2026 Dynasty Baseball Prospects: Daily Write-Up Series #97 Ben Hess

We’re 75 days from Opening Day, and the 2026 Dynasty Baseball Prospects: Daily Write-Up series returns to the mound with a power arm on the rise. Coming in at #97 is Ben Hess, a right-hander whose velocity and breaking stuff give him real swing-and-miss potential. Hess’s arsenal points to strikeout upside, even as his command and consistency continue to develop. As we move deeper into the rankings, he profiles as a high-variance pitching prospect with rotation upside for dynasty managers willing to embrace some risk.

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Daily Baseball Write-Up Series #97 Ben Hess

The Yankees keep churning out arms with real bat-missing juice, and Ben Hess looks like the next one pushing his way into the conversation. After carving through High-A and holding his own in Double-A, he’s showing the kind of stuff-forward profile that tends to travel, and models love, with enough starter traits to dream on a true rotation role down the line.

Hess’s calling card is straightforward: he misses bats. A 13.6% swinging-strike rate powered a 12.1 K/9 across 103.1 innings, and the underlying run estimators back up the performance. His 2.50 FIP and 2.94 xFIP both scream “this is real,” while a tidy 1.07 WHIP underscores how tough it’s been for hitters just to get on base. Opponents mustered a .175 average and couldn’t lift him out of the yard, reflected in a minuscule 0.26 HR/9. Make no mistake, this is a stuff-first righty who can overwhelm with the fastball/slider combo, and there’s enough feel for the changeup to neutralize lefties when he needs it.

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The shape of contact he allows tells a useful story. Hess ran a 41.3% ground-ball rate with only 33.0% of balls classified as fly balls, and while he did allow a 25.7% line-drive clip, hitters mostly had to pull to find anything (43.9% pull). That helps explain the home run suppression, but it also hints at some natural regression as he climbs the ladder; loud contact to the pull side tends to find more damage in the upper levels. The other nudge is the walk rate. At 4.01 BB/9 with a 3.0 K/BB, Hess is getting away with occasionally imprecise command because the stuff is so hard to square. It’s a workable foundation, especially in an org that’s gotten better at sharpening strike throwing, but it’s the separator between “bat-missing bulk starter” and “high-leverage fallback.”

Age-to-level context matters, and Hess handled the A+/AA split at 22 with the poise you want to see. He doesn’t need a radical overhaul to start projecting as a mid-rotation type; he just needs a little more strike efficiency. The ingredients are here for the model crowd to buy in, fastball/slider whiff, FIP/xFIP stability, HR suppression that’s not purely smoke and mirrors, and the timeline lines up cleanly, with a realistic ETA in 2027 once he stacks more innings and refines the zone work in the upper minors.

Fantasy Outlook

In Dynasty, Hess has already pushed into the back end of top-100 prospect conversations and still feels a touch undervalued given the strikeout base. If the walks tick down even a half-grade, you’re looking at a potential SP3 profile with plus strikeouts and usable ratios; if they don’t, he’s still the kind of bat-misser who plays in deeper formats and could explode in short bursts. In Roto, the whiffs and HR suppression give him a path to positive categories even as the walk rate introduces some WHIP volatility. In Points, the strikeouts are a feature, but league settings that punish walks will matter more here than most.

Excited to see if Ben Hess carries his strong 2025 2nd half into 2026. Over 14 starts:

63.1 IP
2.70 ERA
22/80 BB/K
0.95 WHIP

The Yankees 2024 1st round selection owned a 3.22 ERA in his debut professional season, rising up to AA-Somerset. pic.twitter.com/NnZOkET2xV

— Tobey Schulman (@tschulmanreport) December 27, 2025

Follow me on X: @ProspectsOnWes

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