Breakout Hitters for Fantasy Baseball - MLB Batters Rising for Week 3

April 13, 2023

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers and potential sleepers for the rest of the fantasy baseball season, written in week 3 of the season. He looks into Statcast data to identify hitter breakouts.

I started this post series early last season and it ran weekly throughout the year, and it was a pretty big success for us - so we're back with more in 2023!

This is an introduction you should read, at least this very first time. The title of the post is called "breakout hitters", but the truth is that label doesn't always fit. Throughout the year, we will highlight some established Major League hitters that wouldn't really qualify for the "breakout" category. The purpose of this post series is to locate hitters that are elevating their fantasy production before our eyes. The real goal of this is to get ahead of it before the rest of the world notices.

Every week, I will give you a handful of hitter names that are really standing out in the data, relying heavily on skill-based, sticky statistics with reasonably short stabilization times. I will do my best to not give you hitters that you can't really do anything with. An example of that right now would be Wander Franco - who really looks like he's having his big bust-out year, but what are you going to do about that? You can't pick him up, and you probably can't trade for him either. I'll focus on hitters that can be had on waivers or guys to target in trades. We will track the names throughout the year. There will be misses, but there will be hits. Let's get to it!

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Logan O'Hoppe, Los Angeles Angels

We start it all off with some low-hanging fruit. Rookies are the easiest "breakouts" to pick out - that's just the nature of things. Rookies have not been in the Majors before, by definition, so if they come up and play well (it doesn't happen a high percentage of the time, but it does happen), that can be considered a breakout.

The problem for our purposes here is that rookies don't go under the radar very often. There probably isn't a manager in your league that isn't well aware of who Corbin Carroll and Jordan Walker are - you aren't going to sneak any lowball offers by people for those names.

For those reasons, I'm not going to highlight the Jordan Walkers of the world. But with O'Hoppe, I think this is someone who people are not nearly as aware of. The Angels catcher made the team out of spring, which wasn't a surprise but it wasn't a sure thing from the beginning of camp either. For that reason, and the fact that he's a catcher, he went largely undrafted in standard leagues.

In his first two weeks in the show, O'Hoppe has shown us that he's ready. He has slashed .258/.315/.677 with four homers on a 21.7% Brl% and a good enough 26% K%.

Catcher HR Leaders (as of 4/12/2023)

We are still extremely early in the year, so even though we are being as smart as we can with the stats we highlight - it's certainly possible that most of what has happened so far is due to randomness. O'Hoppe could certainly still struggle and end up being just another catcher with decent power but unable to offer anything else. His early 61.9% contact rate suggests that he's not a great contact hitter, and that means the strikeout rate could balloon up. The good news is that the power really does look legitimate as he's already hit a ball 110 miles per hour and has a hard-hit rate of 47.8%. The swing speed is for real and that is a skill that pitchers can't take away.

If you don't have a great catcher right now, and O'Hoppe is available - I would certainly go grab him. If the strikeout rate ends up in the 30% range in a couple of weeks, then we can reconsider - but for now, he seems like he'll be a valuable asset at the catcher position.

Miguel Vargas, Los Angeles Dodgers

I'm coming right up to the line here with Vargas since he was a pretty high-profile rookie coming into the season. However, he is off to a slow start in the box score (.190 batting average, no homers, no steals) - and he's already missed some time with injury so it's quite possible that the manager in your league that has Varags isn't overly excited about him.

Under the hood, however, we're seeing some really enticing things. He clearly has a good eye at the plate. He has walked in one-third of his plate appearances so far. You could attribute that to his disinterest in swinging the bat (34% swing rate, second-lowest in the league), but wait - there's more! 85% of his swings have been at pitches in the strike zone - that's the third-best rate in the entire league (30 PA minimum). That statistic is only based on when he's swinging, so clearly the guy can "see the ball" very well, so to speak.

Swing Decision Leaders, 2023. This is the percent of your swings that come against pitches in the strike zone.

Walks don't help us a ton for fantasy purposes since that takes away the possibility for homers and RBI, but we can have some hope that power is coming when he finally gets some pitches to swing at. He has a 50% hard-hit rate and a 12.5% Brl% so far with a max exit velocity of 108.1, and only 38% of his batted balls have been ground balls. Those are strong power indicators. Eventually, we will have to see some more balls in play from Vargas, and the signs are pointing to some very good things happening for his fantasy value once that happens.

Nolan Gorman, St. Louis Cardinals

Gorman debuted for the Cardinals last year and showed off some prodigious power, homering 14 times in 313 plate appearances. He had a 38% fly-ball rate which was near the league leaders, and the 14.4% Brl% was incredibly strong as well. The problem he had was the strikeout (33%). That kept his batting average below .230 and his fantasy value pretty low. It's still quite early, but we have seen Gorman change his approach a bit this year and it's been working out so far.

We have seen fewer and smarter swings from Gorman, and a higher contact rate. That has led to a drop in K% and a rise in BB%, and he has not given up any of the power while he's been at it.

Once again I have to disclaim that this could all turn around very quickly. He could be right back up to a 35% K% in a week, but we have to work with what we have right now - and Gorman's ceiling is incredibly high with how much raw power he has, so it is certainly worth the risk to get your hands on him now. If he's truly a guy with a mid-twenties strikeout rate, he'll likely be one of the more valuable middle-infielders in the league because it will be tough for him to not hit 30+ homers.

Josh Lowe, Rays and Brandon Marsh, Phillies

I am putting these two together because the write-ups are going to be almost exact copies of each other. Both of these hitters have excited us before as top prospects just to get into a Major League lineup and stink like crazy.

That's the bad news, and that fact does make it more likely that these two will go back to their previous ways soon, but we have seen good news out of these two speedsters early on, and now might be the time to get them while they're still cheap/free.

The fantasy value for these two names mostly comes from steals. They are both incredibly fast. Lowe stole 28 bases last season and Marsh swiped a dozen even while mostly coming off of the bench. On the flip side, they have both had major strikeout issues.

The MLB strikeout rate from 2021-2022 for Lowe was 33% and for Marsh, it was even worse at 35%. That's majorly prohibitive - but both guys currently sport much-improved strikeout rates so far (20% for Marsh, 14% for Lowe) and they are among the league leaders in contact rate improvement:

Biggest Contact% Rate Improvers, 2022 -> 2023

Contact rates stabilize pretty quickly. It's unlikely that this is complete randomness. We should note that the Rays have faced an absolute cakewalk in terms of opponent starting pitching, and that has no doubt helped Lowe - but regardless, the improvements are huge.

Steals are going through the roof, and these two guys can really help you out in that category if you're behind. They both have pretty good shots to keep their everyday jobs given their defensive prowess in center field and if they hit even just a little bit they'll really lock down those jobs. I'm adding them in deeper leagues right now, but they could quickly become must-start players if these contact and strikeout changes are for real.

And there you have it, your first five breakout hitter picks of the year. We'll be back next week with more!

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