Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 5

Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. What we're doing here is taking good, close look at the hitting data each week to see which hitters are standing out the most.

The idea is to find hitters that have made changes and/or really improved this season to find start-worthy hitters for your fantasy teams, preferably on the cheap. We aren't constricting ourselves to players that are available on waivers or anything like that, just looking for some hitters that can may be having their breakout seasons that you should try to acquire.

For transparency's sake, we'll do a recap of each week's recommendation at the beginning of each post to track our results and see if we're on the right track.

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Fantasy Baseball Breakouts Recap

Here are all of the names I've recommended so far.

We saw Bohm and Ward put up really nice numbers this past week, and things kept going well for plenty of the other names we've talked about – especially guys like Pena, Tellez, Vaughn, and Suzuki.

Now let's dive back in and find another handful of breakout hitters.

This Week's Fantasy Baseball Breakout Picks

Note: This week's edition turned out to be some hitters I think can be more "solid contributors" rather than "potential studs". None of the below names I think have top-twenty hitter upside or anything like that, but they are guys that I think can be worthy of a starting spot on fantasy rosters, and guys that are showing really encouraging signs early on.

Rowdy Tellez, Milwaukee Brewers

I'm starting us off here with a repeat. I've been raving about Tellez all season long, and he just keeps looking better and better.

Here's another look at our contact vs. barrel rate scatter plot, which really shows the elite company Tellez is in. The redness of the dots represents hard-hit rate, the redder - the better.

Any time your dot is clustered near Yordan Alvarez, Mike Trout, and Aaron Judge – you're doing something right. Tellez is absolutely going to crush homers in Milwaukee, I don't think many people doubted that, but what we didn't expect was this much contact. Tellez is a must-start guy right now.

Wednesday morning update: Tellez mashed two more homers last night (one a grand slam) and added on two other hits. His barrel rate is up to 22%, equal to his strikeout rate.

Ha-Seong Kim, San Diego Padres

He was a pretty interesting name in 2021 as he signed with the Padres to join the Major Leagues after dominating in the KBO. Unfortunately, his rookie year was a bit of a mess. Early on in 2022 things are looking much better for Kim. Here's a look at the stat comparison between 2021 and 2022 for Kim.

We see marked improvement across the board there. If we zone specifically in this combination of barrel rate and strikeout rate, Kim is in pretty nice company. There are only a dozen hitters right now with a barrel rate above 15% and a strikeout rate below 25%. That list includes guys like Mike Trout, Austin Riley, Yordan Alvarez, and Luis Robert, so it's a pretty good list to be on.

I'm very skeptical that the 15% barrel rate will stick around, but given the fact that we're seeing him get more balls in the air, I think it's reasonable to expect he can be an above-average guy in that category (8-10% is my expectation). The one problem early on was that he was on the wrong side of a platoon with C.J. Abrams, but he has started against a right-handed pitcher three straight games now over Abrams who has struggled with a .182/.264/.295 line.

One bonus is that Kim has all kinds of positional eligibility and can fit in at the very tough-to-fill third base spot. I'm adding Kim where he's available.

Max Kepler, Minnesota Twins

I've been banging this drum for a few years now, and Kepler has given me hope that we finally have him. He is just 29 years old, so while he's no spring chicken, he's certainly still young enough to believe he can make significant improvements.

Right now, Kepler is sitting with a .240/.360/.480 slash-line (the .240 batting average is significantly beating the league's .232 batting average – that's important to note). He has another strong barrel rate at 13.3%, and he has continued to limit strikeouts in a major way at 16.9%. Other improvements have been the contact rate (79.5%) and the walk rate (13.5%). He's added one steal (stole 10 bags in 121 games last year) to his five homers while driving in 12, so the counting stats have been strong so far.

The problem with Kepler was always that he hit too many weak flyballs. That batted ball profile kept his batting average absurdly low, so even though we'd typically rather have a guy hitting fly balls rather than ground-balls, it hasn't really worked out for Kepler. This year, he's hitting more ground-balls (47%, up from 37% in 2021). Again, that's not by itself a positive thing, but it does suggest that maybe he has re-worked his swing a bit to hit more of the line-drive and less of the pop-up.

I thought Kepler was a guy to roster at the beginning of the year given his power, speed, and lack of strikeouts, but his early-season performance have put him in must-start range for most leagues.

Christian Walker, Arizona Diamondbacks

Walker was a bit of a breakout in 2019 when he hit .259/.348/.476 with 29 homers and eight steals in 152 games after being largely undrafted. He then posted another solid line in the short 2020 season, but fell completely flat in 2021 with a bad .244/.315/.382 mark and just 10 homers in 115 games.

He is looking a whole lot more 2019 than 2021 so far this year, although his line stats don't show it. Right now he's hitting .163/.250/.419 – but that's where the bad news ends.

Under the hood, Walker has an elite 16.9% barrel rate which he has paired with a great 21.9% strikeout rate. He joins only Max Muncy, Mike Trout, Yordan Alvarez, and Brandon Drury in the list of hitters with barrel rates above 15% and strikeout rates below 22% (those are very selective thresholds as you can tell, but hey I'm trying to make a point!). His expected batting average sits at a much more palatable .245 and the expected slugging is elite at .613 – he's been just crushing the ball. He's also walking more at 10.4% after being under 9% the last two seasons.

It's easy not to believe in Walker after what we saw last season, but all of the signs are really positive on him and I would pick him up while he's still available.

Pavin Smith, Arizona Diamondbacks

I'm reaching a bit here to find a fourth name, but Pavin Smith is doing the same stuff as the rest of this group. He's posted a strong 18.0% barrel rate with a 76% contact rate and a low 22% strikeout rate over his 77 plate appearances. It's just tough to do that for anybody, so the 26-year-old is showing that he has some unrealized talent.

Despite the Diamondbacks' lack of offensive weapons, they do have quite a few first basemen and outfielders competition for playing time, but Smith is hitting his way into the lineup. He has always been a low strikeout rate guy, but he seems to have added a bit of swing speed this year. His average exit velocity is up more than two miles per hour to 89.5 mph and he's hitting more balls in the air (average launch angle of 13 degrees this year while it sat at nine degrees last season).

He is not someone you need to rush out to add, but in deep leagues he may be very well worth an add.

Thursday morning update: Smith hit another home run on Wednesday. The barrel rate now sits at 18%.

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