| | | | Wednesday, January 29, 2025 | | 56 days until Opening Day ... | | Now breakouts? Those are easy to define. Jarren Duran going from a part-time player in 2023 to a top-15 finish in 2024? Oh yeah, he was a breakout. Chris Sale rediscovering his elite form en route to a first-ever Cy Young award at 35? Yeah, he was a breakout, too. | | Jackson Merrill emerging as a franchise cornerstone in his rookie season, Michael King making the leap to ace-dom in his first year back in the rotation, and Jurickson Profar going from a career also-ran to one of the best hitters in the NL … yeah, the Padres had a lot of breakouts last year, and they covered the whole spectrum. But, to put it as simply as possible, breakouts are any players who drastically outperform expectations and establish a new baseline for their performance. | | And they're some of the most important players you can draft to your Fantasy team because hitting on a true breakout at any point in the draft is how you take your team from good to contending. Drafting a third-rounder who gives you first-round production is how you overcome the inevitable attrition of the season – hitting on Duran last season helped me finish third in one league despite losing Ronald Acuna, for example – and drafting a 10th-rounder who gives you third-round production can be even more valuable. | | | | Of course, because the definition of a "breakout" is a lot less complicated than for a "sleeper" that also means there's a lot more consensus on breakout picks – and a lot more pressure on their prices. That's how you get a situation where Lawrence Butler can be a breakout pick for Frank Stampfl and Scott White, while also being a bust pick for me – the price is just too dang high! | | All told, there are 24 unique breakout picks among Scott, Frank, and I's initial list for 2025, and that includes nine players at least two of us had on our lists: | | Jordan Westburg, 2B, Orioles (on all three!) Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers (on all three!) Spencer Schwellenbach, SP, Braves (on all three!)Junior Caminero, 3B, Rays Masyn Winn, SS, Cardinals Dylan Crews, OF, NationalsJames Wood, OF, NationalsLawrence Butler, OF, Athletics Spencer Arrighetti, SP, Astros (also on my sleepers list!) | | Of course, consensus is no guarantee. Last year, Tarik Skubal was a consensus breakout pick, but so were Royce Lewis and Bobby Miller , who mostly just broke. Predicting the future is hard – most players won't play at a substantially different level than they have in the past. But when these picks do hit, they can make a world of difference in how your Fantasy season plays out. | | Just remember this: There was no price that was too high to pay for Skubal a year ago. The same will almost certainly be true for at least a few of the following picks: | | | | Breakouts 1.0 | | | | Chris Towers' Breakouts | | Head here for my full list of breakouts, and here are a few who made the cut for me: | | Willson Contreras, C*, Cardinals | | *Nominally. | | And that's a big deal. It opens up playing time opportunities for Ivan Herrera, one of my favorite sleepers for 2025 , but it also makes Contreras one of the biggest potential difference makers at the catcher position for 2025. I think it would be a mistake to assume that a soon-to-be 33-year-old with a lengthy injury history is suddenly going to become a model of health just because he's no longer crouching down behind home plate for half the game, but at the very least, he'll be at less risk for the kinds of injuries that tend to only happen behind the plate – like when he fractured his forearm last year being hit by a swing. And it opens up at least the possibility of Contreras getting to 150 games, which would give him a huge edge on the rest of the players at this position, minus one or two. And Contreras' 150-game pace since getting to St. Louis looks like this: .263 average, 74 runs, 25 homers, 74 RBI, and seven steals. That feels like the floor if Contreras stays upright. | | | | Jordan Westburg, 2B, Orioles | | Westburg barely cracks the top five of the most hyped Orioles prospect debuts over the past four years, but he established himself as a player worth getting excited about in 2024, and there's room to grow. At the risk of oversimplifying, Westburg is kind of a lesser version of Gunnar Henderson, combining a well-rounded skill set with tools that aren't quite as loud as Henderson's but which still should lead to big production. Especially now that the Orioles are moving the fences in left field back in, after a multi-year experiment that saw it become arguably the toughest place in baseball for right-handed hitters to homer. The park should play much closer to average, at least, and that'll only help Westburg, who was on pace for 25 homers before a late-July hit-by-pitch left him with a broken hand that cost all but six of the final 53 games of the season. One trick we'd like to see him borrow from Henderson: Turning his 91st percentile sprint speed into something like 20-plus steals, the way Henderson went from 10 to 21 in his second full season. The path to a truly impactful season from Westburg is trivially easy to see. | | Junior Caminero, 3B, Rays | | We tend to get over our skis on young players, to the point where Caminero hitting .249/.299/.424 as a 21-year-old last season was viewed as a disappointment. But it's worth keeping some perspective on these things, so here's some perspective for you: Of Scott White's top 10 prospects for the 2025 season, only two are younger than Caminero. Of the eight older than him, four haven't even made their MLB debut; of the other four who have, two (Dylan Crews and Jasson Dominguez) were quite a bit worse than Caminero in their MLB action in 2024. | | Caminero has a ferocious, powerful swing that figures to generate tons of power in the long run, and so far, strikeouts mostly haven't been an issue for him – his 21% strikeout rate in Triple-A last season was right in line with what he managed in the majors, so no real concerns there. If there is one concern with Caminero, it's that he brings very little to the table besides his bat – four steals across three levels last season – which means there's a lot more pressure on the bat to be excellent. We're betting he will be, and in short order, making him a viable upside pick around 100th overall. | | Scott White's Sleepers | | Head here for Scott's full list of breakouts. | | Lawrence Butler, OF, Athletics | | Now that I've gotten the obligatories out of the way, let's discuss one who's dear to me personally. Butler doesn't come with a sparkling prospect pedigree and, thus, doesn't get the same presumption of sustainability when he does something right. But he always