ZiPS 2026 Movers and Shakers: Hitters

One of the things that people like to ask me about with the projections is how they change over time, rather than what they are. While knowing the actual projections is, of course, highly useful, it’s also interesting to see who has changed the most in the algorithms since they basically represent the players we should feel differently about than we did before. Knowing how changes in a player affect performance models quite often reveals an interesting fact or two about how players develop and age.

The methodology I’ve chosen here is a simple one: I’m ranking the difference in 2026 WAR as projected now against the 2026 projected WAR as of Opening Day in 2025. For the decliners, I didn’t include the off-the-radar types, because while a fringe High-A prospect hitting a wall at Double-A is good info to have, it’s more impactful to see the declines among more roster-relevant players than some poor fellow who saw his -1.0 WAR projection become a -2.5 WAR one.

I would have been very surprised if you had told me before last season that Jakob Marsee was going to snag a spot on my Rookie of the Year ballot, but he hit .292/.363/.478 (133 wRC+) in 234 plate appearances for the Marlins while playing solid defense in center field, good for 2.2 WAR. Though he wasn’t anywhere near as good in the minors prior to his call-up, his 2025 Triple-A wRC+ of 126 translates into a major league performance that would still be quite positive for a competent defensive center fielder, even if he doesn’t maintain the elite offensive output he showed with Miami. Naturally, Marsee does project to regress considerably, into about a league-average hitter, but all the projection systems still see him as a legitimate starter, which was not the case heading into last season.

Jacob Reimer gives the top of this list two Jakes, and I swear I really tried to make a joke involving the 1990 Chinatown sequel starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel, but was sadly unable to do so. The Mets may not feel too happy with the ending of their 2025 season, but Reimer’s breakout performance as a prospect is one of the positives they can take away. The presence of Bo Bichette and Brett Baty means that Reimer doesn’t have a clear path to playing third base for the Mets in the majors, but there’s room for him to grab a corner outfield spot, though I think that’s more likely in 2027 than this year.

Obvious AL Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz has the third-most-improved projection, but unlike Marsee, I had at least an inkling that this might happen. He was one of those players I dread projecting, because when a player has almost no professional experience but an obvious role in the majors, I have to project largely based on college data, which are quite volatile even when you make corrections for conference quality. I noted this in the A’s ZiPS rundown for 2025.

I have no idea if the Nick Kurtz projection is too high, too low, or just right given he has played almost no professional baseball. ZiPS does know his Wake Forest numbers, but college translations are more speculative than crypto currency with meme names.

People have made big sums of money on speculative investments (though I wouldn’t recommend trying to do so), and Kurtz paid off wonderfully for the A’s. After 2025, there’s little doubt about his ability to hit major league pitching. True story: Kurtz is one of only two players I have analyzed under penalty of perjury. I was called for jury duty last October — annoying, during the first few games of the playoffs — and since having “journalist” on your jury questionnaire appears to be something that leads lawyers and the judge to check up on you, I got directly called upon by the defense attorney during voir dire to give my analysis on Roman Anthony’s chances of winning the AL Rookie of the Year award. Strangely, after 90 seconds of my baseball analysis and another question which involved responding to the judge that I couldn’t claim that I wouldn’t be at least slightly distracted with baseball playoff thoughts, I ended up as Juror #2. Hopefully, I was less distracted than Jack Warden’s character in a similar situation. At least I can confidently say that, unlike Nicholas Hoult’s character in Clint Eastwood’s film Juror #2, which was released just before my selection, I was not directly involved in the case.

If Kurtz is as good this season as he was in 2025, he might find his way onto this list again next year!

Sal Stewart crushed it in the minors last year, and was more than respectable for the Reds, and I think there’s a reasonable chance that he fully seizes the job at first base from Spencer Steer fairly early in the season. ZiPS never hated Geraldo Perdomo, but he would’ve been a legitimate MVP candidate last year in a world without Shohei Ohtani, and I’m still a bit flabbergasted that a lot of baseball didn’t seem to notice.

ZiPS thought Ben Rice would hit well entering last season, but his projection took a pretty big dip from his defense at first base, stemming from some really poor minor league defensive numbers. (ZiPS uses ball location data and estimates a catch probability for minor league players.) His glove at first was fine in 2025, so that worry didn’t come to pass, and he beat his offensive projections anyway, meaning we should be even more excited about his bat now. He’ll likely add some WAR to this projection depending on how many stray appearances he gets behind the plate; ZiPS is seeing him here as solely a DH.

ZiPS projected Cal Raleigh to be a star in 2025, but even that turned out to be an undersell, as he put up one of the greatest seasons for a catcher in the history of baseball. Naturally, that has bumped his projection quite a bit, and unless something bad happens or his decline is steeper and earlier than expected, Raleigh has surprisingly started to build a legitimate Hall of Fame case. It’s certainly helpful that he’s a real catcher, not a DH engaging in some baseball-equipment-fetish cosplay.

