2026 Positional Power Rankings: Designated Hitter

I know it sounds nuts now, but this Ohtani guy used to be kind of inconsistent. He’d get hurt. He’s slump. In 2020, he hit .190 over the course of an entire season. (A truncated one, but still.) But since then, we’ve had not just excellence but consistent excellence. At least 135 games plated in each of the past five years, with 44 or more home runs in four of those seasons, and a .390 OBP or better and a .620 SLG or better in each of the past three. This is just the best hitter in the National League now, full stop.

Ohtani has missed just seven total games in the first two years of his Dodger tenure, but if Los Angeles needs someone to spell him, the choices are vast. We have Smith and Freeman listed here, but pick any slow, positionless masher on the roster. The Dodgers have several.

One of the most impressive expressions of Ohtani’s dominance is how completely he’s overshadowed Alvarez, who is himself an awe-inspiring offensive force. When healthy, at least, because Alvarez has gotten hurt a lot. In 2025, he missed more than three months with a broken hand, then wrote off the last two weeks of the season with a sprained ankle.

When healthy, Alvarez combines power and plate discipline with a low strike out rate, in a manner no other hitter, including Ohtani and Aaron Judge, can match. The fact that the Astros are projected for 3.8 WAR here, some 2.4 WAR behind the Dodgers, has something to do with Ohtani’s excellence, something to do with Alvarez’s injury history, and a lot to do with the fact that Alvarez, unlike Ohtani, knows where his outfielder’s glove is. We have the big fella penciled in for some 150 plate appearances in left field, in addition to his role as the primary DH.

Like the Dodgers, the Astros have enough surplus bats to have a good reserve DH group. Paredes and Altuve are part of a five-man rotation that goes into four infield spots, and Diaz is the rare catcher whose bat warrants staying in the lineup even if he’s not behind the plate.

Rooker’s path from entertaining college masher to consistent 30-homer big leaguer was long and winding, but you can’t argue with the results. He’s had a wRC+ of 120 or better in three straight seasons, with a monster 2024 sprinkled in there. He strikes out a lot, and his walk rate and raw exit velo numbers don’t titillate the way other designated hitters’ do, but he’s a good middle-of-the-order bat in what’s sneakily become a pretty deep A’s lineup.

Behind Rooker, the team has quite a bit of depth for the position, because if you’re a slow guy with plus power, there’s a decent chance the A’s have at least tried to sign you to a long-term extension over the past two years. Seriously, check your email, there might be a contract offer in there. Langeliers is another one of those few catchers who hits well enough to keep in the lineup for his bat on his days off. Kurtz might need the odd day off his feet, as he tires from carrying that bazooka-like bat around. And McNeil is acceptable as a defensive second baseman, but is definitely more bat over glove. He could see some half-days off at DH as well.

If I were doing these rankings by the seat of my pants, I’d swap the Phillies and A’s, just because Schwarber has a combination of batting eye and raw power that maybe five other hitters in the whole league can access. He’s coming off career highs in home runs (56), runs scored, RBI, slugging percentage, wRC+, and WAR in 2025, and was at or near his career highs in batting average, on-base percentage, and even stolen bases.

Over his four-year stint with the Phillies, Schwarber has averaged 47 home runs a season. Another campaign like that would put him one ahead of Chase Utley for sixth place on the franchise leaderboard; two would put him in the top three. Simply put, it’s a lot of home runs.

But I get why our projections are down on him; Schwarber is a beefy 33-year-old who, even in his youth, ran in slow-motion. The five-year, $150 million contract the Phillies gave him probably isn’t going to look great by the end. But he got that big payday because, on account of the aforementioned boatload of home runs he hits, the Phillies could ill afford to lose him. The hope is that Dad Strength carries on into one’s late 30s.

Having invested so heavily in a starting DH, the Phillies’ Plan B is a rotation of starters on their off days — Harper, Realmuto — or Otto Kemp, who’s like the Zoomer version of Cody Ransom.

