Juan Soto tops 2026 fantasy redraft as stars sidelined
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- Juan Soto tops the author's rest-of-season H2H points redraft at No. 1, ahead of Yordan Alvarez (No. 2) and Shohei Ohtani (No. 3), in a ranking that ignores first-half 2026 performance.
- Aaron Judge, Ronald Acuna, Jose Ramirez, Shohei Ohtani, and Nick Kurtz are all sidelined or banged up, which the author calls the cause of "the wildest, most divisive rendition" of his yearly midseason exercise.
- Bobby Witt Jr. has been "merely... fine," prompting the author to question not just the traditional No. 24 spot but who deserves the No. 1 overall pick.
- The rankings project performance from July 16 through Sept. 27 and are explicitly rest-of-season only — the author says no player's first-half output consciously factored into his decisions.
- Chris Towers had already published his own version of the same two-round redraft, which the author discovered upon logging in and decided to do his own divergent take.
- Starting pitchers crack Round 1 in the H2H format: Jacob Misiorowski (No. 10), Cristopher Sanchez (No. 11), and Cam Schlittler (No. 12), with Tarik Skubal, Paul Skenes, and Zack Wheeler populating Round 2.
Why it matters: With Judge, Acuna, Ramirez, Ohtani, and Kurtz all hurt and Witt stalling, the traditional top of fantasy draft boards is scrambled heading into the July 16–Sept. 27 stretch run. Fantasy managers who drafted on preseason rankings now face a reshuffled order: Soto leapfrogs established stars, and young arms like Misiorowski crack Round 1 over healthy hitters, materially changing who managers should target on the trade and waiver wire.
