Sal Stewart breakout: Fantasy baseball outlook, stats and top-5 upside

Sal Stewart probably isn’t the best player in baseball right now. I know, I know, it’s hard to hear that. But it’s true. Probably.

Since his debut on September 1 of last season, Stewart ranks 13th among all hitters with a 155 wRC+. He’s hitting .275/.353/.601 over that span, and he’s actually been even better to open this season, increasing that line to .289/.388/.639 over the first 23 games, and he’s doing it at age 22 in a key spot on a competitive team’s lineup. And he made early progress despite teams receiving a scouting report on him last season.

It’s undeniably impressive. Whether you look at the headline numbers or the underlying numbers, it all pretty much tells the same story: Stewart looks like an elite hitter right now. In 2025, Stewart’s solid .355 wOBA came with an even better expected wOBA of .398, and so far in 2026, his .438 wOBA is paired with a .419 xwOBA. Since 2021, there have only been 13 seasons of individual hitters (out of 670 qualified) with an xwOBA above .419; use his career mark of .411, and you only add four more seasons.

Of course, there have almost certainly been many other 41-game stretches where hitters have been better than Stewart. Taking just a random stretch from last season, from June 11 to July 31, there were six hitters with an xwOBA of at least .411. Some of them are superstars, like Kyle Schwarber, Corey Seager and Juan Soto. But this sextet also includes Willy Adames, a good hitter, but not much more than a pretty good hitter; it also includes Nick Kurtz and Kyle Stowers, two hitters who have the jury out on exactly how good they are.

But it would be foolish to view a hot start as meaningless when it comes to projecting a player forward. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s just look at how the rest of the season projections for Stewart have changed, using THE BAT X projections from FanGraphs.com:

Projection systems are notoriously conservative, especially for young players, who face a steep learning curve at the MLB level. And yet, even after only about 20 games, we’ve already seen a substantial increase in this system’s (generally the most accurate for Fantasy Baseball) system’s expectations of Stewart. He’s already gone from the 14th best projected first baseman by wRC+ to the seventh best. This is a serious and significant movement.

I can say this with confidence: Stewart is almost certainly at least a good hitter. BaseballProspectus has a stat they call “Earned Stats”, and they have Stewart listed as a .264/.342/.495 hitter for his career, with a very similar line so far this season. If that’s all he is, he’s a top-12 first baseman and would rank even higher when eligible at third base (where he needs one more appearance to qualify for CBS Fantasy leagues) or second base (where he needs three more). And, given his excellent home base, it seems fair to say that the mid-.800 OPS line is probably close to his floor.

This may not be enough for you. I know. Some of you want us to declare that Stewart is already a top three third baseman, even better than Nick Kurtz. Memories can be short, and reacting to what you see in the moment is exciting and fun, and Stewart currently has the looks of an absolute star. He probably won’t continue to be this good in the future – he hits the ball hard, but not astronomically (75th percentile average exit velocity) and his plate discipline metrics suggest he probably deserves something more like average results with his strikeout and walk rates; it also dropped to a 15.2% exhaust air rate, making its current elite power output harder to buy. There will be a regression.

But from a 20-game sample size, Stewart has gone from a corner infielder we like to someone who will start an all-league starter-caliber first baseman in the future. Is he currently a top-12 first baseman? Absolutely. Top 10? I would lean this way.

Top five? Well, I’m not ready to go yet. The ceiling is certainly that high, especially with his rare upside of 15 steals out of position. But we’ll see Stewart slow down, and we’ll see the pitchers adjust, and then it’ll be up to him to adjust. That’s when you really learn how good a player is.

But the ceiling? Well, that’s what we’re seeing right now, and it’s great. And if Stewart ends up a top-five first baseman in all Fantasy formats by the summer months, I won’t be too surprised.