So, here's the thing about doing a mid-season Fantasy Baseball breakouts list: It's mostly going to be a list of players who just haven't been very good so far this season. If there's one thing that most (though not all) of the players in the list below share, it's that they came into this season with much higher expectations than what we've actually seen from them so far.
It's not a bad bet to make. Players with multi-year track records of success will, occasionally, just lose it, going from must-start Fantasy players to just not relevant at all. But what happens a lot more often is, guys will go through a rough couple of months before figuring things out again, and that's what I'm betting on for most of the following players.
This list differs from my sleeper picks earlier this week in that I'm not worrying too much about roster rate – in fact, all of these players are nearly universally rostered. Instead, I'm focused on 10 players I think will not only be better in the second half than they were in the first but will be difference makers who help countless players win Fantasy championships.
Second-half Breakouts
Francisco Alvarez, C, Mets
This one almost feels like cheating, because Alvarez is sitting on a .862 OPS for the season, with significantly improved plate discipline from his rookie season, which sure looks like a breakout to me. But the power has been a disappointment so far, and that's where I'm betting the 22-year-old can take a big step forward. He has just four homers in 40 games, and his underlying quality of contact metrics don't necessarily suggest he's been unlucky in that regard, so it's possible that he's had to make a tradeoff to get more contact. But the high-end exit velocities are still impressive for Alvarez, so if he can just start pulling the ball in the air a bit more, he should be able to tap into the underlying power there. It's a bet I'm willing to make at a position where I like to have a difference-maker.
Triston Casas, 1B, Red Sox
This is another one where the breakout was already starting to happen before a rib injury derailed him in late April. Casas has been cleared to swing in the batting cages and should be progressing toward live pitching soon enough, and I still expect Casas to be a difference-maker down the stretch. This one is also kind of cheap, given that we saw what the breakout looks like in the second half of last season when Casas hit 15 homers with a .317/.417/.617 line in 211 trips to the plate. That's what the ceiling looks like here, and it's worth chasing.
Gleyber Torres, 2B, Yankees
This has been a frustrating season for Torres, who is hitting just .223/.297/.344 as the All-Star break approaches. He has seen a regression in his strikeout rate after last season's improvements, and it's not like he's been doing the "trade contact for power" thing – Torres' .135 expected ISO would be the worst mark of his career, with only 2020 coming even close. This one is a bet on a guy with a long track record bouncing back, though it depends on Torres finding his swing. Right now, he's hitting entirely too many popups – career-high 8.4%, from 5.6% last season – while also hitting the ball to the pull side less than ever. That seems to be a conscious effort on the part of the Yankees as a whole, as their team-wide pull rate has dropped from 42.1% to 38.1%, and while it hasn't limited Aaron Judge or Juan Soto's greatness, the rest of the lineup isn't exactly benefiting from it. I have faith in Torres' track record to turn this around, and with his free agency looming, he surely knows the stakes here.
Noelvi Marte, 3B, Reds
Marte has now played 23 games between Triple-A and the Majors this season, and the results have not been pretty. He has struck out in 31.6% of his trips to the plate with a combined OPS below .400, and his quality-of-contact metrics since getting to the majors are a mess – his average exit velocity is just 83.2 mph on 28 batted balls.
So, yet again, we're betting on the talent here. Marte was suspended for the first 80 games of the season, and he's clearly having trouble finding his footing with his mid-season debut. But this is a guy who hit .316/.366/.456 as a 21-year-old in the majors last season and has been a top prospect for years while producing at pretty much every level of the minors at a young age – between Double-A and Triple-A last season he hit .280 with 11 homers and 18 steals in 89 games. There has always been some swing-and-miss concern in the profile, but this season is the first time it's ever really derailed his production. Maybe it'll take a more normal offseason in 2025 to get him on track, but Marte is a high-level talent who can currently be had for a discount. I'll take it.
Oneil Cruz, SS, Pirates
Has Cruz been a disappointment this season? He certainly hasn't lived up to the loftiest expectations some of us had for him, but if you compare his current pace to preseason projections, and it pretty much looks in line:
(Note: I'm taking an average of the six projections systems on FanGraphs.com for simplicity's sake)
- Preseason projections: .246/.318/.445, 23 HR, 81 R, 73 RBI, 21 SB
- Oneil Cruz's current pace: .247/.303/.444, 25 RH, 72 R, 74 RBI, 13 SB
Okay, he hasn't been quite in line for his projections, but it's pretty dang close! Of course, the thing about Cruz was you were never drafting him for his 50th percentile outcome; that 50th percentile outcome has come to pass, and it's made him a decent Fantasy option, but hardly a difference maker. If you were drafting him, you were doing so for the ceiling outcomes, and that's still what we're chasing here.
And in this case, we have good reason to think that ceiling outcome is in play. Because Cruz is one player actually underperforming his expected stats, with a .321 wOBA compared to a .353 expected wOBA. He's absolutely crushing the ball, with a 95.6 mph average exit velocity, .506 expected wOBA on contact, and 54.5% hard-hit rate that puts him in the Aaron Judge range. His strikeout rate – specifically against lefties, who have set him down on Ks 35% of the time – makes the Judge comparison unreasonable overall, but that's the territory he's in when he does make impact. And it's reasonable to expect much better things from Cruz moving forward, something we've already seen since the start of June, as he has cut the strikeout rate to a much more manageable 29% and is hitting .257. If he can keep the strikeout rate in that range, Cruz still has superstar upside.
Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers
Langford was drafted as an immediate difference-maker, and he definitely hasn't been that. But he's been pretty awesome since the start of June, hitting .325 in that span with 26 RBI, 16 runs, four homers, and six RBI. Even in that stretch, Langford hasn't exactly been what we expected, though – he's making a lot of contact and he's incredibly athletic, but still isn't providing consistent power, which was the one thing pretty much everyone was sure would be part of the package.
I'm willing to bet on Langford figuring that part out. He struggled mightily to do much of anything early on but started to figure out the hitting for contact part in June, letting his impressive athleticism carry him after he put the ball in play. In the small sample size of July, we're starting to see him put it all together, with his average exit velocity leaping to 91.3 mph and his xwOBA up to a season-best .361; .328 in June was his best mark prior. He's starting to figure out how to put it all together, and Langford could absolutely be a top-12 player down the stretch.
Christopher Morel, OF, Cubs
I'll be honest here: I can't quite figure out how to feel about Morel. He has obvious gifts as a player but also has real limitations that may make it impossible for him to ever actually live up to the upside that anyone can see from a quick glance at his underlying skills. And, if you want the pessimist's take, this writeup from Matthew Trueblood in Baseball Prospectus is a good rundown of why Morel may continue to struggle to live up to expectations – the TLDR version is that, while his swing is geared toward generating elite quality of contact, but he might be sabotaging himself with a swing that generates too many hard-hit balls in the wrong direction, including, too often, directly into his own front foot.
But a man's gotta have a code, as they say, and mine is: Believe in elite skills. In Morel's case, that means drastically improved plate discipline along with still high-end quality-of-contact metrics. Morel has seemingly traded some quality of contact for the improved plate discipline, but he had plenty to spare – his expected wOBA on contact is down from .464 to .416, but his xwOBA overall is actually up from .340 to .354 thanks to the cut in strikeout rate. Morel had never struggled to live up to his expected stats prior to this season, so I'm willing to buy in on the improvements here.
Though, buyer beware: Morel has legitimate bottom-out potential thanks to his near-worst-in-the-league defense. If he doesn't start hitting, there's definitely playing time risk here.
Pablo Lopez, SP, Twins
In this case, it's another bounceback more than a breakout, because we've already seen Lopez pitch like an ace prior to this season. I know it's been made especially rough by his regression in his most recent start – he had struck out 23 with two walks and one run allowed in his previous two starts before being tagged for six runs in five innings last Friday. It's worth noting that three of those runs came around to score after Lopez had already left the game, though you wouldn't be wrong to note that he still allowed those runners to reach base!
I know, I know, you're frustrated. But I'm telling you to remain patient. And, if you get the opportunity to buy low on Lopez, you should absolutely take it, because his best days are still ahead. He still sports a near-elite 28.1% strikeout rate and 5.3% walk rate, and while his quality of contact allowed is a problem, he still has a 3.37 xERA and 3.19 xFIP. Lopez is still an ace, and it's time for the results to show it.
Shane Baz, SP, Rays
It's just one start, and it was a merely decent one, but Baz gave us plenty of reason to be optimistic with his debut last week. Per FanGraphs.com's Stuff+ metric, Baz's fastball rated as a top-15 pitch among all four-seamers, and while the rest of the arsenal wasn't quite as sharp, it still rated out as a solidly above-average arsenal on the whole – and that's with the curveball not quite looking like the pre-injury version. The fastball and slider should be enough to get more than by – Baz had 35 strikeouts in 23 innings over his final five rehab starts – and if the rest of the arsenal catches up, there's a legitimate ace-level ceiling here.
Remember, Baz was a consensus top-15 prospect in baseball prior to his Tommy John surgery and has a career 2.65 ERA and 31.3% strikeout rate in his time at Triple-A. And if you take out the final start of 2022 when he got hurt, Baz has a 2.84 ERA and a 29.7% strikeout rate in the majors, so we don't even really need to project. We mostly just need Baz to stay healthy.
Reese Olson, SP, Tigers
I'll admit, this one is kind of cheating, because Olson is sitting here at the mid-way point of the season with a 3.22 ERA and 1.18 WHIP, so there isn't much he needs to do to improve. But I'm highlighting Olson because he remains one of the most under-rostered players in Fantasy, I think in large part due to his ugly 3-8 record. But everything else has been solid, at worst, and there's reason to think Olson is starting to unlock some upside, too.
Olson has mostly looked like a solid high-floor pitcher, with strong groundball skills but middling strikeout rates. However, he has always had really strong swing-and-miss numbers with his changeup and slider (over 40% with both), and over his past four starts, he has struck out at least eight in three of them. If he's figuring out how to turn those whiffs into strikeouts more consistently, Olson could really take off here in the second half. Olson is, somehow, still available in 28% of CBS Fantasy leagues. Go add him now.