Zach Cole was hardly a big name prospect, but he destroyed the high minors in 2025, and seemingly has solidified a fourth outfielder job in a Houston position group that’s shallow enough that he could conceivably grab a full-time spot if he works out well. Getting to run with the full-time job at third for the Rays, Caminero busted out for 45 homers and a spot in the middle of the lineup written in permanent marker. Yeah, it’s too bad he didn’t end up a shortstop in the majors, but let’s not be too greedy.

Dylan Jasso and Zach Ehrhard are the two most obscure names on the list, and while they have the weakest projections, they both now have a pretty good shot at being useful role players in the majors. Jasso is probably not going to hit enough to play first base regularly, but if his defense plays at second or third in the majors, he could be a Joey Wendle-esque Useful Dude.

Every year that Aaron Judge decides to skip the whole aging thing and instead put up a historically great season, he’s likely to end up this list the following February. Time always wins in the end, but I’m always happy to see someone give it a good thrashing on the way.

Carson Roccaforte is an interesting outfield candidate for the Royals, and while we should be suspicious of high-walk, low-contact minor leaguers, he’s also fast enough and a good enough defensive center fielder that he could escape being one of those walk-heavy prospects that just don’t work out. After a dynamite first full professional season, Twins first-rounder Kaelen Culpepper has quickly become one of the projection system’s favorites, and he will appear prominently on the ZiPS Top 100 next week.

Many were disappointed in Drake Baldwin’s projection going into the 2025 season, and I assured people that it could go up quickly if he had a big season. He earned his Rookie of the Year award, and since my pants are not on fire, his projection did in fact improve quickly.

And now, the frowny portion of our proceedings.

ZiPS had been banging the Eguy Rosario drum for a while. It didn’t think anything crazy like he’d be a superstar, but he was an infielder in his early 20s with experience at all four infield positions who had shown impressive power in the high minors, even after making proper adjustments for the Pacific Coast League. In a few cups of espresso in the majors, he wasn’t overmatched either, with a .783 OPS and five homers in just 100 plate appearances. But after not making the Padres roster at the start of 2025, he had a disaster of a season, with his bat first disappearing so quickly that he was sent down to the Arizona Complex League for a spell, and finished the season with a combined .192/.266/.297 line across four minor league levels. Quite shocking for a guy coming off a .900 OPS season for Triple-A El Paso! Naturally, that has sent his stock collapsing faster than any market crash I can compare it to in order for this analogy to work. Rosario was recently designated for assignment, and despite this, he’s probably worth a pickup for a rebuilding team.

ZiPS still likes Brayden Taylor’s glove quite a lot, but his struggles upon promotion to Double-A has caused his chances of hitting well enough to start in the majors to take a big hit, especially since he wasn’t young for the level. My colleague David Laurila wrote about Taylor’s season on this very website last week.

Thayron Liranzo was acquired by the Detroit Tigers in the 2024 Jack Flaherty trade with the Dodgers (along with Trey Sweeney), and the hope was that he would be pushing for a catcher/DH role-player spot at this point, but he struggled to hit at Double-A, a bad sign for a catching prospect who is far from a guarantee to be able to handle the position in the majors. The only silver lining is that catching prospects tend to have fairly odd developmental patterns, as catcher is the position where the physical aspects of playing the position defensively appear to have a real effect on offensive development.

Jarred Kelenic’s projections get notably worse every season, and this year isn’t an exception. It’s bad enough that he’s barely hit at all in the majors, but he’s struggling a bit more every year against minor league pitching. Kelenic’s Triple-A wRC+ by year: 147, 127, 116, then after a full year in the majors in 2024, a 62 in 2025. He turns 27 this summer, so the once-reasonable “don’t panic, he’s just 22!” arguments no longer hold water. I’m not sure he can even crack the White Sox roster on merit.

I was hopeful that Enrique Bradfield Jr. would be the eventual successor to Cedric Mullins in Baltimore, but while he’s fast and can handle center field defensively, he can’t afford to be a middling contact hitter, since he needs to put the ball in play to leverage his speed effectively. He’s certainly not compensating his whiffs with power.

If you’re still wondering why the Orioles aggressively brought in Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, note how many of them are here. Alongside Bradfield, there are four more O’s, giving them a third of this list. Joining Bradfield are Jackson Holliday, Heston Kjerstad, Colton Cowser, and Alfredo Velásquez. If this list stretched out to 30 players, we’d also add in Payton Eeles (acquired in November), Coby Mayo, and Tyler O’Neill. I can’t say whether or not the Orioles pay any attention to the ZiPS projections, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their methods had similar concerns about their non-Henderson offensive players.