2026 Dynasty Baseball Prospects: Daily Write-Up Series #72 Jarlin Susana

We’re 23 days from Opening Day, and the 2026 Dynasty Baseball Prospects: Daily Write-Up series shifts to one of the loudest arms in the minors. Ranked #72 is Jarlin Susana, a power right-hander whose upper-90s fastball and wipeout slider give him frontline upside. The command is still developing, but few pitching prospects can match Susana’s pure bat-missing ceiling for dynasty formats.

Daily Baseball Write-Up Series #72 Jarlin Susana

If you’ve followed the Nationals’ rebuild, you know the name. Jarlin Susana, the power-armed righty acquired in the Juan Soto deal, spent the past year bullying bats in High-A and Double-A. The raw ingredients are everything you’d want from a frontline starter: size, explosive arm speed, and two pitches that draw real whiffs. The box scores finally started to reflect that, but the next step is the one that separates big-league starters from the “what if” pile: command.

Let’s start with the data. Susana punched out 95 hitters in 56.1 innings, a monstrous 15.2 K/9 fueled by a 16.1% swinging-strike rate. That’s premium bat-missing, full stop. It lines up with the scouting look, a heater that explodes on hitters and a slider with enough bite to finish at-bats. The underlying indicators back up the dominance: a 2.70 FIP and 2.68 xFIP both painted a better picture than the 3.51 ERA, and he kept the ball in the yard at just 0.48 HR/9. He also generated a healthy 46.7% ground-ball rate, which helps explain the scarce home runs despite all that hard, elevated contact potential.

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The catch remains the same catch it’s always been: strikes. A 5.43 BB/9 is a red flag for any starter, and while a 3.0 K/BB can work when your stuff is this nasty, it leaves little margin for error once you’re facing hitters who don’t chase. You see it in the game flow: the fastball/slider combo can bulldoze lineups, but when the timing leaks or the release wanders, pitch counts climb and innings shorten. The changeup is the third pitch in name right now; it flashes enough to keep lefties honest, but it needs more trust and consistency if he’s going to turn over lineups multiple times. The good news is the rest of the model is starter-ish: he holds his stuff, gets grounders when he needs them, and his contact profile hasn’t shown glaring damage exposure.

So where’s this headed? The ingredients scream high-octane starter if the command bumps from 40 to even 45. Trim the walks by a run per nine, and the ERA should track closer to those sub-3.00 estimators we saw. Leave it as-is, and you probably still have a late-inning monster; that’s how loud the two-pitch base is. The Nationals will keep stretching him in the rotation for as long as the development supports it, and at 21 in the upper minors, there’s time to make a real command jump without rushing the timeline.

Fantasy Outlook

Dynasty managers don’t get many chances at this strikeout ceiling outside the top tier of pitching prospects, and Susana qualifies as a premium upside stash. In Roto, the strikeouts can be impact-level as soon as he’s nibbling at the majors, but the WHIP risk tied to that walk rate will add volatility. In Points formats where Ks are king and ratio swings are muted, the profile plays even better. The ETA reads 2027, which feels right given the command work and innings build-up he still needs, but this is the kind of arm you want to be early on. If you’re contending and light on pitching risk, he’s a hold-and-wait lottery ticket. If you’re retooling, he’s a strong buy before the walk rate ticks down, because once it does, the price is going to skyrocket.

Jarlin Susana, 102mph & 103mph ⛽️⛽️ pic.twitter.com/vqtdSemPRk

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 15, 2024

Follow me on X: @ProspectsOnWes

FULL DAILY WRITE-UP PROSPECT LIST