MLB league-wide 2026 trends that fantasy baseball managers need to know before their drafts

Before delving into player analysis in fantasy baseball, it’s important to examine league-wide and team-level data and trends. This is partly due to recent rule changes, specifically regarding stolen bases and automatic balls and strikes. Pitch velocity, object, exit velocity, and bat speed have always been the focus of most people in fantasy baseball because it tends to lead to positive results.

[Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season]

We’ll start with some surface-level advanced statistics across the league, then examine team-level stolen bases, starting pitching and velocity zone information to help us understand what the 2026 fantasy baseball league will look like.

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batting average

From 2021 to 2025, the league-wide batting average has been below .250. This goes both ways, but there is value in a hitter with a higher batting average. Meanwhile, a hitter batting around .240 might not be able to wreak as much havoc. Unsurprisingly, when batting average goes up and down, so does batting average in games (BABIP). We see that by 2025, the league-wide regional contact rate will increase to 86%, and the overall contact rate will reach 76.9%. This is the highest zone contact rate since 2016 and the best zone contact rate since 2018.

Export speed and more

Generally speaking, in the Statcast era, 2025 hitters have the highest hard-hit rate at 41%. For context, they’ve been tracking slugging percentage (the percentage of balls hit with a speed of 95 mph or higher) since 2015. As expected, hitters have the highest rate of hits per base in the Statcast era in 2025 (5.9%), compared to 5.3% (2024) and 5.5% (2023) in the previous two seasons.

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Over the past few seasons, launch angle has gradually increased to 13-14%. Speaking of launch angles, we’ve seen the highest average exit velocity (93.3 mph), slugging percentage (50.2%) and barrel rate (17%) for fly balls and line balls in 2025 in the entire Statcast era. In theory, home runs should be more plentiful in fantasy baseball drafts, especially in the later rounds when batting average risk increases.

The chart above shows hitters ranked by average exit velocity (EV on FB/LD) on fly balls and line drives, including launch angle, exit velocity50 (EV50), sweet spot percentage, and barrel occurrence rate per plate. Baseball Savant defines EV50 as the hardest 50% of a batter’s at-bat events. From a power perspective, potential sleeper hitters include Joe Adell, Byron Buxton, Colson Montgomery, Matt Chapman, Seiya Suzuki, Matt Woerner, George Springer, Jacques Caglianone, Roman Anthony and Weyer Abreu.

stolen bases and attempts

As we discussed in our last article, recent seasons have seen more stolen bases with the new stolen base rules. In 2023, 20 teams stole 100 or more bases. The number of teams with 100 stolen bases drops to 18 in 2024 and rebounds to 22 in 2025. Five teams have never reached 100 stolen bases between 2023 and 2025, including the White Sox, Rockies, Tigers, Giants and Blue Jays. This could have something to do with the philosophy of the players on the team having their base juice stolen or the manager, although it could be a bit of both.

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On the other hand, 14 teams have stolen more than 100 bases in three consecutive seasons. The list includes the Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Cubs, Reds, Guardians, Royals, Brewers, Mets, Phillies, Pirates, Padres, Mariners, Rays and Nationals. There’s a good chance these teams can be productive again in 2026, giving us some confidence in players who show a base-stealing edge in their profiles. Opportunities matter, so let’s look at the teams with 100 or more stolen bases in 2025 compared to 2024, as follows:

Unfortunately, the Angels, Giants, and Rangers lack stolen base production in 2025, so they may be the outliers on this list. On the other hand, four teams have 95 or more fewer stolen base chances in 2025 compared to 2024. The list includes the Diamondbacks, Athletics, Mets and Yankees. Thankfully, all four teams stole 100 or more bases, and the Athletics appear to be the outliers to watch in 2025, as follows:

A more workable roster might be a team that has run and stolen bases on a regular basis over the past few seasons, especially if they have a stable coach. According to ATC projections, 21 batters are expected to hit 20 homers and 20 steals. Notable hitters outside the top 50 in average draft position (ADP) include Luis Robert Jr., Oneil Cruz, Randy Arozarena and Trevor Story.

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Hitters who aren’t projected to reach 20/20 but could strive for it in 2026 include Brice Turang, Trea Turner, Dylan Crews and Jarren Duran.

Stolen bases can be found more easily during drafts and on exemption lines, but this means the floors and ceilings have been raised, so don’t ignore this category.

starting pitcher stuff

Starting pitchers across the league have an ERA of 4.21 in 2025 and 4.15 in 2024. The league-wide ERA has been a bit of a roller coaster, dropping from 4.45 in 2023 to the 2022 off-season (4.05), but mostly above 4.34 from 2019 to 2021. Data shows that from 2019 to 2025, the swing batting average of starting pitchers has hovered around 10.6% to 11%.

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Meanwhile, starting pitchers’ Stuff+ (98-99) and Location+ (101) remained consistent from 2020 to 2025 when the Stuff model appeared on FanGraph. This is consistent with the overall swing hitting percentage that has been relatively consistent in recent seasons. Interestingly, seven teams will see their Stuff+ increase by 1.5 points or more in 2025 compared to 2024. These include the Athletics, Defenders, Rockies (say what?!), Tigers, Marlins, Mets and Rangers, as shown below.

