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What's the state of third base heading into the 2026 offseason? I won't beat around the bush: It's bad. How bad? In 2025, Zach McKinstry and Lenyn Sosa were both top-12 finishers at the position. And it's not like either was great – McKinstry was an All-Star but struggled mightily in the second half, while Sosa finished with 22 homers and just 132 combined runs and RBI.

It was a bad season at the position, and it's actually even worse than it appears, with long-time stalwart Rafael Devers heading into 2026 with just first base eligibility in CBS Fantasy leagues. Fellow top-10 3B Jorge Polanco will also be losing eligibility, as will the likes of Colson Montgomery and Sal Stewart, who provided a nice little boost to the position down the stretch. 

That's not to say this position is a total wasteland. There are plenty of high-end stars out there if you want to shore up the position early on. If you don't want to follow that path, there are still upside options to target, whether you want to bet on an Austin Riley, Mark Vientos, or Royce Lewis bounceback or a breakout from someone like Jordan Lawlar or Matt Shaw, neither of whom took advantage of their opportunities in 2025. 

But if you skip those first few rounds, you're going to be taking on a risk. There are few sure things here, and some of the apparent sure things are getting up there in age. We really need some of those younger guys to step up to solidify the hot corner – especially because, as you'll see later in this newsletter, there aren't a lot of reinforcements coming from the minors, either. 

For more on third base, check out Scott White's top-20 rankings for both Roto and H2H here, and you can find my way-too-early rankings for every position here. 

2025 Third Base Review

  1. Jose Ramirez, CLE: .283 - 103 - 30 - 85 - 44
  2. Junior Caminero, TB: .264 - 93 - 45 - 110 - 7
  3. Eugenio Suarez, SEA: .228 - 91 - 49 - 118 - 4
  4. Manny Machado, SD: .275 - 91 - 27 - 95 - 14
  5. Jazz Chisholm, NYY: .242 - 75 - 31 - 80 - 31
  6. Rafael Devers, SF: .252 - 99 - 35 - 109 - 1
  7. Maikel Garcia, KC: .286 - 81 - 16 - 74 - 23
  8. Jorge Polanco, SEA: .265 - 64 - 26 - 78 - 6
  9. Jose Caballero, NYY: .236 - 52 - 5 - 36 - 49
  10. Lenyn Sosa, CHW: .265 - 57 - 22 - 75 - 2
  11. Matt Chapman, SF: .231 - 76 - 21 - 61 - 9
  12. Zach McKinstry, DET: .259 - 68 - 12 - 49 - 19

According to FanGraphs' Player Rater tool, there were just seven third basemen who returned at least $10 in value in 2025. That's the fewest of any infield position, including catcher! And, as noted earlier, one of those seven won't actually be third base eligible for 2026. It's rough out here.

Biggest Breakout from 2025

Junior Caminero, Rays

That went just about as well as anyone could have hoped. You could quibble and hope for better than a .264 batting average from a guy who makes as much contact as Caminero does, but 45 homers, 93 runs, and 110 RBI from a rookie are pretty incredible numbers. And hey, the low-ish batting average gives you hope that there's room to grow. 

Caminero managed just a .260 BABIP, but it's not like that was just a fluke – his expected batting average was just .269, just about right in line with what he managed. The issue? Caminero has a very loose launch angle spread, which basically means he hits the ball at extreme angles that aren't conducive to production. His barrel rate – batted balls hit at a more or less optimal launch angle and exit velocity – was 14%, nearly twice the league average. That's great for hitting for power, as is his 97.7 mph average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives, the 10th-highest mark in the league. 

However, he also had a higher share of his batted balls defined as either "pop-ups" or "topped," per BaseballSavant.com, and there's very little production to be found there. And you see it in Caminero's expected stats – his .359 xwOBA was very good, but not quite as good as you would expect for a guy who hits the ball as hard as he does and strikes out less than 20% of the time. That mark was up to .400 over his final 250 plate appearances, and if he can sustain that, he's going to take another step forward. As good as he was in 2025, there's still some meat left on those bones. 

Biggest Bust from 2025

Austin Riley, Braves

Once might be an aberration, but two down seasons in a row is a lot harder to ignore. I was mostly willing to give Riley the benefit of the doubt for his poor showing in 2024, in large part because it was mostly just due to a slow start, as Riley more or less looked like himself for the final couple of months before his season came to an early end. With the underlying numbers mostly where you expected them to be, optimism coming off 2024 made sense.

