"The Next" Sal Stewart

For those of you who have been along for the ride since the beginning you’ll remember that I did a series of articles last year called “The Next”. The goal of these was to take a look at the batted ball data of some of the biggest prospect breakouts from 2024 and see whose numbers were the closest, pointing towards a similar breakout of their own in 2025. Our biggest win no doubt came from the Jackson Merrill article. He was an especially tough one because it’s not easy to replicate being a prospect who didn’t fully break out until they reached the MLB, but when comparing some of the hitting analytics the closest hitter I found was Sal Stewart. Since then Sal got called up, is one of the favorites for NL Rookie of the Year, and his Bowman autographs are up more than 500%. That makes him the perfect candidate to run back this series on and see if we can’t find “The Next” Sal Stewart.