2026 Bowman Chrome 1st Autograph Pitcher Rankings

When I started ranking prospects for the hobby on Substack at the start of the 2025 season there were no pitcher rankings. One of the subscribers reached out to me and told me that they had found way more value and buying opportunities in the pitcher market and asked if it would be possible for me to formulate my hobby rankings, which were hitter specific, to include pitchers too. There was a bit of a trial and error process early on to figure out which statistics, pitch traits, and so on should hold the most weight but the formula that I came up with wound up finding us a TON of big money wins labeling players like Thomas White, Ryan Sloan, Payton Tolle, etc. as extremely undervalued arms only for us to see their prices spike in a big way later in the season.

Since then I’ve found that I enjoy ranking pitchers more than hitters. Of course there are some diamonds in the rough that we find each year for hitters, guys that have $10 autographs who have breakout seasons and get up over $50, but with pitchers the jumps get bigger because many of them come out of nowhere. There are guys with $10 autographs who will become top 10 pitching prospects. It happens almost every year. The list of pitchers getting their 1st autograph in 2026 Bowman Chrome isn’t as nearly deep as the checklist from 2026 Bowman but there are a number of them inside my top 100 hobby rankings that I would expect to be fairly cheap in the months following release and therefore could be great targets. Many people buy players in PYP breaks and find value in these rankings by comparing them side-by-side to the break prices and seeing who has potential but might be cheaper than expected. You could also just read this and take it all in because it’s meant to be a helpful tool more than anything. Read the scouting reports, figure out which type of pitcher you have the most confidence in buying, and use these rankings to help you narrow down which singles you’ll be buying in a couple months.

Happy Bowman season!