Six teams lost 1.5 points or more in Stuff+ in 2025 compared to 2024, including the Braves, Orioles, Royals, Angels, Mariners, Blue Jays and Nationals. The Mariners are perhaps the most surprising team, as they generally rank above average in Stuff+ while also positioning and commanding their pitch well. In addition to the Mariners, the Braves and Orioles both have Stuff+ values ​​above 100 in 2024, which may indicate a decline in their starting pitching profiles in 2025. Or, depending on adjustments for health and pitching quality, it’s possible those numbers could return in 2026 in favor of their starting pitchers.

Number of innings started by starting pitcher per game

Nine teams start 2025 averaging five innings or fewer, including the Athletics, Tigers, Marlins, Brewers, Twins, Mets, Rockies, Dodgers and White Sox. The Brewers, Mets, Tigers and Dodgers have better backgrounds than other teams, which could be an indication of a lack of depth in their starting rotations. Normally, we see the Rays last, but they’re tied for seventh with 5.3 innings per game.

Meanwhile, eight teams are averaging five innings or fewer per start through 2024, including the Guardians, Rays, Dodgers, Brewers, Giants, Marlins, White Sox and Tigers. The Tigers, Brewers, Dodgers, Marlins, and White Sox appear again, suggesting this may be a trend outside of monitoring SP1 or SP2 in real-life rotations. The Athletics, Tigers, Dodgers, Marlins, Rays, Rockies and Giants repeat in 2023, with 11 teams starting five or fewer innings in each game. The other five teams are the Pirates, Red Sox, Royals and Redskins.

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This suggests caution in investing in Dodgers starting pitching outside of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, although Emmett Sheehan deserves a breakout. Shohei Ohtani, Roki Sasaki, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell will be limited in innings. Maybe there’s value in looking for middle-of-the-pack relief options like Justin Wrobleski and Ben Kasparis.

On the other hand, the league is averaging 5.2 innings per game in 2025, so here’s what the 14 teams will look like averaging 5.3 innings per game. The list includes the Diamondbacks, Braves, Red Sox, Cubs, Reds, Guardians, Astros, Royals, Yankees, Phillies, Mariners, Cardinals, Rays and Rangers. When we sift through the past two seasons, starting pitchers from the Braves, Cubs, Astros, Royals, Yankees, Phillies, Mariners and Cardinals have been more involved in games than the average pitcher.

Despite recent injury concerns with Brian Wu, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller, it makes sense to target most of the Mariners’ starting pitchers based on their track record and skills. The Cubs, who have pesky veterans like Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd, still have above-average skills, though they might be better in the league because quality starts are part of their scoring setup.

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That doesn’t mean we should fade out or target teams that average more or less innings or pitches per game. However, it provides context for potential bureau forecasts and expectations from a quantitative perspective. Another part not quantified here involves the quality of innings pitched because we didn’t include the results.

I may have written or posted about the following starting pitchers, however, some of the teams mentioned as active targets include Chris Sale, Ranger Suarez, Sonny Gray, Chase Burns, Nick Lodolo, Joey Cantillo, Hunter Brown, Mike Burrows, Chris Bubik, Max Fried, Ryan Weathers, Kirby, Gilbert, Luis Castillo, Ryan Pepiot, Jacob deGrom, Mackenzie Gore and Jake Wright.

Pitcher speed zone

After hearing that Jacob deGrom dropped his velocity last season and that Spencer Strider worked on pitch shapes in spring training, I started digging into the percentage of pitches being thrown down at different speeds. In 2025, the league average pitch rate is 94-97 mph at 16.1%. Meanwhile, the 2025 league average pitch rate is 7.8% at 97-100 mph, the highest rate of the past three seasons (2023-2025). While the sample is small, we see the highest percentage of 2025 pitchers throwing 100+ mph pitches (2.4%).

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This stat is noteworthy because pitchers who average more than 15 percent of their pitches in the 97-100 mph range may be at increased risk for injury, such as Hunter Greene, who will be out until as early as July due to a bone fragment in his elbow. We have 15 pitchers who are averaging 15% or more at 97-100 mph, including many with injury issues. The list includes Sandy Alcantara, Dylan Cease, Gerrit Cole, Garrett Crochet, Greene, Dustin May, Shane McClanahan, Bobby Miller, Mason Miller, Shohei Ohtani, Eury Pérez, Grayson Rodriguez, Tarik Skubal, Spencer Strider and Gavin Williams.

In addition to Green, Alcantara, Bobby Miller and Perez averaged 30% or more of their pitches at 97-100 mph. Alcantara and Perez missed 2024, while Miller missed 2025. Green has consistently pitched at over 100 mph (16.9%), and Ohtani, Perez and Skubal are averaging over 1% of their pitches at 100 mph or above in 2025.

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In this list, we find that the Strider and Crochet travel at significantly higher speeds of 94-97 mph. However, Williams and Skubal found a sharp decrease in the percentage of pitches with velocity between 94-97 mph. Can pitchers like Strider and Brandon Woodruff succeed at significantly lower rates in 2026? There are opportunities, but their draft prices tend to be relatively high, which puts them at moderate to high risk but modest reward in struggling or missing time.