYPD either. The 2030 ETA means you're waiting either way. I'm in at the back of the FYPD top five, right behind the college bats who carry less variance.
Three of these five have full scouting profiles free in the Draft Room right now: Flora, Cholowsky, and Emerson are sample profiles we unlocked for everyone.
I put together a short list of guys who really popped for me based on the following tools: guys who walk, guys who don't strike out, and guys who hit the ball extremely hard. Those skills survive pro pitching. Tools-and-projection guys bust; hitters who control the zone and post 110-plus exit velos mostly figure it out. So we screened all 500 tracked prospects for exactly that combination, and every year the draft buries a few of these players hundreds of picks below where the data says they should go. These are the guys you should look at acquiring later in FYPD's based on the batted ball / discipline profiles.
The numbers: BB% 19.5 · K% 12.8 · Max EV 113.4 mph
A 19.5 percent walk rate against 12.8 percent strikeouts with a 113.4 max is basically the whole checklist in one player. Hughes hit .375/.510/.735 with 18 homers at Texas Tech, he doesn't expand the zone, and premium velocity doesn't beat him. The knock is that he's a well below-average runner who will never steal a base, and the power is more sneaky-strong than showcase because the swing stays flat.
Here's the thing though: Houston took him 17th when consensus had him 29th. When the most data-driven org in baseball jumps the market for a no-speed OBP bat, my ears perk up. Your leaguemates will see "left fielder, no steals" and yawn, which is exactly why you can get a .280-with-20-25-homers outcome in the back third of round one. The 2028 ETA is quick for this class too; Houston fast-tracks these guys.
The numbers: BB% 16.7 · K% 15.5 · Max EV 114.7 mph (109.5 mph 90th-percentile EV)
Ferraro walked more than he struck out in his only Division I season while running a 91 percent in-zone contact rate, and he did it with a 114.7 max and one of the best 90th-percentile exit velos in the country. Contact plus that kind of strength almost never lives in the same swing.
So why did he only hit 8 homers in 52 games? The swing is flat. All that violence goes into line drives instead of over fences, and the bet here is that a pro hitting coach teaches him to pull the ball in the air. That's a much easier fix than teaching someone to stop swinging at sliders. One season of data and no real defensive home keep the price down, and pick 86 against a 55 consensus rank tells you the industry is still hedging. I'd happily spend a late first on the swing-plane bet (ahem Jordan Walker?).
The numbers: BB% 10.5 · K% 20.3 · Max EV 112.4 mph · Avg EV 93.1 mph
Natili hit .339/.424/.674 with 19 homers in 276 plate appearances at Cincinnati, with a 112.4 max and real bat speed. That's legitimate plus power with a workable approach, at catcher. And then there's the part that made me laugh when the pick came in: he's going to play half his games at Coors Field. A power-hitting catcher in Colorado is about the most fantasy-friendly sentence you can write.
The glove is the risk (and the opportunity). He has a 70 arm and 2.05 pop times, but the receiving needs work, and college catchers wash out at brutal rates. That uncertainty is also exactly why he'll cost a late second or early third in FYPDs instead of what the bat deserves. If the Rockies get smart and move him out from behind the plate, the bat profile has a better chance to shine in the best offensive environment in baseball.
The numbers: BB% 12.5 · K% 18.7 · 90th-percentile EV 105.9 mph (multiple readings over 110)
Kozeal slashed .318/.410/.653 with 20 homers at Arkansas out of a compact, line-drive swing. He isn't selling out for the power; it just comes. The approach is solid rather than special, and better arms will test him with secondaries off the plate, but the production hasn't blinked yet. One stolen base all year, so the bat is the carrying tool.
I feel like the FYPD market persistently underprices power at second base relative to the identical bat in a corner, and Miami took him basically at his industry rank, so nobody is screaming steal. Fair enough, but twenty-homer pop in the middle infield with a 2029 ETA in the third round is the kind of pick that looks obvious three years later.
