Rostering rookies in fantasy baseball is a roll of the dice. Sometimes you can hit it big, but other times you crap out completely. Let’s look at a few of the top rookies in this fantasy baseball draft class: Carter Jensen, JJ Wetherholt, and Kevin McGonigle.
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Fantasy Baseball Rookies | Top Players to Draft (2026)
Carter Jensen (C – KC)
Carter Jensen debuted last season with some elite power-hitting metrics.
Jensen only played in 20 Major League games last season, but half of his 18 hits were extra-base hits, including three home runs. While the surface stats were impressive, it’s the underlying data that gets exciting. If you drop the qualifications down to 25 batted ball events, only Oneil Cruz and Aaron Judge had a higher average exit velocity. He was also top-five in hard hit rate behind sluggers like Roman Anthony, Kyle Schwarber, and Shohei Ohtani.
JJ Wetherholt (2B/SS – STL)
A trade of Brendan Donovan opens second base for JJ Wetherholt in the Cardinals’ lineup.
Based on what he has shown in the minor leagues, Wetherholt is likely to hit the ground running. He played at both Double A and Triple A last season and never showed any signs of struggle at either level, batting over .300 at both. In total, he finished with 82 runs, 17 home runs, 59 RBI, 23 stolen bases, and a .306 batting average. He walked nearly as much as he struck out, which should boost his value even further in on-base percentage leagues.
Kevin McGonigle (SS/2B – DET)
You can rarely call a prospect safe, but that’s the case with Kevin McGonigle.
One way to be considered safe among prospects is to walk at a high rate while avoiding strikeouts. McGonigle has done that consistently at every stop in his minor league career. Last season, he struck out only 11.6 percent of the time while walking 14.9 percent. That helped him post his third consecutive season with a batting average over .300 and an on-base percentage over .400. Second base in Detroit is blocked by Gleyber Torres, but shortstop is ripe for the taking from Zach McKinstry.
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