You only get the one first-round pick every year, and it's the most valuable asset you have in building your Fantasy Baseball team. But one first-rounder isn't enough. Something could go wrong with your first-rounder, as it did to varying degrees with Ronald Acuna, Corbin Carroll, Julio Rodriguez, and Spencer Strider last year.
But here's the thing: If you draft right, you can overcome something going wrong. I finished third in one league in 2024 despite Acuna's injury because I was lucky enough to snag Shohei Ohtani when he slipped. Yep, I had, for all intents and purposes, two first-round picks -- and with Chris Sale, I arguably had a third first-round caliber player.
Any road to a Fantasy championship is likely going to require multiple elite, impact players to get you there, so you've got to find players who can make that first-round impact elsewhere. If it's in the second round, that's great; if it's in the 10th, oh, well that's even better.
Here are 10 players being picked outside of the first round this season who could end up there this time next year:
Ronald Acuna, OF, ATL
Let's start with the most obvious one: Presumably at this point next year, Acuna won't be recovering from a torn ACL with an uncertain timetable for his debut, which means he will presumably go back to being a first-round pick. He struggled coming off a torn ACL in 2022, though "struggle" is very much a relative term because he still had a 162-game pace of a .266 average, 97 runs, 20 homers, 68 RBI, and 39 steals. Maybe not first-round caliber production, but that he followed it up with his historic 2023 season makes him an easy bet to be in next year's first round, assuming health.
Jackson Chourio, OF, MIL
Another obvious one, the case for Chourio has been and will be made about 11,000 times this offseason – I already did so in my Breakouts 1.0 column. Chourio turns 21 just a few weeks before Opening Day and arguably already played like a first-rounder after a slow first two months last season: From June 8 on, a span of 94 games, he put up a 162-game pace of 102 runs, 26 homers, 103 RBI, 26 steals, and a .306 average. He has legitimate five-category appeal, and there might be 40-steal upside here if the Brewers let the leash out a bit. Chourio's ADP is already up to 17.7, so I think the question isn't, "Can he be a first-rounder in 2026?" It is, "Can he be a first-overall pick candidate?" He clearly has that kind of upside.
Jazz Chisholm, 3B/OF, NYY
I know that, for some of you, Chisholm's injury history has earned him a permanent spot on your "Do Not Draft" list. And, that's reasonable! Even in a year where he stayed relatively healthy, things almost went extremely wrong for Chisholm, who went on the IL with a UCL sprain in his elbow in August and might have taken the rest of the season off to rest it if the Yankees weren't in a playoff race. It's easy to see how things can go wrong for Chisholm, but that's not the point of this exercise, so take your naysaying somewhere else! We're talking about what a best-case scenario could look like, and Chisholm is another guy who gave us a proof of concept for what a first-round season could look like when he put up an absolutely bonkers 39-homer, 63-steal pace after getting traded to the Yankees. I don't think he'll do that, obviously, but if he gets to even 90% of that while hitting in front of Aaron Judge, he's a first-rounder.
Jackson Merrill, OF, SD
This one mostly comes down to how much latent stolen base potential you think Merrill has, because it's harder to force your way into the first-round discussion if you are only a 15-ish steal guy – and Merrill had 15 in 2023 in the minors and then 16 in his rookie season. He's probably fast enough to push that up to around 30, and if he did that, the path is extremely clear after Merrill's second-half breakout last season. And, honestly, he might have the upside for it purely as a hitter – he was 97th percentile in expected batting average (.303) and 96th percentile in expected slugging percentage (.534) as a rookie and he only got better as the season progressed. Could Merrill progress to the point where he hits like peak Christian Yelich while tossing in 20 or so steals? It's a lofty projection – especially since Merrill's plate discipline isn't quite what Yelich's was – but the skill set might be there.