The numbers: BB% 14.7 · K% 19.3 · Max EV 109.2 mph (105.6 mph 90th-percentile EV)
I'll be honest about this one: there's a genuinely scary number in the file. Kennedy's in-zone contact rate was 79.5 percent, 21st percentile nationally, and pro velocity is going to attack that immediately. That's the flaw, and it's real.
Everything else is a dream. He went 20/22 at Kansas State with a .357/.461/.733 line, walked 38 times against 50 strikeouts, and chases at an elite 15 percent clip. So the swing decisions are excellent, the results are loud, and the misses come on pitches he's right to swing at. Power-speed shortstops with this walk rate don't usually last to pick 114, and they don't usually last to the second round of your FYPD either, but the contact wart will push him there. Something like a lower-end Jazz Chisholm is the ceiling. That's worth a lottery ticket in the back of round one, eyes open about the whiffs.
The numbers: BB% 18.1 · K% 16.7 · Max EV 115.4 mph (combine) · Avg EV 106.5 mph (combine)
This is my favorite pick and potentially the steal of the entire draft, and I don't think it's close. Sasaki walked 18.1 percent of the time against 16.7 percent strikeouts at Stanford, and at the combine he posted a 115.4 max with a 106.5 average, third out of roughly a hundred hitters. The in-season Trackman agreed: third nationally in average exit velo. His strikeout rate went down while his power doubled year over year, which is what it looks like when a hitter figures something out rather than gets lucky.
Consensus had him 460th because he's a zero-speed, first-base-only bat, and I understand the real-life logic. Fantasy does not care where a guy stands. The complication is the fork: he can sign with Miami, sign with SoftBank in Japan (who hold his NPB rights), or go back to Stanford, and it resolves by July 27. At pick 235 of the actual draft he'll cost you almost literally nothing in an FYPD. A .260/.365/.480, 28-32 homer ceiling for free is the whole reason we run the screen.
The numbers: BB% 9.9 · K% 12.9 · Avg EV 95.2 mph · 90th-percentile EV 110.4 mph (both 99th percentile nationally)
Anderson's coach at Penn State described him about as well as any scout could: everything he hits is 100 miles an hour. The season backs it up, .358/.470/.742 with 20 homers and a Big Ten-best 1.212 OPS, with average and 90th-percentile exit velos that both sit in the 99th percentile nationally. He struck out 12.9 percent of the time while doing it, and pitchers were so done with him by May that he wore a program-record 18 hit-by-pitches.
The skepticism writes itself: one loud season, a resume with stops at Rhode Island and a buried stint at Arkansas, a first-base-only glove, no speed, senior-sign money in round five. All true. That's also why he'll go 300-plus picks into deep FYPDs, and 99th-percentile impact with a 12.9 percent strikeout rate is not a profile I'm willing to let cost me nothing. Take the free dart.
The numbers: BB% 10.9 · K% 9.1 · Max EV 115.5 mph · Avg EV 100.4 mph
Shelar put up the hardest-hit ball by any prep player at the combine, 115.5, fourth-hardest overall in a field full of college guys three years older. Swings like his, open setup, toe tap, some length, usually come with strikeout problems, except he ran about a 13 percent strikeout rate on the Georgia prep circuit and the hand-eye keeps bailing out the mechanics. He'll probably end up in right field, so don't build steals into the projection.
He fell to round nine because of a Mississippi State commitment, and Boston has until July 27 to buy him out of it. So this one comes with homework: if he signs, you're getting combine-verified prep power that the FYPD room will treat as an afterthought because of where he was drafted, and I'd grab him with a mid-round pick and feel great about it. If he goes to Starkville, file the name away and check back in three years. Watch the deadline.
The full screen, with the metric columns and the preset filter that generated this list, is a Pro feature in the Draft Room board. So are the other 300+ profiles, including every one of these players.
None of these are bad prospects. That's never what a fade means in dynasty. FYPD price tracks draft slot, somebody in your league pays sticker for the name, and these are the names where the sticker and the profile don't match.
