| | | | Thursday, February 1, 2024 | | I've got a philosophical question for you to kick off today's newsletter: Was 2023 a breakout season for Ronald Acuña? | | Of course it was! He established new career-highs in four of the five Rotisserie categories with his .337-149-41-106-73 line, with the 41 homers only matching his previous best. By any possible definition of the word breakout, Acuña's 2023 fits. Of course, if I had picked Acuña as a breakout before the season, I bet I would have been met with a bunch of scoffing dismissals. | | "Oh yeah, the No. 1 player in ADP is a 'breakout' candidate? Sure thing!" | | The point is, any player can be a breakout candidate if you think they're going to reach a new level of production. Think that young guy being drafted as a solid mid-rotation piece is going to end up being a must-start, borderline ace this season? He's a breakout. Think that established, fourth-round pick is going to return first-round value? He's a breakout! Think a six-year veteran is about to have the best season of his career? Yep, you guess it. | | | | Now, all that being said, breakout picks tend to skew young. Of my 12 picks for my Breakouts 1.0 column, Tarik Skubal is the only one who debuted before the 2021 season, and Oneil Cruz is the only one who debuted in 2021. My personal list skews very young, and for good reason: Young players tend to have more room for growth left. | | It also tends to lead to more consensus among our picks, too. Between Scott White, Frank Stampfl, and myself, our Sleepers 1.0 picks had just five names out of 37 who made at least two of our lists. For our Breakouts 1.0? Six of 33 were on at least two of our lists: | | Royce Lewis, 3B, TwinsOneil Cruz, SS, PiratesTarik Skubal, SP, Tigers Grayson Rodriguez, SP, OriolesEury Perez, SP, Marlins Bobby MIller, SP, Dodgers | | There are no guarantees in this game, of course -- I had Eloy Jimenez, Andrew Vaughn, Hunter Greene, and most frustratingly, Reid Detmers as breakouts last season, and I definitely had company on at least a few of them. Us agreeing on those six players should make you feel pretty confident in their chances of breaking out, but let's not put all of our eggs in one basket. | | In the rest of today's newsletter, I've got some more of my breakout picks, plus a few each from Scott and Frank. Tomorrow will take on a decidedly more negative bent as we talk about our bust picks, so let's keep it positive for one more day. | | Next week, we'll move on to our position previews, starting with catcher, and if you've got any questions about our sleepers, breakouts, and busts, or anything else, send them my way at FantasyBaseball@Paramount.com with the subject line "#AskFBT" to be included in an upcoming mailbag. | | For now, let's see who is going to take their game to the next level in 2024: | | | | My Breakouts | | | | Head here for my full list of sleepers. Here's a sample: | | Royce Lewis, 3B, Twins | | In Lewis' case, I'm not even sure he needs to "break out." He just needs to stay healthy. All he's done at the major-league level is crush the ball, with a .307/.364/.549 line and a 39-homer, 14-steal pace over 162 games – and that's not even accounting for his four-homer-in-six-games postseason run that already has his place in Twins lore locked up. It's even more impressive when you consider how much time Lewis has missed in his career – he didn't log a single official plate appearance in 2020 or 2021, due to the pandemic and then injuries, and his MLB debut was disrupted after just 12 games in 2022 due to a torn ACL, the second of his career. This is another one where the underlying data suggests his top-line numbers may not be sustainable, but they also suggest he's already a very good hitter without any improvement. And, of course, given his lack of experience and his pedigree (Lewis is a former No. 1 overall pick), I'm inclined to bet on the underlying numbers improving as much as the surface-level numbers might slip. Lewis just has the look of a capital-G Great hitter, and that's one I don't want to bet against given all he's already overcome. | | | | Oneil Cruz, SS, Pirates | | It was effectively a lost season for Cruz, who ended up playing just nine games before suffering a season-ending fractured fibula. He's been playing in game action at the Pirates academy in the Dominican Republic and is fully recovered from the injury, so now the question is whether there will be any lingering effects. Cruz lost a key year of development time, adding uncertainty into what was already a highly volatile profile. However, Cruz has also played 98 games at the MLB level and put up 162-game splits of 31 homers and 21 steals, plus 89 runs and 101 RBI, despite very much not being a finished product. He has top of the scale tools – including the hardest-hit ball in the history of the Statcast tracking system at 122.4 mph – and we got a tantalizing glimpse of his upside if he can cut his strikeout rate, when he hit .288/.359/.525 in September of 2022 while striking out 29.8% of the time. That's still a huge strikeout rate, of course, but it hints at how little improvement Cruz might need in that regard to be a superstar. | | Riley Green, OF, Tigers | | Greene has now suffered three pretty significant injuries since the start of the 2022 season: A fractured foot just before the start of his rookie season, a stress reaction in his left fibula in May of 2023, and then a torn ligament in his non-throwing elbow that required surgery to end the 2023 season. He is expected to be fully ready for the start of this season, and I continue to be very interested in his skill set. He hit .288/.349/.447 last season despite the injuries, with underlying metrics that suggest he might have deserved even better – he had a .289 expected batting average and .499 expected slugging percentage. He hasn't shown much stolen base upside, and the injury history probably means he won't run enough to have much more than about a 10-steal ceiling, but if he hits like his Statcast metrics suggest he could, that probably won't matter. It definitely feels like there's another level to unlock as a power hitter, and if he does, Greene still has a really high ceiling. | | Scott White's Breakouts | | Head here for Scott's full list of breakouts. | | Triston Casas, 1B, Red Sox | | My enthusiasm for Casas is