showed the capacity to hit the ball hard, such that if he could ever learn to make enough contact, things could go very right. | | Turns out we underestimated just how right. Toward the end of June, immediately after Butler had returned from a month-long stint in the minors, Athletics director of hitting Darren Bush suggested that the 24-year-old make some mechanical tweaks aimed at eliminating excess movement and staying back on the ball. The results were immediate, and they were astounding. From July 1 on, or roughly half the season, Butler hit .302 with 20 homers, 14 steals, and a .943 OPS. He cut his strikeout rate to 20.6 percent as compared to 30.7 percent in the 52 games prior, when he hit .179. He had two three-homer games during the surge and was basically on a 40-homer, 30-steal pace. Again, that's over half a season. | | To me, that's long enough to call it legitimate, particularly since there was a dramatic improvement in strikeout rate to confirm the underlying changes. It's possible that after a long offseason, Butler could slip back into old habits and bring back the noisy swing that made him an easy out. (I'm not saying there's zero risk, which is why I'd be reluctant to take him inside of Pick 75, even as his ADP continues to climb.) But now that the Athletics know what works for him, I suspect any such hiccups to be short-lived. If he picks up where he left off, Butler might even be in the first-round discussion next year. | | James Wood, OF, Nationals | | You know how I said that elite hitting prospects have by and large struggled to transition to the majors the past few years? That wasn't so much the case for Wood, who delivered enough power and speed in his three months on the job to average nearly as many Head-to-Head points per game for the season (2.82) as Jackson Chourio did (2.86). It wasn't a stellar performance, but it was a solid one, which these days is about all we can hope for when a hitter is first called up. | | What makes the performance especially impressive, though, is that his flaws were plain to see. The growing pains that so many young hitters experience were also evident for Wood, but he's so tooled-up that he succeeded in spite of them. He struggled to put the ball in the air and to pull it, with rates that would place in the bottom 10 among qualifiers, and yet he still hit nine home runs in half a season's time, including seven to the opposite field. These rates can improve with better timing and pitch recognition -- the same sort of adjustments that Wyatt Langford needed five months to make -- and yet Wood was still a viable starter for Fantasy with them at their rock bottom. | | How? He's incredibly strong, leveraging his 6-foot-7 frame for a 92.8 mph average exit velocity that would have placed in the top 15 among qualifiers, up there with Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt . Hitting the ball that hard is one way to overcome the near-30 percent strikeout rate that's almost a natural consequence of being 6-feet-7, but if Wood's minor-league history is any indication, he may be able to reduce that rate itself. He went from striking out 34 percent of the time at Double-A one year to 18 percent of the time at Triple-A the next, and the result was a .353/.463/.595 slash line. There's simply no overstating the ceiling here once everything clicks, and in the meantime, he'll still be must-start. | | Frank Stampfl's Breakouts | | Head here for Frank's full list of breakouts. | | Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers | | The first name on the list is actually a returnee from last year's Breakouts 1.0 . Wyatt Langford is a perfect example of what I wrote about above. It's even more obvious for him. Langford destroyed the minors after getting drafted in 2023. He then showed up in spring training and continued to pummel the competition. As a result, the Fantasy industry fell in love and pushed Langford way up draft boards. I remember him being drafted as a Top-75 player by the end of draft season. The truth is we expected too much, too quickly. While he excelled early at every level, Langford only played 44 games in the minors and then 21 more in spring training. | | So why is Langford a breakout in 2025? He got his taste, took some lumps, but then started to figure things out. From June on, Langford hit .263 with 15 homers, 18 steals, and a .796 OPS over 100 games. That's a 24-homer, 29-steal pace over a full season. A large majority of that production came in September when he helped people win Fantasy championships. Over the final month, Langford hit .300 with eight home runs, seven stolen bases, a .996 OPS, and a 13.2% barrel rate. He started figuring how to make his massive raw power translate into games. On top of his obvious tools, Langford has really strong plate discipline, too. He makes good swing decisions and a lot of contact. I'm entering this season with the expectation that Langford will go 20-20 but he has the upside to go 30-30 in a revitalized Rangers lineup. If he does that, we're talking about Langford as a first-round pick next offseason. | | Spencer Schwellenbach, SP, Braves | It seems as though every year there is one breakout pitcher that everybody agrees on. I believe Spencer Schwellenbach is the chosen one here in 2025. What's not to like? In 21 starts as a rookie, Schwellenbach posted a 3.35 ERA and 1.04 WHIP with 127 strikeouts over 123.2 innings. All of his ERA estimators supported the 3.35 ERA, too. Schwellenbach flashed immaculate control with above-average strikeout stuff. Among starting pitchers with at least 120 innings pitched, his 20.8% K-BB rate ranked 16th while his 13.5% swinging strike rate ranked 12th.
How does Schwellenbach get the job done? He offers a six-pitch mix that includes a four-seam fastball, slider, cutter, curveball, splitter, and sinker. Two of those pitches - the curveball and splitter - had whiff rates over 40%. On top of the whiffs and control, Schwellenbach did a great job limiting hard contact and avoiding barrels. Like I said earlier, what's not to like? Well, there are a few things I should mention. His strikeout rate dipped in September but he continued to pitch well in spite of that. In fact, he turned in two clutch seven-inning performances against the Mets in September. The only other worry is that he saw a big innings jump. Schwellenbach went from 65 innings in the minors in 2023 all the way up to 168.2 total innings in 2024. If Schwellenbach can stay healthy (can say that for any pitcher), I'm banking on a wide arsenal, strikeout ability, and elite control. Draft Schwellenbach as your SP3 but expect SP2 production with an outside chance of SP1 numbers.
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