MLB's 10 Biggest Busts of 2026 Season So Far
There have been a lot of big busts early in the 2026 Major League Baseball campaign, from preseason MVP candidates who have underwhelmed to well-compensated pitchers who can't get anyone out and (gestures wildly at the New York Mets.)
In identifying these early busts, we aren't necessarily throwing in the towel on their 2026 seasons. In fact, with several of them, we'll dig into some of the underlying data to explain why the storm clouds may be clearing soon.
Through roughly 20 percent of the season, though, let's just say we were expecting much more from everyone on this list.
Players are presented in no particular order, but we'll save the two disastrous "group projects" until the end.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play on Saturday, May 2.
Rafael Devers, 1B/DH, San Francisco Giants
1 of 10
2026 Stats: .210/.250/.290, 2 HR, 11 RBI
If the disappointing start to Rafael Devers' season feels eerily familiar, it's probably because he put up nearly identical numbers upon his arrival in San Francisco last June.
While the Giants went 12-18 through his first 30 games in the Bay Area, Devers had two home runs and 11 RBI.
This year, they started out 13-18 while he accumulated...two home runs and 11 RBI.
One problematic difference from last year, though, is that his current OPS (.540) pales in comparison to his .681 mark in those first 30 games in 2025, with a major decrease in free passes representing the biggest change.
Even though walk rate at an MLB-wide level is way up from last year (thanks, ABS), Devers has seemingly lost the ability to draw a base on balls. He is walking in 5.3 percent of plate appearances compared to 15.4 percent last year. As a result, his on-base percentage has absolutely tanked to career-worst levels, and he's scoring barely one run for every four games played.
His bat did eventually show up in a big way last year. Devers went from two home runs in 30 games to 18 of them in his next 60 games, posting an .868 OPS from July 23 onward. The Giants have to hope he can flip a similar switch this season.
Garrett Crochet, LHP, Boston Red Sox
2 of 10
2026 Stats: 30.0 IP, 6.30 ERA, 4.33 FIP, 1.47 WHIP, 11.1 K/9
Garrett Crochet was impeccable last season.
He led the majors with 255 strikeouts. And after questions about his durability from his time with the White Sox, he led the American League in both innings pitched (205.1) and quality starts (22). Had it not been for Tarik Skubal, he would have won the Cy Young award—and even with Skubal shoving, Crochet earned four first-place votes.
But prior to landing on the IL with shoulder inflammation, Crochet was out to a very Jekyll and Hyde start to 2026.
In three of his six starts, he pitched quite well, twice going six scoreless innings. But in the other three starts, he allowed a combined total of 21 runs in 11.2 innings of work, torn to shreds for 10 earned runs in his one disastrous outing in Minnesota.
Though his xFIP (3.69) suggests he has been pretty unlucky, it also appears to be more than just misfortune.
Over the past two seasons, Crochet had a K% of 32.9, BB% of 5.6 and a hard-hit percentage of 37.9. This year, those rates have been 26.8, 8.0 and 45.3, respectively. His ground-ball rate is also way down, while his line-drive rate is through the roof.
His sweeper, in particular, has been getting tattooed. Opponents hit .126 and slugged .207 against that pitch in 2025, but they're hitting .318 and slugging .636 against it this year. And until he hones in that breaking ball, it could continue to be a tough season.
Fernando Tatis Jr., RF, San Diego Padres
3 of 10
2026 Stats: .270/.343/.322, 0 HR, 13 RBI, 9 SB
Because the San Diego Padres have been one of the biggest overachievers to date, on pace for more than 100 wins, one of the weirdest stats in all of baseball has kind of flown under the radar.
Through 31 games and 135 trips to the plate, Fernando Tatis Jr. has yet to hit a single home run.
To be sure, his slugging over the past three seasons (.459 SLG, 29 HR per 162 games) had already been a far cry from what it was before the PEDs suspension (.596, 48 HR per 162 games).
But Tatis had at least hit more than 20 home runs in each of the past three seasons. And at this time last year, he already had eight home runs and an OPS north of 1.000, emerging as one of the top challengers for NL MVP.
Here's the really weird part of this perceived power outage, though: Tatis' hard-hit percentage (63.6) is both the highest of his career and the second-highest among qualified hitters.
The other three players north of 60 percent—James Wood, Munetaka Murakami and Oneil Cruz—have hit a combined total of 32 home runs. But Tatis' launch angle (3.5 degrees) is all out of whack, resulting in a lot of hard-hit ground balls and low liners.
