Top Fantasy Batting Champions You Can Copy Right Now!

The 2026 season MLB season is nearly upon us, and I’m once again reminded that it’s always a good idea to have your fantasy drafts as close as possible to opening day. No one wants to see one of the players they drafted get injured before the first lineup lock. And you certainly don’t want to have one of your outfielders suspended for the season before it even starts.

But we, as industry analysts, make those mistakes by drafting early so you don’t have to. In conjunction with the release of USA TODAY Sports Weekly's annual Fantasy Extra issue, we present some trends and strategies that can help you win your leagues. FANTASY RANKINGS: Top 200 overall players for 2026 Youth is served One of the most exciting things about this season is the wealth of talented young players getting an opportunity to shine.

Yes, expectations are incredibly high for the likes of Konnor Griffin, JJ Wetherholt, Kevin McGonigle and others, several of whom haven’t yet played in their first major-league games. But the allure of getting a Nick Kurtz in the reserve round (as Rotowire’s James Anderson did last year in AL LABR ) or an Agustin Ramirez for $2 (as NL champ Matt Cederholm of Baseball HQ did in NL LABR ) can be incredibly difficult to resist. In addition, there’s a bumper crop of young pitchers who saw limited action in the majors last year, but showed tremendous promise.

Cam Schlittler and Trey Yesavage in the AL, and Nolan McLean, Chase Burns, Jacob Misiorowski, Bubba Chandler and Cade Horton in the NL all look like they can be significant fantasy contributors in their first full MLB seasons. Royal hitting upgrade If you were captivated by the thrilling exploits of Team Italy at the World Baseball Classic (I sure was), you no doubt saw Royals sluggers Vinnie Pasquantino and Jac Caglianone making major noise with their bats. Generally, it’s foolish to put too much weight on statistics from small samples such as the WBC (or spring training or the previous postseason) but there’s a more concrete reason to be bullish on these two.