Today I want to talk about the most underrated hitters in points league based on my metric and rankings based on that. These are players who are widely available and viewed as deep league targets, but my metric shows they should be owned even in 10 team points leagues. That’s widely viewed as the shallowest format, where it’s hardest for hitters to reach that level of impact and relevance. The bar a waiver wire hitter has to reach is pretty high, but I feel strongly these 3 players deserve to be rostered in those leagues. I’ll be focusing on Isaac Collins, Ramon Laureano, and Luke Keaschall. I don’t typically discuss players with as small of a sample size as Keaschall, but he’s hit the ground running in his first 8 career games, and I feel strongly he will make an impact even in the shallowest leagues, considering he plays second base and is at a position that really lacks depth in fantasy baseball. I will also touch on JJ Wetherholt, a Cardinals prospect I added this past week who I think is the best hitter in the minor leagues.

I’ll start with Ramon Laureano, a player who has had a resurgent season this year. He’s played well enough that the Padres traded for him from the Orioles, and he hasn’t slowed down. If you remember, in 2019 the now 31 year old looked like a breakout in fantasy baseball, and injuries and a PED suspension stopped him from being relevant again until the 2025 season. For hitters I’m discussing today, Laureano has the highest ranking based on my metric for qualified players. The efficiency rating for Luke Keaschall is much higher, for example, but it’s at an unsustainable pace when you consider it’s a higher number than even Aaron Judge has produced this season. Based on the metric alone, Laureano is a top 10 outfielder in points league, with a rating in the range of Corbin Carroll and Pete Crow-Armstrong. He’s obviously not a potential top two round pick like those two, but it shows you the production he has put up. He also doesn’t have the volume of at bats of those two, but he does have 312 which is a big enough sample size to show this is no fluke. Some of the indicators I like to look at most for hitters are chase rate and specifically pull air percentage, since pull air percentage does a good job of showing potential upside for a hitter while chase rate shows the type of plate discipline a hitter has, which is basically a requirement for consistent points league production. 

If you looked on his baseball savant page, you would see that Laureano has excelled in both areas this season. He has a very good chase rate at 23.5%, and the lower the better since the league average is around 29%. That’s good for 78th percentile, while his pull air percentage is 22.3%, the highest of his career. That number is even higher than it was in 2019, and the reason this number is important is because players who run high pull air rates maximize their power potential the best. The league average is around 17%, and while it’s not important for every player, I prefer that it be 20% or higher. All that is to say everything checks out for Laureano, and until his production slows down he should be rostered and most likely started everywhere. This season has taught me what to care most about when it comes to plate discipline, and that whiff percentage, strikeout percentage, and swinging strike rate aren’t near as important as you’d be led to believe. Pay attention to chase rate, as maintaining a good chase rate at the plate is eventually going to lead to all those numbers improving.

I’m most excited to talk about Isaac Collins, and that’s because he’s being overlooked and slept on in a way Laureano and Keaschall are not. Considering he’s not even owned in 25% of CBS leagues, he’s flying way under the radar and that’s not going to continue for much longer. As a Cubs fan, I don’t like realizing I’ve found a breakout player on the Brewers, but what he’s doing is clearly speaking for itself. You don’t usually see someone come up as a 28 year old and make a push for rookie of the year, but that’s exactly what’s going on with Isaac Collins. He doesn’t have batted ball metrics that would wow you, but he’s a good player all around and I’m happy to have found him early so I could add him before the industry catches on. His plate discipline and approach at the plate really stand out and are my favorite qualities that he possesses. He has a 94th percentile chase rate at 19.3%, and a 90th percentile walk rate at 12.9%. He also has real power potential with surprisingly good bat speed, and has a good 21.8% pull air percentage as well. Based on my metric, Collins has been the 23rd best outfielder overall, just ahead of his teammate Christian Yelich. That should speak for itself, and on top of that Collins has been even better since he started playing every day in early June, slashing 0.333/0.434/0.503 with a 14% walk rate in 183 plate appearances, which is elite production. He also has enough power and speed to be dangerous, with 5 home runs and 6 stolen bases in that span as well. The switch-hitting Collins may not have the ceiling of an elite player, but as long as he sustains anything close to this he will be consistently productive enough to make an impact in points leagues.

Luke Keaschall of the Minnesota Twins is another rookie with a skillset that should be valuable in a points league, even if he’s only played in 8 MLB games. He’s made an immediate impact in 35 plate appearances, slashing 0.393/0.514/0.679 with 1 home run, 5 steals, and 5 walks to only 2 strikeouts. Keaschall has great plate discipline and on base skills to go with elite speed, and he hit 15 home runs last year in 100 minor league games. He has all the tools to be a real standout in points leagues with a great 19.3% chase rate and 23.1% pull air rate. While it’s a very small sample size, the potential for Keaschall is easy to see, and being at a weak position like second base makes him immediately relevant in my eyes.

I’ve given three players above who are widely available in fantasy leagues who could be real difference makers for teams in the stretch run of the fantasy season, and now I want to discuss another one who hasn’t even made his debut yet; JJ Wetherholt. I was looking for an impact player I could stash who had a good shot at still debuting this season, and I found Wetherholt and felt he was the perfect player to add at this time. There is also a chance he debuts very soon, with Nolan Arenado going on the injured list and Wetherholt getting his first professional start at third base. He was taken in last year’s draft just like Nick Kurtz, and has torn through the minors in a way that only Kurtz has this season. If you remember Kurtz, I wrote an article a few months back talking about the upside I saw with him, and he’s since shown that upside in a big way as a rookie. Wetherholt recently was promoted to triple-A, but in 18 games there he’s been even better than he was at double-A, with a 1.126 OPS compared to 0.892 in double-A. Overall on the season, Wetherholt is slashing 0.309/0.424/0.522 in 356 plate appearances with 13 home runs, 16 stolen bases, and a walk to strikeout rate of 54:50. So wetherholt is currently doing this in his first full season as a professional, while also walking more than he strikes out. He is showing he has remarkable skill, and a profile of a player who could make an impact right away.

My plans going forward is to have my full hitter rankings for points leagues ready to be released by the end of the year with a focus on the future and the 2026 fantasy draft. My aim is for these rankings to reflect a forward-focusing approach where upside is valued and the one-off type of good seasons are given a proper context and aren’t overvalued. A draft-focusing ranking for a points league is what I’m ultimately chasing, then in-season adjusting those rankings for the players who break out who will be sought after in the following year’s draft.