Two San Diego Padres were listed as potential candidates to surpass Shohei Ohtani as the league's best player in 2027.
Every year, Major League Baseball releases their top 10 list at every position as well as their top 100 players in the league for the upcoming season.
The usual suspects headlined the top 10 for 2026, with Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani leading the way at No. 1 like he has in four of the last five seasons.
While there’s no reason to believe that Ohtani won’t remain the “No. 1 Right Now” in MLB next year, there’s always a chance the league crowns a new player as the best in baseball. MLB.com and its reporters put together a list of 10 dark-horse candidates who could jump into that coveted top spot in 2027, including two San Diego Padres.
The 10th dark-horse candidate from the list is 22-year-old All-Star center fielder Jackson Merrill, who only played in 115 games in 2025 due to several injuries that derailed the great production he had in his rookie season.
Merrill suffered a hamstring strain in April, a concussion in June, a left ankle sprain/bone bruise in August and multiple illnesses in May and July. It was quite the summer for Merrill, and while a lot of his numbers dropped, he showed flashes that he will be a great player in this league for a long time. He hit 25 doubles, six triples and 16 home runs with 67 RBI and a .774 OPS.
“Still, his rookie season showed Merrill has the talent to produce at a high level,” Jeffrey Lutz wrote Thursday. “With youth on his side, the 22-year-old former first-round Draft pick can not only recapture his 2024 levels, but improve on them.”
The more obvious candidate on this list is star right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr., who was fourth.
Tatis’ resume speaks for itself: three-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger, two-time Gold Glove winner and two-time Platinum Glove winner. The guy can do it all and arguably had his best year as an all-around player.
While his OPS was the second lowest of his career (still good at .814), he had career-highs in other categories: games played (155), at-bats (594), runs (111), hits (159), walks (89) and stolen bases (32).
If you want to be impressed, just look at his Baseball Savant page. Tatis is truly a five-tool player, a term that gets floated around maybe too often. MLB.com’s Brent Maguire suggests that we haven’t even seen the best offensive version of Tatis yet.
“His quality of contact suggests that another offensive level could come. In 2025, Tatis’s .370 expected wOBA was a good deal higher than his actual .353 wOBA,” Maguire wrote. “It was the same story in 2024 (.390 xwOBA, .359 wOBA). Considering his offensive level is already good and that Tatis boasts elite defense and strong baserunning, any uptick in offense could make him a legitimate MVP candidate and threaten as one of the best players in baseball.”
MLB.com prefaced that it’s more likely that one of the nine players ranked behind Ohtani in the top 10 would surpass him but noted that players including Ohtani made huge jumps to get to the coveted spot in the past.