Díaz is a fascinating player from whom I’ve learned a lot. Specifically: Yes, it is possible for a hitter to overcome an ordinarily fatal groundball rate if he does enough biceps curls. I never would’ve guessed.

Díaz, who turns 35 in August, has slipped a little from what he was a few years ago. The walk rate, which once held steady in the low teens, has dipped into single digits. Accordingly, his on-base percentage has dropped from the .400 range to the mid-.300s, which is still really good, if not elite. I’m going to end up saying this a lot in this post, but foot speed was never a strength for Díaz to begin with. And in the past five years, he’s slid down the spectrum from third base to first, and now to designated hitter. In 2025, for the first time in his career, Díaz made more starts at DH than anywhere else.

That seemed to help him; he hit a career-high 25 home runs, and his batting average rebounded to .300 from .281 the year before. Where he was a 1.9 WAR player while playing mostly first base in 2024, he posted 2.9 WAR in 2025.

He could end up swapping places defensively with the man who replaced him at first, Aranda, who put up a huge 146 wRC+ before a broken wrist knocked him out for the last two months of the season. Beyond that, the Rays could plug Caminero in when he needs a rest, or call on their reserve army of fourth outfielders: Malloy, Fraley, or Simpson.

After four injury-plagued and/or disappointing seasons in the outfield, the Blue Jays finally took away Springer’s glove in 2025. And he looked like a new man: He hit a career-high .309, posted a career-high 166 wRC+, and hit 32 home runs, his highest total since he was hitting lob wedge shots into the Crawford Boxes at the height of the juiced ball era.

The greatest miracle, to me at least, is that Springer was 18-for-19 in stolen bases last year and 16-for-17 in 2024. When Springer was young, he was one of the worst percentage basestealers of all time, especially among fast guys. But since moving to Toronto, he’s 72-for-82. You can teach an old dog new tricks, it seems.

Springer’s kind of in the same boat as Schwarber, where he’s old enough that the wheels are going to fall off sooner or later. But like Schwarber, he’s coming off a monster season, and we can at least hope that Father Time has forgotten about him for now.

Should Springer get hurt, or seconded to the outfield again, the Jays have plenty of slow guys with pop who might need a turn at DH: Vladito, Okamoto, Schneider, Kirk, even Santander when if and when he comes back from shoulder surgery. The defensive versatility of players like Schneider, Addison Barger, and Ernie Clement allows the Jays to rewrite their defensive alignment as needed, and that should include some as-needed DH duty up and down the roster.

Herrera had a blistering 72-game rookie season at the plate (.301/.372/.428, 128 wRC+), and a sophomore campaign (.284/.373/.464, 137 wRC+) that illustrated that, no, that first season wasn’t just a mirage. Herrera has had indifferent defensive numbers behind the plate, plus a few moderate injuries in areas (back, knee, hamstring) that suggest that maybe it’s not a good idea to have this guy squat 200 times a game, five games a week. Pedro Pagés isn’t what I’d call a good hitter, but he’s got an acceptable bat for a catcher. Plus, top catching prospect Crooks already got a whiff of big league playing time in 2025. Best to slide Herrera to DH and keep his bat in the lineup.

When Herrera is either out of the lineup or needed behind the plate, the Cardinals can slide Gorman, Burleson, or Walker over from another position, or insert Velázquez. The former Cub and Royal has a career .286 OBP, but he has decent pop (31 homers in 615 big league plate appearances) and he’s been white-hot this spring.

I had a mailbag question recently that asked me to imagine what baseball would look like if everyone on Earth had the same dominant hand. A fascinating question in its own right, but an existential one for Carpenter. If there were nothing but right-handed pitchers in the league, Carpenter would be Babe Ruth. If there were nothing but left-handed pitchers, he’d be… well, he went to Virginia Tech, so I assume an engineer of some kind.

The Tigers aren’t afraid to ride with a platoon DH if the strong side of that platoon is good enough. (Hello, Robbie Grossman.) But they do need at least one other guy to fill in when a left-handed starter threatens to turn Carpenter into a Pikmin. That could be Keith, or Jones, or a weird three- or four-way platoon that involves Javier Báez or Matt Vierling, with one of Keith, Jones, Greene, Torkelson, or McKinstry sliding to DH.

