RADIO
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.
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Fantasy Baseball Breakouts Recap
Here are all of the names I've recommended so far.
| Week # | Breakout Picks |
| Week 1 (ST) | Julio Rodriguez, Steven Kwan, Kevin Smith, Bryson Stott |
| Week 2 | Steven Kwan, Gavin Lux, Andrew Vaughn, Jesus Sanchez, Austin Nola |
| Week 3 | Seiya Suzuki, Jeremy Pena, Alex Verdugo, Ke'Bryan Hayes, Rowdy Tellez |
| Week 4 | Alec Bohm, Santiago Espinal, Taylor Ward, Cristian Pache |
| Week 5 | Rowdy Tellez, Ha-Seong Kim, Max Kepler, Christian Walker, Pavin Smith |
| Week 6 | Manuel Margot, Brandon Drury, Josh Naylor, Daulton Varsho, Gleyber Torres |
| Week 7 | Brendan Rodgers, Yonathan Daza, Brandon Nimmo, Tommy Edman, Ryan Jeffers |
| Week 8 | MJ Melendez, Kyle Isbel, Patrick Wisdom, Julio Rodriguez, Mike Yastrzemski |
| Week 9 | Alejandro Kirk, Nolan Gorman, Christopher Morel, Joc Pederson, Garrett Cooper, Emmanuel Rivera |
This Week's Fantasy Baseball Breakout Picks
I wrote a script and a query to isolate some hitters for this post this week, so I figured I'd just share that ahead of the rest of the analysis. What I was looking for were hitters that have markedly improved in hard hit rate and barrel rate while not striking out a lot more at the same time, comparing 2021 to 2022.
Barrel rate and hard-hit rate are correlated, so we probably could have just done both – but I wanted to be a bit more forgiving of launch angle since we're so early on this year – and barrel rate is pretty dependent on launch angle distributions. What we have here are hitters that are hitting the ball with much more authority while simultaneously putting balls in play at the same or a higher rate. This is a great formula for success. Unsurprisingly, we find a lot of the names that we've already talked about in this series making the cut.
We will dive a bit further into a couple of these names in this post, but there you have it – some bonus content for you this week.
Andres Gimenez, Cleveland Guardians
Gimenez was an exciting prospect for the Mets, but was pretty disappointing early on for them and hasn't been all that great in his short time with Cleveland after the Franciso Lindor/Carlos Carrasco trade. Since we've been hearing his name for a while, we can forget that this guy is still just 23 years old.
It would appear that he has taken a good step forward here in 2022. He had a couple of big games early on in the year, but then the numbers were on the down trend, until recently when he's brought everything up in a hurry.
In the spirit of picking super arbitrary date ranges to make a point, since May 28th Gimenez has hit .367/.412/.700 with three homers and a 17% Brl% while striking out just 21% of the time.
Now that we got that out of our systems, let's zoom back. For the season, Gimenez has done this:
| PA | Contact% | Brl% | Hard% | K% | BB% | HR | SB |
| 150 | 72.3% | 8.3% | 40.4% | 22.7% | 3.3% | 7 | 4 |
He has scored 19 runs and driven in 29 runs, decently solid numbers when considering he's spent most of the year hitting seventh in the lineup. You would imagine that he would move up in the lineup if this solid performance continues, certainly players like Myles Straw, Amed Rosario, and Steven Kwan aren't completely locked in at the top of that lineup – and moving up to the top three could be pretty significant for him Gimenez's fantasy values.
What we have right now is a guy that can steal 15+ bases while also possessing power that is at least league-average. He has a few more big steps to make before he's a fantasy stud, but at 23 years of age, I don't think it's out of the picture that he could take those steps this season.
Jazz Chisholm, Miami Marlins
This is not a guy that you're going to be able to acquire without a significant price tag, but we've gotta talk about what Jazz has been doing this year. He was one of the biggest stories in April of last season, but struggled with the strikeouts throughout the year and finished with a pretty pedestrian .248/.303/.425 slash line, hitting 18 homers, and stealing 23 bases.
That made Chisholm a risky pick for any category other than steals this season, but his upside was well known. He's been realizing that upside this season as he's already mashed 10 homers and swiped nine bases. That HR+SB total of 19 puts him behind just six other players (Aaron Judge, Julio Rodriguez, Mookie Betts, Jose Ramirez, Tommy Edman, and Kyle Tucker).
