Breakouts are what win you a Fantasy league. A couple of players who take a big step forward plus a little bit of good luck are the main ingredients for a winning formula, especially once you consider that a significant portion of your picks are going to miss -- more than you probably think.
You need those guys who are going to outperform their draft slot to make up for it, then. Even a first-rounder could potentially be a breakout if they make the leap from star to superstar, and an established veteran could be a breakout too if he performs better than ever before. There's no set definition for the term, just like there's no set definition for the term sleeper or bust. In my case, I'm using the term "breakout" to signify the players I'm making sure in the final weekend of drafts that I'm going to go get.
The guys I'll reach for if I have to in order to make sure they're on my team, because these are the guys I think have the best chance to lead me to that championship.
Alright, I'm taking the plunge. I've been a bit critical of the Fantasy community's enthusiasm for Guerrero over the past few years, and I started out that way this spring, despite the "best shape of his life" narrative. That doesn't move me -- I need tangible signs of improvement. And that's what we've gotten in the spring. Guerrero is right behind Giancarlo Stanton when it comes to elite exit velocities, but over his first two seasons, he simply hit too many balls hard on the ground. So far in spring he's hitting .500/.583/.786 with six walks to just three strikeouts, which is awesome, but the fact that he's doing it while elevating the ball more often is what stands out. HIs average launch angle on balls Statcast has tracked is up to 7.6 degrees, compared to 4.6 degrees last season. You'd prefer to see a bigger increase -- he's fallen back into some bad habits over the past week or so -- but I've seen enough that I'm willing to bet on the breakout. His most likely outcome is still that he under performs his 52.6 ADP, but the chances of him making that leap to the second round look better than I expected.
Marte is one of my two most drafted players, and I wish I had him in more than seven of my 15 drafts so far. Some are seemingly writing off his 2019 as a fluke after he hit just two homers in 2020, but I'll make a few points that can hopefully convince you that 2020 is the aberration, not 2019. First of all, he was dealing with a wrist injury that ultimately landed him on the IL in September, so that probably played a part in the power outage. However, the biggest reason I'm still buying is that he managed to sustain the increased launch angle that fueled his breakout in 2019, and he did it while continuing to be an elite plate discipline guy. The average exit velocity was down overall, and his expected stats mostly backed up his struggles, but he still had the fifth highest maximum exit velocity in the league, and that has historically been a good measure of raw power -- he's surrounded by Guerrero, Javier Baez, Teoscar Hernandez and Luis Robert. He's behind only Giancarlo Stanton in number of batted balls tracked over 110 mph so far this spring, including a max exit velo of 114.7 mph, so that power is still there, it seems. He can rival DJ LeMahieu in batting average, he can hit 30 homers, and he might even steal 10 bases, too. If Marte finishes as the No. 1 2B, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
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And there's my other most-drafted player. What's interesting is, while I've consistently reached on Marte, I've only taken Buxton ahead of his ADP one time in the seven times I've drafted. I think he's awesome, but I never have to pay a premium for him, which I love. Buxton's career has always been defined by unmet expectations, but it seems like many Fantasy players don't think the upside is that high anymore. They're wrong. Buxton seems to have made a conscious decision beginning in 2019 to start elevating the ball more, and he's always hit the ball hard, so it should be no surprise that's resulted in some pretty excellent power production -- he has a .275 ISO over the past two seasons, just ahead of Freddie Freeman's mark for 11th best in the league. His per-162-game pace in that span is 87 runs, 30 homers, 94 RBI, and 21 steals with a .259 average, the kind of production that would make him a likely top-50 player in all formats. Injuries remain the biggest obstacle for Buxton, but I'm willing to bet on "injury prone" players staying healthy if they have the kind of upside Buxton does.
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The excitement level for Gurriel never seems to quite match his production, because he's hitting .289/.336/.538 with 80 runs, 31 homers, 83 RBI and nine steals in 141 games over the last two seasons. For some reason, there seems to be a perception that Gurriel's production has been a bit of a fluke or he just doesn't have much upside beyond what we've seen. In both instances, I'd say the perception just isn't far. Gurriel has over performed his expected stats by a bit the last two seasons, but he's also posted strong average exit velocities, barrel rates and hard-hit rates, ranking in the 78th percentile in each in 2020. He's not an incredibly toolsy hitter as much as he's someone with very few flaws in his game. Sometimes, those kinds of players can be less than the sum of their parts, but in Gurriel's case, his lineup and home park(s, including their early-season home in Dunedin) should help him continue to get the most out of his skill set.
Stolen base threats tend to see their value inflated these days, but with an ADP that remains outside of the top 150, that hasn't been the case with Robles. Maybe it's because he only stole four bases in 2020, so nobody really thinks he'll be much of a threat. But Robles is still an elite base runner who stole 28 bases in 2019, and he could surpass that in 2021 if he remains in the leadoff spot -- and it sure sounds like that's where he's going to open the season. Robles has started 48 games batting either first or second in the lineup, and he has 14 steals on 17 attempts, a 44-steal pace. I'm not expecting Robles to steal 40 bases, but you can't dismiss the possibility of it. And, while Robles has the reputation of being pretty punchless as a hitter, his 109.2 mph max exit velo in 2020 was tied with Freddie Freeman's and ahead of the likes of Anthony Rendon, Carlos Correa and Trevor Story, among others. I'm not saying he'll be a power hitter, but the tools have always been there for Robles to be a better hitter than he has shown. This is your chance to buy a 24-year-old top prospect with 40-steal potential for a mid-round pick. Take it.
