Bryce Eldridge

Eldridge battled through injuries to log an .843 OPS with 25 homers in 102 games in the upper levels of the minors before making his big-league debut in mid-September. He missed the first three weeks with a sore wrist, another four weeks with a hamstring strain in the middle of the season and then had surgery to remove a bone spur from his left wrist at the end of the season. The 6-foot-7 first baseman, who enters the year UT-only in most formats, will always have some swing and miss in his game (29.3 K% last year in the minors, 35.1 K% in 37 MLB PA), but he's kept the strikeouts in an acceptable range given his youth, size and power. Eldridge's power exploits are legendary -- he hit a 470-foot homer and logged a 114.6 mph maxEV last year as a 20-year-old and even in his uneventful MLB debut, his 95.6 mph average exit velocity, 25.0 Barrel% and 68.8 HardHit% were all in the 99th percentile. He didn't have stark splits in the minors, and given his pedigree (No. 16 overall pick in 2023), he'll likely be allowed to face same-handed pitching earlier in his career than most lefty-hitting sluggers. Eldridge and Rafael Devers split the first base/DH starts down the stretch, so Eldridge should add first base eligibility by May. Read Past Outlooks