Five First Basemen to buy before the 2026 MLB season

As baseball season approaches even closer, I am realizing there are a lot of players in the hobby that are pretty undervalued. Whether it be because of the team they play for or the market they’re in, or if they were an unheralded prospect coming up the ranks, there is room to grow on many players in the sport we all love.

With that in mind, this is the first installation of a series where we try to find some guys at every position to buy low on coming into the season, and we’re going to start at the first base position. 

Michael Bush

Michael Bush is almost certainly the best player on this list, and that comes with the trade off of his cards having the highest floor already. His rookie autos have consistently sold in the range of $40-50 over the last month or two, making it a bit more of an investment with the tradeoff that his ceiling is likely the highest.

Busch fully arrived last season, smacking 34 homers with an OPS of .866 putting him top 10 in the Majors in the stat. In a Cubs offense that could beat you anywhere in the lineup, Busch was one of the standout players in that stacked lineup. He is your prototypical power hitter, able to crush the ball like few can while also walking at a high enough clip that you can ignore a somewhat higher strikeout rate. 

The players ahead of him on this list are there because the cost to buy in is on the cheaper end, but if you want to pay the higher initial premium for Busch, I could foresee his value increasing even from where it’s at. 

Spencer Horwitz

Spencer Horwitz probably has the lowest floor of the five players on this list. He’s already 28-years-old and has had trouble staying on the field but when he has been on the field he, seemingly quietly, produces. 

Over his last two seasons, albeit in only 205 games in those two years combined, Horwitz had a Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) of 123, and a 119 wRC+ in 2025. Those numbers in 2025 put him in the same category of player offensively as Gunnar Henderson, Matt Chapman, and Riley Greene. 

Again the sample size for Horwitz is small and his defensive metrics are around league average, but he is able to get on base at a highly respectable clip of .353, which would have put him tied for 17th in MLB with Brenden Donovan and just behind guys like Trea Turner, William Contreras, and Bryce Harper had he had enough plate appearances to qualify. Combine that on-base percentage with a SLG that would have put him in the top 50 in the category in MLB you’ve got a really nice player. 

Checking out some eBay listings, Horwitz rookie autos sell in the range of $5 to $15 ungraded across products like Topps Chrome, Inceptio, and Finest, and if he’s able to put together a full season for the Pirates, who should have a pretty good offense overall in 2026, that value could rise a bit. The guy hits, he just needs to do it over a full 162 games. 

Nolan Schanuel

Selling for a similar amount that Horwitz autos do, Nolan Schanuel’s rookie autos also fetch about $15 right now but unlike Horwitz, his upside is significantly higher really due to the age gap between the two. While Horwitz is 28, Schanuel is freshly 24 as of Valentine’s Day.

What Schaneul does share with Horwitz is the ability to get on-base, as they actually had the exact same on-base percentage of .353. The biggest thing for Schanuel to improve is his SLG, which is maybe the most coveted trait in MLB first basemen, and while he still is lacking in that category, he has gradually increased his ability to slug in each of his first three seasons so far. 

Plate discipline is key for Schanuel, who is one of the best hitters in the league at not striking out, which is best paired with a high walk rate, which he also has. If Schanuel can leverage his discipline with finding more gaps, he has the potential to be a very productive player for the Angels, but given that he is still so young and played only 24 games in the minor leagues before the Angels made him their starting first baseman, buying low on a player like this could pay dividends. 

Alec Burleson

Alec Burleson can flat out hit, and my favorite part of him for the 2026 season is that he is out of the outfield, where he did not grade out well, and will be playing first for the Cardinals where he can just focus more on hitting. 

Burleson had a bit of a breakout in 2024 but 2025 saw him elevate his game to a different level. While he doesn’t walk a lot, he also is good at avoiding strikeouts and just focuses on putting the ball in play. He is able to square-up the ball at an elite rate, which helps him generate offense at the level he is capable of.

Burleson was 21st in MLB in SLG and 19th in OPS with an .802 clip, putting him between Seiya Suzuki and Manny Machado among Major League leaders. The one are you’d like to see Burleson improve is with his walk rate because he does have that strong plate discipline, and as he enters his age 27 season, that could very well be in the cards for him. 

It seems like people in the hobby are more in on Burleson, as his sales for rookie autos are more in the range of $15-20 consistently, but that is still a floor more than low enough to have a cheap buy in with potential for a nice payout down the line if he’s able to improve even a bit more in 2026, that payout could come this season. 

Jonathan Aranda

Jonathan Aranda has the potential to be a legitimate superstar hitter based on his 2025 season, but there are a few things in his way. One of those things is the team he plays for, as the Rays have a weird ability to shelter every single thing about them. They have such a knack for finding star players out of nowhere that whenever one arises, we’re really quick to hand wave them. Aranda also suffers by splitting time with Yandy Diaz at first but after the season he had last year, they have to find a way to get him in the lineup every day.

Aranda will turn 28 in May of this season, so he is a bit of a late bloomer, but the potential really does feel sky high. In terms of Exit Velocity, Hard-Hit rate, and Launch Angle, Aranda is near the top of the league in each of these categories and he even did make the all-star team in the 2026 season but it feels as though there is no buzz around him. While he didn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify, his OPS of .883 would have put him eighth in MLB, behind Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, George Springer, Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber, Juan Soto, and Ketel Marte. That’s right, eighth with that group of players, ahead of Corbin Carroll, Pete Alonso, and Freddie Freeman.

The Rays do love them a platoon split too, but that isn’t the full scope of what happened with Aranda’s sample size, as he still had a pretty respectable .274/.379/.345 slash line against lefties in albeit a pretty 98 plate appearances. 

Aranda rookie autos, similarly to the other guys on this list, sell for around $15, with some lower numbered autos hitting the $30-40 range. This feels like the best time to buy in, as this is a player who, even coming off a season like this, can still be bought so cheap that even if he is a one year wonder, there isn’t much to actually lose. This is a low risk, high reward player to look into this season and I’m excited to see if he can replicate his season with a higher sample size.