Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 6

May 12, 2022

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers and potential sleepers for Week 6. He looks into Statcast data to identify hitter breakouts.

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.

Welp, Pavin Smith has hit .077 since I recommended him. That is .077 higher than Ha-seong Kim who has gone 0/22 since last week's article, and that group of hitters gave us exactly zero home runs in the last week. Not my best work! Some updated thoughts:

• Still holding strong on Tellez, barrel & strikeout rates remain super strong
• Kim's contact rate has stayed strong and he's walking a ton – I'm holding on a bit longer especially since he plays 3B
• Keep starting Kepler
• Walker went for a 23% barrel rate last week but no homers, he's going to provide homers but might hurt you elsewhere
• Pavin Smith had another nice barrel week but a 44% K% and all those other names that Diamondbacks have in the outfield mean you can probably cut him now
• Seiya Suzuki should still be started, but his strikeout rate is up to 29%, which is discouraging
• Verdugo's fly-ball gains have gone away, and he's back up to a 52% GB% (65% last three weeks). He's back to just being the player you drafted him to be – not a breakout candidate
• Jesus Sanchez has a 31% K% the last three weeks, so he seems to be back to the "empty power" category

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 showing really encouraging signs early on.

Manuel Margot, Tampa Bay Rays

I am pretty hesitant to believe that Margot is a different player than what we've come to know, but it is important to keep in mind that he's just 27 years old and was previously a top prospect.

He has started the 2022 season with a .337/.400/.500 line and has homered thrice in 25 games. The slash line is bolstered by a .366 BABIP (.292 career BABIP – so that's very high), and his barrel rate is underwhelming at 6.8% (but that is up from a career mark of 3.6%).

Here are some of the other changes we've seen in Margot's profile thus far

He is hitting the ball harder and getting the ball into the air more often, all while making even more contact. These are exactly the changes we want to see from a potential breakout hitter. It is more than possible that it was just a "hot" month for him, and he will recede back into his normal self. It's also quite possible that he made significant skill improvement coming into 2022 and we're seeing the early fruits of it. Either way, Margot should probably be rostered given his propensity to steal bases. He has a bit of a hamstring issue right now, but it does look minor as he hasn't been placed on the IL two days after it happened – so I wouldn't hesitate for that unless a new report comes out.

Brandon Drury, Cincinnati Reds

This one is pretty tough to believe as well since Drury has been around and mediocre for so long (he debuted in 2015, is now 29 and has a career slash line of .251/.298/.423). The early-season success simply cannot be ignored right now. Here's what Drury has done this year.

What is very striking there is the combination of the 16.4% barrel rate with the 81.6% contact rate. That puts him in pretty elite company.

It is not easy to have that many barrels while also making so much contact, and that has me a bit believing in Drury. The issue with Drury is that he was not an everyday player at the beginning of the year. He has certainly slugged his way into that role for now, but if the homers quit coming he could easily go back to a platoon situation – and that would make him pretty tough to roster for fantasy purposes.

It's extra alluring that he does fill in at third base, which has just been such a brutal position to fill unless you're lucky enough to have one of the top guys like Machado or Devers. We know Great American Ballpark is great for power, and Drury seems to be taking advantage of it – although the barrel rate suggests he'd be hitting homers pretty much anywhere. Give him a look.

Josh Naylor, Cleveland Guardians

The Naylor hype has been real for a few years now, and maybe it's being realized in 2022. He is just 24 years old and a formerly exciting prospect coming up in the Padres' organization. Those two things make the breakout a bit more believable to me.

This year he's hitting .338/.370/.574 with four homers. He has never been a high strikeout rate hitter (career mark of 18.6%), but he's taken that to the next level this year with a tiny strikeout rate of just 13.7%. He has a wRC+ of 180, tied for 14th-best in the league. Okay now for the bad news!

Naylor's 6.8% barrel rate is below league-average, and his ground-ball rate is still quite high at 47.5%. His .345 BABIP is near 50 points above his career average. All of this means he's certainly been lucky in terms of racking up base hits, but he is indeed hitting the ball harder on average with a huge improvement in the hard hit rate (currently at 47.5%, up 8.4 points from his career average of 39.1%).

If Naylor was a few years older, I wouldn't be buying this at all given the barrel rate, BABIP, and ground-ball rate. The reason I'm still interested is the age and the reliably low strikeout rate. It's more than feasible that he's actually added swing speed at that age. That's much more easy to believe for a 24 year old than a 30 year old like Drury. I don't think Naylor will be a 25+ homer guy, but he does have the raw swing speed to do so if he can consistently get more balls in the air. He's unlikely to really hurt your team in the meantime given the strikeout rate, so he can be added with some level of confidence.

Daulton Varsho, Arizona Diamondbacks

Varsho is certainly not available in any leagues right now, but I think he's taking his game at the plate to a new level. He's another guy who was very recently a highly-touted prospect, and he has catcher eligibility – which is huge for fantasy purposes.

Early on, Varsho is slashing .255/.336/.490 with six homers and three stolen bases. That has made him one of the more valuable fantasy hitters overall, and he's been the most valuable catcher by a good margin. The power profile is quite believable as well with the 12.5% barrel rate and 44.4% hard-hit rate he's posted. He also pops in near the league leaders in my personal "Boom Score" rankings, which looks at the quality of contact and contact rate together to see who is making the best contact most frequently.

The only reason for negativity is the fact that he's actually having to play catcher right now. At the beginning of the year, he was the everyday centerfielder, which meant you got the catcher eligibility without the frequent off-days and bruises that come with being a catcher.  Now Carson Kelly has hit the IL (it appears to be a long stint ahead too...), so Varsho has had to become the primary catcher again. I imagine they still play him in the outfield or DH on a lot of the days he's not catching, but I think you'll see significantly more rest days for him when a left-handed pitcher is on the mound.

Not much actionable advice here besides going pretty aggressive on him in a trade – especially in a keeper league now that he'll retain his catcher eligibility for at least one more season.

Gleyber Torres, New York Yankees

You see Gleyber Torres in the top 15 of the "Boom Scores" rankings above. It's been a nice start to the season for Torres, whose career has been so underwhelming given his former status as the game's top prospect overall.

Here's what it looks like so far for the Yankees middle infielder.

That's a lot of contact for such a low batting average, the .206 BABIP has really hurt him. This actually means you can probably still get Torres for pretty cheap – and that's something I would be interested in doing.

He has hit more balls in the air this year than ever before with a 48% FB%, that is an incredibly good sign playing in Yankees Stadium. The hard-hit rate is also up to a career-best (by far) 50.7%. His xBA is .303 and the xSLG is .600 – which really displays how unlucky he's been thus far.

It was also pretty exciting that he stole 12 bases a season ago. He has not attempted a steal so far in 94 plate appearances, but hasn't been on first base very much (just 14 singles plus walks this year) either. It's possible that 2021 was the outlier there and he won't steal bases this year, but it's good to know it's possible.

I'm trying to acquire Torres in leagues, especially where I'm weak at second base.

Thursday morning update: Torres drove in five runs and hit another homer last night, raising his slash line to .222/.258/.444 with five homers and an 11.7% barrel rate.

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