Five Hitters You Should Be Reaching For In Drafts

  • By Anthony Kates

    Last Updated on March 5, 2026 2:24 am by Anthony Kates | Published: March 5, 2026

    I’ve been involved in a few real drafts and mock drafts so far this season and I have found myself reaching for certain players throughout all of them.

    Instead of keeping them all to myself, I’ve decided to share a few names that I think are undervalued based on their current ADP and that you should be reaching for in drafts right now.

    I didn’t include every name I’ve reached for, because some of them were just by a few picks and others were in the very last rounds of a long draft and tend to be more of a dart through than a true belief.

    The five names contained inside here though? These are all players I expect to out-earn their current ADP AND even the places I’ve been reaching for them for. In most cases, worse players are being drafted ahead of them, both at the same position and overall, yet even if you swapped their draft spots, you would steal net a positive return on your draft investment.

    I used the ADP from the last three weeks of Draft Champions league on NFBC (15-team, 5×5 roto).

    Will Smith – C – Dodgers – ADP 105

    2025 Stats: 64-17-61-2-.296, 153 wRC+
    2026 Proj.: 73-24-73-3-.271, 139 wRC+

    Smith finished the 2025 season as the seventh most valuable fantasy catcher and is currently the ninth catcher off of draft boards.

    Yet, I would take him as early as the sixth catcher. He had the fewest plate appearance of any season of the last five in 2025, missing 22 games in September thanks to a hairline fracture in his right hand after being hit with a foul ball. He came back during the playoffs though and hit two home runs over 66 plate appearances, with a .276 batting average and a 115 wRC+. He had just one bad month in 2025, a poor August, but overall a great season.

    It was his best offensive season other than the (shortened) 2020 Covid season. He posted the best walk rate, wRC+, batting average, OPS, barrel rate, hard hit rate and chase rate of the last five seasons of his career. He spent most of the season hitting third or fourth in one of the best offenses in baseball…and the lineup is even better with addition of Kyle Tucker.

    I mean, just look at that savant page, in the top-25% of the league in a multitude of categories, only lagging behind in bat speed.

    His injury has discounted his price, but I would still grab him sooner than he is going. Grabbing him as early as the middle-to-end of the sixth round will still return plenty of value. He was a top-5 catcher from 2021 through 2024 and only a foul ball caused that streak to end.

    Rafael Devers – 1B – Giants – ADP 64

    2025 Stats: 99-35-109-1-.252, 135 wRC+
    2026 Proj.: 86-32-94-2-.252, 126 wRC+

    Devers was the fourth most valuable fantasy first baseman in 2025. He’s the seventh first baseman being drafted at the moment, which isn’t that big of a difference, but he is being drafted behind a second year Ben Rice and two veteran first baseman that he has been more valuable than three of the past four seasons (Bryce Harper and Matt Olson).

    I find it tough to argue with taking Rice before Devers, especially since he has catcher eligibility and will hit in the middle of the Yankees lineup. He had a great first full season and posted elite statcast data and great plate discipline numbers. He should have far more plate appearances this season as the Yankees primary first baseman, so his counting numbers should go up.

    Harper and Olson, though? This is where it gets tough. Harper is still a great player when he is on the field. The problem over his time in Philadelphia (post-Covid 2020) has been his availability. I know he has 580 and 631 plate appearances the past two seasons, respectively, but Devers has 601-plus in all five of those seasons. He has been extremely durable in his time in the big leagues and doesn’t have an ongoing beef with his teams President of Baseball Operations that could distract him this season.

    And Olson is a very good producer as well, but the only season he has been better than Devers over the past four was his outlier 54 homer season in 2023, when he set career highs in virtually every single offensive category. Outside of that career year, Devers has bested him every year since 2019. Yet he is being drafted 11 picks ahead of him, on average?

    I would rather have Devers’ locked in, 600-plus plate appearance, 126 minimum wRC+ production over Olson’s up-and-down production and Harper’s difficult availability. I’d reach around ten picks early to grab Devers, especially if you have a pick in the back half and you know he won’t be available to you when your fifth round picks is on the clock.


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    March 5, 2026, 2:24 am