Seeing a 34-year-old Yelich as a primary DH makes me feel very old, but it makes sense. The 2018 NL MVP can still run well, but you don’t want a man with his history of back problems to run any more than is necessary. Plus, the Brewers seem to have over-indexed on the slap-hitting fast guy archetype of outfielder, so where would you put him anyway?

Yelich had a rough go of it in the early 2020s, with the nadir coming as he hit .205 with a 30.8% strikeout rate in the COVID-shortened 2020 season. But he’s hit .279/.366/.460 over the past three seasons, which is still easily top-half-of-the-order stuff. His 29 home runs in 2025 were his most since 2019. Yelich’s groundball rate, as ever, carries the risk of precipitous decline, but for now he’s still one of Milwaukee’s best hitters.

I’ve mentioned the family of catchers who are good enough offensively to warrant time at DH. Contreras is among the foremost of those, and Sánchez still has some pop in his bat, even as the rest of his game has declined. Past those two and Yelich, the Brewers have the unsinkable Bauers, and the usual array of starters to rotate through DH.

Speaking of teams with catchers who hit well enough to DH; the Orioles have a wealth of those. Eventually, this town will cease to be big enough for both Basallo and Rutschman, but until then, we have that pair accounting for just over half of the total plate appearances available to Orioles designated hitters.

In addition to catchers with some pop, the Orioles are big on corner guys who look like they can squat a Mini Cooper. Two of those, O’Neill and Alonso, could get some time at DH. O’Neill is a terrific power-speed guy when healthy, but if he even thinks the word “yoga,” he tears his hamstring. Alonso, by contrast, has been highly durable, missing only 24 regular season games over a seven-year career, and playing every game in his last two seasons in New York. But he’s a first baseman more by dint of prestige than ability, and the O’s would be well-served to begin his transition to designated hitter soon.

Westburg will return from his partially torn UCL at some point this season. When he does, he’ll find Baltimore’s infield situation characteristically crowded, which could mean some time at DH. And after what feels like three years of either trying to trade Mountcastle or turn him back into a 30-homer guy, the Orioles still have him on the roster. He might as well play at DH as anywhere else.

A world in which Wood is the full-time DH is a world in which the Nats want to live. Not only would that require Wood himself to be productive — and a productive Wood tops out as the next-best thing to Judge — but it’d mean both Lile and Dylan Crews are playing well, and Jacob Young is hitting enough to keep his elite glove in the lineup.

Thanks to an extensive residency on top prospect lists and two successful stints at the heart of Great Britain’s WBC order, Ford has much more name recognition than most players with eight games of major league experience. He’s at least OK at everything, but not really great at anything, and his defense is still a work in progress. A team expected to finish last in its division ought to give Ford every shot to catch, but the odd spell at DH is a good way to kill time until the Nats figure out if he’s their catcher of the future, or more like their third baseman of the future.

Other DH options would indicate a world the Nationals would prefer not to inhabit. García is a second baseman and hits like it. Chaparro has crushed high-minors pitching, but was completely swamped in a 34-game major league tryout last year. And Ortiz, acquired in the MacKenzie Gore trade in January, has an elite first name — I love any shout-out to obscure Old Testament figures — but a minor league record that’s just short of confidence-inspiring.

I think you could sell a reality dating show about the Yankees designated hitters called The Golden Bashelor. But seriously, folks: These guys are old.

Stanton, 36, can still hit the ball harder than almost anyone else in the league, as his 158 wRC+ in 2025 proves. Among hitters with 200 or more plate appearances, he was second behind Oneil Cruz in EV90. But Stanton played only 77 games, his lowest total in a full season since 2019. He also struck out a career-high 34.2% of the time, which was seventh out of 348 hitters with that 200-plate appearance minimum.

