Under the Radar: The Underrated AL Player on a Power Surge

If I asked you to name the American League players with at least eight home runs over the last 30 days, could you do it? Yordan Alvarez and Junior Caminero are obvious. There’s a good chance you have heard about the pub that Nick Kurtz and Colson Montgomery are getting. Then there is the breakout player in Kody Clemens. You might guess veterans Byron Buxton and Pete Alonso, but they fall short in this span. In all your guesses, would you come up with the player who is second in the AL in home runs in that span?

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Zach Neto: Under the Radar Power

It would take you a long time to come up with Zach Neto. Along with other under-the-radar hitters like Jo Adell, Jose Siri and Donovan Walton, Neto has been crushing the ball after going through a massive slump from mid-April to early May.

The former first-round pick entered the season following a massive breakout in 2025, in which he hit 26 home runs and stole 26 bases to go along with a .474 slugging percentage. The question was, would his massive spike to 14% barrel rate and 46% hard-hit rate remain, or were those just flukes?  In fantasy baseball, identifying players whose under-the-hood stats can predict their power is one of the best ways to gain an advantage, and Neto’s power has remained strong in 2026, and his plate discipline has improved as well.

Elite Barrel Rates

One of the biggest reasons Neto looks like a great, consistent fantasy power source is his elite barrel rate. Entering 2026, he has posted a barrel rate of 14.0% in 2025, according to Statcast. In 2026, it sits at 13.2%, one of the top 32 rates in the league. Barrel rate is one of the strongest predictive measurements for present and future home runs because it measures how often a hitter combines an ideal launch angle with strong exit velocity.

His average exit velocity is about 90 mph, while his hard-hit rate has pushed all the way up to 40% after jumping to 46.6% in 2025. Those are significant numbers for a 25-year-old hitter with fewer than four Major League seasons on his resume. Neto already possesses the underlying power skills necessary for a major jump in power, and he hasn’t even reached his prime hitting years yet.

A .300 BABIP (batting average on balls in play) hasn’t been able to pick up Neto’s batting average above .231 this year, but even if the batting average remains inconsistent, the power foundation is already strong enough to make him one of the best middle infield power sources in all of fantasy baseball.

Improved Swing Helps Power Potential

Neto’s improved swing this season is another major reason to believe in the power breakout. Statcast tells us he has significantly improved his launch angle in 2026, with an average launch angle around 22 degrees (12 degrees in 2024 and 17.5 degrees in 2025) and a sweet-spot percentage nearing 35%. That is the exact type of batted-ball improvement fantasy managers want from a power hitter.

It has led to a very high whiff rate and high strikeout rate (31% strikeout rate, something that must be improved), but his bat speed is around 71 miles per hour, a very strong number, and he is achieving elite bat speed on about 12% of his swings this season.

In many ways, Zach Neto has become a sort of model of the modern power hitter. He has high strikeouts, great barrel rate, great launch angle and swing speed, and some good old-fashioned pure strength that can get the ball out in any park. The fact that he is doing this as a full-time shortstop also hearkens back to the days of Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada, and Nomar Garciaparra.

Room For More in the Second Half?

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Neto’s fantasy season is that his current production may not show what all he could do for the rest of 2026. He is just 25 years old with less than four years of MLB playing time.  There is still growth happening even with breakout seasons behind him, and some luck that could turn his way. That creates the possibility of a second-half surge once things begin to stabilize this year.

As shown by the BABIP, there is also reason to believe his rates and his counting stats could improve. If the batting average goes up, the rest of his fantasy stats (home runs, runs, RBIs) presumably go up as well. If he settles into a consistent pace for the Angels and doesn’t have another prolonged slump, the RBI and run totals could jump quickly. Neto has hit first in the lineup in every game he has played this season and has sat out once over the last month. That’s incredibly valuable in fantasy baseball, especially with a combination of rate improvement and volume.

Also benefiting him are the players currently hitting behind him. Over the recent part of the fantasy season, Denver Guzman, Nolan Schanuel, and Jo Adell have been valuable assets. Now that rookie Donovan Walton is up and hitting well, the Angels’ lineup is set up for better production in the second half. And that doesn’t even count the return of Mike Trout soon.

Fantasy managers sometimes focus exclusively on batting average when evaluating breakout candidates, but players who can contribute 25-plus home runs with improving run production and stolen bases become extremely valuable across all formats.

For the remainder of 2026, Neto is exactly the type of player worth targeting in a trade or other move before the market, especially if the average stays low. The combination of a 14 percent barrel rate, strong hard-hit data, strong launch angle, and raw strength gives him the statistical profile of a player of a major power contributor over the rest of the 2026 season.