I think it's harder to make that case for 2025. For one thing, Riley was worse in 2025 than in 2024, and it wasn't just the surface-level numbers; his quality of contact held mostly steady, but Riley's plate discipline (never a strength) collapsed. His zone contact rate fell from 81.3% to a career-worst 78.1%, leading to a 28.6% strikeout rate and 6.0% walk rate, his worst marks since his rookie season in 2019. Maybe he was still dealing with lingering effects from the right hand fracture that ended his 2024 campaign, though it's hard to square that with the fact that Riley's best months of the season were actually April and May. He didn't get better as the season progressed in the way teammate Ozzie Albies did, which makes it harder to buy that as an explanation. 

Riley will be 29 shortly after Opening Day, and while that's not so old that you would necessarily expect him to be on the decline, it's not so young that we should bet on a bounceback, either. 

Biggest rankings movers from 2025 to 2026

Up: Junior Caminero, Rays; Eugenio Suarez, Mariners; Isaac Paredes, Astros; Maikel Garcia, Royals

We'll get to Suarez when we talk about pending free agents, so let's take a moment to appreciate what Paredes managed this season. Back in a park more well-suited for his pull-heavy swing than Wrigley Field ever was, he put up some of the best numbers of his career. He played just 102 games but was on a 33-homer, 85-run-85 RBI pace before a hamstring injury in July effectively ended his season. That's pretty much exactly what we were hoping for from him, because it's pretty much exactly what he did in Tampa before being traded to the Cubs. As long as he plays in a park with a short fence in left field, Paredes is going to be a very good Fantasy option. And he might just be an underrated one yet again. 

After enjoying eligibility at second base, third base, shortstop, and the outfield in 2025, Garcia will enter 2026 as just a third baseman. But if he's as good as he was in 2025, that plays at any position. Garcia has always had excellent plate discipline and better-than-you-think power, but he took both to another level this season. He cut his strikeout rate to 12.6% while improving his expected wOBA on contact from .331 to .358. He started elevating the ball more consistently, and while he still has the problem of hitting the ball harder on the ground than in the air, he makes enough contact to overcome that. There probably isn't too much more he can squeeze out of his current skill set, but the nice thing about Garcia is that if the bat does take a step back, he did steal 37 bases in 2024, so there are other ways for him to contribute. 

Down: Austin Riley, Braves; Mark Vientos, Mets; Luis Rengifo, Angels

Let Vientos serve as a bit of a cautionary tale for your favorite "Big power, bad plate discipline" breakout. Ironically, Vientos actually saw more fastballs and pitches in the strike zone in general in 2025 than he did in 2024, and he actually managed to cut his strikeout rate from 29.7% to 24.8%. But he made them pay for those pitches less, with his xwOBA on contact dropping from .444 to .403. 

But, if you look under the hood, Vientos doesn't look that much different from his successful 2024 version. His expected wOBA dropped from .331 to .325, which isn't nothing, but it doesn't explain why he was such a disappointment. This does: He went from overperforming his xwOBA by 25 points in 2024 to underperforming by 22. His aggregate production over the past two seasons has him right in line with his overall xwOBA, and it would see him hit .250/.305/.464 with a 31-homer pace … and you know what, that's not so bad. There are playing time concerns for Vientos, but if you don't expect him to be what he was in 2024, you could get a very nice power-hitting corner infielder for what should be a steep discount. 

As for Rengifo … yeah, we just whiffed on this one. I mean, sure, he took a gigantic step backwards from 2024 and suffered through his worst season since 2021, but it's not like we had a ton to actually get excited about here. He overperformed his expected wOBA by 40 points in 2024 and randomly became a high-volume base-stealer out of nowhere despite mediocre speed. He'll hit better than his .238/.287/.335 line in 2026, I'll bet, but not by enough to be anything more than a bench flier in Fantasy drafts. 

Offseason preview

Who needs an upgrade most? 

The Red Sox and Mariners are listed here because they are the current home of the two biggest free agents. Alex Bregman will opt out of the remaining two years of his contract to head into free agency again, this time looking for the long-term deal he couldn't find last offseason. He'll be turning down at least $40 million (and up to $80 million) by opting out. Eugenio Suarez is the other big free agent, and he'll be looking for one more big deal after getting traded to the Mariners. He has struggled since the trade – just like he struggled the first time he was in Seattle – and while the culture and clubhouse fit seems great from the outside, you have to wonder if the Mariners might not be better off passing on him in free agency to find a better fit for their ballpark. 

