2026 Sports Ethos Fantasy Baseball Flag Plants – Middle Infield

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  • By SportsEthos Staff

    Last Updated on March 20, 2026 4:35 pm by Anthony Kates | Published: March 20, 2026

    The team here at Sports Ethos is going position-by-position to plant their flag on what players they fully trust and will draft whenever, and wherever possible.

    These are more than just sleepers.

    These are the dudes our experts fully trust and want on as many rosters as possible.

    We continue our series with our top Middle Infield options.

    Larry Vannozzi

    I want Ezequiel Tovar on as many of my teams as possible. Sure, I like his skills but it is his value that I absolutely adore. A 200 ADP for this guy? Yes, please!

    Tovar lost a big chunk of last year due to hip and oblique injuries. His lack of production last year (.253, nine homers, five steals) is likely the cause of him falling off the radar for most people this year.

    However, digging deeper reveals that all wasn’t lost for Tovar last year. Despite missing so many games, he managed to slightly improve his walk, strikeout, line drive and contact rates. He hit the ball harder, too, as he set career highs in average exit velocity and max exit velocity. Tovar is entering his fourth year as a full time player but he’s still just 24 years-old.

    He already had two very good seasons when healthy (ranked 149 in 2023; 66 in 2024). Tovar is a young and improving player who is getting ready to give us great value by smashing his ADP.

    Anthony Kates

    Willy Adames – SS – Giants – Over the past three seasons, only Francisco Lindor has hit more home runs than Adames at shortstop, only Bobby Witt Jr. has driven in more base runners and only six shortstops have scored more runs. Last season he was second in home runs, sixth in runs and fifth in RBI among shortstops and he stole 12-plus bases for the second season in a row.

    The batting average will never be amazing, but he is elite in three of the five categories and won’t kill you in a fourth. And he is typically the 14th or 15th shortstop off the board in drafts, though he has more top-10 upside than some being drafted before him. Plus, the Giants had a sneaky top-12 offense last year and Adames was notably better once Rafael Devers was added to the squad.

    Nathan Baker

    JJ Wetherholt – Unlike most top prospects going into opening day, Wetherholt is virtually guaranteed an every day spot on the Cardinals roster, unless they decide to keep him in Triple-A for the first few weeks of the season to manipulate his service time, which would be an unfortunate start to what could be a fantastic rookie campaign. There’s no question that Wetherholt will hit at the major league level, and his power and speed combination are better than he gets credit for. The potential of a .300+ batting average with 20/20 HR/SB would make him comfortably a top five second baseman (once he attains the positional eligibility), when he is currently being drafted outside of the top 250, behind clearly inferior options like Marcus Semien, Gleyber Torres and even Otto Lopez.

    Paul Williamson

    Gunnar Henderson is going to be an absolute stud this year. He is my no. 7 on the Williamson 300 and he is going 12 in OC drafts over the last two weeks (Writing this the night of March 19).

    It is Ohtani, Judge, Soto, Witt, Jram, Acuna, then my man.

    Give me Gunnar over all three aces (Skubal, Skenes, Crochet), Elly and Jrod. And over Kyle Tucker whose ADP is literally 0.83 lower than Gunner in this same time frame.

    And I have absolute confidence in this.

    He is going to be hitting in a premium spot (possibly leadoff, per Roster Resource) in a damn good Oriole lineup.

    That means a ton of plate appearances and tons of counting stats.

    He has stolen 51 bags over the last two seasons. He hit .274 and .281 in these two seasons.

    Now last year the power did drop off.

    But he battled a shoulder injury that he claims hurt his ability to keep his bat on a steady plane.

    That affects barrels.

    His barrel rate was the ONLY power metric that dropped off. The avgEV was 92.1 MPH and the hard-hit rate was 49.0%, both numbers lineup closely with his usual marks.

    The barrel rate did drop to 8.5%.

    A healthy shoulder should allow him to get that barrel rate back to where it was when he was hitting 30 homers.

    He has a good hit tool with a 76.8% contact% and that means he hits the ball hard and hits the ball alot.

    A wonderful combination.

    His only ‘issue’ is his lift but he did have an 11.4 degree launch in 2023, not too far off from the 9.5 degrees from last year. And he has a 16.7 degree angle in spring training.

    Yeah, it’s spring training, but it is notable.

    I love me some Gunnar and encourage managers to stop drafting those first round aces and snag this elite five-category dude instead.

    Actually, on second thought, leave Gunnar for me.

    kthxbye.

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    March 20, 2026, 4:35 pm