The two-way thing is fun, and it's real: he's touched 96-97 off the mound with a promising changeup, and at the plate he shows plus barrel feel with genuinely advanced strike-zone control. But the Angels have not demonstrated the ability to develop anyone recently and the plan is the bat first, which means you're rostering a corner outfielder with maybe 18-22 homer peak power, no steals, and the mound stuff on ice.
Here's my other problem: he reclassified up from 2027, so he's the youngest player in the class, and the realistic ETA is 2031-2032. Your FYPD room is going to price the pick-12 headline and the two-way dream. I'm pricing a 40-50 raw power corner bat who's five-plus years away. That's a late first in a draft-class-only format and outside my top 100 in a full startup. The gap between those two prices is the fade.
Everyone in your league is going to want this profile, and I get it: 60 power, 65 speed, a shortstop who could go 25/25 at peak. Consensus had him fifth in the class and some boards had him second, so at pick 14 Miami arguably got a bargain on pure talent.
Now the part your leaguemates probably skip: a 38-39 percent whiff rate across his last two showcase summers, with chase rates that touched 66 percent out of the zone. The .477 senior average came against uneven competition and tells you almost nothing about those misses. If the zone recognition tightens, he's a top-12 dynasty shortstop and I'll eat this take. But swing-and-miss at that scale, with a 2031 ETA, is the single most punishing bet in dynasty, and the FYPD room is going to charge you top-five money for it. Let someone else pay for the tools; I'll take the polished hit-tool guys a few picks later.
The stuff is legit. Mid-90s touching 98 from the left side with a slider that already flashes plus at 2,600-2,800 rpm; if he starts, that's a 26-28 percent strikeout arm, and higher if he relieves. His senior line was a 0.59 ERA with 124 strikeouts in 71 innings, which sounds great until you remember prep numbers like that tell you almost nothing about command against real hitters.
I fade prep arms on principle, and I'll keep doing it until the attrition data changes. This is the widest-bust-rate demographic in the sport: the changeup is a distant third pitch, the levers are long, the ETA is 2031 at best, and the injury dice get rolled every single year in between. Texas took him 16th against a consensus of 21, a mild reach, and your FYPD room will price the first-round slot. The profile is a back-half-of-round-one flier in deep leagues that can afford to wait five years, and only there.
Brunson does everything okay. He controls the zone, he hit .304/.462/.556 in the Big 12 with more walks than strikeouts most stretches, he flashed exit velos over 110, and he swiped 13 bags at a fringe-average run grade. The approach will travel. I believe in the floor.
I just can't find the category that wins you anything. The game power is gap-to-gap, probably 12-15 homers. The speed is single digits to maybe low double digits. The realistic outcome is a .270-.280 outfielder with 18-20 homers and a handful of steals, a perfectly fine lineup piece who never swings a fantasy week. Washington paid roughly fair draft value at 42, so this isn't about the pick; it's that FYPD rooms hand second-round prices to second-round picks, and a profile with no carrying tool is a third-to-fourth-round asset in my book. Depth stash, not a target.
Maniscalco is a bet on a swing that doesn't fully exist yet. He reclassified out of 2027, so he's one of the youngest players in the class, and the reports read like a rough draft: patient but sometimes too passive, aggressive in the wrong stretches, a deep trigger that better velocity and spin already get into, a left side of the plate well ahead of the right. The frame supports 20-homer power eventually, and the glove is good enough that he sticks at shortstop no matter what the bat does.
That last part is exactly the problem for us. The plus glove gives him a long, safe real-life career path that fantasy gets nothing from, and the ETA is 2032. Even the draft told you how the industry feels: consensus 25, drafted 50th, which reads like everyone pricing in the same hit-tool questions I am. The Cardinals develop patiently on top of it. In an FYPD he's a back-of-the-first kind of dart, and I suspect his name value gets him taken well before that. Not with my pick.
Every fade above has a full profile in the Draft Room explaining the case, with the grade we hung on the pick. Maniscalco's is one of the free samples if you want to check the work.
The 2026 Draft Room is the whole class in one place: a 310-player drafted board ranked fantasy-first, and the board's top five, five full sample profiles, and the first deep dive are free.
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