What is most encouraging about all of this is the improved strikeout rate. He has a 25% K% at the time of this writing, still a few points above the league average but a good improvement from the 28% mark in 2021. Those three points can make a big difference for a guy with this much power and this much speed. Jazz has also done a great job with the launch angle profile, as evidenced by the 15% barrel rate and 39% ground-ball rate. I want to see him keep this 25% K% steady for another month or so before putting him in the "fantasy stud" category, but he's on his way there it would seem.
Santiago Espinal, Toronto Blue Jays
We were on Espinal way back in April, but his recent performance deserves another paragraph of affirmation. For the year, Espinal has a fantastic 83% contact rate and a 17% strikeout rate. That has resulted in a great batting average of .293. For most of the year, that has come without much power. However, in recent weeks the ball has been jumping off of his bat. Over his last 10 games, he has homered three times while driving in nine runs and scoring six times on a .350 batting average.
The biggest reason to be excited about Espinal is where they have been hitting him in the batting order. Over the Blue Jays' last 20 games, Espinal has lined up like this:
| Lineup Spot | GS |
| 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 5 |
| 4 | 1 |
| 5 | 3 |
| 6 | 4 |
| 7 | 1 |
| 8 | 3 |
So he's been in the top five of the batting order 60% of the time – and this is even with the Blue Jays being fully healthy. This is great news for his counting stat production. Even if the power numbers fall off again, he should rack up enough hits, runs, RBI, and steals to make a really positive impact on your fantasy team. I think he should pretty much be universally rostered right now.
Harold Castro, Detroit Tigers
We have a couple of deeper league guys coming up here, and we'll start with the Tigers utility-man Harold Castro. He is 28 years old and has been up and down between the minors and Majors since 2018. He has always shown good contact skills with a low career strikeout rate of 21.9%, but the downside was the lack of power.
With just 114 plate appearances under his belt in 2022, it's too early to say the increased production here isn't just the result of good fortune, so keep that in mind. But here are the numbers:
| Year | PA | HR | Brl | PA/HR | PA/Brl |
| 2018-2021 | 772 | 8 | 17 | 96.5 | 45.4 |
| 2022 | 114 | 4 | 9 | 28.5 | 12.7 |
He's already halfway to his previous career production in homers and barrels. This doesn't definitely mean this power surge will continue, but he's someone to look into in your deep leagues if you need a guy with multi-position eligibility.
Brendan Donovan, St. Louis Cardinals
Shout to Frank Ammirante for this one!
Indeed, Donovan has shown a great eye at the plate as well as great contact skills. His 94% in-zone contact rate is third-best in the league (Steven Kwan and Luis Guillorme) and he's swiped two bases in his 117 plate appearances.
Unfortunately, that is pretty much the end of the positive news since there is very little to write about in terms of power. He has a barrel rate under 2% and has a crazy high 58% ground-ball rate. That files him in the "batting average specialist" category, although it does seem like he could score some runs and steal some bases if he can maintain a spot in the Cardinals lineup. He has not been an everyday player for the Cardinals, but has seen more reps lately and he's mostly hit in the fifth spot of that lineup – which is a pretty good spot to be in.
Don't rush out and add Donovan in shallow leagues since the power won't be there and the playing time isn't a sure thing, but for deep leagues he's a nice bat to add if you need some batting average.
Ramon Urias, Baltimore Orioles
Another deep-league consideration, Urias appears to be swinging the bat a bit harder this year, and especially lately. Since May 23rd, he has an 18% barrel rate with a great 56% hard-hit rate. He has homered four times in that span, more than half of what he did last year (7 homers) in 296 plate appearances.
Nothing else has really changed in his profile this year, although it is good to see the extra power numbers come while he maintains the same decent strikeout rate (25%). Over these last three weeks, he has upped his swing rate and that has resulted in much better results. This could very well just be because he's seeing better pitches to hit and jumping on them, but it could also be a conscious change in approach that will lead to some good things for him.
He has more power than Donovan to be sure, but again, this isn't a guy you need to add to your standard/shallow leagues. Keep an eye on what Urias does over the next few weeks.
And that's it for this week's breakout picks, hope this helps. Good luck this week, RotoBallers!
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