When Stanton gets hurt (I’m not being snide, I’m just being realistic), Goldschmidt and Rice are logical replacements when they’re not partnering up at first base. Goldschmidt, 38, is less dangerous than Stanton, especially because he retooled for contact rather than power last season. His 10 home runs in 2025 were a career low for a 162-game season; his previous low was 19.

Other Yankee starters who could cycle through at DH include Judge, Chisholm, and Wells, with some possible reps for Escarra as well.

Seeing Duran’s name atop the DH depth chart was a little odd, because he’s only 29 and I still think of him mostly as a center fielder, and a good one. But the Red Sox have quietly assembled an outrageous outfield defense, with Abreu in right and Ceddanne Rafaela putting up plus-20 numbers in center. (As the world’s biggest Jackie Bradley Jr. fan, it kills me to admit that Rafaela is a better defender.)

That leaves three players — Duran, Anthony, and Yoshida — to share left field and DH. The first two are both bats you want in the lineup every day, and while Yoshida kills right-handed pitching, it’s hard to find a platoon angle for him when Duran and Anthony both hit left-handed as well. Perhaps there would be a way to rope Boston’s first basemen into the mix — the top player at that position, Contreras, hits right-handed.

But the mere fact that you see nine names here is instructive. The Red Sox are in the privileged position of having more players than they can use, so the DH spot will have to suffice as a parking spot until someone gets traded or hurt.

Speaking of parking spots. The Mets completely remade their infield over the offseason, letting Pete Alonso walk, trading Jeff McNeil, trading for Semien, and signing Polanco and Bichette. The previous generation of infield prospects — Vientos, Baty, and Mauricio — had to a greater or lesser extent underwhelmed, hence the need for all those transactions. Maybe the Mets could trade one or more of those guys to clear some playing time and strengthen elsewhere?

Nope. Everyone’s back, so what you see here is the uncomfortable condominium of about five guys who could start at third base. But with only one third base spot available, we’re left with Vientos, Baty, and the Seven Dwarves hot-bunking at DH. The fact that Vientos hits right-handed and Baty left-handed offers a path to a platoon. However, a DH platoon seems a bit wasteful when each team has only four bench spots to play with, to say nothing of the fact that Vientos’ problem is less same-handed pitching than breaking balls in general.

This looks like a mess — and it might be one, in practice — but in reality, all of these guys are pretty good hitters at least, so it’ll probably work out OK for the Mets in the long run.

This offseason, the Pirates decided that defense is for cowards. I like the bats they acquired, but I worry about a primary defensive alignment that includes Lowe at second, Nick Gonzales at short, and Reynolds and O’Hearn in the outfield corners. (At least to start — the baseball world waits with bated breath for Pittsburgh to plug Konnor Griffin and his giant neck in at short.) It almost feels like a Freudian response to Ke’Bryan Hayes forgetting how to hit. That didn’t work, so we’re going to do the exact opposite.

In a perfect world, the Pirates would cycle these guys through DH, while someone — presumably Jared Triolo and half a dozen clones of Jared Triolo — serves as a defensive caddy. This being the real world, and the Pirates, GM Ben Cherington has chosen to spend $12 million of his boss’ extremely limited dollars on Ozuna.

Across 2023 and 2024, Ozuna hit .289/.364/.552 with 79 home runs in 306 games. I can see why someone would be tempted to make a deal with the devil to get that bat in the lineup. Less so the Ozuna of 2025: .232/.355/.400, 21 home runs. Especially a team as historically miserly as the Pirates, who now have some 11.4% of their big league payroll devoted to Ozuna. That’s almost exactly the same percentage of the Dodgers’ payroll devoted to Ohtani. I suspect the results will diverge accordingly.

Pederson can’t be any worse than he was in 2025, he just can’t. It’s easy to understand why the Rangers signed him to a two-year, $37 million deal after the 2024 season, when he posted a .393 OBP with a 152 wRC+ for the Diamondbacks, but that deal turned into one of the ugliest in the league in a hurry.

