2026 Fantasy Baseball Season in Review – Middle Infield Duds

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  • By Paul Williamson

    Middle infield is shaping up like a position group that is going to be difficult to rank and navigate in 2027 drafts.

    Plenty of ‘proven’ assets had down years like Ketel Marte and Trea Turner while younger assets like CJ Abrams and Kody Clemens brokeout in a big way in 2026.

    This piece will be dedicated to the disappointing middle infielders as I breakdown what went wrong as well as what it could mean for their 2027 value.

    Bobby Witt Jr. – Kansas City Royals

    Witt was a ‘dud’ considering he was drafted in the top-3 of 2026 drafts and failed to meet that expectation.

    He finished 2026 with just 18 homers, 94 runs, 54 RBI (YUCK), 45 steals (a career-high), and a .281 average.

    The homers and RBI really tanked his value as managers were having to play catch up in those categories with Witt on their roster.

    Diving into his numbers, the home and away splits do jump off the page. .

    He was way better in KC than on the road. He slashed .308/.375/.514 at home vs. .252/.342/.361 on the road with a 96 wRC+ and .109 ISO.

    While he certainly enjoyed a surge in quality of contact at home his metrics on the road were not bad with a 45.3% hard-hit rate and 9.4% barrel rate as his xStats on the road were good, especially the xSLG of .424 (.361 surface) and an xwOBA of .337 (.308 wOBA).

    In fact, this isn’t totally surprising as he does have a 110 road wRC+ vs. a 144 mark at home for his career.

    You may recall the Royals made changes to their park dimensions to make the park more hitter friendly as the park was second in overall park factors this year for RHH with above average marks in all the offensive categories. This only adds to the extreme splits.

    But the metrics on the road don’t take a large enough dive to have much worry here.

    Ultimately, there is a lot to like about what Witt did this year, despite the disappointing results.

    First, his hit tool and plate discipline were as great as ever with a career best 10.6% BB% and a 17.2% K%. He made plenty of contact in the zone with a career-best 88.9% in-zone contact rate (Z-con%). and his usually rock solid 10.8% swinging strike rate (SwStr%).

    Second, his quality of contact, while down slightly, was still more than good enough to support significantly better production in 2027.

    The average exit velocity (avgEV) was 92.2 MPH with an 11.3% barrel rate and a career-high 50.3% hard-hit rate. That showed in the xStats  of a .302 expected batting average (xBA), .504 expected slugging percentage (xSLG) and a .378 expected wOBA (xwOBA).

    At the end of the day, it’ll be interesting to see just how fall Witt falls, if at all. I would be willing to buy him as a top-five asset in 2027 and if falls beyond that in drafts, he will be a great value.

    Jazz Chisholm Jr. – New York Yankees

    Outside of Jazz’s 41 steals, nothing about his season matched his second round preseason value.

    He hit 19 homers with 69 runs, 55 RBI and a .231 batting average.

    This was the third straight year that we saw a K% increase from a 24.5% in 2024, 27.9% in ’25 then 2026 brought in a 29.5% K%. This lead to the average dropping from .256 to .242 to this season’s .231.

    While he did have two months of 15.7% and 13.0% barrel rates (but also well above 30% K%’s in June/July) his barrel rate was back down to 8.2% as he was unable to consistently barrel up the ball. He also saw his bat speed drop off from 73.9 MPH to 72.9 MPH and a 41.9% fast swing rate (FastSw%) dropping to 28.1%.

    He had injuries to his toe, leg, thumb and head this year as maybe that can be to blame for him not fully settling in at the plate.

    But he deals with injuries all the time. as he has only eclipsed 531 PA once in six seasons.

    Jazz will need to find a way to consistently barrel the ball as his poor hit tool will not allow an 8.7% barrel rate play up enough in the power department and the K% will continue to hinder the average.

    Chisholm will and should be viewed as a high-risk, high-reward pick in the first 3-to-4 rounds though he would need to fall a tad further for me to consider him.

    Gunnar Henderson – Baltimore Orioles

    We are now two years removed from his best year in 2024 where he hit 37 homers with 21 steals and a .281 average.

    This year he hit a decent 24 homers but only 10 steals, 85 runs, 68 RBI and a poor .225/.309/.403 slash.

    His hard-hit data took a step back with a career worst 7.7% barrel rate and 43.3% hard-hit rate as his bat speed dipped to 74.1 MPH (from 75.3) and his FastSw% went from 53.4% to 41.6%.

    However, one excellent development is he seems to have decided to rely more on lift and pull than exit velocity as he returned an elite, and, by far, career best 22.8% Pull air%.

    Imagine a world where Henderson combines this year’s lift and pull ability with his previous season’s quality of contact? He would easily eclipse 40 homers. Even though his bat speed has dipped, a 74 MPH bat with a 40% FastSw% is nothing to sneeze at and is still plenty good enough to return great quality of contact numbers.

    What helped him keep the homers going with lower exit velocities (pull air%) is also what may be at the heart of his lower batting average.

    He sacrificed line drives for some of those flyballs as his flyball% went up to 38.1% and his line drive rate was down at 17.5% and flyballs are good for homers but do not produce base hits.

    Line drives do.

    Henderson still has the makings and skill set to be a legit early round power and speed asset, he just needs to put it all together before we can fully trust it.

    The steals, well, it is hard to say with any degree of certainty if they will return or not. He is still quick with 71st percentile sprint speed but he was caught five times while stealing those 10 bags. He was caught five times in 2025 when he stole 30, so his success rate cratered. He also had Pete Alonso batting behind him so a lower success rate combined with a great hitter in the box will force a manger to be gun-shy on the base paths.

    So we can assume he will be cheaper this draft season, the question is how cheaper?

    I do think he has a solid power floor as we can be confident in at least at 20-25 homer year and a bounceback in batting average seems likely. Combine that floor with a first-round ceiling, I can see him being worth a top-50 pick and I’ll likely be there to buy him at that discount.

    But if he only falls to the second or third round of 12-teamers, I may not be so willing to buy.

    Ketel Marte – Arizona Diamondbacks

    What a roller coaster of a season for the All-Star second baseman as he was a controversial no-show to the ball park with no explanation as that preceded the announcement of a knee injury forcing him to the IL.

    He also had three months of a 118+ wRC+ and three months 88 or below.

    While he has always been better against lefties than righties, this year we saw a pretty hard fall off in his numbers against RHP.

    He needed 468 PA against righties to get to 13 homers but just 156 PA to get to nine bombs vs. lefties. He had a .930 OPS vs. LHP and a .688 vs. righties and a .264/.156 split when it came to isolated power (ISO).

    The good news is there is a solid argument to be made he was unlucky. He had a decent 8.4% barrel rate and 40.7% hard hit rate as there was a pretty big gap between the surface stats and expected stats.

    The average was .230 with an xBA of .270, The SLG vs. RHP was .386 with an xSLG of .433 and a wOBA of .303 with an xwOBA of .338.

    One more data point to discuss is his O-Sw% (outside zone swing rate)  that was a career worst 31.5%. He also made contact on those pitches outside the zone as that helps explain the dip in hard-hit data despite no dip in bat speed.

    Correcting that chase back to his career-norms will go a long way to help him access his elite power as it is not hard to see how Marte can get back to being an elite 2nd base fantasy asset in 2026.

    His ADP will dip and I think I’ll be there to buy the dip.

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    October 14, 2026, 7:30 am