The Great Comparison: Two Former Top Prospects Breaking Out In a Big Way
The "youth movement" is strong in 2026. Bryce Eldridge and Jac Caglianone are two of the biggest components of it.
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The "youth movement" is strong in 2026. Bryce Eldridge and Jac Caglianone are two of the biggest components of it.
If you haven’t watched baseball at all until this year, you would think it’s commonplace for young top prospects in the game to get called up and immediately take the league by storm. However, any avid baseball fan will tell you, that’s not always the case. Young players can have a hard time adjusting to the highest level of professional baseball. Promising young arms find that their 100 mph heater doesn’t always get the swing and miss it used to when it’s thrown to an elite professional hitter. As for hitters, they may find their plate discipline waning when big league arms adjust and figure out their inexperienced weaknesses.
Yet still, there are times where those young hitters and pitchers that come up manage to breakout in a big way. This year, the youth movement has provided us with multiple candidates for each league’s Rookie of the Year award. Two young stars that find themselves in this promising movement of young potential: Kansas City Royals 1B/OF Jac Caglianone, and San Francisco Giants 1B/DH Bryce Eldridge. For the season, Caglianone is batting .269/.341/.489 with 39 runs, 14 homers, and 30 RBIs. Eldridge is slashing .277/.375/.482 with 21 runs, 6 homers, and 16 RBIs.
Both of these young sluggers have shown that success in this league is not always imminent, and growth isn’t linear. Eldridge came up for a cup of coffee last year, and struggled in 28 ABs, hitting .107/.297/.179. Caglianone, or “Cags,” had a little bit more time to get acclimated, with 210 ABs last season, but he also struggled to the tune of .157/.237/.295. Not much changed at the start of this season for either player. Cags was batting just .226 March-May, and striking out at around a 31% clip, and Eldridge started the season out in Triple-A.
Recently, they both have put the early struggles behind them. In the last 30 days, they’ve been two of the hottest hitters in baseball. Cags has still been striking out at about the same rate, but he’s smashing .327/.405/.653, with 9 HRs, 21 runs, and 19 RBIs. Meanwhile, Eldridge is hitting .333/.430/.589, with 5 HRs also, 19 runs scored, and 14 RBIs.
Fantasy Impact: Who Ya Got?
These two lefty power hitters are so similar, so it’s time to go under the hood to see who might be the better option for us in fantasy. Two of the biggest factors that are important in any fantasy context is league size and format. These determine what players appear built to last and help us distinguish between multiple breakouts. In the past month, both players have managed to become two amazing options for us at 1B. Eldridge and Cags are very similar lefties, however their individual plate discipline is where they're different, and I believe it creates a different kind of value for each player.
Above are the statcast percentile rankings for Caglianone (Left) and Eldridge (right) per Baseball Savant. Eldridge hasn't yet reached the qualified amount of plate appearances for Savant.
If you are in an OBP league, I would prefer Eldridge over Cags. Simply because there is less strikeout in Bryce's game versus Cags' free-swinging nature. If you look at their current stat lines, Cags has been seeing the ball so well when he does make contact that his swing and miss almost becomes a moot point. Plate discipline is what makes me favor a guy like Eldridge in an OBP league or a points league that counts strikeouts. If all else is close to equal between the two players, you're going to want to go with the guy that strikes out less. When a player has multiple ways of getting on-base it makes them more capable of climbing out of a cold streak or a tough stretch of games at the plate. Walk-rate increases their chance of scoring points for you when they aren't slugging at a high level and Eldridge's (13.8%) is among the best in the league.
When it comes to Cags, I honestly think he is the better option rest-of-season (ROS) for us in fantasy. Now keep in mind, since I began writing this article last week, numbers have changed, and Cags has since had a multi-homer game, saw a stretch of 5 games with 6 homers, and Bryce has hit a rough patch (.100 BA over the last 7 days)... so that's not influencing my decision at all. Nonetheless, I can't remember where I saw it, but there was a fantasy baseball analyst that said the biggest sign of a breakout is quality of contact. If you had a chance to read my piece on Michael Harris II, you would see a similar breakdown as Cags in plate discipline and quality of contact. For both Eldridge and Cags, the quality of contact is close to elite. However, we have a larger sample size of seeing Cags flat out destroy the ball recently. His hard-hit rate, barrel rate, exit velo, bat speed, etc. are all off the charts, and are in the top percentiles of the league. I am in a 10-team mixed league that doesn't count strikeouts, so Cags' value gets a lift in my league's format, as he's right around the top 10 of hitters in fantasy points scored over the last 7, 15, and 30 days.
The last thing I will say is this: Even with Eldridge's recent slump accounted for, don't give up on these young hitters. They'll have their cold streaks, every hitter does. Cags and Eldridge are proof that they can turn it around though. Both sluggers hit at the bottom of the order when their respective seasons began, and now they each bat in the top-four, occupying a premium spot in their team's lineups. Now, while Eldridge I would be more inclined to grab in a 12-teamer, they both represent a youth movement this season that is continuously showing there isn't always a hard learning curve when elite hitting prospects get called up. Don't be afraid to add either one of these elite upside studs to your fantasy lineups today if they're somehow available in your league! Don't walk, run.
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