It's all very reminiscent of when Bryce Harper went 38 games without a home run back in 2023, but eventually got that launch angle back to where it needed to be.
Because Tatis does have 13 batted balls that have traveled at least 340 feet. All he has to show for that warning track power, though, is an OPS of barely .650 and the first homerless month of his career.
Taijuan Walker, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies (formerly)
4 of 10
2026 Stats: 22.2 IP, 9.13 ERA, 7.81 FIP, 2.08 WHIP, 6.8 K/9
A few days before the Phillies fired manager Rob Thomson, they first fired pitcher Taijuan Walker.
Walker was in the fourth and final season of his $72M contract. But after a bit of a bounce-back year in 2025 with a 4.08 ERA in a swingman role, he wasn't getting anyone out this spring, allowing both hits and home runs at by far the highest rates of his career.
Of his six-pitch arsenal, the only one that opponents weren't hitting at least .300 against was the curveball. And even that offering wasn't exactly foolproof, as evidenced by Mickey Moniak annihilating a Walker curveball for a 437-foot home run. (It was the second home run Walker allowed in that game to the player the Phillies took No. 1 overall in the 2016 draft.)
With Zack Wheeler making his season debut on April 25, Walker was already going to lose his spot in the rotation. But rather than hope for the best with a transition to a middle-relief role, the Phillies opted to simply bite the $18M bullet and release him.
We're still waiting to see if anyone will pick him up on the cheap.
Roman Anthony, OF/DH, Boston Red Sox
5 of 10
2026 Stats: .230/.353/.320, 1 HR, 5 RBI, 2 SB
Over the final 55 games played in his rookie season, Roman Anthony performed at a near-MVP level, triple-slashing .329/.420/.510. Had he played in more than 71 total games in that campaign, he might have won AL Rookie of the Year. As is, he finished in third place in that vote with his .859 OPS.
He proceeded to hit .300 in spring training and smacked a pair of home runs in the World Baseball Classic, entering year No. 2 in the majors with no shortage of hype.
In fact, in MLB.com's preseason poll of its 57 experts, Anthony was one of eight players to receive votes for AL MVP.
Of the eight, though—the others being Bobby Witt Jr., Aaron Judge, Julio Rodríguez, Nick Kurtz, Gunnar Henderson, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and José Ramírez—there's no real question that Anthony has been the most disappointing with about 20 percent of the season in the books.
Things started out promising enough with three hits on Opening Day and a pinch hit home run on April 1. He is barely hitting .200 since then, though, with nary a home run.
The good news is he is still drawing walks at a high clip and his expected batting average (.258) and slugging percentage (.380) are a good bit higher than his actuals, thanks in part to a BABIP that is below his career norms. "Progression" to the mean should be coming soon, and may have already begun with that three-hit game Friday night.
However, if you took Roman Anthony somewhere around the fourth round of your fantasy draft, you're probably pretty frustrated right about now.
Adrian Houser, RHP, San Francisco Giants
6 of 10
2026 Stats: 30.1 IP, 7.12 ERA, 5.74 FIP, 1.71 WHIP, 4.7 K/9
While a lot of signings look regrettable with the benefit of hindsight, San Francisco giving Adrian Houser a two-year, $22M contract this past winter was questionable before the ink had even dried.
Houser got out to a phenomenal start to last season with the White Sox, making 11 starts with a 2.10 ERA before getting traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline. But even with that dominant two-month stretch included, he had a 4.32 ERA and 1.40 WHIP from 2022-25—only landing with the White Sox on a league-minimum salary after getting cut by the Mets, Cubs, Orioles and Rangers in the span of 10 months.
Six starts into the Giants portion of his career, Houser is still searching for his first win or quality start.
He did pitch reasonably well in his first two outings, but his line over his last four appearances is: 19.0 IP, 27 H, 19 ER, 7 BB, 9 K, 6 HR. He didn't even make it out of the fifth inning in three of those four starts, and he barely survived the second inning in the other start, allowing five runs before recording five outs.
Houser has never been much of a strikeout artist, but 4.7 K/9 is quite low, even for him. And between the expected batting average of .304 and expected slugging percentage of .521, there's little reason to assume he's about to turn things around.
Marcell Ozuna, DH, Pittsburgh Pirates
7 of 10
2026 Stats: .165/.232/.272, 3 HR, 10 RBI
Over his final three seasons with Atlanta, Marcell Ozuna clubbed 100 home runs, good for the ninth-highest mark in the majors. He averaged one round-tripper for every 18.7 trips to the plate.
