Underdog MLB Best Ball: Undervalued Infielders to Target (February 2026)

Drafting players that are going to return positive draft-day value is the name of the game in best ball, and it's even more important in MLB best ball, where positions blur together to give us a multitude of decisions on what player archetypes to construct our roster around.

Grabbing reliable players is great to balance out your team, but sometimes, you have to swing for the fences and find the players who, when we look back a year from now, we'll wonder why they were going so late in drafts.

Here are three of my Underdog MLB best ball undervalued infielders that I'm targeting in drafts.

Zach Neto, Los Angeles Angels

Current ADP: 62.4 (Early round 6)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Early round 5

Zach Neto, to me, is the player most likely to jump into the second or third round next season in the infield. He missed over a month of time last season due to injury, which kept his counting stats lower than they should have been, but the ratio metrics - and the advanced stats - show the trend we're looking for to justify the value.

Last season, the 25-year old shortstop, per Baseball Savant...

• Improved his barrel rate from a low of 8.4% all the way up to 14%, which puts him in the 87th percentile in MLB

• Hit the 89th percentile in xSLG

• Improved his xwOBA from .319 to .344, which puts him in the 76th percentile last season

He's been a priority target for me in early drafts, and his ADP hasn't risen enough for me to pump the brakes on my exposure levels.

Jeremy Peña, Houston Astros

Current ADP: 125.6 (Middle of round 11)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Early round 10

Speaking of players who took a leap forward in 2025, look no further than Jeremy Peña for the next installation in the series of Let's Bet On Last Season's Performance Bumps That Don't Show Up In The Stat Sheet Because Of Missed Time.

On Peña...

• His barrel rate was actually lower (8.2%) than his rookie year (9.7%), but he did have increases elsewhere that show a possible power bump over the 20 HR mark could be in play here, such as:

  • An increase in his launch angle (up to 8.9%)

  • A career-best hard hit percentage (42.9%)

  • A career high average exit velocity (88.9%)

• He posted a career best in xwOBA (.334, 66th percentile)

• He dropped his K rate down to 17.1% (76th percentile)

• Oh, and he still has a 97th percentile sprint speed, making him an annual threat to steal more bases

I'm not sure how likely it is that Jeremy Peña takes a massive leap forward, but his value is certainly lower now than it should be for the skill set.

Jonathan Aranda, Tampa Bay Rays

Current ADP: 227.7 (Late round 19)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Late round 17

You want to see what a hitting profile on Baseball Savant looks like when it's all red? Go look at Jonathan Aranda's page.

Of course, there's caveats that come into play here. Jonathan Aranda only started 13 games against left-handed pitching in 2025, making him basically a strong-side platoon, and his numbers dropped significantly when facing lefties. I don't expect that to change, and neither does the market as a whole. (The Rays probably don't expect that to change, either.)

But this late in the draft, we want to swing for some upside (pun intended), and scoring is week-to-week. If we get five games of Jonathan Aranda facing righties in a scoring week, he's more likely to hit your lineup than nearly anyone else still available at this point in the draft. Just make sure you have at least some stable options in front of him for the downside weeks.

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