Fever Report No. 036 · 2026-10-19
The Garage and the Gap
We called Edouard Julien a breakout in July and missed. He's still No. 2 on the board, the gap is still there, and the crowd has stopped listening.
The miss
We filed Call C0002 on Edouard Julien on July 11. The thesis was that his contact quality was running ahead of his results — we expected a 30-point climb in actual contact value by September 27. The resolution came back at -0.026. His contact results went the wrong way from baseline. The miss is on the ledger — one of 13 now, against 8 hits — and it stays there.
He's still No. 2 of 20 on the breakout board today. The bat is still louder than the line. We were wrong once, and the engine is still pointing.
The person
Edouard Julien is from Quebec City, a French-speaking household where his father Remy — an Expos fan who played recreational ball — put a glove in his hands at three or four. They hit in the family garage. Later, Julien would swing against a bat-speed app, measuring himself against major leaguers like Mike Trout, swinging so hard his helmet flew off during Team Canada practices.
Before baseball took him fully, he was a competitive alpine skier, ranked among the top 10 in Canada at 15. The Phillies drafted him in the 37th round out of high school; he didn't sign. He went to Auburn.
He arrived in Alabama unable to speak English. On his first day of practice, coaches pointed at positions and asked questions he couldn't parse. He said yes to everything — yes meaning I'll go where you point — and bounced around the field until the language caught up. Former teammate Davis Daniel remembered that he didn't withdraw. He was outgoing, eager to hang out, present in a language he didn't have yet.
As a freshman, he broke Frank Thomas's program RBI record with 69 and earned Freshman All-American honors. The Twins took him in the 18th round in 2019, pick 539, and he signed for $493,000 after initially planning to return for his junior year. He debuted in April 2023.
The batting average has gone .263, then .199, then .220, and now .208 with three home runs in 88 games for Colorado. Four seasons, each one lower than the first. A career trending the wrong way, and a crowd that has stopped watching.
The signal
One hundred sixty-four balls in play give us enough to trust the read. His 95th-percentile exit velocity is 105.57 mph — right at the league median of 105.8, harder than 46% of the 406 qualified hitters in our sample. Not a star's contact. A solid everyday bat's contact.
But his results on contact run -0.1138 below what park-adjusted contact quality supports. That puts him further below the physics than 99% of qualified hitters. The ball leaves his bat like a useful big-league hitter's, and the stat line pays him like a replacement player. In Colorado, in a park that inflates offense, three home runs in 88 games from this kind of contact does not compute.
We said this in July. We were wrong — the call resolved as a miss, his actual contact value moving the wrong way from baseline. The bat is still saying one thing. The line is still saying another.
Julien has spent his whole career saying yes to where the game pointed him — from a garage in Quebec to Auburn to the Twins to the Rockies. The engine is pointing again. The crowd has stopped looking.
The market
The market data tells you what the crowd decided. His 2026 Topps Series 2 Gold sits at $1.80 raw, $39.02 in a PSA 10, across 33 sales. His 2023 Bowman Chrome rookie prospect — the card that carries the dream — is $1.43 raw, $8.00 in a PSA 10, across 27 sales. The PSA 10 on the Topps card is down 0.1% over the past week. Flat for weeks. The market has settled on .208 and is not spending to find out otherwise.
Edouard Julien cards on eBay →
Paid link — as an eBay Partner, FVR earns from qualifying purchases. We take positions only after publication — never before. Misses stay on the record.
On the record
If Julien's results on contact do not climb toward his EV95 by next season's All-Star break — if the gap persists or widens through the first half — then the bat was lying, the crowd was right, and this read goes on the ledger as a second miss on the same player.
We'll know in July.
Biographical details per Wikipedia, MLB.com, Auburn Tigers, AL.com, and theScore. All performance data: MLB StatsAPI via the FVR engine.