The Pirates need help everywhere, the Athletics have multiple holes to fill if they want to take a step forward, and the Tigers got away with a platoon at third but would likely prefer to have something a bit more stable at the corner. 

And then there's the Phillies. This high-priced, star-powered team has largely fizzled out in the playoffs in recent years, and the core isn't getting any younger. Alec Bohm has never been much more than fine at his best, and now he's nearing 30 and getting more expensive. Would they be better off trying to find a legit impact bat for that spot? Could they dip their toes into the Bregman/Suarez sweepstakes? Or are they pretty much at their spending limit? 

Top impending free agents

  • Alex Bregman*
  • Eugenio Suarez
  • Miguel Andujar
  • Munetaka Murakami**
  • Kazuma Okamoto**

*Has an opt-out
**Likely to come over as a free agent from Japan

Bregman is coming off a bounceback season, though one that looked a lot better before a quad injury derailed his season. Bregman is no longer a superstar as he nears his early 30s, but he's a very solid all-around hitter and Fantasy option – though landing somewhere like the Cubs or Tigers probably wouldn't help his value, given their home parks and the particulars of his pull-heavy swing.

Suarez is just a bad fit in Seattle. He has played 195 career games at T-Mobile Park and is hitting just .211/.311/.406 there, with an untenable 31.2% strikeout rate. He'll be heading into his age-34 season, with the risk that implies, and returning to Seattle would probably be enough to push him out of the top 12 at the position for me. If he lands pretty much anywhere else, he'll be a target. However, expecting him to flirt with 50 homers again is probably asking too much. He's a strong source of power and a big batting average risk, and there's always a chance the bottom completely falls out sooner rather than later, given the inherent swing and miss in his game. 

The rest of the free agent crop is pretty bad, but you probably need to know about Murakami and Okamoto. Murakami is a two-time Central League MVP in Japan, and he won the Triple Crown in 2022, when he broke Sadaharu Oh's single-season record for home runs by a Japanese-born player with 56. He struggled to live up to that level in his next couple of seasons, but was a dominant force yet again in 2025, hitting .286/.392/.659 in a league where the average OPS was just .652. He carries significant swing-and-miss issues with him – a 27% strikeout rate compared to 19.5% as the league average – and there are real questions about whether he'll be able to handle major-league heat (and whether he'll be able to stick at third base long term), but given the relative lack of other appealing options, he seems like a worthwhile dice roll as a 25-year-old free agent.

Okamoto is a few years older than Murakami, at 29, and his highs haven't been quite as high in Japan either. But he also doesn't bring quite as much strikeout risk while still looking capable of hitting for power, with a career-high of 41 in 2023 and 248 in his NPB career. FanGraphs.com's scouting reports give him a better hit tool than Murakami, with less power, though still above-average. He'll likely get a significantly smaller contract than Murakami and come over with less hype, but if he signs somewhere he could start, he'll be a name to know for the later rounds. 

Trade candidates

Arenado seems like the one sure thing to be moved, and he acknowledged he'll "have to be" more open-minded to being traded this offseason than he was last. That's noteworthy because Arenado rejected a trade to the Astros, one of the few spots where his pull-heavy swing could still play. He's still an excellent defender at the hot corner, but Arenado's bat has slipped a ton, and he hit just .237/.289/.377 with 12 homers in 107 games last season. He still has two pretty expensive seasons left on his contract, so the market for his services is likely to be pretty limited unless the Cardinals are willing to take on more. Landing in Boston as a cheaper alternative to Bregman might be the best possible outcome for Arenado, though the Red Sox' bevy of cheap, young talent might make it tough to justify that kind of move from their perspective. 

Top 2026 rookies to know

It's not great down in the minors, either. There will certainly be players who shift down the defensive spectrum to third, of course, and one obvious name to know who isn't listed here is JJ Wetherholt, who could slide into the spot vacated by Arenado whenever the Cardinals do move on from him. Wetherholt has enough glove to stick at shortstop long term, but he's nowhere near the defender Masyn Winn is, so sliding to the hot corner would make some sense. Wetherholt hit .314/.416/.562 as a 22-year-old at Triple-A this season and looks like he should be a strong source of batting average with the upside to hit 20 homers and steal 20 bases at his best. 

I'll also acknowledge here that, while Condon was drafted as a third baseman, he's actually listed as an outfielder on CBS Fantasy and has primarily played first base in the minors so far. Another hit for the position.