As young as the 2026 season still is, we’re now well past the point where the outputs of Pitcher List’s in-house pitch quality model, Pitch-Level Value (PLV), begin to stabilize for everyday hitters and workhorse pitchers. This means it isn’t necessarily too early to look at who has been materially better or worse compared to 2025, even if the results are too noisy to tell us that on their own at the moment. Here’s a look at the pitchers and hitters who the model thinks most differently of compared to last year, for better and for worse.

 

Risers

Emerson Hancock, SEA

There are some very intriguing things going on under the hood with Seattle’s pitchers, and it starts with Hancock. The former top-10 pick got hit pretty hard last year and didn’t strike anyone out, pitching firmly in low-leverage situations by the postseason. This year, he has a 2.86 ERA, an above-average strikeout rate, and is showcasing elite command through his first 6 starts. His arm angle is down to 13°, yet he’s throwing his four-seamer a lot more. It hasn’t lost any carry despite the drop in release point, and his spin efficiency on it is way down, which has allowed him to expand the variety of his glove-side offerings as his main non-fastball is now his sweeper instead of his changeup. He’s also gained 4 inches of drop on his sinker, which hasn’t lost any of its devastating arm-side action; PLV is particularly enamored with both the four-seamer and the two-seamer. It’s worth pointing out that FIP and xERA, the latter based on contact quality allowed, suggest he’s punching considerably above his weight with that high-2s ERA, but the model likes the physical changes to his arsenal. As of right now, no starting pitcher has seen their PLV go up this much from last year.

Will Warren, NYY

Right behind Hancock on the year-over-year PLV gainers leaderboard is Warren, who’s rounding into form for the AL-leading Yankees with a 2.59 ERA and a 23.3% K-BB through 6 starts. While Hancock made some wholesale changes to his usage and the biomechanical profiles of his pitch types, Warren has only made one significant adjustment: He widened his release point without changing its height so that he’s releasing the ball way farther toward the third-base side of the mound. He’s also locating better compared to last year (zone rate up from 48.5% to 51.1%, BB% up from 30th percentile to 88th), which has helped drive up his PLV scores across all pitch types. There may be some merit to the theory that shifting his horizontal release point is helping him hit better spots, given the way his pitches move. He was durable but unpolished in 2025, making 33 starts in his first full year in the big leagues and recording a mid-4s ERA, frequently getting into trouble with hard-hit balls from opponents. This year, he looks more like a legitimate supplementary piece in one of the game’s best rotations.

Jordan Walker, STL

Walker is finally translating his physical gifts into elite results, hitting for a 159 wRC+ at the time of writing. A look at his bat tracking shows a stance change and an increase in attack angle compared to 2025, which is putting his high-end bat speed to good use and leading to more quality contact in the air. For hitters, PLV is broken down into several facets such as swing decisions, contact, power, and strike zone judgment. Walker’s scores in the gap power (100) and home run power (101) categories sat squarely in league-average territory in 2025. This year, he’s way up in both categories (111 gap power, 137 home run power), becoming an extra-base hit threat every time he steps up to the plate. His strike zone judgement score is also up from 83 to 104, thanks to a career-low chase rate. Walker’s approach still comes with its fair share of swing and miss, but the improvements to his game power and his plan of attack are both worth buying into.

Yordan Alvarez, HOU

Health issues limited Alvarez to just 48 games a year ago, but it’s definitely clear that when he’s physically 100%, his ceiling is as high as any hitter in this league. In the 4 seasons where he has played at least 100 games, he has never had a wRC+ lower than 137 or a home run total less than 31, reaching a 165 wRC+ plateau in 3 of those 4 years. This season, some of his numbers don’t even seem possible. His wRC+ is 224. That’s Barry Bonds territory. He has 11 home runs and an ISO of .396, which is higher than some everyday hitters’ slugging percentages. He’s only striking out 8.5% of the time, up there with some of the best contact hitters in the sport, and walking nearly twice that amount. From a results standpoint, last season was a low point in his career, but now that he’s back on the field, he’s simply unstoppable. Breaking it down by category, his lowest PLV score lies within the value of his swing decisions, where he’s a smidge below average (96). The fact that a hitter who has been this dominant could be subpar at anything is a strange notion. His 160 Process+ leads the league by 20 points. The difference between him and 2nd-place Freddie Freeman is the same as the difference between Freeman and 23rd-place Max Muncy.