You can’t even blame Pederson’s horrendous 2025 (.181/.285/.328) on injury; he broke his hand in May and missed two months, but at the time of the injury he was hitting .131 with just two home runs in 146 plate appearances. Pederson is far from the only left-handed hitter in the Rangers’ lineup in need of a healthy and/or get-right season. (You can see Nimmo and Seager in this very depth chart, in fact.) But anything better than “throwing good money after bad” would be an encouraging start for the Rangers’ starting DH.

Speaking of lovable center fielders of the mid-2010s, the Rangers have picked up McCutchen, who’s still kicking around at age 39. The 2013 NL MVP doesn’t play the field much anymore, or steal bases, or hit for that much power, and his once-elite on-base ability has finally trickled back to average. Last year, he was roughly a replacement-level player for the Pirates, and I’d expect more of the same here. The same goes for Haggerty, a fifth outfielder for most of his career.

One consistent thread in this ranking has been the number of catchers who hit well enough to DH. It feels like that number has skyrocketed recently. The first draft of this post described William Contreras of Milwaukee as “maybe the foremost” of these players, and then I scrolled down here and realized I’d forgotten the guy who hit 60 home runs last year. Certainly the Mariners know they can’t afford to keep Raleigh’s bat out of the lineup; he played 159 games across all positions last year, on top of 153 in 2024 and 145 in 2023.

This is a decent day off position for the Mariners’ other big bats: Naylor, Arozarena, Rodríguez. When the starters are all in their primary positions, DH should be a platoon between Refsnyder and one of Canzone or Raley (with the other left-handed bat playing left field). Refsnyder’s one of the best short-side platoon bats in the league; he’s gone over 120 wRC+ against lefties five years running, and 159 or better three years out of the past four. Canzone and Raley are fine, but they’ll be exposing the weaker side of the platoon most of the time. Sounds like a good idea to get Raleigh some games here, doesn’t it?

This is a tough spot for the Braves; before the season even started, they’ve suffered a near-season-long injury to their starting shortstop and a mortifying recidivist PED suspension to their presumptive left fielder. They were two starters down before the World Baseball Classic ended, which is any-port-in-a-storm territory.

So while Smith isn’t an acceptable Plan A at DH for a would-be contender, you could do worse as a stopgap. Last year, he hit .296/.343/.436 against righties, which isn’t bad at all, even for a DH. How’d he do against lefties? Don’t worry about it.

In theory, the Braves can leverage their catching tandem for help here; clearly we expect a fair amount of that, with Baldwin being no. 1 on the depth chart and combining for almost 400 plate appearances with Murphy. That plan does require Murphy to be both healthy and offensively animated, which he is not now and has not been for some time. He was a terrific offensive catcher for the first few years of the 2020s, but he hasn’t hit .200 since 2023.

Wright State’s most productive alum would be entitled to claim mitigating circumstances due to injury, but that’s not the kind of explanation that makes one feel better about a 31-year-old catcher coming off hip surgery. The Braves could get some production here with judicious deployment of Smith, and some help from semi-resting stars like Baldwin and Acuña, but this is going to be some seat-of-the-pants action at least for the first couple months of the season.

Ballesteros is the second-best bat-first left-handed-hitting catching prospect whose last name starts with B and has “all” soon after. He’ll probably disappoint people who thought they were drafting Samuel Basallo in their keeper leagues, but please everyone else. He hit .298 with patience and power in a 20-game big league cameo to end 2025, and I don’t see any reason why he won’t be a productive major league hitter.

The Cubs made what I thought was one of the offseason’s savvier signings, inking former Yankees prospect and Matt Dillon lookalike Tyler Austin to a split contract with a major league salary of just $1.25 million. Austin wrecked NPB when on the field; he posted wRC+ marks of 197 and 147 the past two years. But he’s 34 now, which means he’s got that clicking in his knee, and in Austin’s case it requires patellar tendon debridement that’ll keep him out long-term.

Fortunately for the Cubs, they have cover here. Not just Ballesteros, but Shaw, who’s been reduced to vagabond status by the signing of Alex Bregman. Suzuki also made 102 starts at DH last year, and could return to that position, especially if the strained PCL he suffered in the WBC requires a slow reintroduction to game action.

