Breakout Hitters to Watch for Fantasy Baseball Week 7

May 19, 2022

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers and potential sleepers for Week 7 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 a 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 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.

Fantasy Baseball Breakouts Recap

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

Plenty of names here that could've majorly aided your fantasy team if you snatched them up around the time of that writing. Of course, plenty of duds as well I probably caused people to waste a week or two on. Some of the guys I'm still riding hard from the list

• Lux, Vaughn, Suzuki, Pena, Tellez, Ward, Kim, Walker, Margot, Drury, Varsho, Torres

and some I have abandoned

• Smith, Stott, Sanchez, Nola, Pache, Smith

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

This Week's Fantasy Baseball Breakout Picks

Tommy Edman, St. Louis Cardinals

We'll start it off with a cheapo. Edman is certainly rostered in your league and probably won't be easy to acquire. I alluded to the potential power increase in the preseason, and that seems to be materializing. So far over 149 plate appearances, Edman has a 8.3% barrel rate and a 44% hard hit rate. Those aren't outstanding numbers, but they are more than you usually get from a guy you drafted in the middle rounds for batting average and steals.

The strikeout rate has stayed low at 14.1%, and he's walking more than ever before at 11.4%. The .273/.372/.438 slash line is really good in the context of 2022, and he's already 36% of the way to his homer output from a year ago.

Even if the power goes away, you're still starting Edman for the batting average and steals, so the floor is super high in that regard. He's someone I would be pursuing in trades if you think you can pull it off.

Brandon Nimmo, New York Mets

For a long time, Nimmo was that guy you could have for on-base percentage and a few steals and even some runs when he was leading off against righties. That left him pretty uninteresting for standard leagues, but he's out of the gate really strong here in 2022 and may have even added some pop this year.

Right now the barrel rate sits at 10%, which is soaring above his previous career marks (2%, 7%, 6%, 8%, 4%). The expected slugging percentage is way up at .485 as well, and these are notable figures.

The most interesting thing to me is the decreased strikeouts we've seen. Here's his K% and BB% visualize from the last seven seasons.

You can see the walks haven't budged, which you often see with a decreased strikeout rate (a good way to reduce strikeouts is just to swing more and at worse pitches, but Nimmo hasn't done that). So what you have now is a guy with enough barrels to get to a dozen homers which should come with a great OBP and probably even a decent batting average. The Mets lineup is really strong, so leading off for them is a boost.

Maybe the strikeouts come up and the current barrel performance dissipates, which would send Nimmo back to the fringes in a standard league, but his floor isn't the worst thing in the world either – especially so in OBP leagues.

Yonathan Daza, Colorado Rockies

The 28-year-old Rockies outfielder is earning playing time. His 84% contact rate is one of the better marks in the league, and it comes with non-zero power marks as he has a 6.3% barrel rate. I say non-zero, but he hasn't homered yet, and yeah, I wouldn't expect many to come with his 32% hard-hit rate and max exit velocity of 105. It's still quite early to be relying on those numbers, but we aren't looking at a big swinger here.

There's not much difference between Daza and a guy like Steven Kwan or Luis Arraez, so if your league doesn't set up well for those players to be rostered, then you can probably leave Daza on the wire. However, if you're in real need of batting average and some runs scored (he's hit in the #2 hole a lot lately), Daza is a great option.

Coors Field certainly raises his batting average floor as well, and he currently sits at the 100th percentile of expected batting average of .368!

Expected Batting Average Leaders

The 8% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate are numbers hard to find anywhere else, so yeah – everything is pointing towards this guy being an easy .300 hitter while playing – and that's worth something in plenty of fantasy leagues.

Brendan Rodgers, Colorado Rockies

Two Rockies this week! It is worth noting once again just how big of an advantage Coors Field is, and I think that might actually be accentuated this year with the ball not flying as well as it has in the past. The Coors effect is most strong on fly-balls, which are the batted ball types most damaged by the new baseball and the new humidors across the league. Coors has had a humidor for many years now, so nothing changed in that regard – which is more reason to believe that Coors will stay more or less the same while the rest of the league sees depressed offense.

The batting average in Coors is .289 right now. The league average is .234 and the second-highest stadium is .263. That's a crazy difference, so Rockies bats are proving to be insanely valuable.

One Rockies hitter I thought was poised for a breakout is Rodgers. The 25-year-old was a former top prospect for the organization and made some serious improvements to his strikeout rate last year. He had an awful start to the 2022 season, but he's humming along recently. Since April 27th, Rodgers is hitting .370/.382/.574 with two homers, a 16% barrel rate, and a 16% strikeout rate. He's even hitting the ball hard on the road in that time with a 14% barrel rate in 16 plate appearances away from Coors. He's always been a solid contact bat, and that's continued this year.

The downside, of course, is the 50% of the time he's on the road and the fact that he won't steal you more than a few bases, but he certainly seems like an auto-start whenever in Coors, and not the worst option in the world on the road either. Good guy to buy low on right now given the stats are still mediocre after the horrible first couple of weeks he had.

Ryan Jeffers, Minnesota Twins

Ew gross, a catcher! But hey, he's been something to take note of this year! He's just 24 years old and did turn in a pretty good power season last year with 14 homers in just 293 plate appearances.

It appears the power is for real. Jeffers has turned in an 18.2% barrel rate, a 52.7% hard-hit rate, and a .474 xwOBA on contact this year. Those are solid marks, but they've turned into just three homers so far.

The problem is, as it is so often, the strikeouts. His 30.4% strikeout rate leaves much to be desired in terms of batting average and reliability. The 75% contact rate behind it suggests that maybe this number will gravitate towards 25% as we move along, but yeah I don't expect much more than .230 or so from Jeffers.

In two-catcher leagues, Jeffers seems like someone that should be able to contribute to your squad. There just aren't many catchers that are chipping in anything to your offense, and Jeffers looks like a guy that should hit at least 15 homers or so this season.

And that's it for this week breakout picks, hope this helps. Good luck this week, RotoBallers!

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