summed up rather easily. In the second half last year, he slashed .317/.417/.617, hitting 15 of his 24 home runs. Those numbers are not only spectacular but also in line with the lofty comparisons to Freddie Freeman and Joey Votto as he ascended the minor-league ladder. Is he really going to be as good as those two eventual Hall of Famers? The smart money says no, but I will point out the similarities between his batted-ball profile and Freeman's. Both are up-the-middle-focused, their hits well distributed between center, left and right field, and generally don't put the ball on the ground. Both have an average exit velocity of about 91 mph and a max of about 113. Casas strikes out a little more than Freeman did at the start of his career, but only a little more, and it trended down in the second half. | | Tarik Skubal, SP, Tigers | | A former top prospect with some awe-inspiring minor-league stat lines, Skubal was beginning to emerge as a useful Fantasy starter in 2022 when he needed surgery to repair the flexor tendon in his elbow. The recovery kept him out of sight, out of mind for nearly a full calendar year, but then he returned last July with an additional 1.5 mph on his fastball. It meant he didn't have to rely so much on a so-so slider, and it made his already excellent changeup a true nightmare of a pitch, yielding better than a 50 percent whiff rate. | | If you think his resulting 2.80 ERA was impressive, check out his 2.28 xERA and his 2 FIP. The former led all pitchers (minimum 80 innings) by 72 points and the latter by 83 points. In other words, by all of our most advanced methods of evaluating pitchers, Skubal was far and away the best -- better than Spencer Strider, better than Tyler Gasnow. | | Seiya Suzuki, OF, Cubs | | Suzuki was probably the highest-profile hitter to come out of Japan since Shohei Ohtani himself, so while he showed flashes as a rookie in 2022, the final results were underwhelming. Last year brought more of the same, at least to start out. The 29-year-old entered August batting just .249 with eight homers and a .713 OPS, all hopes for Fantasy greatness relegated to a distant memory. | | But that's when everything clicked for him finally. Over the final two months, he hit .350 (65 for 186) with 12 homers and a 1.073 OPS, striking out just 17.4 percent of the time compared to 25 percent before then. I wouldn't claim to know exactly what changed, but I will point that Suzuki's struggles in his first year and a half with the Cubs were just as mysterious. The underlying metrics were always strong, his Statcast page lit up in red with most every quality-of-contact stat being 60th percentile or higher. | | Frank Stampfl's Breakouts | | Head here for Frank's full list of sleepers. | | Bobby Miller, SP, Dodgers | | Similar to Grayson Rodriguez and Eury Perez , there's a lot of hype around Bobby Miller entering 2024. In fact, I like him even more than those other two. Miller just feels a little more polished and plays on the best team of the three. But why is there so much hype around Miller? He pitched well in his debut season, putting up a 3.76 ERA and 1.10 WHIP. While the strikeout rate was a little underwhelming at 23.6%, Miller has a nasty arsenal and I think those strikeouts could be on the rise. He averages 99.1 MPH on the fastball with three swing-and-miss secondaries in his curveball, slider and changeup. | | According to Eno Sarris' Stuff metric, which measures the physical characteristics of pitches, Miller ranked fifth among starting pitchers with at least 120 innings pitched. He got better in the second half, too, and it came in conjunction with a pitch-mix change. Miller dropped his slider usage and opted for more curveballs, which was a smart move. His curve looks like an elite pitch, posting a .184 batting average against, 13.3% swinging strike rate and 89th percentile spin rate. Considering Miller got up to 138.2 innings last year between the majors and minors, I don't see any reason why he can't push 175 innings in 2024. Miller's going to cost you a top-100 pick but I think he's worth it and should be drafted as a top-24 starting pitcher. | | Michael King, RP, Padres | | As a Yankees fan it sucked that Michael King was traded to the Padres but it was for Juan freakin' Soto after all. I can't be too upset. King has all the potential in the world and he flashed it down the stretch last season. His final eight appearances were all starts and during that stretch, King posted a 1.88 ERA, 1.10 WHIP with 48 strikeouts over 38.1 innings pitched. For anybody who had King on their Fantasy team, I'm sure you remember that 13-strikeout masterpiece against the Toronto Blue Jays. That's the kind of upside we're talking about here. | | Jake Burger, 3B, Marlins | | Alright, maybe I cheated with this one. Jake Burger technically broke out last season, hitting 34 home runs with an .828 OPS. But I think he can be even better. Something changed once he was traded to Miami. In 53 games with the Marlins, Burger hit .303 with nine home runs, an .860 OPS and just a 22% strikeout rate. Up until the point he was traded, Burger's career strikeout rate was nearly 32%! He's always been an aggressive swinger at the plate but what he improved in Miami were some of his swing decisions. Burger swung at more pitches in the zone than ever before and, as a result, made more contact on those pitches. | | Burger also possesses some of the best raw power in the game. His 91.9 average exit velocity ranked in the 89th percentile while his 16.7% barrel rate was in the 98th percentile. Burger's 118.2 max exit velocity was the sixth highest in all of baseball. If he could somehow blend this new approach with his massive power, the sky is the limit. The .303 batting average he produced with the Marlins seems unrealistic but if everything works out, could Burger hit .275 with 35-plus home runs? It's not impossible. Worst-case scenario is he goes back to striking out a lot but still produces elite-level power. Burger is a great fallback option at third base or somebody to target for power as your corner infielder or utility bat. | | | | | | | | MaxPreps App | | 24/7 Sports News | Every team, every player, every game. Get the latest high school scores, exclusive rankings, news and more in the MaxPreps app.
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