Oh dear. I hope new Twins manager Derek Shelton handed out nametags at the start of training camp. From this charcuterie board of 10 names, we have de facto backup catcher Victor Caratini getting significant playing time. Six of the other nine are at least platoon starters elsewhere on the diamond.

As a result, most of these guys can hit. Buxton, Jeffers, Lewis, and Caratini are especially valuable because of their ability to play premium positions. (At least theoretically — I’m not comparing Caratini to Johnny Bench or anything.) But I expect the low-end-of-the-defensive-spectrum players to see more time here, which means Larnach and Bell. Both of them have shown intermittent impact ability, but corner power being cheap, both are running out of rope to maintain their status as everyday regulars.

I waved the flag for Clemens in the second base power rankings; he could be useful here as well as a left-handed bench bat.

This here says Mike Trout is basically just a rich man’s Jorge Soler anymore, and that makes me want to crawl up into a ball and die. He’s slated to start in center for the Angels; the 280 plate appearances listed here indicate the likelihood that he’ll spend more time at DH as the anguished cries of his joints and tendons become audible from the dugout.

Soler battled lower back issues all last year, which isn’t too surprising for a 33-year-old his size, and he struggled to his first below-replacement-level season since 2017. Soler suffered a noticeable, though not precipitous, decline in bat speed in 2025; even so, that’s problematic for a player who needed truly elite bat speed to muster a 120 wRC+ and 1.1 WAR in 2024.

If those problems are more related to age (he’s 34 now) than the specific back injuries Soler suffered in 2025, the distance between Trout and him should be bigger. Unless, of course, Trout gets hurt too, which has been known to happen.

O’Hoppe has plenty of pep in his bat when he makes contact, but an aggressive hitter who swings and misses a lot is always going to be facing an uphill battle. Somehow the least depressing entry on this list is Moncada, who missed almost all of 2024 but fought back to post a 117 wRC+ in 84 games in 2025. God, this is a downer. I’m moving on to the Reds before I put on Damien Rice and let this feeling start to spiral.

Suárez hit 49 homers last year, was one of the biggest names moved at the deadline, and burnished his big-game credentials by taking Aaron Nola deep in the World Baseball Classic semifinal and hitting the tournament-winning double against Team USA. He’s a good player, and a fun player, and I think the Reds did well to sign him for just $15 million. I hope he hits another 49 homers in 2026.

But I understand why his market was so soft. He turns 35 in July, his strikeout rate climbed to almost 30% by season’s end, and his defense at third base is such that… well, he’s listed as a DH here, isn’t he? That should tell you a lot. He can’t really play the field or run, and he doesn’t get on base much. But the one thing he’s still really good at — hitting home runs — is the most important ability for a hitter to have.

In a best-case scenario, some of the younger Reds (namely Stewart, Matt McLain, and Noelvi Marte) get going and turn Suárez into more of a no. 6 hitter than a cleanup guy. Either way, I expect Suárez to be productive in a hitters’ park where he was extremely productive earlier in his career. He’ll drive in plenty of runs and be good for the vibes.

Stephenson ought to get some reps here; Cincinnati has a backup catcher in Jose Trevino who warrants more than one start a week. Stewart and Steer can also pick up the odd start at DH when Suárez is either resting or stretching his legs and playing the odd game at third base.

The 21-year-old Eldridge is San Francisco’s first baseman of the future, and at 6-foot-7, 251 pounds, he’s the rare literal San Francisco Giant. (I’m almost certain I made this joke about Sean Hjelle when he came up, but I don’t care, it’s still funny.) Eldridge hit 18 homers in just 66 games at Triple-A last year, which is even more impressive considering he was almost seven years younger than the average player in the PCL.

