Yesterday, we went through the draft's best sliders. Today's exercise deep dives the four-seam lab. Our four-seam Stuff+ model is, in some ways, easier to write about and harder to disagree with. Sliders fragment into half a dozen shape types and Stuff+ models reward each of them differently depending on who you ask. Four-seam fastballs are simpler. There are essentially four things more heavily weights than the rest, and the math is mostly bookkeeping.
You want velocity. You want induced vertical break, you want extension and you want a shallow vertical approach angle, which is the byproduct of a low slot, plus extension, and good spin efficiency. Release traits, spin capacity, horizontal break and performance track record are also baked into our model. Those secondary traits are important, but play second-fiddle in the grand scheme.
The seven names below all sit inside the top-15 of the entire 2026 college …