I wanted to do five hitters and five pitchers, but I couldn't leave Ohtani out, so he makes it 5.5 and 5.5. We all know not to get too excited about spring training, but you'd be a fool to ignore what Ohtani is doing -- he's hitting .600/.621/1.080 with four homers and two steals and has 14 strikeouts in eight innings as a pitcher. After he looked like a shell of himself in a few short outings in 2020, his stuff is all the way back to pre-surgery form, as he's hit triple digits with the fastball and had the secondaries working. And he batted in the same game as he started on March 21, going 2 for 2 with a walk while striking out five and allowing one run in four innings. The Angels have already said they won't stick to the old way of using him -- a day off before and after each start -- so it's possible he gets to 500 plate appearances and does a reasonable imitation of someone like Austin Meadows as a hitter while throwing 125 or so innings of ace production. In leagues where you have to pick whether to use him as a hitter or pitcher each week, his potential impact is a bit muted, but in daily lineup leagues, he probably deserves to be a top-60 pick. He could break Fantasy baseball.
You could make a very good case that Woodruff already broke out in 2020, so this is more just my chance to talk him up as one of the best pitchers in Fantasy. I was, admittedly, skeptical that his fastball-heavy approach would hold up given that most pitchers rely on their secondaries to put hitters away, but Woodruff increased his spin rate on both his four-seam and sinker in 2020, leading to even more whiffs. The changeup and slider are pretty great pitches, too but he doesn't need to incorporate them any more than he already does if he can sustain that increased spin rate on the fastballs. Woodruff is elite at limiting hard contact, and with better swing-and-miss skills, durability is the only concern here. But if you take out the last three starts of 2019 -- his last before going on the IL with an oblique injury and then first two back, when he threw just seven innings combined -- he's thrown 188.1 innings over his last 32 starts. If he can avoid the IL, Woodruff has top-five upside.
My love for Anderson is well documented at this point, and he's a key part of most of my pitching staffs at this point. There are questions about how many innings he will throw in 2020, but that's true about just about every pitcher outside of the top 20 in ADP, so it's hard to ding him too much. Anderson may only throw 150-160 innings this season, but I'm expecting him to be one of the best pitchers in the league when he's out there, with elite strikeout potential thanks to two plus secondary pitches in his curveball and changeup, and his fastball should continue to limit hard contact. I am, admittedly, possibly too excited about Anderson, but this is a case of buying talent and the numbers, even in a small sample size.
It feels like there's so much less interest in Luzardo this year than there was last year, and that's because he went from a pitching prospect with an unmeasurable theoretical upside to a guy who has actually pitched in the majors and only pitched well enough to finish eighth in Rookie of the Year voting. His 4.12 ERA was a disappointment from a player with ace upside, and though he's being drafted in around the same spot as a year ago overall, there's clearly less buzz around him. That's a mistake. For one thing, Luzardo was better than his overall numbers indicated -- take away a six-run start against the Giants where he was forced to start at the last minute when Frankie Montas was scratched with a back injury and his ERA dips to 3.39 while his strikeout rate jumps from 23.8% to 24.7%. A bigger reason to be optimistic, however, is that Luzardo sounds a lot more confident in his breaking ball(s) -- he has three variations from slider to curve -- than he was last season. Luzardo has elite velocity for a left-hander, with plus command and legit swing-and-miss stuff, and he absolutely has top-10 SP upside, even with innings concerns and injury risk. This might be your last chance to buy him around pick 100.
Alcantara has talked about wanted to throw his four-seam fastball more to increase his strikeout rate, and at least in spring, the results are encouraging: He has 24 strikeouts in 17.1 innings. His strikeout rate ticked up already in 2020, while his walk rate moved in the opposite direction, and because he's so good at limiting hard contact on balls in play, he's not far from being an ace. Alcantara pitches deep into games consistently, too, so he could be one of the few pitchers who is capable of going 200 innings this season. The combination of his volume and the potential for another step forward make Alcantara a very intriguing breakout pick.
It's still not clear if Hicks is going to open the season as the Cardinals closer, but he's still my bet to lead the team in saves. His stuff is all the way back this spring following his recovery from Tommy John surgery, and that stuff made him one of the hardest pitchers in the game to square up -- he had a miniscule 1.8% barrel rate, lower than Sonny Gray's league-leading mark from 2020. And, while he struggled with his control and didn't get as many strikeouts as you would think from watching him, he was starting to improve in both facets in 2019, introducing a changeup and increasing his slider usage. That combination of improved strikeout rates along with his incredibly heavy sinker that nobody can lift off the ground, and there are all the makings of an elite reliever. Hicks is a big part of my strategy for reliever, which centers around not paying a top-150 pick for one. He could be among the very best at a much cheaper price.