 

Fallers 

Cole Ragans, KC

Kansas City’s Opening Day starter had a high-4s ERA during an injury-shortened year in 2025, but all signs pointed toward that ERA being the result of poor batted ball luck. This season, his ERA sits at 5 flat, and his FIP is north of 6. What happened? There are some small changes to point out within his pitch specs, such as a 0.6-MPH drop in fastball velocity and a 2-inch gain in iVB for a slider that previously boasted one of the most outlier downward movement patterns in the league, both of which no stuff model would take kindly to. The big problem here is command. His walk rate has doubled to an unsightly 15.7%. PLV’s location-only model, which displays its outputs on the ‘+’ scale where 100 is average, has given his four-seam fastball, a pitch he throws more than half the time, a score of 93 in the early going. During a recent outing at Yankee Stadium, he walked 8 batters in 4 ^1/3 innings. His last start against the Angels (6 IP, 11 K, 0 BB) was a step in the right direction, and location problems are fixable in the short-term, but this is a cautionary case in terms of how a month of losing control for a starting pitcher can drag everything down.

Michael King, SD

King’s 2.41 ERA is a big reason why the Padres currently sit just a game back of the best record in baseball, but PLV is adamant that regression is nigh. Yes, his arm angle is slightly down from 27° to 24°, which would intuitively lead to a slightly less vertical four-seam fastball, but the carry he was generating on the offering last year has been killed (16.7″ iVB to 14″ iVB). On top of that, he’s only zoning it 39.3% of the time, a frequency that’s more typical for breaking balls and a far cry from the 53.7% it was at during his career-best 2024 campaign. Overall, his walk rate has crept up to 11.2%, far above his career average. He has tried to mask some of this by throwing the four-seam less, especially to lefties, but things aren’t great elsewhere either. His trademark sinker has lost some tail, which has contributed to its PLV decrease from elite to simply good. King has the wide arsenal that’s usually necessary for starting pitchers to outperform their raw stuff, but I’d still proceed with some caution.

Michael Busch, CHC

The Cubs just rattled off a 10-game winning streak, so they’re not too concerned in the grand scheme of things, but Busch’s .610 OPS is puzzling after a fantastic 2025. His plate skills are still where they need to be; his K% is slightly down, and his BB% is slightly up. The culprit here is balls in play. Everything that was good about his batted ball profile last year has completely flipped: His groundball rate is up ~12%, his flyball rate is down ~5.5%, and his line drive rate is down ~8%. He crushed the ball despite sub-70-MPH bat speed but his barrel% has gone from elite to mediocre and his exit velocities are poor in general. To make matters worse, his average bat speed has decreased by a full 2 MPH. He also became a poster boy for the pull-air approach since getting dealt to the Cubs, but his pulled flyball rate has fallen off a cliff as well. Some of this would naturally be suppressed by the unforgiving conditions of Chicago in April, but Busch has historically been a much better first-half hitter. He currently holds the largest PLV drop from last year among all qualified hitters.

Jazz Chisholm Jr., NYY

Chisholm recorded the first 30-homer/30-steal season of his career last year and continued to set a high bar for himself in Spring Training, declaring his intent to join the 50/50 club as camp opened. Ever since he put that into the universe, the baseball gods have been laughing their way to the bank. The beauty of Chisholm’s game is that he doesn’t have to be a good hitter all the time to be successful, given his prowess on the bases, and he’s currently authoring the best defensive season of his career to date. Still, a .633 OPS is decidedly out of character, and it’s being fueled by a precipitous drop in contact quality (78th-percentile xwOBA to 5th). Last year, PLV saw Chisholm as a solid power hitter whose propensity to slug easily outweighed the swing-and-miss in his game. However, his power grade is down from 115 to 72. He isn’t coming up empty more than he was last year, but the batted balls have not been threatening in the slightest. At least he’s being a good teammate and fining himself more than the amount mutually agreed upon by the Yankees clubhouse for bad ABS challenges.
All PLV data as of April 23, 2026. All other data as of April 26, 2026.