He also went 3-for-28 with 13 strikeouts in a 10-game call-up last year, and he struck out nearly 40% of the time in Cactus League play this spring, before being optioned to the minors. He remains a key part of the Giants’ plans for 2026, and I don’t want to read too much into those two extremely small samples against uneven competition, but a 40% strikeout rate is bad enough that the local papers are writing about it in concerned tones, and rightly so. Eldridge is supposed to be a key power component in Tony Vitello’s first big league lineup, so he’d better start making contact soon.

The other parts of the power equation are Devers, who’ll mostly start at first base but should see the odd start at DH, and the 28-year-old Encarnacion, who is Eldridge’s most likely platoon partner. Save some playing time for Arraez and Ramos; both are decent enough hitters, but neither should be fielding the ball anywhere without emergency services on standby.

Manzardo and Hoskins are both power-hitting first basemen who probably shouldn’t be playing the field much. Both will draw a walk, but both strike out a lot. One hits right-handed, the other left-handed. One always lies, the other always tells the truth. And Hoskins is four inches taller.

The Guardians have long been in search of a third good hitter, after Ramírez and Steven Kwan, though judging by how their roster has been constructed since the Francisco Lindor trade, they haven’t been looking very hard. A couple players on this list could change that: DeLauter is the team’s top prospect and could bring some offensive production to the outfield. Valera and Kayfus have both hit well in the upper minors, but I’m not convinced either is going to make a meaningful contribution in the big leagues.

Fry is the wild card here. He won a trip to the All-Star game in 2024 thanks to a white-hot first half in which he posted a .388 OBP. Then he cooled off in the second half, missed the first two months of 2025 with a torn UCL, and broke his face on a Tarik Skubal pitch during the last week of the regular season. If we’re talking about guys who have nowhere to go but up, we should talk about Fry.

I don’t love this DH setup for the Padres. You’ve got Machado, Laureano, Tatis, and Merrill working their way through on that half-day’s rest program. Campusano is the San Diego catcher with the most going for him at the plate, so he’ll get some playing time here too.

We currently have San Diego down with a first base platoon of Sheets and Castellanos. The latter is a big name, but his decline has been uglier than most because of the type of hitter he is. Castellanos has always been aggressive, but in his prime, his strength was in his well-roundedness. He didn’t have a big platoon split, didn’t strike out that much, had more doubles power than home run power, and used the whole field. So when all his skills started to degrade, instead of having some standout abilities left, everything is just kind of bad now.

Even if Castellanos were a lefty-killer, the Padres wouldn’t need him, because Andujar is an even bigger lefty-killer. I’ve been an Andujar skeptic dating back to when Yankees fans championed him for AL Rookie of the Year over Shohei Ohtani in 2018, which is not fair. That’s not his fault. But there’s no denying he was quite good in 2025: a searing .389/.409/.578 against lefties, and a respectable .290/.331/.429 against righties. He could regress quite a bit from those figures and still be just fine here.

Knowing AJ Preller, this menu of DH options won’t last more than a couple months, but at least for now it’s a bit underwhelming.

The Diamondbacks strengthened their outfield situation not by trade or free agency, but by moving their longtime top infield prospect, Lawlar, to center field. So Alek Thomas slides over to a corner, and the incumbent left field options, Smith and Gurriel, go over to DH, at least sometimes.

Smith has been all over the place in his big league career. He looked like a bust, then in 2024, he emerged as an uber-patient right-killing masher, and came back in 2025 with a Z-Contact rate under 80%, which is about as low as you can get if you want to play in the majors and don’t have 70-grade raw power. One could say the same about Smith’s 31.9% strikeout rate. I have no clue what to make of him, or of post-knee surgery Gurriel.

Locklear came over from Seattle last summer in the Suárez trade; he’s struggled badly in two brief big league stints and is out for two more months with a shoulder injury anyway. When he comes back, the Diamondbacks will be hoping he steals the first base job from Santana.

All of Arizona’s catchers could get a spin here, but the one I’m most interested in is Del Castillo, the stocky three-true-outcomes monster out of the University of Miami. He was among the top 30 prospects in baseball before last year, but he’s had strikeout rates in the 30s in two brief big league stints. I’m still a believer, but it’s his age-26 season, so time is running out.

