6 years agoIn his first season with the Oakland Athletics, outfielder Stephen Piscotty put up the best numbers of his four-year major league career. He hit .267/.331/.491 with a career-high 27 home runs, 78 runs scored and career-high 88 RBI in 151 games (605 plate appearances). While Piscotty doesn't walk much – he had a career-low 6.9 percent walk rate in 2018 -- he managed to whiff a career-low 18.8 percent of the time with Oakland. The 28-year-old also very publicly battled through personal issues due to the illness of his mother for most of the year. The most encouraging part about Piscotty's season was that he hit fewer ground balls, more line drives and squared the ball up a career-high 42.6 percent of the time. Because of these gains without a drastic change in his plate discipline, Piscotty saw his HR/FB surge to 18.8 percent. He'll need to maintain that production while hitting a fair number of hard-hit fly balls in order to match or exceed his power output, especially in one of the friendliest pitching environments in baseball. Piscotty was a great value pick late in last year's drafts coming off a tough 2017 campaign, and he'll again be worth targeting in the late middle rounds to see if he can improve on his breakout season. He's RotoBaller's 45th-ranked fantasy outfielder. Target him with a selection around the 16th or 17th rounds in mixed drafts.--Keith Hernandez - RotoBaller