Breakout Hitters Watch for Fantasy Baseball - Jack Suwinski, James Outman, and More

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers, and potential sleepers for the rest of the fantasy baseball season, written in Week 5 of the season. He looks into Statcast data to identify hitter breakouts.

It is Week 3 of Breakout Hitters Watch, and so far I'm feeling pretty good about it. This post is one of my favorites to write because we really get into the data and locate some very interesting hitters to add. I learn a ton from this post every week, so I hope the rest of you are enjoying it as well.

There will be different player profiles included in all of this. I try to keep the majority of the names as hitters that are available on waivers. Or at the very least, players you could trade for before the breakout really hits. However, sometimes I just want to highlight already highly regarded hitters that seem to be going to the next level. These would be considered "buy highs" that you could still try to pry away from their owner with a fair offer.

For full transparency, I also track the picks every week, so you can go back and see who I picked. There will be some misses, but hopefully, we'll have enough hits to make this a worthwhile endeavor. I'll give you the tracker first and then we'll get into the five names we're picking for this week.

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2023 Breakout Picks Tracker

Week 5 Picks

Jack Suwinski, Pittsburgh Pirates

There is no perfect statistic. Every statistic that measures a player's output that we talk about here is subject to randomness. In the game of baseball, almost anything can happen over a short sample size. That said, one of my favorite statistics to look at is Barrels Per Plate Appearances (Brl/PA). This is the percentage of your plate appearances that end with a barrel (a barrel is the best type of batted ball, about 70% of them go for hits and about 50% of them go for homers).

The league average Brl/PA sits at 5.9% at the time of this writing (this isn't going to move very much, we'll likely finish the year right around 6%). Here are the league leaders:

What you can see here is a list mostly of established power hitters. It's not easy to crack the top 10 even if you are talking about fewer than 100 PAs. The nice thing about this stat is that it includes strikeouts. You can put up a very good Brl% while striking out a ton because Brl% uses balls in play as the denominator instead of plate appearances. Since PA is the denominator here, strikeouts hurt you.

That's good for Suwinski because last year he struggled mightily with the strikeouts. I (as a Pirate fan from childhood) was worried that the strikeout rate would be majorly prohibitive this year.

So far, the K% is high again for Suwinski at 28%. That's an improvement from the 31% he posted last year, but it's not a major change. This early in the season, he could be above 32% with two bad games.

There is good news in the profile here as well, though. His swing decisions (the percentage of his swings that are at pitches in the zones) have improved from 72% to 82%. His chase rate is down from 25% to 14%. His GB% is down from 43% to 31%. So he's swinging at better pitches and getting the ball in the air at a higher rate. Those are welcome signs.

He also has a solid 13% stolen base attempt rate this year. He isn't going to end up on first base very often with the strikeouts and the home run rate, but one thing I haven't mentioned yet is that his walk rate is very high so far at 18%.

One last note on Suwinski -- he's been miserable against left-handed pitching in his major league career (.114/.236/.267 with a 32% K%). That will have him on the bench most times when the Pirates face a lefty. Suwinski is best picked up in daily changes leagues where you can just play him in those spots against righties (he has slashed .246/.338/.507 against righties in his young career).

James Outman, Los Angeles Dodgers

We are probably a week or two late on this one, as I am guessing Outman is owned in the vast majority of your leagues. At the beginning of this, I talked about Brl/PA. Outman isn't very far behind the league leaders there at 11.8%. He's slashed an elite .311/.400/.703 with seven homers and two steals so far.

He also has popped up with a really good eye at the plate:

The downside with Outman is, once again, the strikeout rate. It's currently at 28% and his contact rate is down to 67%. These numbers were both much worse last week, and that's why it took me this long to get to him -- so it's good to see some improvement there. With as much power as Outman has, he can probably sustain strong production even with a 28% or so K%. Any higher than that and you're getting into murky territory.

Outman is a young player that has a long history of success in professional baseball, so he certainly should be rostered and started right now -- but don't commit to him too much if the K% bloats back over 30%.

LaMonte Wade Jr., San Francisco Giants

There are fewer hitters really popping out at me this week, so we're reaching a bit further into the bag to pluck out some potential hitter improvers.

Wade Jr. is 28 years old and probably past the point in his career where we can think he's really improved over the offseason. However, for the last few years, he has been a pretty interesting hitter when healthy.

Much like Suwinski, Wade Jr. missed his chance to prove that he can hit left-handed pitching (a career .338 OPS against lefties, laughably awful). He does hit quite well against righties with a career .807 OPS.

He might not get a single start this year against a left-handed starter, which makes him pretty tough to start in weekly leagues. However, he has gotten a few extra chances this year against lefties (13% of his PAs last year were against lefties, this year it is up to 28%). Even if he doesn't hit the lefties this year, his staying in the game when a lefty reliever comes in is big -- because it gives him a chance at an extra PA against another righty later in the game.

We mentioned above the nice plate discipline, and he's barreled the ball at a high rate early on (13.5%). He's not going to be a guy that takes your fantasy team to the next level. He's certainly an underrated piece in daily lineups leagues, and that's worth mentioning.

Nico Hoerner, Chicago Cubs

This is another name that probably isn't helping you very much. Hoerner was certainly drafted in your league, and his owner probably doesn't want anything to do with giving him up at this point -- but I have to mention what he's doing.

So far this season (prior to Tuesday's game), Hoerner is slashing .355/.400/.473 with two homers and nine stolen bases. His nine steals are the second-best in the league and his 33% stolen base attempt rate is the 10th-highest in the league. His strikeout rate is a ridiculous 7% and that is backed up by his 92% contact rate.

The power is obviously an issue here as Hoerner has just the two homers and a very low 3.5% Brl% so far. The good news is a non-awful 88-mile-per-hour average exit velocity and a 38% hard-hit rate that is certainly better than what you usually see from these 90%+ contact rate hitters. The power isn't a zero here, which is really all you're looking for with a player that hits for such a good batting average and steals so many bases.

Again, I don't think there's anything to do about Hoerner. But to me, it's not a bad idea to "overpay" a bit for him right now.  Maybe you swing a deal in your league for him if the Hoerner owner is hurting for power and has a surplus of steals. Hoerner is looking like a top-30 fantasy player right now. I don't believe it's ridiculous to think that's how he'll finish the season out in this new league environment.

Cody Bellinger, Chicago Cubs

I know, this is not my best work. Only a couple of these names really fit the criteria of "breakout" but I'm just giving you what the data is giving me. Bellinger, I suppose, is more of a "re-breakout."

What we wanted to see from Bellinger after the change of scenery was simple -- continued power output but a much-improved strikeout rate. And he's delivered that. So far this year in 92 PAs, Bellinger has a 14% strikeout rate. That's crazy. He's slashing .300/.380/.550 with five dingers and four steals. He's been one of the better fantasy players in the game, and I hadn't even realized that until now.

The contact rate is up seven full points from 72% to 79%, and he's chasing less (a five-point improvement). The Cubs are really clicking, and it looks like they made a great decision to give Bellinger a shot.

There is a good chance that the Bellinger owner in your league might not actually trust these improvements (I'm still skeptical, so he would be someone I'm willing to sell). That could give you a chance to acquire a very high-upside bat for a reasonable cost. I'm not guaranteeing that it's going to go super well from here on out. But as I said, the ceiling is enormous and the signs are all positive so far.

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