Jacob deGrom, SP, Rangers
Naysayers, out! Yeah, I get it, he can't stay healthy. I'm lower on deGrom in my rankings than the consensus, so I don't need to hear it. Again, we're talking about just the best-case scenario here, and I don't think it's at all a stretch to say he has more upside than any pitcher in baseball if he actually manages to stay healthy – deGrom was the No. 3 pitcher in Fantasy in just 92 innings in 2021. Over the past seven seasons, deGrom has a 2.07 ERA and 0.87 WHIP while striking out 36% of opposing hitters, which is elite closer-type production. I don't think it's safe to just assume he'll be that guy again as a 37-year-old coming off a second Tommy John surgery, of course. But if he's 90% that good over 160 innings, yeah, we're probably talking about him as a first-rounder this time next season.
James Wood, OF, WAS
Another one of the more obvious-seeming calls, except now we're getting to the point of the list where you have to do some real projecting to get him there. To be fair, Wood was pretty solid as a rookie, putting up pretty close to a 20-homer, 30-steal pace while holding his own in batting average and getting on base plenty. But that isn't first-round production. Now, what he did at Triple-A? Yeah, that's the upside we're looking for. In 52 games as a 21-year-old, Wood hit .353/.463/.595 with a 30-30 pace. I don't expect Wood to be that helpful with batting average, but his ability to produce elite high-end exit velocities could make him a useful source even if he doesn't improve much in his contact abilities. If he does? Well, that's where you might be able to dream up some scenarios that look Kyle Tucker-esque.
Garrett Crochet, SP, BOS
Paul Skenes is the only pitcher actually being drafted in the first round these days, but you can make a case that it should be Crochet. After all, Crochet had Skenes beat in K-BB% (a league-best 29.6%), xFIP (another league-best 2.38), and SIERA (2.53; yep, another league-best mark). It's a small-sample size, relatively speaking, but hey, so is Skenes'! Now that he's with the Red Sox, Crochet should have plenty of opportunities to rack up wins, and if he makes it through another dominant season without getting injured, it's going to be tough to make an argument against him being one of first two pitchers off the board.
Roki Sasaki, SP, Dodgers
If you've been reading this newsletter, you know I'm pretty skeptical about the Sasaki hype for 2025 – skepticism I laid out again earlier this week, so I won't rehash it here. Instead, let's talk about what could go right. Sasaki lost a couple MPH on his fastball last season, and part of his recruitment before signing with the Dodgers was to ask prospective teams why they think that happened. So, let's say the Dodgers have an answer to that and they get Sasaki back to sitting around 98 mph instead of 96. And let's say he makes it through the entire season without issue and dominates the way many expect. Couldn't he have a Skenes-like rookie season, where he absolutely dominates over 130-140 innings, racking up league-best strikeout numbers and sets himself up to be one of the first pitchers off the board in 2026? It'll be a bit tougher to justify with Sasaki, who seems likely to remain in a six-man rotation as the Dodgers try to balance Shohei Ohtani's workload as a two-way player. But we have the blueprint here with Skenes making that leap.
Lawrence Butler, OF, ATH
Spoiler alert: Butler is going to make my Busts 1.0 column when it's released next week. But that has everything to do with his price, because I do like him, and I can obviously see the upside – and that's what we're focusing on here. And there's a lot to like about Butler if you're just focusing on the positives. He hit .291/.330/.565 with a 39-homer, 29-steal pace after returning from the minors in mid-June, with underlying stats that back up much of what he did, most notably an 86th-percentile expected slugging percentage and very strong quality-of-contact metrics. Butler more than held his own against lefties, and with the Athletics moving to Sacramento, he's got a better ballpark to hit in for half his games, too. I don't totally buy it, but the case for Butler as a 30-30 superstar is there.
Trea Turner, SS, PHI
I wanted to throw another older guy in here, because we shouldn't forget that veterans have high-end outcomes, too. Turner doesn't get discussed that way these days because he isn't an elite base stealer anymore, swiping just 19 in 121 games in 2024. But he certainly still has the foot speed for it, and I'll just point out that before he suffered a hamstring injury in early May, he had 10 steals on 11 attempts in his first 33 games. Now, injuries will happen to players more often in their 30s, and Turner has had plenty of issues with that throughout his career, so there's plenty of risk. But, again, we're talking best-case scenarios here, so we don't really care about the injury risk. I still think Turner has one 40-steal season left in him, and he remains a standout in batting average and runs – and is certainly not a zero in homers – so if he gets to that 40-steal mark, Turner could absolutely return first-round value again.