The Royals’ position player group is big on slow guys with plus raw power: Perez, Pasquantino, and Caglianone, who has raw power such that any number of pluses would be insufficient to describe it. India’s a useful on-base guy, but he doesn’t have the kind of power you’d want from a DH, especially with these other options available.

In truth, the Royals kind of tied themselves in knots regarding roster construction. Perez is nearing the end, having caught what feels like 6,000 innings a year for the past 15 years. But the timing is great, because the Royals have Jensen, one of the top catching prospects in baseball, ready to go. Unfortunately, Perez is still playing every day. If he catches, Jensen has to DH. If he plays first base, Pasquantino has to DH. In either of those cases, Caglianone — who should be a first baseman at most — is out there bumbling around right field like Truckasaurus.

To balance things out with their old, slow guys, the Royals signed Marte, who’s an old, slow guy who used to be fast. He hasn’t posted double-digit home runs since 2022, but he did hit .270/.335/.410 in limited duty for the Mets last year, and can shield Jensen and/or Caglianone from tough lefties.

Almost every team has some DH spots earmarked for a catcher who can hit. That could be Teel, who earned birthright Italian citizenship by virtue of being from Bergen County, New Jersey, then popped his hamstring running the bases for Team Italy at the WBC. The injury looked rough, but even the four- to six-week timeline, starting March 10, gets him back on the field by the end of April. He’ll probably DH from time to time, but the more Teel catches, the more Quero plays here.

“Catcher who can hit” might be stretching things when it comes to Quero, but he’s not any worse than Sosa, who’ll DH sometimes because he’s Chicago’s designated backup at every position. Benintendi, Murakami, and Hays are good candidates to see time at DH, but on a part-time basis.

Seeing Rumfield’s name here is a good reminder that you go to bat with the lineup you have, not the lineup you wish you had. I think it’s fair to say that Moniak hasn’t lived up to expectations as the no. 1 overall pick in 2016, but I’m pleased that he’s carving out a meaningful big league career nonetheless. More than that, I’m tickled to see what he’s become. The Phillies drafted Moniak to be a table-setting center fielder, and he’s morphed into this kind of hacker nonpareil.

Turns out that suits Coors Field just fine; Moniak had a really good 2025, goosing his hard-hit rate more than 10 points, from 34.4% to 45.3%. That resulted in career highs in home runs (24) and SLG (.518), with a reduction in his strikeout rate. In his first season getting semi-regular playing time with the Angels, Moniak struck out 35.0% of the time; last year, that figure was down to 23.9%.

When Moniak is playing the outfield, the Rockies could spin Goodman over to DH; Goodman is like Moniak except right-handed and a catcher. Freeman somehow contrived to finish with a 91 wRC+ and -0.7 WAR last year, despite posting a .354 OBP in 110 games. Coors giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other, especially to those who fail to post a triple-digit ISO in the league’s most hitter-friendly park.

Bryant will probably get the odd start here as well, insofar as he plays at all. But the really exciting name here is Condon, the former no. 3 overall pick and college home run king. We keep asking the Rockies to lean into it and just draft huge guys who mash dingers — well, they have answered the call with Condon, who figures to debut at some point this year.

On the to-do list for Miami this year: Find out if Ramírez can catch or not. In 71 starts behind the plate last year, the then-23-year-old rookie checked out with a horrendous -12 FRV. Yeowza. Hitting 21 home runs as a rookie is a good showing, but Ramírez doesn’t walk enough to be an offensive asset with a .231 batting average, and doesn’t hit for enough power to be an offensive asset with a .287 OBP. He needs to keep developing on both sides of the ball.

Hernández had a solid enough rookie season last year at age 25 (.266/.347/.438 with 10 home runs in 87 games), but I wouldn’t be jumping out of my chair to anoint him the next Giancarlo Stanton. Morel has the kind of power that might make you think about dropping that comp, but his swing-and-miss rate is barely survivable in the majors.

Conine could see work here when he’s not needed in the field; the same goes for Hicks and Caissie, though probably in smaller doses.