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Sam Chinitz looks at three young hitters who are positioned to breakout earlier than expected. These players could be value selections in fantasy baseball drafts ahead of the 2021 MLB season.
Finding breakout hitters can be a difference-maker for fantasy teams, especially when those hitters have had limited success at the major league level early in their careers. Whether it be through added playing time, skill improvements, or some combination of the two, pre-prime breakouts can be excellent draft values thanks to their unusually high upside.
A hitter’s best years can come at just about any age, but the start of a hitter’s prime is their age-26 season for this article*. That limits the pool of players to pick from -- 75% of qualified batters last season were 26 years old or older -- but there are still plenty of options.
For this article, a breakout season is one in which the hitter has his most valuable fantasy season by a significant margin and is worth rostering in most leagues. That’s still a fairly subjective set of criteria, but it disqualifies players like Ke’Bryan Hayes and Sean Murphy. With that in mind, below are three (and a half) pre-prime breakout candidates for the 2021 season.
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Evan White (1B, SEA)
24 years old
White struggled at the plate in 54 games last season, slashing .176/.252/.346 with an ugly 41.6% strikeout rate that ranked behind only Miguel Sano for the highest strikeout rate among qualified batters. When White did make contact though, he hit the ball hard with impressive frequency. Only 12 players posted a higher hard-hit rate than White in 2020, and White showed off a similarly strong 97 mph average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives and a 112.8 mph max exit velocity.
Notably, White is a pretty extreme outlier when it comes to contact quality and overall performance. Hard-hit rate and OPS are only weakly correlated for hitters, but White stands out as the hitter who underperformed the most given his hard-hit rate.
White’s high strikeout rate was the biggest driver of his underperformance, and it came with a relatedly high 35.6% called+swinging strike rate. White showed an ability to make relatively consistent contact in the minor leagues though, and his 15% swinging-strike rate from 2020 implies a strikeout rate closer to 30%. With that in mind, it’s not unreasonable to expect White to make a little more frequent contact while being more aggressive at the plate in 2021, changes that would have significant effects on his overall production.
If White can get his strikeout rate down around 30% (which is plausible), then he should be able to get his OPS up around .800 even with some contact quality regression baked in. Add in that White has the upside to post an OPS closer to .900 based on his potential for an improved strikeout rate and the 24-year-old makes for an exciting breakout candidate.
Nate Lowe (1B, TEX)
25 years old
Lowe has been productive but unspectacular for the Rays over parts of the past two seasons, posting a .770 OPS through 71 games. Now headed for regular playing time with the Rangers in 2021, Lowe is primed for a breakout season.
Lowe’s biggest issue in the major leagues has been his poor 32.1% strikeout rate, but he’s not a prototypical high-strikeout hitter. For one, Lowe’s 10.5% major-league swinging-strike rate would have been the second-lowest among qualified batters with a strikeout rate of at least 25% in 2019, and only one qualified hitter posted a strikeout rate above 30% with a swinging-strike rate below 14%. Additionally, Lowe wasn’t much of a strikeout hitter in the minor leagues, posting an 18.5% strikeout rate over four minor league seasons.
If Lowe can manage to increase his aggressiveness at the plate while maintaining at least most of his solid contact quality (.439 xwOBAcon), then an OPS above .800 is likely. Combined with consistent playing time and the upside to get his OPS above .850, Lowe is worth a look from fantasy managers chasing breakouts late in drafts.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1B, TOR)
22 years old
This feels like a trap, but Guerrero Jr. is just too good and made too many offseason adjustments to be left out of this article. Let’s start with what Guerrero Jr. already does well: he has as much raw power as anyone, above-average contact skills, an advanced plate approach, and he sprays the ball to all fields. The only two major holes in Guerrero Jr.’s offensive game over the past two seasons are his conditioning and his tendency to hit ground balls at a high rate.
Hitting coach Guillermo Martinez implied that Guerrero Jr.’s late-season 2019 slump was the result of fatigue, and Guerrero Jr.’s less than ideal physical shape has been well-documented. Guerrero Jr. has reportedly had an extremely productive offseason in that regard though, shedding 40 pounds. If that’s enough to help Guerrero Jr. be more consistent at the plate -- and it very well may be -- then a hard-hit rate above 45% is a reasonable (maybe even slightly pessimistic) expectation for 2021. Since the start of 2015, there have been only 42 instances of a hitter posting a hard-hit rate of at least 45% with a strikeout rate below 20% (min. 250 PA). That group averaged a .885 OPS, and nearly half of those hitters posted an OPS above .900.
To find himself in the upper echelon of those hitters, Guerrero Jr. will have to cut down on a ground-ball rate that sat at 54.6% last season and routinely exceeded 45% in the minor leagues. Fatigue also played a significant role in Guerrero Jr.’s high ground-ball rate, and Guerrero Jr. has been working to elevate balls more consistently this offseason. Overall, Guerrero Jr. has one of the highest offensive upsides in all of baseball, and his reportedly productive offseason makes him a clear 2021 breakout candidate.
Bonus: Lewin Díaz (1B, MIA)
24 years old
Díaz is a 6’4” first baseman who hit 27 home runs in 121 minor-league games in 2019 and posted a 96.8% z-contact rate in 2020. Those numbers jump right off the page, but if that’s all there is to say about Díaz he’d have broken out by now. For one, Díaz posted his eye-popping z-contact rate in only 41 plate appearances, and he struck out at an impressive but not elite 17.6% rate over his minor league career. A high z-contact rate doesn’t always lead to an elite strikeout rate (especially when considering that Díaz posted a relatively poor 63% o-contact rate in 2020), but his relatively high minor league strikeout rate isn’t a great sign.
On the topic of Díaz’s minor league career, he showed flashes of strong play but struggled to put together consistent success, posting a middling .778 OPS across six seasons. I’m reluctant to call Díaz a legitimate breakout candidate for 2021 as a result, but he should be on the radar of fantasy managers and is worth a late-round gamble in deep leagues thanks to his power and potentially underrated contact skills.
*All ages in this article are based on each player’s age as of April 1, 2021.