After a season in which no Pirate hit more than 20 home runs, they thought they might be getting their first 40-homer hitter since Willie Stargell in 1973.
And while it is plausible thus far that either Oneil Cruz or Brandon Lowe could become that guy, Ozuna definitively has not been the slugger they were hoping for.
He did hit his third home run on Friday night, but he's still only on pace for about 15. He also has nearly twice as many strikeouts (30) as hits (17) while scuffling to a barely .500 OPS.
As of Friday morning, Ozuna was one of 169 players with at least 100 plate appearances this season. Were it not for Cedric Mullins and Alec Bohm, he would've had the lowest OPS of them all.
Perhaps worst of all, in the process of signing him, the Pirates spurned franchise legend Andrew McCutchen. He ended up taking a minor league deal with the Rangers for one-tenth of what Pittsburgh is paying Ozuna.
Kyle Tucker, RF, Los Angeles Dodgers
8 of 10
2026 Stats: .237/.328/.364, 3 HR, 16 RBI, 21 R, 3 SB
Compared to the rest of the players on this list, Kyle Tucker has been more than adequate. He has hit a few homers and stolen a few bags, and his triple-slash line is almost identical to the league average thus far.
However, there should be nothing "league average" about a guy who is in the first season of a four-year, $240M deal.
Over the previous seven seasons, Tucker triple-slashed .276/.361/.514, averaging 32 home runs and 26 stolen bases per 162 games played.
And over the past two years, Tucker had been sensational out of the gates, hitting .289 with 14 home runs and 13 stolen bases between those two Marches and Aprils.
So far with the Dodgers, though, he has been a replacement-level player.
The biggest issue has been breaking balls.
The ones that he does hit, he typically hits hard. In fact, his average exit velocity against breaking balls (90.5 MPH) is the highest it has been since 2019. But he is just 4-for-23 with 11 strikeouts, with sliders, in particular, causing major issues—1-for-12 with seven Ks.
We are, of course, talking about a minuscule sample size. And entering this season, Tucker was 89-for-399 (.223) with 27 home runs and a 26 percent strikeout rate against sliders. He could hammer one tomorrow and instantly change the narrative.
All the same, it's an early hole in his swing that has kept him from even remotely living up to that massive contract.
Houston Astros Pitching Staff
9 of 10
Throw a dart in the general area of Houston and you'll likely find an Astros pitcher who is either injured or disappointing.
On the former front, they have an entire rotation on the IL—Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, Hayden Wesneski, Ronel Blanco and Tatsuya Imai—as well as six-time All-Star closer Josh Hader. Three of the six have not yet pitched in 2026, and the sextet has logged a combined total of just 28.2 innings pitched.
At least Brown pitched well for the two starts he was able to make. Javier, on the other hand, got shelled for a 12.54 ERA in his three appearances, while Imai walked 11 batters in his 8.2 innings before hitting the shelf with arm fatigue.
Elsewhere, Mike Burrows and Lance McCullers Jr. have combined for 13 starts with a 6.13 ERA, and Bryan Abreu is having a calamitous season with a 12.54 ERA (identical to Javier's) and a 2.79 WHIP. In 9.1 innings pitched, he has already allowed as many home runs (four) as he did in 71 innings pitched last year, and his walk rate (14.5 BB/9) is completely out of control.
The lone bright spot has been Spencer Arrighetti, who had a 2.00 ERA in his first three appearances off the IL. The rest of the pitching staff has allowed 187 earned runs in 268.1 innings, or a 6.27 ERA, on pace to allow nearly 1,000 runs this season.
New York Mets as a Whole
10 of 10
A select few individual members of the Mets have been quite good in the early going, most notably Juan Soto, Clay Holmes and Nolan McLean.
For the most part, though, woof.
Through the end of April, 11 different Mets had made at least 50 plate appearances, but Soto was the only one batting at least .240.
They traded Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien. He had a sub-.600 OPS at the end of April.
They gave Bo Bichette an outrageous three-year, $126M contract. He had a sub-.600 OPS at the end of April.
They brought in Jorge Polanco with plans of having him replace Pete Alonso at first base—despite no previous experience at the position. In 14 games played before landing on the IL, he had a sub-.600 OPS.
They handed the reins to rookie Carson Benge after trading away both Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. You guessed it. He has a sub-.600 OPS.
And those are just the disappointing bats.
Shift the focus to the mound and you'll find Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Sean Manaea, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver, each making north of $8M this season and each saddled with an ERA of 5.50 or worse.
Needless to say, a lot of things are not going according to plan for the team with the worst record in baseball.
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